"Della Mercatura"

Morrisville – 1984

It fled into the fog, and Penance gave chase.

Soon the twisted woods and bramble disappeared, replaced by the yawning chasm of a massive hallway. Opulent wallpaper shrouded the corridor, its veiny designs highlighted in bold Scheele's Green. Massive gas lamps belched out a sickly ochre hue like the jets of a foundry furnace dying of starvation, the spent gas smelling of rotten eggs. The decaying wood floor curled about in nonsensical ripples and waves; the walls towered above for miles and miles in an impossible, endless chasm.

And they breathed. The walls trembled in and out with uneven, stuttering breaths like tubercular lungs. The echoing wheeze, mixed with the dying shriek of the gas lamps, mimicked nothing alive he'd ever encountered. He was but an ant in the depths of some Lovecraftian creature.

And the fox... well, it was just a fox.

The animal emerged from one of the endless narrow, six-sided doors flanking the infinite hallway, looking back at the boy with an empty expression. The fox turned its head, looking down the hallway, then moved further into the darkness of the place.

And Penance gave chase, following through the bowels of a beast with arsenic lungs, rotted bones and dying light.

In the House of the Green, the dead wait dreaming...

The fox disappeared into one of those nondescript six-sided doors, and Penance followed into another bank of fog. As it cleared he could see only darkness, with the exception of a massive bay window— at least two stories tall— and a crooked mess of trees hanging before a yellowed moon. The fox sat dutifully at the side of a woman staring out the window, her silk dress immaculate and her stance dignified and straight. She absently caressed the fox's head.

Penance slowly approached, looking first at the fox, then the woman. Before he could reach her the rotten floorboards betrayed him, squeaking with a sick whine.

Gilbarta turned her head, looking back at the boy with a warm smile that quickly turned to contemptuous pity as she surveyed him up and down.

"Poor devil! See him o'er his trash!"

More floorboards squeaked in the dark beside him; Cadha emerged from the emptiness, circling the boy and staring at him with green eyes blazing, narrowed to sharp slits.

"As feeble as a withered rush!"

Penance stepped back, only to bump into a small body behind him. Struana pushed apart his legs and scuttled under them, emerging in front of him with her raven hair scattered wildly about her pallid face. Her eyes matched her mother's, only with a more mocking playfulness.

"His thin legs a good whip-lash," she slapped one of Penance's legs, then got off her knees and grabbed his hand, holding it up and then dropping it with derision, her tiny teeth bared like a gorilla's. "His fist a nut!"

Penance stepped back from the three women, his heart racing in his chest. Cadha and Struana matched him step for step, shuffling like intelligent zombies. The fox, too, followed in their wake, staring at the boy with an ineffable expression. Only Gilbarta stood her ground, shaking her head as she spoke.

"Through bloody flood or field to dash..."

Again Penance bumped into a body behind him. This one was not small.

Vice-like hands grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him about.

Uallas stared down at the boy, teeth shaking on edge and the veins in his head bulging. He looked like he might tear the boy's throat out with those gnashing chompers.

But he did far worse.

"O, how unfit!" He screamed.

He screamed, and then he laughed...

X

X

X

Penance bucked in the chair, eyes flitting about as his body twisted to one side.

No giant dying gas lamps met his eyes, or arsenic-coated walls drawing sickly breaths. The wood floor beneath his chair had seen better days, but it wasn't the crazed and haphazard mess of the eldritch mansion. Nor were the dead standing around him, taunting and mocking him.

These were all positive changes in his circumstances.

Unfortunately they were the only positives of his current situation.

Penance was tied to a hard-backed dining chair from his ankles to his collarbones, and every conceivable place in between. His fingers and bare toes were the only things he could move freely, and that included his jaw, which was secured with a large knotted cloth.

His Reeboks sat across the room beneath a wood table, each one bearing a neatly-folded white sock. His tartan backpack rested on the tabletop beside an open bottle of red wine. A small light bulb rested on a thin chain over the boy's head, casting a wan circle of light that barely illuminated a fraction of the room.

So, not great, all things considered.

As his senses slowly returned he took to twisting about in the chair, testing his bonds, but unfortunately they more than aced all his tests; he wasn't going anywhere, physically.

So he went somewhere mentally, instead, sinking into that deep, dark 'pit' inside his head, struggling to find the proper 'frequency' while trying to ignore, at least for the moment, that he was nearly mummified in rope and being held prisoner.

There were worse things than that, after all.

And he found one when reaching out with his mind: somewhere in the darkness of the room, beyond the reach of that lone light bulb hanging over Penance's head, a pair of eyes watched the boy struggle in his chair.

A pair of immortal eyes surveyed their prey.

Penance's nostrils flared over his gag and his rusty blue eyes turned to saucers, trembling with instinctual panic. The boy ignored any sense of dignity and took to thrashing about with all his might, screaming into the knotted cloth and whipping his head about in a frenzy.

A pair of fine black Italian dress shoes stepped out from the darkness and into the wan circle of light. The man wearing them was thin and tall, his black hair impeccably smoothed along his scalp with thick oil, beneath that his bushy eyebrows rested over a set of shrewd cinnamon eyes framed around a fine Roman nose.

"I'd have expected more dignity from you than this," he said.

Penance redoubled his struggles, belting out a string of nonsense grunts, spit forming at the corners of the knotted cloth.

The man rolled his eyes, more exasperated than angry. When Penance still thrashed away ten seconds later he made his move, grabbing the back of the boy's head and holding a clump of hair near his forehead, forcing the boy to be still as he got in his face, his aquiline nose not a centimeter from Penance's less graceful, broken schnoz.

"If it helps then you should know this: I have not decided exactly what I'm going to do with you yet, Mister Cameron, but you're not going to help your case by behaving like a little brat throwing a tantrum."

The man gripped the back of the boy's skull tighter, and his brown eyes bled deathly seriousness.

"Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

After a pause (and a deep breath through his nose to avoid passing out) Penance nodded his head as much as he could manage.

"You will act the part of the well-behaved young gentleman, will you not?"

Again, a small nod.

"When I take that thing from your mouth you will use your 'inside voice', as they condescendingly tell children, yes?"

A nod.

The man removed his hand from the back of Penance's head, pointing one finger at the boy.

"I don't ask you to be polite; that would be a bit much, given the circumstances. But when your mouth is free and you decide to call me a 'cocksucker', or the like, I only ask that you don't shout it."

At this Penance managed a roll of his eyes, but the man took that as another nod and untied the knot of cloth at the back of the boy's head, removing the wad from his jaw.

Penance spat the excess saliva from his mouth on the floor beside his chair, instead of in the man's face. Given the circumstances he'd have to take the man up on his deal about being a 'well-behaved young gentleman', at least for the moment.

And to a point.

"Cocksucker." Penance narrowed his eye, keeping his voice to an opera whisper.

The man, however, merely smiled, his bushy eyebrows curling with bemusement.

"Thank you, kindly," he gave the boy a mock bow. "I appreciate the lowered voice; this is a rental property of mine— vacant more than a year, now— but it's a duplex and honestly the insulation is terrible. I wouldn't want the neighbors to be disturbed, you understand. And I wouldn't want to have to take your little head as a consequence."

"Which one?" Penance grumbled.

The man snorted through his nose, holding up a hand to his mouth before letting it fall to his side, lips still curled with a suppressed laugh.

"That," he pointed at the boy, "is more the spunk I expected from the 'Rabid Fox'."

Penance was ready with a reflexive retort, seizing on the man's use of the word 'spunk', but then he blinked in confusion.

"What'd you just call me?"

The man walked over to the small table and picked up the bottle of wine.

"'Rabid Fox', of course."

Again the boy blinked.

"Uh... why are you calling me that, exactly?"

The man held a glass, ready to pour the wine, but then he looked back at the boy with his own confused look.

"I— that's just what they call you. Haven't you—"

"Who calls me that?"

The man waved the wine bottle through the air in a vague motion.

"The collective 'they'. People like me, I guess. I figured that you knew—"

"And what are you, exactly?" Penance asked. "You know my name, and you like giving out stupid nicknames—"

"I didn't give you that name." The man scoffed and poured a large glass of wine. He sniffed the rim, smiling with satisfaction. "You gave it to yourself, whether you know it or not." He looked back at Penance. "You have a reputation, and it's more than earned. My reputation is doubly earned, if I do say so, myself, but whereas you are known for the heads you've collected in your time I am known for the information I've amassed." He walked over to the boy, swirling the blood-red wine as he spoke. "If you are a merchant of death, child, then I would be a merchant of facts. And I like to think I have that market cornered. My name is 'Medici', at least as much as your name is 'Penance'."

The boy had grit his teeth at the mention of his kills; when the man thought to brag about himself Penance decided to take him down a peg.

And that wouldn't really work out for him.

"You know nothing about me!" Penance grumbled.

"I know that knowledge is power, and that a man would do well to be 'powerful' in at least one area of his life. They call me the 'Ledger Keeper'—"

"The 'collective they', again?"

"Immortals who want— or often need— my dossiers. And another interested organization, from time to time. You know what a 'ledger' is, don't you?"

Penance scoffed.

"Of course: a banking book—"

"And," Medici held up one finger, "a marker over a grave. Just as knowledge is power, it can also be a deadly thing. Its effects on people— and on their fate— can be dramatic, indeed."

Penance rolled his eyes at the man's grandiosity.

"What?" The man smiled. "You, of all people, would disagree..."

He then said something: just one word.

Five simple syllables, but each one hammered the boy's head like a sledge.

Penance stared at his own bare feet after Medici said this word, and when he looked up at the man the boy's eyes burned with cold fire.

"That name," he whispered. "Never use it, again!"

Medici again bowed, although this one appeared less mocking and far more somber.

"I apologize. Just proving my point. And like I said: 'Medici' is no more my real name, either. Do you know that name, by chance?"

"'Medici'?"

The man nodded.

Penance looked to one side.

"Yeah: they were a family of Italian bankers, or something. Right?"

The man chuckled.

"As much as the Ptolemaic kings were 'Egyptian civil servants'. Suffice to say that not a coin changed hands in Florence without the Medici family's approval, and every figure in government that wasn't of their direct bloodline (few though they may've been) nonetheless bent their knees at the name. They held power unprecedented. Me? I was a man of— to be generous— 'modest' means that held only a small power of my own. That happened to be power over the heart of a lovely young scion of the Medici clan's most influential family. That didn't sit so well with the elders, who forbade my courting of the young lady, the match being scandalous and me being a 'disreputable old fortune hunter' in their minds."

Again Medici took a sniff of the wine, his lips twisted with a self-deprecating and melancholic smirk.

"I won't lie and say that her family fortune meant nothing to me, but I also wouldn't lie in saying that the girl meant something as well. And in those days a marriage was usually based on far less, emotionally-speaking. So after the family threats didn't dissuade me they decided to take a more direct approach and have two thugs 'bump into me' one night on the Ponte Vecchio, over the Arno. Do you know it?"

Penance nodded, and the man seemed genuinely happy at this.

"Ah! And a lovely old bridge, isn't it! Well, once the thugs buried their daggers in my back they threw my body into the water. By the time I woke up I'd floated nearly to Empoli, and immortal or not I was out of the Medici family's hair for good. Well, time doesn't so much heal wounds as it scabs over them, at best, and my anger at the family has really only managed to scab over into resentment in my 'old age'. Eventually I thought to take the name that was so violently denied to me in my first life, and I vowed to outlive my namesake's largess and splendor, which I've succeeded in doing. To this day I like to think the family elders are looking down— or up— from whatever afterlife they've earned and see me wielding their name long after the glory of their dynasty has passed. There's something poetic about it, and we Italians love our poetry."

"And tying kids to chairs in crummy apartment buildings," Penance muttered.

"That," Medici said, "is in honor of your own reputation, child. Call it a 'sensible precaution'. We who deal in facts and figures, after all, are nothing if not cautious."

The man took a long sip of the wine, sighing contentedly afterwards. He delicately held the glass before the boy's nose to let Penance inhale the vapors, which he didn't. Medici swirled the glass temptingly.

"Not that I want to be boastful, but this bottle costs more than most used cars. You could at least humor me with a sip."

"No," the boy scowled.

"Don't like red wine?"

"Love it."

"Don't want to drink with me, then?"

"I've had drinks with my enemies, before."

"Who said I was your 'enemy', exactly?"

"The kid you tied to a chair."

Medici shrugged, conceding the point.

"So then what reason is left for you to not have a little sip of the 'good stuff'?"

Penance, cold eyes trained on the man like lasers, kept his face as stern as stone.

"Because I'm a recovering heroin addict."

One of the great detriments to Penance's situation was, and always would be, his inability to honestly connect with people and be open about some very fundamental things. Other immortals had this problem too, of course, but not to the level of a '12-year-old'. If immortals had to suffer secrets as a fact of life then someone like Penance had to suffer secrets inside of secrets. At least an adult immortal, for example, could talk to others and get treatment for a problem like heroin addiction; Penance had been relegated to listening at the doors of AA meetings after helping set up coffee and cakes in community centers. He'd whisper his own imaginary introductions to the group and listen to their stories as best he could.

It was helpful, to a point, but still cold comfort when he finally decided to go clean.

He didn't remember much about that time period, and that was a blessing.

But to talk about his problems with anyone else, or even casually bring them up in conversation? He might as well have been Cassandra warning the Trojans about Greek gifts. Whip had only laughed at him when he declined her whiskey, claiming to be an addict, and he didn't mind such a response. Keeping secrets came naturally to Penance, and he wasn't the type to share even on a good day.

But it could still be frustrating.

It could be maddening.

From Medici, however, there was no condescending smirk or reproachful snicker at the boy for telling 'tall tales'. Instead the man's eyes widened and he let that façade of charming Italian grace falter, instead showing a vulnerable mortification. He pulled the glass from under Penance's nose and quickly walked back to the table, clearing his throat as he set the glass down.

"Well, even the best 'bankers' can miss a fact or figure. I, uh, sincerely apologize."

Penance was ready to rib the man over his little intelligence failure but he stopped short; Medici's voice and body language betrayed no hint of sarcasm or insincerity, and despite his current predicament Penance was struck by the display, at least enough to withhold any snarky commentary.

And, for someone like Penance, that was saying an awful lot.

"It's fine," he grumbled.

An awkward silence followed; Medici filled it by examining Penance's personal effects on the table, starting with the boy's little knife in its scabbard. He held the thing up, looking back and the boy.

"Would you mind if I...?"

Penance scoffed, shaking his head at the man's ridiculous display of politeness.

"Knock yourself out," he said. "Not like I can stop you."

Medici pulled the blade from the scabbard, holding the liquid steel knife up to the light bulb as he surveyed its cold, watery bands. He spoke in a reverent whisper.

"Thonmas Ferrant's final masterwork: the Fiacail den Sionnach."

Again Penance blinked in confusion.

"The what?"

Medici looked down at the boy.

"The 'fox's fang'—"

"I know what that means," Penance said. "Why are you calling it that? This isn't more of that 'collective they' bullshit, is it?"

Medici motioned to the boy with an expressive hand, his face tensed with exasperation.

"You're joking, aren't you? That's not what you call it?"

"Of course not—"

"But they—" Medici caught himself, holding up one finger. "Pardon: what do you call it, then?"

"Nothing. It's a knife, not a pet cat."

The man set the weapon down on the table, letting a disappointed huff escape his nose. He dug into the boy's backpack and found the fox head, holding it up before the boy.

"I suppose this raggedy scrap doesn't have a name either?"

"Of course she has a name." Penance spoke with disbelieving condescension, as if he were having to explain that water was, in fact, wet.

"Galabeg?" Medici again wagged it in front of the boy.

Penance nodded.

The man sighed, staring up at the ceiling with sarcastic relief.

"Finally! But one out of three isn't much to brag about." When he again met Penance's gaze he gave the boy a teasing smirk. "That much had to be true: a sentimental young boy's beloved 'pet' doll—"

"It's not a doll!" Penance snarled. "And there's nothing 'beloved' about it. I just... I carry it out of habit—"

"Oh," Medici nodded. "I see." He picked up Penance's knife from the table. "Then you'll have no problem with this."

The man held up Galabeg in one hand and moved to slice it in two with the little knife.

A noise somewhere between a hiccup and a high-pitched yelp escaped the boy's lips; every muscle in Penance's body tensed and he bucked his bound torso as far forward as he could, even managing to get the whole chair airborne for a fraction of a second.

Medici chuckled and put the knife back down on the table, along with the still-intact fox head.

"Sorry, again: couldn't resist."

The boy grit his teeth, unsuccessfully trying to hide a tomato blush.

"Yeah, you could've..."

The man leaned his backside against the table in a half-sitting position, crossing his legs and sliding the sole of one of his black dress shoes along the worn floor.

"All games aside, child— and the Game aside, too, for the moment— I do want you to know how extraordinary I find your 'figures' in my ledger; you are an exceptional immortal, measured as a child or otherwise."

Penance was ready to throw that statement back in the man's face by declaring that he was just a 'survivor', but at the moment this seemed to be an uncertain fact, and if he were about to die he'd hate to be killed right after making a stupid statement like that. He'd be giving Medici the perfect setup for a great action movie one-liner, like 'not anymore', or 'survive this', or something even worse.

Penance could come to terms with dying, certainly.

But not dying like that.

Maybe Medici would start by lopping off the boy's bare feet?

"'Not a sole survivor'..." he whispered.

Maybe it was his growing insanity, or maybe it was just that the ropes were too tight and cutting off circulation to important places in his body, but that joke made Penance laugh.

Medici ignored the brief giggle fit.

"You haven't asked me the question you naturally should be asking. I assume that's out of fear, yes? That's understandable. I suppose— from your point of view— you feel that putting off the question as long as possible is the same as a condemned man slowing their pace on the way up the gallows."

Penance met Medici's eyes; the giggle fit had now passed.

He didn't really know what to think of this 'Medici' guy, but so far their relationship was a grand step above his usual interaction with an adult immortal, who unambiguously and obsessively sought to part his head from his shoulders. Who knows what this one wanted from him? Who knows why?

But it seemed that Penance wouldn't be leaving this room— alive or dead— until that question was asked. Until then Medici's motives were a mystery, as was Penance's fate; he was both alive and dead in this room at the same time, in a manner of speaking.

'Schrödinger's Fox'.

He willed the humorous defense mechanism from his head and looked up at Medici with a cold and resolute stare.

"Alright," he mumbled. "I'll bite—"

"I bet you would." The man chuckled, crossing his arms.

"Why are we talking, and why am I not dead?"

"We are talking, my dear child, because I wish it. And you are not dead because I don't particularly wish that, at least for the moment."

The boy scowled.

"Thanks for clearing that up."

Medici gripped the sides of the table with two hands; the position was defensive, steadying, and it dispelled much of that aloof command and confidence he was trying to project, instead exposing an awkward uncertainty.

"I have only some simple questions; they'd be very brief. I'd be delighted if you would consider answering them."

Penance rolled his eyes; that wording was as ridiculous as Medici's 'request' to unsheathe the boy's knife. He wasn't in a position to refuse much of anything, at the moment.

"Questions about what?"

Throughout their chat a faint hope had formed in the back of Penance's mind, and it grew as they talked. Medici seemed sincere, polite, and ultimately non-threatening, and while there were enough people in the world to wear such an unthreatening mask while hiding their true intentions Penance didn't get that 'vibe' from the man. He'd called Penance a 'merchant of death' to distinguish himself from the boy, after all. He fancied himself the 'businessman', didn't he? And businessmen don't get blood on their own clothes, do they?

Sometimes...

The point is that Penance felt he had a chance, and that maybe he could somehow get out of this situation in once piece.

All that changed with Medici's next words.

"I'd very much like to talk to you, if I may, about a certain time and a certain place. I think you'll know the time if you know the place..."

"Where?" Penance asked.

Medici gripped the table tighter, staring down at his fancy shoes and clearing his throat before meeting the boy's eyes. With the look on his face you'd think that he was the one being interrogated.

"The place," he whispered, "is Jamestown."

Whatever color was left in Penance's face drained like hot water from a colander, leaving his skin cold and dried like leather. Medici saw this change but said nothing, only sighing through his nose while exuding a wistful grunt, almost as if he expected the response, but somehow didn't want to see it.

Penance didn't register much of the man's reaction; he was too busy coming to terms with the bombshell in his lap.

He wouldn't be leaving this room alive.

He could only hope for a quick death as consolation.

And he almost certainly wasn't getting that, either.