Prunesquallor
03-22-2011, 09:51 AM
(Note: To hear this story read by mistercactus, a trained Shakespearean actor, please tune into Episode 2 of our Malifaux podcast: The Aethervox (http://theaethervox.com/)).
This story is part three of an ongoing series:
Part 1: 'The Circus is Coming to Town' (http://wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18461)
Part 2: The Auxiliary (http://wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18462)
***
Mulligan heard footsteps, heavy and uneven, accompanied by a low muttering sound. The were coming closer. Hardly daring to breathe he peeped out from behind the barrel of salt-fish where he hid. There they were: the twins.
The only light was that which seeped down through cracks between the floorboards from the rooms above, but the boy had been hiding down there for most of the night and his keen eyes had long since adjusted to the inky darkness of the storage cellar.
Mulligan could hardly believe it but the twins looked just like the sketch that Mr. V had shown him. They weren’t quite one person, but not quite two either. They shared a single pair of legs but above the waist their bodies diverged, torsos twisting away from one another to make room for two pairs of arms and shoulders, two necks and two heads. They wore a specially tailored quadruple-breasted suit, belted at the waist. Four pistols hung from that belt. One wore a porkpie hat on his head, the other a bowler. They each carried a briefcase.
Mulligan checked his pocketwatch. It was a beautiful, brass-cased timepiece. The hands had been dusted with powdered soulstone and they glowed faintly in the dark. He noted the time on a scrap of paper.
Mulligan’s gang used to be called the Tricklewood Gang, but he was thinking of changing the name to the Pocketwatchers because that’s what they did now—they watched people. They used to be pickpockets and bullies, stealing from gullible adults and the other gangs of street kids who hung around Tricklewood Alley, but everything had changed the night they had been caught breaking into the old scrap yard in search of weapons. Mr. V’s men had caught them and locked them in an old shed full of rusty machinery and scrap metal.
Mulligan hadn’t let on to the others, but he had been terrified. He was sure they would be left there to starve to death, or worse. He had even begun to plan who they should eat first, if it came to that. Tanner was his second-in-command, so he was out of the question. Little Groggy would be the easiest to overpower, but Lizzie-the-Limp would have more meat on her bones.
“What are we gonna do, boss?” Tanner had asked.
“Look for a way out,” Mulligan had growled, trying to sound confident and angry. “And try to find some things to use as weapons in case they come back.”
When the door finally opened again the four of them were huddled in a corner, shivering with cold, clutching lengths of lead pipe in their fists. Lizzie-the-Limp had charged at the men, screaming and swinging the pipe wildly, as they had planned, but Tanner had started to cry: “We’re very sorry, sir. We was just playing. Honest.”
The big miners at the door had easily disarmed Lizzie and then an older gentleman had entered and shook their hands and said his name was V. He said he forgave them for trespassing on his property but that they would have to do him a favour to make it up to him.
And that was how it had begun.
They had started out spying on low-ranking Guild personnel, reporting their comings and goings to one of Mr. V’s assistants at the scrap yard. Most of the inhabitants of Malifaux ignored the city’s street urchin population as much as possible and this allowed Mulligan and his gang to perform their missions exceptionally well. They were able to hide in shadows and crannies, and even just stand in plain sight, without drawing attention. After their first mission Mr. V began to pay them a small salary for their services.
One evening, after following a guardsmen all day—from his home to the Guild offices to the Star Theatre and back home again—Mr. V’s assistant asked Mulligan what time the man had left work. Mulligan said that it was just before sundown, but he had to admit that he didn’t know how to tell time. The man was clearly angry and Mulligan thought that that would be the end of their missions, but the next day Mr. V himself had come to find them and gave them each a brass pocketwatch. He spent several hours teaching them how to read the time and record the information with pencil and paper. After that Mulligan and his gang received more missions than ever.
The money that Mr. V paid them for their work went towards buying food and equipment and weapons. Mulligan bought Groggy a lockpick kit, Lizzie a switchblade and Tanner a set of smoke-bombs. He also sometimes paid other gangs to beat up kids who were pickpocketing or bullying in his territory.
“Why does Mr. V want to know where all these people go all the time?” Lizzie-the-Limp had asked one day.
“Shut up. It’s none of your business,” Mulligan had replied, as if he knew the answer. In reality he was just as baffled as she was. The actual work of tailing the marks was always exciting, but the information he handed over to Mr. V at the end of the day was just a bunch of boring numbers. Mulligan didn’t get it.
***
When Mr. V had first shown Mulligan the drawing of the twins he thought it was a joke. He had laughed: “There’s nobody who looks like that.”
“You may be right,” Mr. V had said. “All the same, I want you and your gang to split up and wait in the basements of these four buildings,” he pointed to the four X’s drawn on a rough map of downtown Malifaux. “Bring food and water with you. Wait all day and all night if you have to. If you see the men in this drawing I want you to record the exact time and then come immediately to me. But don’t let them see you. I have reason to believe they are extremely dangerous...if they exist at all.”
Mr. V’s words ran through Mulligan’s mind as the twins passed within mere inches of his hiding place. He could hear their words now. They muttered back and forth to one another in rapid-fire fragments of speech: “Built two-hundred years....yes, but restored dozens of times...we did one of them?...two, actually...original beams...load bearing, can’t be removed...joined to another...of course...”
They were past Mulligan now, heading towards the low door in the far wall of the cellar. Mulligan peered round his barrel again. The twins stood with their backs to him. One of them drew a huge key ring from his pocket. There must have been at least a hundred brass and iron keys dangling from that ring. The twin with the bowler hat thumbed through them rapidly. They clicked together as he searched for the right one. Very carefully, Mulligan stretched his painfully cramping legs.
All of a sudden the keys clattered to the ground and the twins whirled around. They moved with uncanny speed, drawing all four pistols at once and pointing them right at Mulligan. The boy froze in terror, finding himself unable to move, unable even to duck back behind the barrel. He just stared stupidly into the four slender barrels and they stared back for what felt like hours but must have, in reality, been only a few seconds.
“What was that?” said porkpie hat, at last.
“Dunno. Just a shadow maybe,” replied bowler. He seemed to relax and he holstered his guns, but porkpie kept his drawn and stared harder into the shadows where Mulligan hid while his brother bent from the waist to retrieve the fallen keys.
“I feel we’re being watched.”
“Don’t be silly.” Bowler hat had found the key he wanted now and unlocked the little door.
“I think we should have a hunt ‘round this basement before we go through.”
“We haven’t got time for that. Mr. Magpie wanted these soulstones delivered an hour ago.” He patted his briefcase. “It was probably just a rat.”
Bowler swung the door open and picked up both briefcases. The twins stepped through, still bickering back and forth. As they crossed the threshold there was a blinding flash of light. By the time the afterimage cleared from Mulligan’s vision the twins were gone.
It was a long time before he dared to move, but when he finally crawled out from behind the barrel Mulligan couldn’t resist tip-toeing up to the door. With trembling hands he tried the knob. It turned easily and he pulled the door open a crack. Beyond was nothing but a small storage room full of coal. There was no other exit but the twins were nowhere to be seen.
Mulligan bumped into Groggy in Halfmile Street, on his way back to Mr. V’s scrapyard. The boy seemed very excited and he tried to tell Mulligan what had happened as they hurried through the streets, but he kept tripping over his words: “I saw them...I saw them...the twins! They came through...both had hats...and briefcases...but they couldn’t have come...the door didn’t go there...but there was a big flash...then, there they were...but I’m sure they didn’t come from...”
Mulligan interrupted him: “Did you remember to record the time?”
“Course I did. It’s right here, see?” Groggy handed over a piece of paper. Mulligan stopped and stared at it.
“You must have written it down wrong, idiot. That’s the same time that I saw them. They can’t have been in two places at once.”
“No, it’s right. I’m sure,” said Groggy. “I triple-checked the pocketwatch, just like Mr. V showed us. It must be you who got it wrong.”
Mulligan gave Groggy a whack and a glare. He heaved a sigh and they continued towards the scrapyard. Mr. V would be furious. He had stressed over and over again the importance of precision when recording the time that the twins were sighted.
When they arrived at the shack Mr. V was there speaking in urgent tones to a tall woman in a long, dark coat. He looked tired and worried. When he noticed the boys approaching he stopped mid-sentence and his expression changed. He grinned at them and spoke in the gentle tone he always used: “And what have my little spies discovered about our conjoined friends?”
With a heavy heart Mulligan handed over the scraps of paper and explained what happened, with Groggy chirping up now and then to add details of his own. Mr. V listened patiently throughout and when they were finished he told them they had done an excellent job and gave Mulligan his usual fee plus a small bonus. Then he told them they should come back tomorrow for the next part of the operation.
***
When the children were gone Victor Ramos turned back to the tall woman and showed her the scraps of paper. “Look at this. They stepped through a door in Cheapside and appeared six miles away in Haymarket Close.”
“Just like I told you,” replied Colette Du Bois. “A trick like that could prove invaluable to our operations, don’t you think?”
“Yes. But who are these men?”
“They are circus performers and mercenaries. But before Mr. Magpie recruited the twins they were restoration architects, working here in Malifaux. They know more about the architecture of Old Malifaux than anyone else alive.”
“And how did they pull off a trick like that?”
Collette did not answer immediately, but she stared at the sketch of the two men, then at the city map. “It seems our friends here are not the only things that are conjoined in unnatural ways.”
Victor rubbed his brow. The twins’ incredible trick could prove invaluable to him. He yearned to know the scope of their ability. “How much do these men charge for their services?”
“They’re not cheap,” said Collette. “And Victor, one more thing, they are already working for the Guild.”
“What?” Victor stared at her, wide-eyed.
“I believe they are helping to transport one of Secretary Lucius’s personal soulstone reserves to a secret vault beneath the Haymarket district. But don’t worry. We can turn this to our advantage. Mr. Magpie and his crew are mercenaries, plain and simple. All we have to do is pay them more.”
Victor Ramos rubbed his hands together. “Whatever they charge, we’ll pay it. Lucius is going to get a nasty surprise.”
This story is part three of an ongoing series:
Part 1: 'The Circus is Coming to Town' (http://wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18461)
Part 2: The Auxiliary (http://wyrd-games.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18462)
***
Mulligan heard footsteps, heavy and uneven, accompanied by a low muttering sound. The were coming closer. Hardly daring to breathe he peeped out from behind the barrel of salt-fish where he hid. There they were: the twins.
The only light was that which seeped down through cracks between the floorboards from the rooms above, but the boy had been hiding down there for most of the night and his keen eyes had long since adjusted to the inky darkness of the storage cellar.
Mulligan could hardly believe it but the twins looked just like the sketch that Mr. V had shown him. They weren’t quite one person, but not quite two either. They shared a single pair of legs but above the waist their bodies diverged, torsos twisting away from one another to make room for two pairs of arms and shoulders, two necks and two heads. They wore a specially tailored quadruple-breasted suit, belted at the waist. Four pistols hung from that belt. One wore a porkpie hat on his head, the other a bowler. They each carried a briefcase.
Mulligan checked his pocketwatch. It was a beautiful, brass-cased timepiece. The hands had been dusted with powdered soulstone and they glowed faintly in the dark. He noted the time on a scrap of paper.
Mulligan’s gang used to be called the Tricklewood Gang, but he was thinking of changing the name to the Pocketwatchers because that’s what they did now—they watched people. They used to be pickpockets and bullies, stealing from gullible adults and the other gangs of street kids who hung around Tricklewood Alley, but everything had changed the night they had been caught breaking into the old scrap yard in search of weapons. Mr. V’s men had caught them and locked them in an old shed full of rusty machinery and scrap metal.
Mulligan hadn’t let on to the others, but he had been terrified. He was sure they would be left there to starve to death, or worse. He had even begun to plan who they should eat first, if it came to that. Tanner was his second-in-command, so he was out of the question. Little Groggy would be the easiest to overpower, but Lizzie-the-Limp would have more meat on her bones.
“What are we gonna do, boss?” Tanner had asked.
“Look for a way out,” Mulligan had growled, trying to sound confident and angry. “And try to find some things to use as weapons in case they come back.”
When the door finally opened again the four of them were huddled in a corner, shivering with cold, clutching lengths of lead pipe in their fists. Lizzie-the-Limp had charged at the men, screaming and swinging the pipe wildly, as they had planned, but Tanner had started to cry: “We’re very sorry, sir. We was just playing. Honest.”
The big miners at the door had easily disarmed Lizzie and then an older gentleman had entered and shook their hands and said his name was V. He said he forgave them for trespassing on his property but that they would have to do him a favour to make it up to him.
And that was how it had begun.
They had started out spying on low-ranking Guild personnel, reporting their comings and goings to one of Mr. V’s assistants at the scrap yard. Most of the inhabitants of Malifaux ignored the city’s street urchin population as much as possible and this allowed Mulligan and his gang to perform their missions exceptionally well. They were able to hide in shadows and crannies, and even just stand in plain sight, without drawing attention. After their first mission Mr. V began to pay them a small salary for their services.
One evening, after following a guardsmen all day—from his home to the Guild offices to the Star Theatre and back home again—Mr. V’s assistant asked Mulligan what time the man had left work. Mulligan said that it was just before sundown, but he had to admit that he didn’t know how to tell time. The man was clearly angry and Mulligan thought that that would be the end of their missions, but the next day Mr. V himself had come to find them and gave them each a brass pocketwatch. He spent several hours teaching them how to read the time and record the information with pencil and paper. After that Mulligan and his gang received more missions than ever.
The money that Mr. V paid them for their work went towards buying food and equipment and weapons. Mulligan bought Groggy a lockpick kit, Lizzie a switchblade and Tanner a set of smoke-bombs. He also sometimes paid other gangs to beat up kids who were pickpocketing or bullying in his territory.
“Why does Mr. V want to know where all these people go all the time?” Lizzie-the-Limp had asked one day.
“Shut up. It’s none of your business,” Mulligan had replied, as if he knew the answer. In reality he was just as baffled as she was. The actual work of tailing the marks was always exciting, but the information he handed over to Mr. V at the end of the day was just a bunch of boring numbers. Mulligan didn’t get it.
***
When Mr. V had first shown Mulligan the drawing of the twins he thought it was a joke. He had laughed: “There’s nobody who looks like that.”
“You may be right,” Mr. V had said. “All the same, I want you and your gang to split up and wait in the basements of these four buildings,” he pointed to the four X’s drawn on a rough map of downtown Malifaux. “Bring food and water with you. Wait all day and all night if you have to. If you see the men in this drawing I want you to record the exact time and then come immediately to me. But don’t let them see you. I have reason to believe they are extremely dangerous...if they exist at all.”
Mr. V’s words ran through Mulligan’s mind as the twins passed within mere inches of his hiding place. He could hear their words now. They muttered back and forth to one another in rapid-fire fragments of speech: “Built two-hundred years....yes, but restored dozens of times...we did one of them?...two, actually...original beams...load bearing, can’t be removed...joined to another...of course...”
They were past Mulligan now, heading towards the low door in the far wall of the cellar. Mulligan peered round his barrel again. The twins stood with their backs to him. One of them drew a huge key ring from his pocket. There must have been at least a hundred brass and iron keys dangling from that ring. The twin with the bowler hat thumbed through them rapidly. They clicked together as he searched for the right one. Very carefully, Mulligan stretched his painfully cramping legs.
All of a sudden the keys clattered to the ground and the twins whirled around. They moved with uncanny speed, drawing all four pistols at once and pointing them right at Mulligan. The boy froze in terror, finding himself unable to move, unable even to duck back behind the barrel. He just stared stupidly into the four slender barrels and they stared back for what felt like hours but must have, in reality, been only a few seconds.
“What was that?” said porkpie hat, at last.
“Dunno. Just a shadow maybe,” replied bowler. He seemed to relax and he holstered his guns, but porkpie kept his drawn and stared harder into the shadows where Mulligan hid while his brother bent from the waist to retrieve the fallen keys.
“I feel we’re being watched.”
“Don’t be silly.” Bowler hat had found the key he wanted now and unlocked the little door.
“I think we should have a hunt ‘round this basement before we go through.”
“We haven’t got time for that. Mr. Magpie wanted these soulstones delivered an hour ago.” He patted his briefcase. “It was probably just a rat.”
Bowler swung the door open and picked up both briefcases. The twins stepped through, still bickering back and forth. As they crossed the threshold there was a blinding flash of light. By the time the afterimage cleared from Mulligan’s vision the twins were gone.
It was a long time before he dared to move, but when he finally crawled out from behind the barrel Mulligan couldn’t resist tip-toeing up to the door. With trembling hands he tried the knob. It turned easily and he pulled the door open a crack. Beyond was nothing but a small storage room full of coal. There was no other exit but the twins were nowhere to be seen.
Mulligan bumped into Groggy in Halfmile Street, on his way back to Mr. V’s scrapyard. The boy seemed very excited and he tried to tell Mulligan what had happened as they hurried through the streets, but he kept tripping over his words: “I saw them...I saw them...the twins! They came through...both had hats...and briefcases...but they couldn’t have come...the door didn’t go there...but there was a big flash...then, there they were...but I’m sure they didn’t come from...”
Mulligan interrupted him: “Did you remember to record the time?”
“Course I did. It’s right here, see?” Groggy handed over a piece of paper. Mulligan stopped and stared at it.
“You must have written it down wrong, idiot. That’s the same time that I saw them. They can’t have been in two places at once.”
“No, it’s right. I’m sure,” said Groggy. “I triple-checked the pocketwatch, just like Mr. V showed us. It must be you who got it wrong.”
Mulligan gave Groggy a whack and a glare. He heaved a sigh and they continued towards the scrapyard. Mr. V would be furious. He had stressed over and over again the importance of precision when recording the time that the twins were sighted.
When they arrived at the shack Mr. V was there speaking in urgent tones to a tall woman in a long, dark coat. He looked tired and worried. When he noticed the boys approaching he stopped mid-sentence and his expression changed. He grinned at them and spoke in the gentle tone he always used: “And what have my little spies discovered about our conjoined friends?”
With a heavy heart Mulligan handed over the scraps of paper and explained what happened, with Groggy chirping up now and then to add details of his own. Mr. V listened patiently throughout and when they were finished he told them they had done an excellent job and gave Mulligan his usual fee plus a small bonus. Then he told them they should come back tomorrow for the next part of the operation.
***
When the children were gone Victor Ramos turned back to the tall woman and showed her the scraps of paper. “Look at this. They stepped through a door in Cheapside and appeared six miles away in Haymarket Close.”
“Just like I told you,” replied Colette Du Bois. “A trick like that could prove invaluable to our operations, don’t you think?”
“Yes. But who are these men?”
“They are circus performers and mercenaries. But before Mr. Magpie recruited the twins they were restoration architects, working here in Malifaux. They know more about the architecture of Old Malifaux than anyone else alive.”
“And how did they pull off a trick like that?”
Collette did not answer immediately, but she stared at the sketch of the two men, then at the city map. “It seems our friends here are not the only things that are conjoined in unnatural ways.”
Victor rubbed his brow. The twins’ incredible trick could prove invaluable to him. He yearned to know the scope of their ability. “How much do these men charge for their services?”
“They’re not cheap,” said Collette. “And Victor, one more thing, they are already working for the Guild.”
“What?” Victor stared at her, wide-eyed.
“I believe they are helping to transport one of Secretary Lucius’s personal soulstone reserves to a secret vault beneath the Haymarket district. But don’t worry. We can turn this to our advantage. Mr. Magpie and his crew are mercenaries, plain and simple. All we have to do is pay them more.”
Victor Ramos rubbed his hands together. “Whatever they charge, we’ll pay it. Lucius is going to get a nasty surprise.”