2-6
Ben Gibson, the record had said. Sixty-two years of age, employed by the state for the duty of ghoul-hunting and backarounder assistance for fourteen of the fifteen years that such jobs had been necessary. He had taken on an apprentice, Micky Monaghan, some three years earlier, aged sixteen at the time and reported dead exactly one day before Vilena began her search, which seemed unlikely to be entirely coincidental. The prior experience that had won him the job was thirty years spent working as a shepherd, a job requiring an immense amount of resilience and knowledge of how to use a shotgun.
The record was as plain as day and completely unambiguous. It even included a written description, just in case there was another man with the same job and a similar name working in Carlisle that the jeweler might have been referring to. This was the man who had accompanied Gilead du Carbennic into the city, his only known associate beyond the as-yet entirely anonymous red-shirted Furati.
And it had only taken Vilena six hours to find that incredibly useful information. The Marquess kept his government in an intolerably messy state. The library in Vilena’s hometown was better organized, and that thing had had a budget consisting of ten rubles and a hope for a better tomorrow. Ruthven was definitely going to hear about that, but not until Vilena had succeeded in learning everything she could about the identity of the swordsman and, more importantly, where he might be found.
That meant traveling outside of Carlisle, to Ben Gibson’s posting many miles to the south. A long journey on foot, and a pleasant jaunt on the wind. For all that she had lost along with giving up her humanity, Vilena quite enjoyed her mist-form. With nobody around to watch her or scold her for lack of productivity, she even took the time to play a little, swirling around trees, soaring up so high that she could see the runes sinking into the crimson sea beyond Scrapyard’s edge, and stopping briefly to spook badgers in their dens and deer in their meadows.
Eventually, though, Vilena spotted Gibson’s cabin, and had to actually concentrate. It was the dead of night, and the man himself was almost certainly asleep. Vilena could smell him, hear his heart beating slowly. She slipped under his door in mist form—a trick that somehow caught humans off-guard every single time—then rose up to her full height and became material. Creeping forward, Vilena loomed over Ben Gibson as the old man shivered and slept, before seizing him by the shoulder.
He awoke in an instant, and his instincts were good. If it had been a mortal grabbing him, it was likely that his instantaneous backhanded strike would have been enough to disorient them, at which point he presumably would have leapt for the gun over his fireplace and settled the matter one way or another. But Vilena was more than strong enough to block his attack with a casual sweep of her hand and pin him down.
“Hello, Mister Gibson.”
The man was paralyzed with fear, absolute terror. Vilena realized she was going to have to go a little bit soft on him if she wanted to get any information out of him at all, so she let go of him and stepped back. Slowly, Gibson returned to his senses, rolled out of bed, and after several seconds of groping was able to find the candle and box of matches that he kept in case he needed to relieve himself on a cloudy night.
As the candle-flame lit the cabin interior in golden hues, Gibson went through a whole new round of terror. Vilena pulled back her top lip, revealing just a hint of fang. Between that, the paleness of her skin, and the way that her eyes reflected light, she wanted it to be entirely clear who, and more importantly what, she was.
“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I,” Gibson said. “One o’ Ruthven’s girls. Aye, I saw you… a few years back, at the execution grounds.”
There was something painful about being identified, first and foremost, by her husband. But Vilena had made that bed herself, so it was only fair she lie in it.
“Indeed, Benjamin Gibson, shepherd and now ghoul-hunter. You have a strong memory.”
The old man gripped tightly onto his trousers, swaying his head this way and that as though looking to bystanders for help. Finding none, he asked, “What do you want out of me?”
“Very recently, a backarounder named Gilead du Carbennic was seen accompanying you. Do not attempt to deny this, Mister Gibson, there are eyewitnesses. Presumably, the two of you have since parted ways; where might he now be found?”
Gibson sat very still, smacking his lips. If it wasn’t the truth, he was doing a very good impression of a befuddled old man. “Me mouth is dry. Mind if an old man has a drink of water?”
“Of course not. Take your time, Mister Gibson; we have all night.”
Gibson did as he requested, rising from his bed and filling a cup from a pitcher of water kept on his tiny dining-table. What pathetic poverty; even the home of Vilena’s birth had been better than this, and her family grew buckwheat and raised goats. She banished that thought.
Gibson set down the pottery cup, his hand trembling. “Gilead, you said?”
“Gilead, yes. A very distinctive name, don’t you think?”
“Bah, I don’t remember the names of all the backarounders who come through here. And I don’t know why you think I might know where he is, either.”
“It’s part of your job description, isn’t it?” said Vilena. “You guide the newly-resurrected in how to make their way in the world. It’s only been a day, and as far as anybody can tell he isn’t in Carlisle. He must have said something about where he intended to go?”
“He’s not in Carlisle?” Gibson said.
Vilena’s eyes narrowed. That question was more emphatic than anything else Gibson had said so far. Was there some truth behind it?
Slowly, Vilena circled the confines of the tiny hut, looking for anything that might count as evidence. There was so little there that it almost seemed ridiculous to assume that something could be hidden or obscured. But she looked anyway. And indeed, there was something: a leather satchel sat propped against the wall near to the door.
“Going to rob me too, while you’re at it?”
Vilena smirked. “You and I both know that nothing I could do to you would count as a crime.”
Inside the satchel was… a bunch of ordinary things, completely expected from a man working this job. A tinderbox, gun-cleaning equipment, a compass, a folding hobo kit, a pouch of tobacco for pipe-smoking. Out of the corner of her eye, Vilena watched Gibson as she searched, looking for any reaction to her touching some particular object or another.
There was a folded piece of paper sitting amongst all the outdoorsman’s gear. Suspicious, Vilena took it out and unfolded it: it was a map of Northern England, printed long before coming to Scrapyard, though with the alterations to the terrain crudely added on with pencil-scratch. There were many marks and notes scattered across the area around where Gibson lived, most of them many years old. Except for one.
Somewhere to the south, a region had been circled very recently, a road marked out with arrows. Vilena knew little about it, as the region was about as isolated as it is possible for any part of England to be. But Ben Gibson clearly knew.
“You have no idea where Gilead du Carbennic might be going,” Vilena said. “But just recently you left marks on the map to indicate a region of desolate moorland many kilometers to the south. Explain yourself.”
Gibson hunched over in his seat, his cracked nails digging into his palms. “That ain’t have nothing to do with Gilead.”
“Really? That’s very interesting. I look at this map… there aren’t many other marks like this. Most of them are so old, and so much more specific. But then, at the same time that you meet Gilead, you leave a new mark…What does it mean, then?”
He continued to shrink, averting his eyes more and more even as his anger grew. “I was pointing him to where we were. He was just curious, being a backarounder and all that.”
Vilena sighed. He wasn’t going to break, not under the light sort of pressure. She folded up the map and tucked it into the top of her dress, then started to pace between her position and the door.
“You cannot save him. This map already includes everything we need to know. Now consider this: do you want me to report to Lord Ruthven that you were stubborn, or that you were cooperative?”
Vilena looked down at him, and after several counts of silence, Ben Gibson looked back, his already-rough features further hardened by a mountain’s worth of spite. “Good luck finding anybody else to do this job. You kill me, how long before the ghouls in these parts start to be a problem for the military, the caravans, hm?”
Vilena smirked. “Very well, then. Goodbye, Mister Gibson.”
Vilena stepped out of the cabin, and out of Ben Gibson’s life altogether, vanishing into mist along with the map she’d taken. It was a long flight back to Leeds, and by the time she returned to the grand capitol of Ruthven’s domain, the very edges of the sky were already beginning to brighten with the approach of dawn. She dropped quickly onto the roof of the grand Civic Hall, Ruthven’s massive personal estate and palace, and from there slipped through its countless passageways with practiced ease. She resumed human form only when she was just outside of Ruthven’s bedchamber.
She always knew where he was. The physicality of his existence was a persistent pressure on Vilena’s mind, one she could never, ever forget about. She knocked on the door, forcing herself not to think about the noises she could hear through it, and politely waited the two minutes it would take for Ruthven to rip himself away from his business before he could come and open the door.
“Ah, Vilena, my darling. Good to see you once more. How is the news from Carlisle?”
The bedroom was painted red. Ruthven had six wives, but an infinite parade of mistresses: the two most recent women on that list were responsible for the new coat of paint, as well as the rancid smell which struck Vilena across the face as the door opened. She was well-fed enough that she didn’t particularly feel the urge to lick that room clean.
“The report was correct. Viscount Rutter, the Marquess’s pet Pretender, is dead. His killers are two further pretenders, a bomb-controller described as a Furati woman, and a sword-wielder named Gilead du Carbennic.”
Ruthven raised an eyebrow. “Carbennic?”
“Carbennic, yes. He is a backarounder, I believe; he styles himself as a knight.”
“How very fascinating…” Ruthven paused, licking his lips. “Oh, but I’m being so very unkind to you. Come in, sit down, you must be completely exhausted.”
Ruthven didn’t need to pull very hard to force Vilena to follow him into the room. The scent of blood submerged her, making her throat feel tight and dry, as she was dragged over to the vanity with its one associated chair. Ruthven, ever the gentleman, leaned against the wall.
“Now then. Tell me about these Pretenders.”
Vilena couldn’t help herself but think about the women on the bed, what had been done to them. It was impossible to tell whether they were white or brown, beautiful or ugly, withered from experience or far too young… But she was Ruthven’s wife. She had to report.
“I… was not able to learn much. They arrived, they killed Rutter, they left, all in a span of hours. The Marquess was… less than helpful as well. Not that he was not cooperative, rather his officers were doing a very poor job. It took me quite a bit of investigative work to find out that Gilead is a very recent resurrection. Very recent.”
Ruthven wrinkled his nose. “That’s worrisome, no? It’s not typical for someone to become a Pretender so quickly.”
Vilena shook her head. “No, it is not. Hence why I believe hunting him down should be a high priority. And in that regard, I was able to make some progress. I spoke to one of our state grave-minders. He didn’t know much, but he showed me this map. The mark, here, was left by Gilead, I believe.”
Ruthven snatched the map from Vilena’s hand, examining the mark in question. “Oh. Well, that might explain a thing or two. Carbennic… do you know anything about that name?”
“I do not.” Vilena said. To disguise her feelings, she added, “My love.”
Ruthven chuckled softly under his breath, shaking his head in pity. “I suppose you wouldn’t, no. Carbennic is the name of an old kingdom that existed in this region back in medieval times. And I may be wrong here, but I do believe that the ruins of Carbennic castle are within this circled area.”
Suddenly it seemed very obvious. “You think he might be going to his old home?”
“Almost certainly. It’s what I would do, if I woke up and God only knows how many centuries had gone by.”
Vilena stood up from the chair, eager for an excuse to leave. “I shall hunt him down at once, then.”
Ruthven tisked, placing his hand on Vilena’s head and running his cold fingers down the back of her neck. She was suddenly, acutely aware that the chair that he’d put her in had had blood on it: the hot stain was sticking to the back of her dress.
“Darling, you need not worry, not about this. You have your own business to attend to.”
“The ball…” Vilena sighed.
“Precisely. Stay here and make sure that everything goes smoothly. You’re so very good at arranging people, keeping everything neat—it must be the Russian in you.”
Vilena flashed a grin at him, the better to make sure that he didn’t catch a whiff of how she really felt.
“I’ll take care of the Pretender. Me and the pups. So don’t you worry about him.”
“Thank you,” Vilena replied. “In that case… I should go and see what needs to be done for the ball, yes?”
Ruthven frowned, pouting like a puppy. Other people might consider the look attractive, but Vilena had never thought he was pretty.
“I feel as though it’s been days since we had any time with each other,” said Ruthven. “Can’t I partake in just a few minutes of privacy with my beloved wife?”
One of six beloved wives. But Vilena swallowed her pride, just as she always did. She pulled him into a kiss, cold lip against cold lip, and Ruthven walked her towards the bed with the bright red sheets.