With Shrike and Lulu’s help, Spyder managed to sit upright in the sand. Every breath was an adventure in pain. He gasped and took shallow breaths. That helped. Over by the fire, Primo sat, his injured shoulder wrapped in a clean bandage. He was drinking with a tall man dressed in leather and chainmail. The stranger had a scarred but darkly handsome face and eyes that shone intensely in the fire light. He nodded at Spyder. Primo turned and smiled when he saw Spyder awake.
“Good to see you up, sir! Thank you for your help off the ship!”
Spyder tried to shout back, but his ribs spasmed and he couldn’t get the breath to shout. He gave Primo a pained smile and little wave. The stranger, Count Non, raised his glass at Spyder.
“I’ve seen that guy before,” said Spyder.
“Yes, he said he knew you, too,” said Shrike.
“He doesn’t know me. We just saw each other at the weird market with the Sphinx. How did he end up near our ship?”
“He was coming to knock us out of the sky.”
“Nice guy. He said that?”
“Yes.”
“A snappy dresser and honest as a preacher. Sexy,” said Lulu. “Why can’t I find a girl like that?”
“Why is he still here if he came to bury us?” asked Spyder.
“Because I changed my mind,” said Count Non.
Spyder’s senses clearly weren’t hitting on all cylinders yet. He hadn’t even seen the Count coming over.
“You need to move around or those muscles will stiffen up. Let me help you,” Count Non said, reaching down and effortlessly lifting Spyder to his feet. It hurt like hell to be upright, but Spyder swallowed the pain. He didn’t dare let go of the Count’s shoulder as the man walked him slowly to the fire.
“How’s the arm, Primo?” asked Spyder. “Or, well, you know what I mean.”
The little man smiled and turned to let Spyder see his empty sleeve. “Like you, I’m a bit sore, but the Count has an extensive knowledge of healing magic. And it’s hard to kill us Gytrash.”
“Lucky for us,” said the Count. Spyder watched the little man smile broadly. It was weird, but the Count had that kind of air about him. Spyder wasn’t sure what it was, but the man’s title fit him. Somehow, he seemed regal. There was a weight to his presence that was oddly compelling. Spyder turned back to him.
“You look better without the make-up,” he said.
Count Non chuckled. “You think so? If I’d known I wasn’t flying right back to civilization, I would have packed it. My scars bother some people.”
“I think they’re cool,” said Lulu.
“Thank you.”
“What do you do, Count. When you aren’t trying to kill us?” asked Spyder.
“Don’t be rude,” whispered Shrike.
“It’s all right,” said Count Non. “He’s right to feel uneasy, being saved by his executioner. I was all set to kill you, especially when I saw you dealing with that pig prince of the Erragal clan. Then I saw the Brotherhood attack your ship and knew that we were on the same side.”
“What side is that?” asked Spyder. “I didn’t even know there were sides.”
“The Brotherhood is scared enough of your expedition to try and stop you, and that’s good enough for me,” said Count Non. “‘On mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise.’”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Lulu, picking up a glass.
“The Count is coming with us,” said Shrike. “We can use the help, getting where we need to go.”
“He’s on our side now? Okay, asshole, who paid you to get us?”
“I was hired by the Wizard’s Guild. I wasn’t told why, but I understood that you were about to acquire something that would upset the balance of magical power in all the Spheres.”
“So, you’re some kind of magician union buster?”
“The Brotherhood doesn’t believe in magic, but is more than willing to use it to its own ends. As we all recently witnessed. I knew then that whatever you were up to could only weaken them. The wizards will just have to sort out their business themselves.”
“Just like that?” asked Spyder. “You’re not afraid of a whole army of pissed-off magicians?”
“I have my own sources of power and protection,” said count Non.
“Like me, the Count is royalty without a country.”
“No quite,” he said. “We’re far from conquered. I’m traveling all the Spheres looking for help.”
“How? By working as a merc?” said Spyder.
“What better ways to meet other warriors and adventurers such as yourselves?”
“Spyder, listen to me,” said Shrike. She sat beside him in the sand and put her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been unconscious for a full day. And the Count and I have been talking. I believe him. Please trust my judgment on this. I want him to come with us.”
Spyder reached out to where Lulu was pouring drinks from a leather sack with a bone spout. She poured a glass of amber liquid and handed it to him. Spyder took a pull and felt the liquor burn where sand had scoured the back of his throat.
“Fuck every single little bit of this,” said Spyder. He rubbed his temples. “So, where the hell are we?”
“We made it to Kher-aba, the right island to get to the Kaslan Mountains,” said Shrike. “But we’re on the wrong side.”
“How big is Kher-aba?”
“Big enough,” said Lulu. “Walking is not plan one.” Sometime during the night she’d lost the pieces of paper she’d kept taped over her eyes. The empty sockets were black and deep. Spyder tried not to stare.
“Before we landed, we spotted a city a day or so through the desert to the north,” said the Count. “There’s a fresh water river nearby. We’ll follow that to the city.”
“What city is it?”
“We don’t know,” said Shrike.
“It’s not on our map,” Primo said.
“That doesn’t sound like a good thing,” said Spyder.
“It doesn’t mean anything, necessarily,” said Shrike. “The map Madame Cinders gave us is old. The city could be a recent vintage.”
“In any case, we have no choice. We need transportation,” said the Count.
The liquor was making Spyder light-headed. He remembered that Shrike said he’d been unconscious for a day, which meant that he hadn’t eaten in all that time. The liquor buzz made the ache around his middle seem far away.
“Thanks for fixing my ribs,” Spyder said.
“Glad to help a fellow fugitive.”
Spyder finished his drink and held out his glass for another. “So, Countdown, Lulu tells me you have some wicked bad weapons?”
Count Non’s face widened into a smile, showing perfect white teeth. Suddenly Spyder felt like a little kid who’d just gotten a compliment from his favorite teacher. He’d asked exactly the right question.
TWENTY SEVEN
The Hall of Mirrors
The sun was up and the air was warm when Spyder awoke. It was the kind of early morning heat that he knew meant that the afternoon would be an inferno. Hope the river water’s cool, he thought.
Spyder rolled over and groaned. His side hurt less, but now his right arm was sore. He’d spent a good part of the previous evening drunkenly playing with one of Count Non’s odd weapons. What had he called it? Spyder tried to remember through the haze. It was something unpronounceable, with a lot of back-of-the-throat “ch” sounds. Spyder had just ended up calling it a Hornet, he recalled. His high school football team had been the Hornets and the weapon buzzed like a stinging insect when it was spun properly (which Spyder failed to do, most of the time).
Spyder held his side and let out a groan when he stood up.
“The more you move around, the better you’ll feel,” said Count Non. The big man was packing his gear into a pair of leather saddlebags, like the ones Spyder had installed on the Dead Man’s Ducati. The Count’s bags looked hand-tooled, with squids or some weird animals stitched all over them. Spyder envied the bags.