Part 9: A Friend in Need... Again...

All of my wanted posters were replaced with ones of Kessel around The City. I didn't give information about assassination plots for free but the Baron did receive a considerable discount under the circumstances. His nephew managed to flee The City and the remaining performers in the Mechanival barely escaped with their lives. Finding the ringmaster dead probably tipped them off and by the time the Baron's guard reached the fairgrounds, they were setting sail on their ship. Good riddance. The City and I both had enough of machines that were meant to replace humans.

What I really needed to do was concentrate on that book again. I still had no idea what Viktoria or the Trickster had planned for The City and taking those three artifacts from them may have only bought me a little time. I decided I was going to spend the night studying it for however long it took the tome to reveal its secrets to me.

I pulled a stool up to my workbench and set the book down in front of me.

"You there! Thief!"

My glare dragged up to the highest shelf above me. I had stored the crown and the mummified hand there fore safe-keeping and now one of them decided to talk.

"Just what do you think you're doing, holding my brother and I captive in this festering environment? We were quite content to be resting in the glade, now return us at once, you common street thief!"

That pompous tone of self-righteousness could only belong to a crown. I reached up to pull it down from its perch and it yelled in my head.

"Keep your THIEVING hands off of me, you malformed street urchin!"

I winced and squinted at it. "And how am I supposed to take you anywhere if I can't touch you?"

"Use your brains, for whatever they're worth! Steal a velvet pillow—I know you'll enjoy that aspect of your task—then place me on it and carry me forthwith to my place of rest!"

I shook my head and almost laughed. "That still requires me to touch you. Watch." The crown had a lot to yell as I took it down, which made me feel even more justified about flipping it into the barrel of rainwater I kept on the lower level. Unfortunately the water didn't muffle its complaints and I was going to have to take my studies elsewhere. I hid the book on myself and prepared to leave the clock tower. Just as I finished checking my supplies, Jenivere the Second flew up to the window and dropped off a matchbox.

Friends of M-X want to meet you. They say they'll kill me if you don't come. -B

Friends of Madame Xiao-Xiao wanted to kill Basso? That wasn't news, but why did they want to involve me?

Of course. The Burrick's Heart. I left the clock tower and was relieved to find the crown's voice out of my head as soon as I put good distance between us. Maybe Basso would be grateful enough to lend me his office space after I saved his life.


One of the good things about Basso's basement setup was that it made it easy to get the drop on someone. I could see through the first window that he was being held at knife-point by two of Madame Xiao-Xiao's personal guards. Interesting. I pitched a flash bomb through the window and it exploded against one of their leather helmets.

While they scrambled around, I rushed into the room and smashed one of them into the bookshelf behind Basso's desk. I twisted the other guard's arm backwards and wrenched the knife out of his hand, then held it up against his throat.

Basso took a while to rub the flares from his eyes. "Shit, Garrett, give me some warning next time, will you?"

"You're welcome," I said as I moved around the guard. "Now what the hell is this about."

"Dammit, thief!" He tried to take back his knife but I kept it under his chin. "We need your help but we don't have the coin for it. Do us a favor, will you?"

"I only do favors for people I tolerate." I turned briefly to throw the knife into the wood of the door. "You threatened my fence, so you're lucky I'm letting you leave here with your balls tucked between your legs."

Basso punctuated my words with a few of his own. "Told you it was a bad idea, guys. Should have told me what was up so I coulda talked to him."

The guard that I knocked down gradually found the bearings to join in on the conversation. "It's Madame X. Ever since you brought her that rock, the whole place has started goin' to piss and she ain't paid the least attention to it."

His partner added to the explanation. "A few clients mishandled the girls and walked out without paying. She didn't blink away from that bloody stone to deal with it."

"She ain't ate, ain't slept—"

"Ain't changed her hair in days. Madame X don't wear the same costume twice in the same month. Sometimes not even the same year."

That did sound serious but the solution seemed pretty simple to me. "Why didn't you just take it from her?"

They shook their heads. "We tried. Craig did, anyway. She stabbed him to death with his own belt buckle."

Basso and I exchanged a look before I responded again. "All right. I'll come take a look at least but this is going to cost you a lot if you're wasting my time."


We went down to the House of Blossoms together with the intention of walking through the front entrance, but we could see something was wrong as soon as we stepped into the open area in front of it. The door was already partway open and a series of vines spread out from the opening. The guards took out their swords and stepped forward but I took a step back into the shadows.

My move turned out to be the right one. When one of the guards approached the door, he was immediately launched across the open area when it slammed open.

The other was scooped up by a wooden beast that thundered past the the door. I didn't wait to see how his screams of terror would end. I ran to a nearby corner and climbed up to a hole I had used before to sneak past the main entrance.


The inside of the House was overgrown with vines and ivy. Patches of grass grew over the carpet in some areas. The Blossoms and their clients were tangled up in the mess of plant life but they were all asleep. Small flowers were spraying pollen in each of their faces and keeping them out of the way of the wooden monsters that marched up and down the halls.

This couldn't have been caused by the stone. The guards who threatened Basso would have known about it and said something. I made made it to the ducts that filtered opium around the building and worked my way to Madame Xiao-Xiao's new art exhibit. Whatever was happening, I was going to have to rescue her. She paid good money and the aristocrats would spontaneously combust without the House of Blossoms to relieve the stress of being rich.

The closer I got to the art hall, the more I could hear the Heart talking in the back of my mind. It wasn't talking to me, though. I couldn't hear the other voice until I reached the curtain that blocked off the area.

"Do I have to go? I was having so much fun here. Especially with that one."

"You are such a naughty little heartbreaker, aren't you?"

Viktoria. I wasn't ready to deal with her but when I looked past the curtain, I could see that I had to do something. Madame Xiao-Xiao was sitting in a chair wrapped in vines that kept her upright even though the flower spraying in her face was keeping her asleep. Viktoria was pacing around the hall with the Burrick's Heart in her hands, carrying as normal a conversation as you could have with a gemstone.

A deep growl vibrating behind me told me I had somehow lost the element of surprise. I rolled into the art hall a fraction of a second before wooden claws could tear me apart.

Viktoria looked at me immediately but it was the heart that spoke first. "It's you! I knew you would come back for me! No one can resist MY charms."

"Garrett. How nice of you to turn yourself in to me." Viktoria had a very familiar look in her eyes: It was the same look I gave Six-Fingers when he stole from me. I turned to run and had to slide between the legs of the tree beast that had forced me to reveal myself.

"Going somewhere, sneaksie manfool?" Viktoria's high-pitched hail echoed down the hall and the vines that draped from the ceiling dropped lower to tangle around me. I was able to dodge through it for a while but I ended up getting trapped in the mess before I reached a point where I could escape from it.

The vines tightened around my limbs and turned me around so I was facing Viktoria and her tree beast. She was no longer wearing her human disguise but at least she looked calm.

"Let's talk, shall we?"

"What about," I grunted while I looked around for some possible way out of this. The vines tightened around my neck and forced me to keep my gaze on her.

"You've taken something very precious from the Woodsie Lord and I'm wondering what you did with it."

"I don't know what you're talking about." It was a risk lying to her and it turned out to be a bad move. The vines that held my arms and legs sprouted thorns that dug into my leather. They were unusually sharp and managed to pierce through to the skin.

The Burrick's Heart gasped while I grunted through the pain. "Don't hurt him. Let me have him! I will make him love me forever."

Viktoria smiled and passed the ruby to her wooden guard. "That would be entertaining, but I'm afraid he would resist and I need to know what he knows sooner rather than later." She stepped forward and ran a finger along the edges of my face. "Now, Garrett. I know for a fact that there is no one else in this city with the skill to navigate the enchantments on our house, or the greed to take not one, or two, but all three of the artifacts housed in the glade."

She pulled my hood back and tapped my forehead with her fingers. They started to feel sharper with every poke. "The crown and the paw are less significant right now. I can find them again over time. What I want to know, is what you did with The Eye." I could see blood dripping past my eyebrow from where she continued to tap on my forehead. "And I will takes your skin by inches until you confess..."

I have a pretty strict client confidentiality rule but it certainly wasn't worth having my skin peeled one inch at a time. "Baron Stonebridge." I blinked to shake some of the blood out of my vision. "He paid me to steal it, but I couldn't tell you where he's taken it."

Viktoria's smile changed to something a bit more playful. "So the gauntlet has been thrown. The Woodsie Lord will be pleased." She traced her fingers down to my chest and pointed one close to my heart. Her smile dropped and she looked genuinely hurt for a moment.

"You shouldn't have betrayed me, Garrett. I thought that I might call upon you in the coming days, but you have sided with the enemy. I can't let you use your skills on behalf of the Builder's mongrels."

The thorns on the vines dug past my skin and into my flesh. Some of them were hollow and I could feel my blood draining into the plant. "Betrayed you," I hissed to keep from crying out. "You tricked me into doing what you needed me to do and now you're going to kill me for not playing along with your lie! You're not making a very strong case for god worship right now—" I choked on the pain of her fingertip driving into my chest. Her wooden fingernail pushed through the meat underneath my skin and leather armor and burrowed its way close to my heart, stopping just short of piercing it.

"I've learned it is folly to leave a man to die slowly, especially one who can cause so much grief to my Woodsie Lord. But your blood will make a fine meal for the plants that now grow around you." Viktoria leaned forward and planted a kiss on my forehead. "Goodbye, thief."

A hot blade cut downward past my field of vision and separated the wood from the rest of her finger.

Everything moved fast after that and I could barely tell what was going on due to the loss of blood. Viktoria swiped in the direction that the blade came from and moved to attack a cloaked figure that briefly shuffled where I could see it. A fire arrow struck the tree beast in the face and another figure rushed in with a hot sword to cut it down. Something broke the vines that held me upright and I fell sideways. I was still bleeding from the thorns that dug into me and the wood left in my chest splintered and made the pain worse.

I was bleeding out and pretty soon my vision was too blurry to be trusted. I could have sworn I saw the Queen of Beggars standing over me. I could have sworn I saw her trace a symbol of light in the air and push it towards Viktoria. Whatever she and three cloaked figures did seemed to drive Viktoria away. All of the green that I could see was starting to fade, then the rest of the world faded with it.