Thieves' War by Clayton Snyder

Author:Clayton Snyder [Snyder, Clayton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rogue Publishing
Published: 2020-03-23T22:00:00+00:00

Tug Tuggerson, Moron

We’d made our way past the party district of the city, finally entering what could be considered residential. I supposed even the dead needed somewhere to stop moving for a while. The streets had moved from simple grids to concentric rings, homes lined up like attentive supplicants, facing the center of the city, an open round, the circumference carved with a strange set of runes. Posts the height of a man stood from the stones, cracks at their base from the force with which they had been driven in. More of the black cables of corruption snaked between buildings, across cobbles, and up walls, in some cases thick as ivy. They crawled over the nearby circle like caressing fingers, another post at its center, something, or somethings hidden beneath their mass.

The temperature steadily dropped as we approached the center of town, first revealing our breath in thick plumes, then coating the walls and tentacles in a rime of frost. This close to the circle, fat flakes of snow blew from the cloudless sky, skirling by in small wind devils. The cold skipped through my bones and numbed my fingers. I rubbed them furiously, breathing into my palms to keep them flexible. Tug watched me.

“I knew a girl who did that with her fingers all the time.”

“If you finish that sentence, I will feed you yours,” I said.

He shrugged, and we peeked back around the corner.

No guards patrolled this part of town, no people walked the streets. A sense of desolation and loss hung in the air, undercut with sorrow. Behind us, a group of Fantucci’s men lay in a heap, missing limbs, and in some cases, heads. They’d spotted us turning into the circles of the neighborhood, hoping to catch and enforce my yet-to-be-paid residence fee. I looked at the ruin. Camor hadn’t been kidding. Tug had become something else since his procedure. It was also comforting to know that the dead could bleed. Not as comforting was the question of where those spirits went when they died a second time.

I ducked back into the alley, frowning. What would Cord do in this situation? Probably jump out, and then die. I didn’t have the luxury of everlasting life however, so I tried to think of the second-best plan. I looked at the corpses in the corner, and I swear to the gods, I heard the short bastard chuckle in my head. Fuck. I needed a vacation.

“Tug,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

He pulled his head back into the alley.

“How far can you throw someone?”

He held his hands about a foot apart. I squinted at him.

“How far is that?”

“Long way.”

“How did you ever pass the tests in Tremaire?”

“He’s very smart in one area,” Elvis replied.

Tug ignored the conversation. He’d found a stick on the ground and chewed it vigorously.

“Like a savant?” I asked.

“Yes. An idiot savant. Without the savant.”

Tug was extremely angry with the stick. Normally, I’d let an idiot chew on a stick. In this case, it was distracting. I let an exasperated sigh and tired to pull it from his mouth.

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