The Box

by Bill Ward

Chapter One: Win Some, Lose Some

Kostin talked as he circled the box, a cube of black wood a forearm's length across resting on a table at the center of the junk-cluttered attic room. The afternoon's heist had come off without a hitch, and Kostin was still basking in the giddy afterglow of his success; his mind and mouth, as the old Varisian saying went, were determined to outrace one another. It had taken every scrap of will he possessed to leave the box alone until his friends had arrived that evening. Kostin knew that the real danger with a score like this was not so much in the stealing of the thing, but in the opening. Whatever this box was—and by extension whatever was in it—was special. The exact kind of special that made fortunes and got people killed in equal measure.

"So... to the box itself." Kostin, having finished his retelling of the day's con, got on with the business of the evening. "The wood is clearly onyx bark from the Mwangi Expanse, spot-lacquered in the Vudran style. The inlay is most likely the work of a Chelish silversmith, and the locking mechanism—at least what is visible so far—is almost certainly of dwarven make. Agree?"

"Not even close." Aeventius Reatés, scion of one of Magnimar's oldest—and now most impoverished—families, looked up from his scrutiny of the box to fix his glowing eyes on Kostin. "But it is wizard-locked. And why exactly is... she... here for this?"

"The name's Taldara, Aeventius," The third member of the group was a tall blonde leaning uncomfortably on the edge of a wobble-legged Galtan dining table. "Though I suppose feigning ignorance of my name is just your way of making me feel welcome after all these years." Taldara paused to scratch the head of the sleek badger draping her right shoulder and shifted her gaze toward Kostin. "As far as why I'm here, well, our mutual friend lied to me."

Most Chelaxians assume every Varisian’s a thief. In Kostin’s case, they’d be right.

Spreading both hands in a gesture of pleading innocence, Kostin deployed his most charming half-smile. "We could still be looking at a major find, Tal. Besides, isn't this more fun than sketching the Irespan all day? You should be flattered I trust you with something like this."

Aeventius, the bluish glow of the detection spell fading from his eyes, pushed his way irritably past Kostin to examine the box from another angle. Tall and sharp-featured, with jet-black hair sweeping back from a high forehead, the wizard looked every bit the full-blood Azlanti he claimed to be. "There are precautions we must take before..." Aeventius trailed off and cocked his head, listening. "Someone at your door."

"Flattered!" Ignoring the wizard, Taldara shot to her feet and took a step toward Kostin. She wore her fair hair back in a single, thick braid that exposed the pronounced tips of her ears, lending her a somewhat severe aspect. "You told me exactly what you knew would get me here. And now it seems that, in addition to this having nothing to do with Thassilonian artifacts, we've come to help you appraise stolen goods."

Caught with your hand in another man's pocket, Kostin thought. How is it he could coolly lie his way into Dockway's cargo impound with little more than an inexpertly forged writ of seizure and a cocky swagger, but this girl so completely disarmed him? Woman now, he corrected. It had after all been twelve years, long enough for even someone with Taldara's half-elven heritage to leave childhood completely behind and grow into someone new, a stranger.

And stranger she was, returning to Magnimar a world traveler, scholar, and newly minted Pathfinder—far more than Kostin had managed to do for himself. No, Kostin Dalakcz had stayed behind—stayed behind and become exactly what the predominantly Chelish population of his city suspected all Varisians of being: a thief.

At least he didn't run a harrow parlor.

"Would you answer that damn door already?" Aeventius spoke without looking up from the box, and Kostin, noting the banging downstairs for the first time, tore his attention away from Taldara. No, he did not run a harrow parlor, but he did run that most ubiquitous of Varisian institutions: the odds and ends shop. Among the citified Varisians who, like Kostin's father, had given up their wandering to settle throughout the Shore District of Magnimar, the small import-export emporiums like Dalakcz Durables of Callowcaulk Street, Beacon's Point, were a profitable link between the inland caravans and the sea.

Of course, such businesses had proven even more lucrative as fronts and fences for stolen goods, and if Kostin's father could see what had become of his once above-board shop, he would no doubt spit curses enough to make an Ulfen blush.

The banging three stories down had changed—it now sounded more like someone trying to smash down the door. Kostin could feel the vibrations through the floor with each blow.

"Probably some dumb drunk stevedore looking for the Whale's Belly," he growled, kicking his way toward the street-side windows through the detritus of the loft; a clutter of unsaleable items like a litterbin for all Golarion. Forcing open a window, Kostin leaned out. "Two blocks shoreward, you souse!"

The pane above him shattered before Kostin even registered the crossbow-armed thugs arrayed in the street below. He ducked back inside, collapsing to the floor and upsetting a standing shelf full of brass fittings and tarnished silverware. Another thunk drew his attention to the ceiling, where a second crossbow bolt buried itself a hand's breadth away from the first.

There must have been fifteen of them out there, that damn Shoanti gutter-gang bristling with weapons and painted for war.

Downstairs the door crashed in with a splintering final boom.

"New friends, or old?" Aeventius asked, stretching to his full height and cracking his knuckles. Taldara had rushed to Kostin's side, checking him for injuries. Her badger hissed eerily, bristling in agitation as it clung to her shoulder with curled nails the length of a man's fingers. Until that moment it had seemed a mere cute pet to Kostin, with its black-and-white face and bumbling demeanor—now it seemed about as cuddly as a war dog.

Kostin scrambled to his feet, glass crunching beneath his boots. The sounds of destruction rose muffled from the first floor. The shop was being trashed. "New," he said in answer to the wizard's question. "A dozen or more. But I never crossed any Shoanti. "

Aeventius tapped a finger on the polished lid of the stolen box. "I do not believe in coincidence."

Kostin shook his head as he strapped on his sword belt. It sounded as if a cavalry squadron maneuvered downstairs—or a single, epileptic giant flailed about in destructive seizure. "Not these guys. Small-time thugs running low-level stuff between the Point and Rag's End. A real headache for the Sczarni, but not someone like me. If anyone would be looking for the box, I'd expect the Scales, or one of the Shadow bosses. These guys are street trash."

"Sounds like the 'street trash' have just reached the second floor," Taldara said, drawing a long knife from beneath her jacket.

Aeventius, stooping low under the slanted ceiling at the far end of the room, was already peering out the alley-side windows. "Seems clear. Difficult to tell."

Leaning with one ear pressed against the attic's only door and listening to the intruders' chaos, Kostin uttered a string of fluent Varisian under his breath. "We could fight..."

"Don’t be a fool," countered the wizard.

"It's my home, Aevy," said Kostin.

"It is our lives I am thinking of," Aeventius said, raising the window and once again inspecting the street. "And I told you never to call me that."

"He's right," Taldara agreed. Pulling Kostin away from the door, she began to drag the heavy Galtan dining table to bar the passage.

"Desna laughs," Kostin hissed between clenched teeth before joining Taldara with the table. Shouts and the sounds of rampage had grown closer, now coming from the stairwell.

Behind them Aeventius was intoning a spell, uttering the strange language of magic as if he had been born to it. Kostin turned in time to see the flash of the wizard's ring, and the unstoppering of a phial in his other hand. Bringing the phial to his lips, Aeventius sucked up the contents with a sharp intake of breath. Kostin knew from experience that the wizard had just eaten a live spider, and judging from the grimace on his friend's face it had probably been a large one.

"Come," Aeventius said, before vaulting out of the window with the practiced ease of an acrobat.

"You next," Kostin said to Taldara. Behind them, the door boomed as if hit with a siege ram. "Go up." She did not argue, following Aeventius through the window with more composure than Kostin would have ever expected. He scooped up the mage-locked box—was it really the cause of all this?—and climbed through the window just as the attic door splintered from its hinges, toppling the primitive barricade. The howls of the Shoanti spilled out into the night after him.

The edge of the roof was within easy reach, and Kostin hoisted himself up one-handed, with Taldara's aid. From the vantage of the slate roof he could see his building—of which his rented storefront and apartments comprised but a tenth—stretching away to north and south. To his right, across the alley, the old five-story Rope Works building blocked their sight of the landward portion of the city, but the convoluted tangle of warehouses, dockyards, taverns, and tenements that comprised the shoreward view dazzled with alternating patches of light and dark.

The warm flicker of torches below stole his attention—some of the Shoanti, shouting and whooping like a pack of wild dogs, had run around into the alley to block any escape.

Breathing deeply of the cool, sea-tanged night air, Kostin struck out northward, Aeventius and Taldara at his heels. Before him loomed the dark shape of the Rope Works as it veered sharply shoreward just at the end of his block. The roof upon which they ran was a black wedge against the lights of the Shore, as the lower city was called. Just above was another dark band, the Seacleft, the great cliff that bisected Magnimar, atop which blazed the lights of the Summit, the upper city, a bright knife-edge glow like a barrier between the commoners of the Shore and the glittering heavens above.

A snarling yell announced that the Shoanti had followed them onto the roof.

"I will go first, then you can throw over the box," Aeventius said as they neared the narrowest space between the tenement and the Rope Works. They had practiced this escape route years ago, the leap over to the Rope Works and the quick climb to its abandoned top floor, but never had Kostin's heart been hammering in his chest like this, or his limbs trembling.

Unseen in the darkness, crossbow bolts whispered past.

Aeventius jumped out over the alley and struck the stone face of the Rope Works hard, sliding a little before finding purchase on a scrollwork ledge. He twisted his body, clinging to the building with one hand, and Kostin tossed the box over so that it hit the wizard square in the chest. Aeventius clutched it reflexively, holding tight.

Kostin turned to Taldara, intending to give a few words of encouragement, but the spry half-elf was already moving, leaping between buildings and flattening herself against the stones a bit higher up than Aeventius. Clearly she had been living a more exciting life than one spent writing travelogues and sketching artifacts since last he saw her—he only hoped he would get a chance to hear about it one day.

With a wild shout, Kostin followed his friends across the gap, catching the ledge with a shock to knock his breath out.

Aeventius scrambled past him, going upward, pausing only to hand over the chest of black wood that was the source of all their trouble.

To his left, a bolt cracked against the wall. Kostin began to climb as best he could with one hand, waiting for the shout from Aeventius that meant the wizard was ready for him to toss the box upward.

The smack of flesh and iron below and to his right drew Kostin's attention. There in the dark, one of the Shoanti—exposed skin painted in ochre and ash—wrestled with Taldara. Her badger growled and bit at the thug, slipping from her shoulder and down to the stone ledge upon which she and the Shoanti balanced.

Taldara ducked to scoop the creature up, leaving herself defenseless.

Kostin saw the gleam of the knife in the dark above her, poised to strike.

"Toss it up now!" came Aeventius's shout from above.

Kostin cocked his arm back and threw, not upward at the wizard, but hard down and into the face of the attacking Shoanti. The sharp crack of impact and a gargled yell preceded the man's fall. Man and box both plummeted into the torch-lit alleyway, down among the swarming Shoanti pack.

Their howls of victory rose up in the same instant that the first tongues of flame sprang from the windows of Kostin's home.

Coming Next Week: The secret lives of the Sczarni in Chapter Two of Bill Ward's "The Box."

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.

The Box

by Bill Ward

Click here to read this story from the beginning.

Chapter Two: Where the Heart Is

It had been a busy day.

Kostin, sucking on split knuckles, tried to look nonchalant as he waited near the entrance to the courtyard. "Looks like rain again," he said to the hatchet-faced Sczarni blade that eyed him like a bird of prey studying a mouse. The guard did not reply.

Kostin nodded good-naturedly, as if they were two old friends completely comfortable sharing each other's silence. He casually let his gaze wander over the peeling plaster of the courtyard arch, studying the thug out of the corner of his eye as he did so. The man's clothing was a loose-fitting bloused shirt, brocaded at the sides in red and yellow, spilling out from a tight woven vest in crazy-quilt style. His trousers were a faded crimson stuffed into sailor's boots. He wore more jewelry than a dockyard trollop, and his hair hung in heavy black curls to the center of his chest.

Noticing the scrutiny, the guard shifted, hooking his thumb into his broad sash, resting his hand close to the curved knife he wore naked and gleaming at his side like the chip-edged cutlass of some Shackles pirate. You had to admire the Sczarni, Kostin thought; they really played the whole Varisian thug act to the hilt.

Granted, Kostin himself had been playing at the same game scant hours ago—but at least he didn’t look like he’d just stepped down from a covered wagon.

"Come," said another Sczarni stalking up out of the courtyard proper. "The kapteo will see you."

"Nice talking to you," Kostin said with a smirk to his minder, before pivoting on his heels to leave.

"Muschi-uepoi," the guard spat at his back. Kostin's stride wavered for the blink of an eye, then he kept moving.

It was the old, familiar insult: muschi-uepoi, or “mossback.” One of the highest forms of contempt in the Varisian lexicon. A verbal dart most appropriate for cowards and nestlings who had never gone out to travel the world, citified dandies who had fallen from the true ways of the People and turned away from their heritage. As far back as Kostin could remember, he had been told this—told that he was not a real Varisian.

Rather amusing, then, to think that poor Donal Carent, Kostin's informer at Dockway’s south impound lot, had utterly no notion of this. No, for Donal, Kostin was the sum total image of the Varisian criminal underworld—a veritable Sczarni bandit chief. That was probably why, when Kostin had paid him a surprise visit this morning fresh from sifting through the ashes of what had once been his home, Donal only needed minor persuading to spill everything he knew.

Kostin sucked again at the cut on his knuckle, and thought of the damned box as he followed the Sczarni thug to the kapteo's tent.

Among the Sczarni, a shoemaker is never just a shoemaker.

Tent. Here they were in Magnimar, a city that boasted more buildings than it did people to live in them for much of the year, and the chief of the Wreckwash Blades lived in a damned tent. The courtyard was central to an entire block of tenements, all bursting with the Blades' families, but the kapteo himself maintained the central position in what resembled a typical Varisian traveling camp. Tents and wagons littered the area, as did the slow cookfires of a dozen potato-faced matrons, busy monitoring their spicy chap'vwlash trail stews with one eye while keeping the other fixed on the chaos of their barefoot grandchildren. An ironsmith pounded out nails at an open-air anvil, a turner hunched over a foot-pumped lathe, and a gaggle of women took turns milling at a portable grindstone. If it were not for the clotheslines stretching overhead from window to window, Kostin would have forgotten he was in the city at all.

They came up short of the kapteo's tent, a green silk dome that was as humble in size as it was rich in material. Kostin's escort snapped his fingers for attention and performed a curious gesture, a raising and parting of the hands before the face. "Do this when you enter. Let me see you try."

Kostin obeyed, imitating the gesture perfectly and adding a few flourishes of his own.

"Good enough," the guard grunted. Kostin thanked him.

The man spat on the ground. "I do not show you for your thanks, muschi-uepoi, but only so that you do no dishonor to the kapteo."

"Well, thanks anyway," Kostin muttered as he stepped inside the tent.

In the smoky light of a single, sputtering lantern, the kapteo of the Wreckwash Blades was hard at work mending shoes.

"Ah… Kapteo Giuleppeschi…?" Kostin asked, confused. Could this really be the captain of a criminal clan?

"Sit," said the old man, not bothering to look up from the floor and the simple leather shoe he was hunched over. Arrayed about him were well-worn tools of the shoemaker's trade.

Kostin performed the gesture of obeisance he had been shown, uncertain if the man had even seen it, and sat down cross-legged on a brocaded pillow.

Waiting in silence, Kostin watched the kapteo's strong hands draw sinew thread through the tough old leather of the shoe. After a space of time that Kostin could not measure, the kapteo spoke.

"In life," he said, putting down the shoe and raising his washed-out blue eyes to look directly at Kostin for the first time, "we do what we must. My father made shoes, and so I have the skill. Your father was a good man, Kostinnavolus, and so I wonder why you are perhaps a bad one?"

Startled to hear his full name from the mouth of a stranger, Kostin blurted, "You didn’t know my father."

The kapteo nodded. "True. I only knew of him. There was a time when I knew all the comings and goings of the People from Rag's End to the Underbridge. He was a good man, as you know. He would not cross silver with us, with any clan. And for that we loved him in our way—he was as the stone that does not feel the storm. A strong man is like that, yes? Do you follow?"

"I…" Kostin was at a loss for words. He glanced down at his dirty breeches, ash-smeared from the scorched remains of his father's home. He was conscious for the first time of smelling like smoke.

"But you are here, now." The kapteo grinned, leaning back in evident satisfaction. "And that can only mean you have failed him, yes? You are a boy in trouble, a boy in a man's body, just as any nestling who has hid like a child from the world." It was said mildly, matter-of-factly, but the venom of the old man's words was palpable.

Kostin, anger kindled, locked eyes with the kapteo and bared his teeth.

"A friend is an enemy's enemy," Kostin quoted the old Varisian saying. "It's the same in every language, kapteo. I'm not here for a handout, and Desna take your insults. I'm here to make a deal about the Shoanti."

The kapteo raised one bushy white eyebrow and gestured for Kostin to continue.

"The worst scum in Beacon Point—what do they call themselves? The Iron Eaters? Something ridiculous. We both want them out of the picture—only you have an agreement with the Night Scales not to touch them. They're the Scales' blunt instruments in this part of town, and they push and push at you and all you can do is complain to navedo bosses that life isn't fair." Kostin stopped, took a breath, and noticed his hands were knotted into fists. "I can get rid of them."

A calculating look crept into the old man's eyes. "If one pretends the Scales will ignore what they can surely find out about such a deal, what do you want from us?"

Kostin named his figure.

The kapteo licked his lips before speaking. "A lot of coin. It will take time to raise such a loan."

Kostin hissed a choice Varisian oath and slammed his hand into the ground between them, sending a leather-punch skittering across the carpets. The old man's eyes flashed fire, and his hand slipped to the hilt of his blade.

"It isn't a loan, you old cheat. Either I get it done, in which case it's payment. Or I don't—in which case I'm dead, either at their hands or yours. And I don't need coin. Hacksilver, trade bits, ingots—hell, dinnerware is fine, just have it for me by this time tomorrow. I have people that need to get paid."

The kapteo shook his head, his anger giving way to amusement. "Too much risk. I cannot say yes to this. But it is good to see the spirit of the People is still in you, mossback."

Kostin leaned back and smiled. "You don't know the best part yet, kapteo. I admit that I'm an unknown quantity to you—my abilities in this area cannot be seen as a guarantee. But the real risk you’re talking about is retaliation from the Scales." Kostin scrutinized the old man, noting his interest. "But the Scales grow tired of their alley dogs, and they've already tried to arrange the killing of the Shoanti Azahg, the mad shaman that holds their leash."

"And I am to take your word at this? You would say anything; I see revenge in your eyes."

Kostin stood. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled forth a wad of fire-blackened cloth, its former intricate and multi-hued pattern barely discernable. It was his kapenia, his family scarf. The story of his parents and his parents' parents, the story of his life before it had been given him. He dropped the ruined thing before the old man.

The kapteo smoothed the garment with bent fingers, and said nothing.

"This time, tomorrow. It's enough time to check my story. One of Symirkova's brats down at the Bazaar can tell you all about the Kellid freelancer who took a shot at Azahg, and how the deal was brokered by a couple of town guards called Marster and Dennebris. Maybe you've already heard of that pair—they certainly run their mouths enough. The girls of half-a-dozen Lowcleft dance halls had plenty to repeat about those two, about how they like to go around spending Night Scales silver and playing the big men."

Kostin declined to mention the remaining link in the chain of information he had uncovered this morning—that it was Donal Carent that had sent him sniffing after Marster and Dennebris, the two men that had rolled into Dockyard impound one day with a cartful of supposedly confiscated sundries and a false bill of lading. Their cargo had disappeared by the end of the day, gone home in the pockets and pouches of a score of guards and officials. All their cargo, that is, except for a black, wizard-locked box.

The kapteo spoke after a moment's consideration, "If this is true, then the Scales will take care of our problem for us."

Kostin shook his head. "The Scales want to cut off the head of the beast, to better control it. If they do that, your problem doesn't go away. If you back me on this, what's left of the Shoanti will turn tail and scatter and the Scales won't press the issue. It's the navedo way—they won't blood feud over a pack of foreign gutter grubbers that they have already grown tired of."

Kostin paused, studying the kapteo as he sat motionless in the dim interior, the old man's hands moving delicately over the ruined fabric of the Dalakcz kapenia.

"Let it be Sczarni silver," Kostin interjected into the silence that had fallen between them, "and a Varisian hand that accomplishes this task. That is our way."

The kapteo nodded, once, decision made. "Tomorrow you will have your silver, if what you say is true. Desna walk with you, Kostinnavolus, and may she light your path."

"And yours, kapteo. My thanks." Kostin bowed and slipped from the tent, fighting to keep a grin off of his face.

Outside the sky had cleared, and the first stars of early evening stood out like hard diamonds in the fading blue. A day ago he had brought the box into his home, the home he had watched burn from the fifth floor of the Rope Works building while bucket teams scrambled to douse it. A day ago his life had changed forever.

It was time to hit back. Time to cash in some favors, make some promises, and build his team.

Coming Next Week: Careful scheming and creative recruiting in Chapter Three of Bill Ward's "The Box."

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.

The Box

by Bill Ward

Chapter Three: Nothing Ventured

The girls were, by any objective standards, far too beautiful for the Point. But in the dim glow of the dockyard lights they did the trick. Silently the trio gestured, gyrating hips that would make the women of the Keleshite Emperor's harem seem bony lads in comparison, their impossible skin as smooth and silver as the moon above. Their black tresses—tinged with a seaweed green—hung in long clinging strands that managed to suggest more than they concealed. They were, when it came down to it, completely irresistible.

If you were born yesterday, Kostin thought with a smirk.

The pair of Shoanti thugs guarding the old rum joint moved toward the gorgeous trinity like fish pursuing a hooked worm. When they passed through the darkest and narrowest part of the alleyway, Kostin struck.

He slipped in behind the leftmost guard and smashed across the base of his skull with a lead-filled sap. The man dropped.

Opposite him in the dark a giant figure loomed up, felling the second Shoanti with a single blow from a sledgehammer fist.

"Nice hit, Gyrd," Kostin said, gritting his teeth as his voice came out too loud.

At the end of the alley, the three nymphs gave a silent cheer, flinging their arms up and bouncing on their heels like schoolchildren.

Kostin swiftly bound the arms of the unconscious Shoanti with rawhide tethers and gagged them with wads of cloth. Gyrd stepped in when he was finished, reeking of sour sweat and stale mead, and threw a guard over each broad shoulder. The Ulfen's chainmail jangled under the load. Kostin pointed further down the alley and the big northerner stomped off with his cargo to dump them where they would not be found until morning.

"Enough with the girls," Kostin said through clenched teeth, noting that the illusory threesome was now engaged in activity fit to make a Calistrian blush. With a final, sensuous wave they winked out of existence—and a child-sized figure vaulted onto a nearby stack of discarded casks and gave a bow.

"Not too bad, yeah?" Her voice was the very model of gnomish enthusiasm. "I actually met a sea-nymph once, you know. And so I took her likeness and this tavern girl that Gyrd used to know—well, everyone used to know, apparently—and—"

"Yes, Shess. But we need to keep quiet—" Kostin was interrupted by the sudden flaring of a light behind him.

Whirling around and drawing his sword in the same motion, he saw Aeventius and Taldara walking up from the opposite end of the alley. A glow like daylight emerged from the wizard's left hand, from the onyx and platinum ring that bore his family seal and was an integral part of his magic.

Aeventius held up his other hand before the livid Kostin could speak. "There are no watchers outside, no windows—the light is safe. But just to keep you from making faces..." The wizard—dressed more appropriately for a night at the opera than a raid into a dockside gang's stronghold—cupped his hand over the ring and brought the daytime radiance back down to something approaching a dim lantern.

"What's she doing here?" Kostin stage whispered, gesturing at Taldara.

The half-elf stepped between Aeventius and Kostin before the wizard could answer. "Why is that the first thing everyone says when I show up? You got me into this, Kostin—"

"Not this!"

"Yes, this. The box, the Shoanti—staying up all night and watching them try to save your father's house. Don't think it's all about you—he was a father to me long before I ever met mine. Besides," Taldara smirked, raising the crossbow she held at the ready, "this is better than sketching the Irespan all day." Her badger, wobbling where it clung to her right shoulder, chattered agreement.

"She followed me," Aeventius added.

"You aren't hard to track—and a city isn't so much different than the wilderness, especially the city where I grew up."

Just then Gyrd reappeared like some vast berg of steel and flesh.

Aeventius let out an audible sigh. "Of course, where the imp goes, the ogre follows. You smell like an alehouse latrine."

"That's where we found him!" Shess piped up, bouncing to Aeventius's side. The wizard flinched away.

Gyrd, bearded face impassive behind a tangle of red and gray hair, took a long pull from a leather drinking skin. The raw, almost chemical odor of potent spirits rolled out from him like an aura.

"None of this!" Kostin said, snatching the bag from Gyrd before the giant could react. "You can have it back when we're done."

"What did you think of my casting, Aevy?" Shess gazed up at the wizard through a shock of emerald green hair.

Kostin interrupted, clearing his throat. "Enough talking. Come." He moved back down the alley toward the old rum house.

"Too beautiful," Aeventius said to the gnome as he turned to follow Kostin. "And do not ever call me that."

"Of course!" Shess said, skipping in stride with the wizard. "I always knew you liked your women short and green!"

"It seems Taldara picked up a number of new skills in her years away from home."

Taldara moved to Kostin’s side. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your, um, 'gang?'"

"Certainly. Forgive my manners," Irritation creeping into his voice, Kostin turned back around. The group halted.

"This here is Shess, the best little sneak thief in Magnimar."

The gnome, beaming, gave a mock curtsey. She was dressed in a patchwork of styles and colors, resembling something like a collision between a Chelish noble, a Tian merchant, a Sczarni blade, and an Ulfen minstrel.

"And Gyrd here is, um..."

"Blacksmith," the giant answered, no expression on his ruddy, heavily scarred face. His chainmail hauberk gleamed dully in the light, and he held a battle-dinted round shield in his left hand. Gyrd looked as if he had just stepped out from a shieldwall—and was aching to get back.

"Really?" Kostin asked, surprised. "Well, ah, everyone, this is my oldest friend, Taldara, who is some sort of big deal Pathfinder now."

"Ooh," said Shess, eyes round with interest as she studied Taldara. "But I thought Aevy was your oldest friend."

"I thought I was his only friend," Aeventius said blandly.

Taldara smiled and opened her mouth to reply, but Kostin grabbed her arm and tugged her along behind him. "Plenty of time for all of this later!" he said over his shoulder. The rest followed.

Aeventius was correct in that there were no signs of observation from the rum house. It was as Kapteo Giuleppeschi had said—the place was boarded up and abandoned. The Sczarni boss had come through for him that afternoon, granting him not only his silver, but valuable information about the Shoanti hideout. Kostin had modified his original plan to storm their front door in favor of this one—to come in undetected through the secret back entrance the Shoanti used to slip in and out along the shore side of the Point. Further west of here was the Wyrmwatch lighthouse, marking the spot where the great Indros had battled the sea dragon. South and east, and you had a tumble of smugglers' wharfs along the mouth of the Yondabakari leading down into the slums of Rag's End. It was a good location for a pack of robbers and thugs.

"Door is clear," Aeventius said behind him, and Kostin turned to see the wizard's eyes glowing with an eldritch blue light.

The guards had not had any keys on them. "Alright. Shess, you're better at this than me. Get us in there."

"Yes, sir!" Shess, saluting Kostin ridiculously, leaped onto Gyrd's back. Drawing her sword, the gnome leveled it at the door like a cavalry officer ordering a charge. "Smash it, Gyrd!"

Before Kostin could react the Northman—Shess still clinging to his back—raised his shield and launched himself shoulder-first at the door. It crashed inward with a splintering boom.

"'Best little sneak thief in Magnimar,'" said Taldara, covering the door with her crossbow. Aeventius snorted in amused agreement.

Kostin, sword drawn and teeth clenched in annoyed disbelief, entered after the mad gnome and the half-drunk warrior.

Inside it was dark and empty. A few sprung and moldering casks rested against the walls, and the odd sliver of wood or twist of ship's rope littered the ground. On the far wall a doorless portal yawned blackly.

"So far it's as the kapteo claimed," Kostin said. "The old cellar of this place abuts the sunken warehouse. From there we’re right at the shaman's quarters. Most of the Shoanti should be on the other side, in the warehouse proper. We nip in, take down Azahg, get the box, set some fires, and get the hell out again. Questions?"

Shess raised her hand and Kostin pushed it back down. The others shook their heads.

"Alright, then. Let's go."

The way ahead was easy to see—years of wear had left a path of dirt and scraped stone for them to follow. The blocks of the cellar wall had been pried out to form a crude doorway into the domain of the warehouse—a shoddily built structure that had sunk and partially collapsed at its south end and had long been abandoned by any legitimate concerns. Scrabbling through the wall and into the building, they followed a sloping and precarious floor upward. Kostin wiped sweat from his eyes; the air in the warehouse was close and redolent with the stench of mold and decay.

A flickering light ahead caused Aeventius to clamp a hand tightly over his radiant ring.

There were two of them, talking animatedly in the guttural cadences of the Shoanti. Gyrd tensed as if to spring forward, but Taldara clapped a hand on his shoulder and bade him be still. With her other hand she held a finger to her lips, urging them all to stay quiet.

After a brief exchange, both Shoanti moved off down the corridor.

Taldara turned to the group. "They say Azahg and his wives have been a night and a day in his sanctum, and they worry. They wish to know what powerful treasure he has discovered in the box, but also do not know if they should counter his orders and try to enter his rooms." Taldara shrugged. "At least that's the most I could get out of it."

"You speak Shoanti," Kostin said, impressed.

"They aren't all bad, you know. I think they may have had to come to the city to turn into this." Taldara scratched her badger behind the ear. Lifting it gently from her shoulder, she nuzzled it before placing it on the ground.

"Mordimor will scout they way for us," she continued as the badger zipped off down the corridor. Taldara closed her eyes and drew a shape in the air.

"Tal, are you—" Kostin stopped at a sudden smack on the arm from Aeventius, who gestured for silence.

The badger returned as swiftly as he had left, and Taldara muttered a few words in a language Kostin had never heard, one different from the ancient tongue of magic he had listened to Aeventius utter on so many occasions.

Mordimor leaped into Taldara's arms, and the two commenced to have the strangest conversation Kostin had ever witnessed.

"He says it's clear, but he gets a bad feeling about the shaman's door. Or, maybe, what's on the other side of it." Taldara plopped the badger back up on her shoulder. It still muttered at her ear and Taldara cocked a playful smile. "He also says the wizard should go first."

"A woodland wit," Aeventius said, scowling.

Kostin led the way, stalking ahead with barely a sound. Shess followed, moving silently with little effort. Taldara and Aeventius came next, creeping forward with careful steps. Gyrd shuffled in the rear, heavy one-handed sword drawn, armor tinkling despite his apparent caution.

They paused at the door for a time while Aeventius and Shess examined it—the wizard scanning for magical emanations and the thief checking for traps.

Shess, now wearing a ridiculous pair of spectacles devoid of their lenses, gave a thumbs-up, while Aeventius murmured something incomprehensible under his breath. Finally, he turned to Kostin. "I can open it, whenever we’re ready."

Kostin surveyed his team. Gyrd, wicked smile on his face and skin flushed with battle lust and booze, had positioned himself at the door, ready to storm in. Taldara was beside him, eyebrows knit in concentration, crossbow leveled to cover Gyrd's flank. Shess bounced on her heels, eager as a child at the fair, her blade gleaming silver and naked in her tiny fist. Aeventius waited patiently, back straight as any aristocrat, a slender black wand in his hand.

Kostin moved into position next to Gyrd, and took a deep breath in an attempt to strike a mental deal with his heart to stop thundering in his chest. He loosened his grip on his sword and bent his knees slightly. A cold serpent of sweat trickled down his spine.

"Do it," he said, left hand poised above the door's handle.

A word from Aeventius and the door lock opened with an audible clack.

Kostin flung open the door to the shaman's sanctum—and a horde of creatures burst forth.

Coming Next Week: The triumphant conclusion to Bill Ward's "The Box."

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.

The Box

by Bill Ward

Chapter Four: Nothing Gained

"Move back!" Kostin shouted, barely parrying a spear thrust to the gut. There were more than a score of the things, each scarcely taller than Shess but like no humanoid Kostin had ever seen. Green-skinned, bedecked with shaggy ropes of dark moss, and armed with crude spears and clubs of human bone, the naked savages fought silently, almost impassively. The sheer weight and surprise of them had pushed Kostin back until he collided with Aeventius.

"Go forward!" Aeventius snarled. A flash of light behind him attracted Kostin's attention, and he spared a quick look. Shoanti, howling for blood, were blocking the hallway that was their only exit. In the instant that Kostin turned he saw white darts of energy burst from Aeventius's wand to sear down the corridor and drop the lead thug dead, leaving black burn holes smoking in the man's chest.

Beside Kostin, Gyrd sung a low, rumbling war-ballad in the skaldic language of his people. His thick Ulfen blade rose and fell grimly, black-green liquid clinging to the steel. He dropped his shield hard down upon the skull of one of the monsters with a sickening crunch, and bulled forward with a roar, scattering the creatures with his charge and clearing a path into the shaman's sanctum.

Kostin parried another wicked jab from his opponent, and sliced his blade down along the spear shaft, lopping the creature's hands off with a snick. The thing made no sound, nor did its expression change as he pushed past it.

"They’re fungus!" Taldara shouted behind him, the twang of her crossbow punctuating her statement. "Cover your nose and mouth!"

But Kostin now had his dagger in his other hand, and was fighting in the style of the Sczarni street duelists he had so loved to emulate as a kid. His blades whistled in a tight arc around him, alternately parrying and striking, the difficulty of landing mortal blows on such diminutive opponents compensated for by their lesser reach. With a wild howl he leaped and spun among them, all fear forgotten now, or else subsumed in his desire to strike.

To his right, Gyrd fought like a juggernaut, hacking fungus-men down and ignoring any blows that landed upon his armored form. Kostin took note of their surroundings for the first time, the floor strewn with carpets and hides in a score of styles and colors, the walls bedecked with a strange intaglio of scrawled symbols, the black altar in one corner of the room shedding a weak radiance from guttering candle-stubs.

It was only then that he noticed the bodies.

They were Shoanti, clearly, or what was left of Shoanti. Each body was sticky with a mass of glistening mold, and each horribly ruptured as if it had burst from the inside. Suddenly Taldara's warning to cover their faces made sense, and Kostin dropped his dagger and riffled one-handed through his pouch for some kind of cloth. Smashing aside an attack from one of the creatures, he turned to shout a warning at Gyrd—and was just in time to see the big man disappear behind a wall of darkness in the room's far corner.

"Light!" Kostin shouted, running toward the place where he had last seen the Ulfen. A lance of pain sent him crashing to the floor, a bone-tipped spear lodged in his thigh. His sword spilled from his hand, landing with a thump on the carpet, just out of reach.

He rolled, hands held up to ward off the blow of a femur club. He could see everything in excruciating detail; the bone club brown with dried blood, poised to strike; the horrible, vacant face of the monster, a thing more plant than animal; and his own hands, held up uselessly, themselves green with the blood of these creatures.

Kostin saw too the silver blade emerge from the thing’s chest just as it was about to strike, and the unholy light go out of its eyes as Shess appeared behind it, her invisibility spell nullified by her attack.

"Stop sitting around, boss!" She tipped him a wink as the monster dropped dead at her feet. He had seen the same little girl enthusiasm in her once before, when picking flowers in a cemetery. She whirled away, blade flashing through the pack of monsters, babbling a cheerful sing-song in the strange language of gnomes.

As Kostin regained his feet and removed the miniature spear—the wound was not deep, but it bled profusely—Aeventius and Taldara were there beside him, fending off the encroaching creatures. There were around a dozen of the things left, surrounding them in a deadly noose.

"I have held the door," Aeventius said, "but it will not last forever. I think we may have a larger problem, however." The wizard gestured to the corner where Gyrd had disappeared. The unnatural darkness emanating from it had rolled back, and the object of Kostin's quest was revealed.

The box.

It stood open atop a seaman's chest, seemingly innocuous, but a dissipating cloud of particles surrounded it in a halo of death. Gyrd lay unconscious at its base among a group of ruined corpses.

"Spores," Taldara said. She had discarded her crossbow in favor of a fighting hatchet, and was laying into a pair of creatures to Kostin’s left. "We have to get to him soon!"

Suddenly it all clicked into place for Kostin. The box—not just bait for a thief, but a trap for a shaman. The Scales had set it up. Dangling a treat the Azahg could not resist, and filling it with a trap he would never be able to counter. Dispel the locks and you still had the darkness spell—and the lethal spores within. Simple; diabolical; and if it weren’t for the stupid greed of Donal Carent feeding Kostin information about such a tempting prize, he would have never been involved in this business.

"We need acid!" Aeventius was shouting at Taldara as Kostin regained focus. A creature leaped over the back of its fellows, spear leveled at the wizard's heart. Aeventius flicked a finger at it in midair, and a force equal to one of Gyrd's hammer fists smashed it in the chest and flung it back the way it had come. "Ask the imp!"

Shess was at his side, slashing with enthusiastic abandon. "Aevy!” she admonished, sounding wounded. “After all we've been through!"

"Acid?" Kostin asked Taldara, as they both danced out of the way of a flailing creature. "To kill the mold?"

"Well I don't know any acid spells either," Shess piped above the din. "I don't like that sort of thing!"

"Tal—what else do you know? How do we kill it?" Kostin was acutely aware that Aeventius's holding spell on the door wasn’t going to last much longer, and they would soon be trading one set of enemies for another.

Taldara caught the spear of a charging creature in the crook of her axe blade and pried the weapon from its hand before driving her fist into the creature's face. Mordimor leaped and slashed around her feet, his oversized claws ripping through fibrous flesh with ease. "Acid and daylight are the best ways—real light, not Aeventius’s ring."

"Not fire?" Kostin asked, driving the point of his sword through the midsection of one of the monsters.

"No," Taldara answered. "Daylight. Acid. And... alcohol. But something hard, high proof stuff."

With a barking laugh, Kostin remembered the leather skin he had confiscated from Gyrd. Judging from the smell of it, it was strong enough to strip paint. Without hesitation he sheathed his weapon and sprang for the box in the corner, wineskin in one hand, the other holding a cloth over his nose and mouth.

"Don't get close!" Taldara shouted behind him, but Kostin saw no other choice. Muttering a prayer to Cayden Cailean, the god of drunks and heroes, he moved in, skin held out at arm's length, the black box that had been the cause of all his problems fixed in his sight.

When he was close enough to see the reddish stuff—clinging to what looked like a clay shingle sitting serenely in the otherwise empty interior of the box—the world suddenly exploded in a cloud of dust.

"The only thing worse than fighting one of these things is becoming one."

Spores. Kostin screwed his eyes tight against them and held his breath beneath the cloth. It suddenly, stupidly occurred to him that this just might be the last thing he ever did.

Not only that, but he might just get everyone else killed in the process. Everyone that was here because of him.

Moving by memory, he lunged forward on his wounded leg, ignoring the bolt of pain that shot up his thigh and the blood squelching in his boot. Reaching what he hoped was the right spot, he upended the strong spirits into the box. For what seemed an eternity he squeezed the skin, lungs hot as forge coals bursting in his chest. The skin of his face and hands tingled unnaturally.

The jack was empty and Kostin dropped it, staggering away while waving his arms and slapping his face and clothing to rid himself of any spores that might have clung to him.

He opened his eyes. The dead creatures all lay heaped in still mounds around his exhausted friends. Kostin smiled, a ready quip on the tip of his tongue, just as the door banged open at the other end of the room.

His smile evaporated as the vanguard of the Shoanti mob poured into the sanctum. But a crazy notion seized him in the same moment, and he rushed to meet the gang, arms spread wide and teeth bared.

"Behold the vengeance of the Night Scales!" Kostin bellowed in a voice that sounded like the arrival of a god.

The Shoanti froze.

Kostin grinned his most intimidating of grins, conscious of the fact that he was covered in green ichor and spore dust. He pointed at the bodies that littered the rooms, both the horribly mutilated corpses of the Shoanti shaman and his women, and those of the strange fungus people.

"Thus do those who cross us die: souless and damned for all time. Come to me and join your master in Urgathoa's belly—or flee the city tonight!" Kostin roared, ranting like a stage villain.

Behind him Shess murmured, and a ghostly image appeared between Kostin and the Shoanti. It was vaguely man-shaped and glowed with its own inner light.

"Witness his agonies as I wrack his soul!" Kostin howled, throwing both hands into the air. Before him the image writhed and flickered like a storm-blown candle flame.

It was a stampede. The Shoanti, all will to fight broken, scrambled for the door. Their howls had turned into those of whipped dogs, and reverberated down the hallway until they were well out of sight.

Shess giggled, her illusion winking out of existence.

Taldara moved instantly to Gyrd's side, the threat from the spores extinguished by the Ulfen’s own potent draught. She searched frantically through her small pack, discarding a slew of items strange and sundry, before snatching up what she had sought. She brought the small phial to the Ulfen's bearded lips, and tilted it down.

"That should kill the spores, but he’s still going to hurt like hell. Maybe if we get this mail off, two of us will be able to manage him." She wiped sweat from her forehead.

"Let us be away from here first," Aeventius said. Producing a pinch of coarse, brown hair from his pouch, he intoned the words of a spell. His ring flashed.

Walking over to the massive warrior, Aeventius bent down and hoisted him onto his shoulder with barely a grunt. "Although," he said casually, chainmailed form balanced on his shoulder as easily as if it had been a child, "if we run into anything more dangerous than another locked door this evening, I am of no more use."

They moved quickly back the way they had come, not daring to explore the complex any further in case some of the Shoanti returned, and everyone aware that Aeventius's unnatural strength could only last for a few minutes.

They encountered no one. Retracing their steps to the same alleyway where they had ambushed the first pair of guards, Aeventius set his burden down unceremoniously. Taldara dashed away, intent on hiring a horse or mule from the livery yard on Kindrucker Street. Kostin moved to accompany her, but Aeventius pushed past him with alarming intensity, saying something about not being left behind with “the imp.”

Kostin sighed and slipped down next to Gyrd’s sleeping form. He straightened his wounded leg, tightening the hasty bandage that was half-soaked through with blood. "Looks like this was a wash. Lucky you got paid up front in Sczarni silver, right little one?"

Shess shrugged, trying to adjust her overlarge spectacles, which had been bent in the fight. With a pout she plucked them from her button nose and pitched them into the dark.

"Oh, I don't know,” she said, a grin sneaking over her face. "It was interesting. Plus we get equal shares of this thing I grabbed off the altar." From her pouch, Shess produced a sun-bleached goat's skull. It would have been hideous if it were not for the dozens of fine-cut gemstones clustered around its golden eye sockets.

Kostin threw his head back and laughed. For the first time in seemingly forever, he really meant it.

Coming Next Week: Assassination in the markets of Katapesh in Steven Savile’s “Blood and Money.”

Bill Ward is the author of more than 40 short stories for venues like Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Morpheus Tales, Rogue Blades Entertainment, and more, as well as game work for companies such as i-Kore and Urban Mammoth. A diehard fan of pulp adventure, he’s also an editor at the flagship sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate. For more information, visit his website at billwardwriter.com.

Illustration by J. P. Targete.