Noble V: Greylancer (23 page)

I must have considered abandoning my name, rank, and workshop and running away to
the oft-rumored neighboring city over a hundred times.

The chisel in my hand trembled relentlessly as I carved the cheekbones, and the lips
that I’d managed to sculpt after much agony let out a scornful laugh audible only
to me. The eyeballs reflected the image of a middle-aged man balled up in a fetal
position in a corner of the workshop, terrified by the enormous task before him.

But it was this task that also saved me.

Exhausted, Shwann fell asleep with his arms and head spread over the table cluttered
with my many failed attempts to produce a face. With more faces scattered about his
feet, Shwann looked like a gravedigger who’d enjoyed a night of merrymaking with skulls
in a cursed underground cemetery.

He came in the dead of night. I heard the door creak open, but I was too hopeless
and exhausted to raise my head.

I sensed the visitor bypass the countless faces scattered about, stop before my desk,
and take up my latest creation that I’d set down next to me.

“Exquisite,” I heard him say.

I lifted my weary head. Was there a savior that reached out to every man drowning
in the depths of despair? Even if that savior was a faceless specter shrouded in a
shadowy cloak?

“You have my esteem and trust in your abilities. You must continue the work you have
started. Here is my payment for your troubles.”

I glimpsed a blue hand—the same blue hand I’d seen at the scrap metal yard—withdraw
a satchel from the shadows of his cloak, and I felt myself warming to this black figure
at last. The satchel left on the desk contained fifty gimli coins.

After watching the shadow stride out into the dark gray world, I strained to stand.

Somehow I staggered to my feet.

I shambled over to the table where Shwann slept.

“Let’s get back to work,” I said. My assistant picked himself up without complaint.

Three days later, the face was complete. Then on a snowy day three months later, I
hosted an unveiling ceremony for my creation.

Shwann was the only audience in attendance. The black figure had not visited again
since that night three months and three days prior.

After Shwann alone applauded the unveiling, he gazed at the finished product and asked,
“Does such a creature exist?” His voice had the hollow ring of a man for whom the
answer was obvious.

With his hair combed neatly back, his face exuded a refinement rarely seen in upper-class
society. The well-to-do citizens of Cité might have seen it differently.

I’ll say no more about his visage. The parts I had labored over the most were the
ties and wrinkles of the cloak. I doubted the being himself would complain about my
craftsmanship.

His forward-bent stance with one foot forward and arms crossed over his chest had
also been extrapolated from the fangs.

At first glance, he looked as human as you and I, from his hairstyle to his facial
features, his cloak and the garments underneath. Yet no human grew fangs the likes
of which this creature wielded now.

“So these are the fangs that punctured the woman’s throat,” said Shwann, haggard.
I nodded. “But for what purpose? There is absolutely nothing to be gained, that I
can think of, from doing so.”

“Why don’t we ask the victim directly?”

Shwann gasped, perhaps not thinking to ask.

“Bring the woman to me,” I said, but Shwann shook his head.

“She’s not here. She has been missing since yesterday.”

I stared at my assistant’s drawn face and asked, “Has this happened before?”

“Yes,” he answered. “While we were working on the face, she sometimes went into the
other room. But she may have slipped out of the house several times this last month.
And I say may because she has always returned to her room after two or three days,
and I have not actually seen her outside.”

“Why do you suppose she’s run away?”

“I imagine she doesn’t want to be wounded again.”

I nodded in agreement and asked, “Do you think she will return soon?”

“There’s just no telling, although I understand this is rare.”

“Do you think you can find her?” I asked, reluctant to order him outright.

Shwann bowed and hurried out of the workshop straightaway.

Within ten minutes, the front door burst open and a gang of police officers stormed
into the workshop.

“May I help you, officers?” I asked, affecting civility.

An officer distinguished by his spiral moustache stepped forward and unfolded a metallic-colored
document. “By order of the court of Cité, we are here to search the residence of Master
Craftsman Monde on Yami Street, Shin Shin District. We have a report filed by ninety-five-year-old
Ver Non of 22,605,984 north high-rise district, claiming that his seventeen-year-old
niece Ayla Non and nine friends disappeared three months ago after visiting your home…”

I felt my lips curl almost imperceptibly.

†

I had not reported the deaths of the female bandits. Though an interrogation would
no doubt find me justified in my actions, clearing my name would take some time, especially
against the word of a well-to-do citizen of the high-rise district. There was also
the risk that the police might have been bribed. Even if the truth were revealed in
time, that might be after I’d been tortured, with molten lead poured into my bloody
back at the hands of the police.

I had only one option. Death. But it would afford me the time I needed before my execution.

I interrupted the bearded man from pronouncing the date of my so-called questioning
and confessed to the charges. “I confess to the murder of the women as charged. I
understand that the proper punishment for my crime is death. But I wish to exercise
the second of three privileges accorded all confessors—two weeks of unconditional
probation.”

After the bearded man agreed to my terms, I was made to sign several documents and
was spared immediate arrest.

All I could do now was wait.

As the day wore into night and still Shwann did not return, I began to wonder if I’d
sent him on a fool’s errand.

I woke up in the dead of night for some unknown reason. I crept out of my bedroom
and into the workshop.

A mysterious presence stood in the corner of the room, where the steel woman lay crumpled
at his feet trying to back away from the shadow’s clutches.

I called out my assistant’s name, but he did not appear.

“So you have returned…of your own volition,” I said to the woman. Naturally, she did
not answer. “You escaped on your own and chose to return on your own. For what unearthly
reason? Just what is it about this,” I said, gesturing toward the fanged being, “that
so terrifies and attracts you? I can only think that you too are some unreal presence
who is connected somehow to this—my unreal creation.”

I left the couple in the workshop and returned to the main house.

Shwann soon returned from his search, hanging his head. “I could not find her.”

I led the lad into the workshop, whereupon he gawked, dumbfounded at the sight of
the steel woman cowering before my fanged creation. After I explained that she had
returned here on her own, Shwann shot me an admiring gaze and said, “How I aspire
to your skill, Master Monde. I hope to become the kind of craftsman capable of bringing
the unreal into being someday.” He ran a tender hand along the woman’s steel skin,
until his fingers stopped at the side of the neck, where the mystery had all begun
and would take another turn.

I noticed the cause of his consternation before Shwann spoke. “Master Monde, next
to the holes…are more puncture wounds.”

On the volcanic flames of Yoga, I swear that the punctures were not there when I had
found her earlier. “These must be new. Apparently the same forbidden act is being
repeated in our absence.”

“For how much longer?”

“I do not know.”

“For what purpose?”

When I did not answer, Shwann walked calmly toward the worktable and snatched up the
hand drill. Before I could intercede, he plunged the drill into his neck. Drawing
it out, Shwann tilted his neck so that I might see. “Anything different?”

“No,” I answered. I detected only a tiny discoloration on his milky skin but nothing
that might reveal any earthly reason for anyone to puncture a woman’s neck.

“What now, Master Monde?”

“I imagine our client will be by to collect them.”

“These beings belong here,” said Shwann, shooting me a defiant look for the first
time. “This fanged creature is your masterpiece.”

“I have already been paid a fee.”

“You must not,” said Shwann, his tone growing angry. “I cannot bear to see you hand
over your creation—no, the product of our first collaboration, however small my part,
to some stranger.”

“Only when we deliver our products to the client do we earn the right to call ourselves
craftsmen. Apparently your time under my apprenticeship has been wasted.” Then, trying
to suppress any hint of sentimentality, I bade him never to darken my door again.
Shwann opened his mouth as if to speak. Had he appealed to our relationship, I might
have gone to my grave despising him. But the young man had more dignity than that.
Saying nothing, Shwann took one step back, bowed deeply, and showed himself out of
my workshop.

†

It was two days later that my client arrived at last.

The metallic couple stood before the black-shrouded visitor, as ghostly blue flames
from the gas lamps danced off their steel skin.

“I am greatly satisfied. A recompense for your labor.” The black figure dropped a
heavy satchel on the table.

I slid the satchel back and said, “I’m afraid I have no use for money.”

“So I have heard. I regret the trouble I have caused.”

“Then perhaps you’ll answer one question.”

“Please.” The visitor bowed, which aroused a strange feeling in me. I know now that
it was a paradoxical feeling. Something told me that this man was incapable of displaying
such deference.

How could this be? It was the familiar gesture of a man I knew well.

“Your previous visit also took place when my apprentice was gone.” The black figure
might have pulled away had I attempted any large movement. Instead I stepped on the
pedal that I’d rigged before my client’s arrival, and a hook swung down from the ceiling
and tore off the hood shrouding his face. I had calculated the trajectory of the hook
according to the man’s presumed height.

Recognizing the face, I grunted, “What is the meaning of this?”

“Who is it that you see?”

“Shwann.” What was he doing shrouded in a black overcoat?

“Yes, that’s right.” The young man smiled.

And then innumerable footsteps surged like a tide from the entrance, and a mob crashed
through the door. There were more of them this time. The policemen that packed into
the room exceeded a hundred.

Shrouded in black, Shwann remained collected as one might expect, and I too remained
perfectly still, this time stunned by another face that confronted me. I uttered a
name I did not expect to repeat. “Shwann?”

“That is the name of your apprentice.” Shwann brushed back his blue cloak, revealing
gold insignia on the shoulder and chest of his armor underneath. Engraved on his chest
was the insigne of a noble family that might be forever emblazoned in anyone’s memory.

It was the insigne of House Voyevoda.

“My name is Schranz, the 249,974,031st Lord of House Voyevoda,” said Shwann solemnly.
“I became your apprentice because I thought it a shame to lose your skill and these
creations with no one to succeed you. Your creations may serve my House in battle,
but I will not allow them to pass into the hands of anyone who refuses to show his
face.”

When I turned to where Shwann pointed, the second black-shrouded Shwann had pulled
his hood over his face. “Forgive me, but I cannot reveal my identity at this time.”

Stepping forward, Shwann—or Lord Voyevoda—grabbed hold of the man’s hood and cried
in disbelief the moment he pulled it off. The shouts of the policemen and my own that
followed shook the workshop.

The black-shrouded figure now revealed a face that was mine. “Who do you see now?”
he asked.

“Master Monde,” Shwann gasped.

“Indeed, I am he.”

The eyes of everyone in the room ricocheted between me and my doppelganger in the
black shroud, as Shwann said, “But which is—”

“Do not be alarmed,” said my double as he pulled the hood over his face again. “Who
am I now?” He pulled back the hood, and it was Shwann again. “And now?”

As he pulled the hood on and off again, he assumed the face of the policeman next
to Shwann. And then the policemen next to him, and next to him.

Before any of us recovered our senses, the man, his face shrouded in the hood again,
said, “I am each and every one of you. As well as the selves you do not know, and
the totality of the worlds you have yet to know. One such world desires your two creations
as its own. There, they together shall become an irreplaceable existence in the world’s
history.”

“Where is this world you speak of?” asked Shwann in a thread-thin voice.

“I do not know, for my part is but to collect them and send them on their journey.”
A blue hand rose and beckoned.

The policemen cleared a path, and my two creations rose several centimeters from the
floor and glided to their places on either side of the black-shrouded figure.

Suddenly, Shwann swung his right hand over his head and brought down the gold knife
and plunged it into the black figure’s chest.

“Now if you will excuse us.” The black figure bowed. The knife in his chest quivered.
As the figure turned and headed for the door, the two steel shadows followed. No one
dared pursue or stand in their way. We had all been paralyzed by terror.

As I watched the steel woman drift past me, I felt as if a spike had been driven into
my eye.