Tin Swift(79)

Alabaster’s new eye squirmed and pulled against its roots, lancing pain through his skull. Agony bloomed in his joints, fired down every inch of his spine. He held his breath, tightening muscles to hold his shifting bones where they belonged.

Shunt chuckled. “…you will come apart like a straw doll.” Shunt closed his hand and the sensation was gone.

“Fire!” Alabaster ordered.

The thunderous roar of guns unloading at point-blank range shook the tent and sent splinters flying through the smoke and flames.

Mr. Shunt rattled from the impact, one arm blown completely off, the rest of him crumpling to the ground.

“Lieutenant Foster,” Alabaster growled in the thick stench and smoke of spent gunpowder, “finish him.”

The lieutenant strode out from behind the general’s chair and stood above Mr. Shunt. He unloaded his pistol into the back of the strange man’s head.

Blood, black as oil, seeped from the holes peppering his body, mixing with the fresh ruby wetness that covered the floor.

Then, from within those holes, small brass clamps and bits of dull metal flickered like metal snake tongues, stitching up flesh quick as a blink.

Mr. Shunt stood in a fluid rush. Before Alabaster could react, the man was behind him, his remaining hand vised around the general’s throat.

“I am not so easily killed,” Shunt hissed. “Not by men like you.”

Mr. Shunt’s arm crawled across the floor, leaving a black, bloody trail behind it.

The soldiers in the room didn’t move, transfixed by the disembodied limb wriggling over to the hem of Shunt’s coat, where it then grabbed hold of the wool and clawed its way upward, slipping into the sleeve and refastening itself in place.

“So easy to unstring you, Alabaster,” Shunt hissed. “So easy to unstring all your little soldiers. And since you will not play my game—”

The men lifted their guns again, but Alabaster held up his hand. “Wait,” he groaned.

The men lowered their weapons.

“You want to play?” Shunt cooed. “My game. My rules: kill the hunter, kill the wolf. Bring me the deviser, and bring the witch. Both alive. If you wish to see the next season turn.”

“I agreed to kill the hunter and wolf. That was all,” Alabaster said.

“Then leave the witch behind. It is your suffering, not mine,” Mr. Shunt said. “And a short suffering it will be. You didn’t think my gift would last, did you, Alabaster Saint?”

He squeezed Alabaster’s throat, then let go, the razor tips of his fingers scratching delicately across his cheek.

“What do you mean?” the general asked.

“My gifts will not last. Without the witch’s spells, her binding of life to living, you will die. Soon, soon. Days, weeks. All of you dead.”

He clucked his tongue. “Poor men of dirt, bones of ash. So weak and frightened.”

He strolled out from behind Alabaster and offered him a wide, jagged smile. “Your grave hungers for the taste of you. If you do not kill my enemies, if you flee…I will pull the knots on your strings. Piece by piece, you will all fall down.”

The general pushed up onto his feet, holding the edge of the table and locking his knees. “I will not be threatened, Mr. Shunt,” he said. “And I will not bow to blackmail.”

“I do not threaten, Alabaster Saint. I make dreams come true. You took yours willingly. I gave you everything you desired. Dark wishes.”

“The witch for your bones, the deviser for mine.” He opened his coat and revealed the hole where his chest should be. In that ragged space was a terrible work of blood and bone and eyes and hands and mouths and things that should never be strung together. All of it moving, grinding, pumping.

In that strange work, dead center, was a gold and crystal clockwork dragonfly. So beautifully fashioned, Alabaster couldn’t help but be caught by the glory of it.

“This vessel,” Shunt said, “will fail me without the witch’s blood, without her magic, without her binding. But it will last many years beyond you and your men. Decades. The deviser can make me new again. I want her. I want them both. Now. And you want them now too.”

He bared his teeth and spat. His spittle landed on the table in front of the general’s hand and burned into the wood.

“Now.”

Mr. Shunt walked around the table and lifted the beautiful tin cup. He took a sip, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment before he began picking up the instruments of his torture, the instruments of his craft, one by one, as if no one else were in the tent with him.

He drew a cloth over each bloody blade, rubbing it clean and humming like a child with his favorite toys.

“General?” Lieutenant Foster said quietly.