Hard Mettle

  Hard Mettle

  By John Hook

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2015 by John Hook

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without the prior written consent of the author. Brief passages may be used for the purposes of a review.

  I would welcome any communication at hookstories@gmail.com I like very much to hear from readers, but I am not big on social media. Just one of my (many) quirks. ;-)

  Fiction by John Hook:

  Quentin Case Series:

  Hard Case

  Hard Corps

  Hard Reign

  Hard Mettle (Final Volume)

  For the magical Elaine (Simard) LaForet who was the original inspiration for the character of Saripha. She would have found these books too violent and pulpish for her own tastes, but she would have understood the symbolic undercurrent in them. Her guidance was as essential in my life as Saripha’s was for Quentin.

  And also, a tip of the blue typewriter to Ketan Kothari and Joe Barrus, two former Apple engineers who just over 20 years ago patented the invention that made these novels possible. All four novels in this series were drafted on an Alphasmart Neo 2. I even bought a second before Renaissance Learning (the current owner of the technology) stopped manufacturing them, but you can still find Neos and Neo 2s on eBay. These tools are, to me, the finest distraction free drafting tools ever conceived.

  Note: I think the same note at the beginning of the third volume serves well enough for this one as well. This is the fourth (and final) volume of the adventures of Quentin Case. While I have made an effort to create a good story that stands on its own, it was much harder here, especially as it is coming from a cliff-hanger ending in the previous book. A lot happens that makes reference to the previous books. If you haven’t read the other books, you will still enjoy a good story of someone coming to terms with a hostile world and changes within himself. If you have read the previous books, you will understand even more of the undercurrents sweeping Quentin along. At least this time I gave you a real ending.

  I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,

  A poet, a pawn and a king

  I've been up and down and over and out

  And I know one thing

  Each time I find myself flat on my face,

  I pick myself up and get back in the race

  Lyrics from “That’s Life”

  Dean Kay & Kelly L. Gordon

  © Universal Music Publishing Group

  It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

  Admittedly a mistranslation (by Thomas Byrom who, reportedly, spoke no Pali) of the Dhammapada. It has been widely misattributed to Buddha, but it works here.

  1.

  The knife was real and it was deadly, even if it was only sharpened bone.

  It was said, however, that you didn’t want to cross the Lotus Queen.

  The man was short, wiry and had the haggard appearance of someone obsessed but frustrated. He looked defeated, but thinking him therefore weak would have been a mistake. He grabbed the game runner from where she stood across the table and yanked her easily over, putting the knife at her throat. Her eyes widened in surprise and fear. Cards scattered, as did the patrons. He was shaking as he held the blade, gripping it tighter than he needed. He was sweating. His eyes darted wildly.

  Then a shadow fell across him. It was me.

  He spun, pulling the woman in front of him, pressing the blade to her throat.

  “She took all my dream points. I have nothing.”

  “No,” I said quietly, holding his gaze. “You just are foolishly bad at this game. You lost your holdings. She did nothing to you.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he said, but the look in his eyes and the spittle at the corners of his lips betrayed him.

  I shrugged.

  “Okay by me, but the Lotus Queen is not going to be happy.”

  “She most certainly is not.” First there was the unmistakable scent of lotus, and then Saripha seemed to glide across the floor. Where she had come from, as usual, no one would know. It was a kind of entrance she had perfected these months we had spent in Antanaria. It was very effective for lending a certain mystery to “the Lotus Queen.” She wore silver, almost like moon glow, with her white hair drawn up in curls, held by a tiara. It was actually a pretty terrific glamour.

  The desperate man backed away and held the woman tighter, pressing the blade, drawing blood. She winced, letting out a soft mewling sound, but otherwise tried not to move. She was being pretty brave.

  “Give me back my dream points or I kill her.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said, as if we were just having a friendly chat. “Neither, in fact. And if I have to take that knife away, you’re going to not have much use of that hand for a while.” Again, I said it as if I was his friend. There was no inflection of threat.

  I noticed the painful welts forming around his neck and shoulders. They came from the collar around his neck. Although you couldn’t see them, tiny biological microfibers from that collar were intertwined with his nervous system. They were meant to ramp up pain if you tried to commit nonconsensual violence on another. Either he was so angry he had tuned out the pain, which was hard, or he was using an illegal drug that increased pain tolerance. Our “collars,” on the other hand, were fake.

  “I’ll do it, I’ll kill her!”

  He wisely resisted making more of a cut. She looked at me. I smiled, because I could see what—who—had come up behind him.

  A scaly arm came over the man’s shoulder and took the arm of the woman. I don’t know whether it was Tweedledee or Tweedledum, since I can’t tell them apart. The man was startled and tried to twist away, but it was already too late. The demon had teleported, taking the woman with him.

  “Now would probably be a good time to put down the knife and beg the forgiveness of the Queen,” I said, a bit of a flourish in my voice. Saripha rolled her eyes, although she had created this “character” we maintained.

  He seemed disoriented and like a trapped animal. He turned to bolt in another direction only to find himself facing Anika with an arrow drawn back. He dropped the knife, and then all the agitation seemed to drain out of him. His legs just collapsed under him and he sank to the floor.

  I looked at Saripha and she nodded. I walked up to the man, who looked at me fearfully. He knew his fate was in our hands.

  “How many dream points did you lose?”

  “Everything. She took everything. I had one thousand points.”

  I reached over to the table and scooped up coins, like poker chips, that served as currency in Antanaria. They were called dream points because they were most often used to buy access to the dream chamber. In the dream chamber, so people believed, they would live out their dreams. We knew differently. I had scooped about two hundred points’ worth. I put them in a sack he wore about his waist. Then I helped him up.

  “Don’t make me say this again. You lost your points playing a game you don’t understand. Get yourself a mentor for the game. The Queen gave you back two hundred points. If you want to earn a few more until you have worked with a mentor, come by and we’ll give you odd jobs.”

  I looked at him and raised my tattoos for emphasis.

  “If you ever threaten anyone here again, you will not leave.”

  I then returned to normal Quentin Case, blue but no tattoos, and smiled. I nodded at Saripha. He looked at her. She raised an eyebrow
. He probably didn’t see the bemusement on her face that I did.

  “I–I’m sorry. I won’t be any more trouble.” He backed away and then left hurriedly. Anika had replaced the bow on her shoulder, but he still gave her wide berth on the way out.

  Justice, our brand of justice, had been served.

  My name is Quentin Case and I have to admit, this wasn't quite what I was expecting when we first climbed off the cliff and entered Antanaria that day. The Zaccorans were in a stalemate with Gerod's forces. Pulling away fighters to try to enter Antanaria by force would have imperiled Zaccora and, frankly, didn't seem like it would work. However, Saripha couldn’t just sit and wait after learning that Guido was imprisoned in the form of a Magister who sat atop a tower in the inner city at Antanaria. Guido was our patron Manitor, who allowed us to operate as free humans in this world we called Hell. For Saripha, of course, he was much more. Lover is the term I would use, but there was so much more to it. He was an ancient and alien being and she was, well, a very magical former human. So we used Tweedledee and Tweedledum to transport Saripha and myself, as well as Izzy and Anika, to the desert cliffs overlooking Antanaria. There we were joined by Azar, a strange and monkish demon, one of the last of his race.

  Tweedledee and Tweedledum were the names I gave to two Azaroti demons that worked with Guido. Like Azar, they were different from the other, more atavistic demon races we had met. They had the ability to teleport themselves and others, the latter ability proving a useful defense. We used them to reach Antanaria and then they transported us into the back alleys so we could avoid the checkpoint at the gate, although Saripha had gotten us through before with some ability to cloud the minds of the Shirks that stood guard there. Not sure if clouding the minds of Shirks is really a challenge.

  Saripha left us standing in the alley and came back with colorful glamour textiles from one of the shops. I’m not sure how she got them. Maybe more mind clouding, but it didn’t matter. We created cloaks for Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Azar that allowed them to pass as a little exotic, but people might not notice they weren’t human. Then again, it didn’t seem to me that people in Antanaria paid that much attention.

  Antanaria was a city of pleasure and pain, but mostly of illusion and addiction. The goal for anyone here was to reach the chamber of dreams. Never mind that the other side of those dreams was one’s destruction, being turned into a proto and enslaved. However, to gain access to the chamber of dreams, they had to raise money, represented by small wooden chips. You could get money by providing pleasure for others, if you were willing to tolerate people’s sick appetites for pain and abuse. However, by far, the most common way was to gamble in the many casinos. In fact, casinos were a very inefficient way of achieving your goal. It was addicting, as were the glamour drugs and drinks served, but people would lose money again as soon as they made some and the only way people reached the dream chamber, we later learned, was because the casino owner let them.

  I no longer knew how long we’d been there. It’s hard to keep track of time in this place. However, Saripha quickly twigged to how this place operated and began working it. We started out on the street. Saripha would operate small-scale back alley gambling hustles and would end up taking people’s money. Izzy, Anika, Azar and I guarded her. She always gave back a quarter of what she had won to those she won it from. This created a curious gratitude from those who had just been beat. Being penniless in this place left one in the dire situation of being both vulnerable and desperate. However, Saripha soon amassed a small fortune. She was very good at this.

  Next she began patronizing smaller casinos. She would have a winning streak, they would threaten her, and we would protect her. It usually left the casino without an owner and Saripha would take over. She immediately treated the gamblers better than they had been treated before, and this resulted in a sympathetic and loyal clientele. As her casino and reputation grew, other large casino operators began to view her as a threat. Unfortunately, they couldn’t pull the mob tactics you might expect. Everyone was forced to wear the collars that regulated their behaviors, probably because without them they would end up with a bloodbath. That wouldn’t serve the purposes of those who truly ran Antanaria. We got around this nicely. Izzy rigged up a good enough look-alike for the collars, minus the biological tendrils.

  The large casino bosses seemed to have patronage that allowed them special privileges. One was not having to wear the collars. So, in fact, the bosses were capable of carrying out threats; they just couldn’t use goons to do the dirty work. Abusing their privilege in that way was rumored to bring severe punishment. However, there was plenty of leeway for dirty tricks and luring away customers. There was a kind of power in how many gamblers they could hold sway over. It was one of the reasons Saripha was considered such a threat. Our gamblers were loyal and we never seemed to send any to the dream chamber. I figured it was a matter of time before we had a serious power play made towards us.

  In the meantime, I had been continuing my training with Azar and Saripha. Although I had been at this for what I guessed was months, I didn’t have a firm sense of what my powers involved. Locally, I could make changes in things if I thought about them clearly enough. These were simple molecular changes and mostly just involved having some theory about how something should be changed and what the effect might be. As far as I could tell, I didn’t need to be scientifically precise, I just had to have a good, consistent story. My more global powers were a bit abstract and I wasn’t sure I would ever understand what I could do on a larger scale. That only came to me in visions that I barely understood.

  We had also been doing some exploring in the old city, as we had come to call where the dream chamber was. It was obviously the original ancient city, like Ohnipoor, with some of the same fluted towers and open gardens. There were a few more squared-off palatial buildings, including the central tower, which Guido sat atop in the body of a sleeping Magister. We couldn’t go near the rooftop as it was constantly circled by the mysterious flaming horsemen. We had no idea if they also watched the streets below, so we were careful moving between buildings. There didn’t seem to be any demons on either side of the wall. The only ground-level patrols were Shirks, and avoiding them wasn’t much of a challenge. Older buildings seemed to be mostly empty, except for the top floors. Occasionally, we’d find locked chambers. So far I’d resisted trying to use my abilities to gain entrance. I’d hoped we would learn something useful about what was being hidden, but it looked like I was going to have to break in.

  Our means of getting to and from the old city was Tweedledee and Tweedledum as we had found no way through the wall except the dream chamber. I also used Tweedledum and Tweedledee to make occasional visits to Zaccora to let them know how we were and to see how the standoff with Gerod’s old forces was going. Gerod was dead, but his Dark Men didn’t know that and wouldn’t have believed us. I’d have lost patience long ago, but Roland was convinced he could save most of his former men. His hope was that, as time without Gerod wore on, they would come to their senses. I wasn’t sure. I’d never noticed a tendency of people to come to their senses, but I understood and admired what he was trying to do. Kyo and Blaise both supported his choice and that was enough for me.

  Mostly I was edgy because everything we were doing was a waiting game.

  “Tell us about Antanaria,” Roland asked. We were sitting in the Dirty Glass. Kyo and Blaise were with us. We sipped grass tea, not bothering with the glamour beer. The proprietor mostly ignored us, but at least he was no longer openly hostile. I always made it a point to blow him a kiss anyway.

  “Just like here, things progressing slowly,” I replied.

  “Any closer to knowing how to free Guido?” Blaise asked.

  “We can’t get anywhere near him. He’s under constant guard and surveillance by the horsemen.”

  “That just means you haven’t figured out how to free him.” Blaise grinned. “When you do, you’ll figure out how to distract the horsemen.
”

  “What about the Angel?” Kyo asked.

  “Or Angels,” I added. “Might be more than one.”

  Kyo’s face never showed much change in reaction, but her eyes would brighten when something caught her interest.

  I leaned back in my chair. “She—or they—have disappeared. Added to my long list is figuring out where she or they go because clearly they don’t stick around. Why aren’t they directly ruling from Antanaria? Why aren’t they supervising the big sword project in the Mountain?”

  “Maybe they can’t.” There was a curious gravity in Blaise’s voice.

  “What do you mean? My guess is they’re pretty powerful. They can do anything they want.”

  “You said it yourself. They show up and kick ass, but they are still doing everything by proxy.”

  “The deals Guido kept talking about.”

  “What if they have to do things by proxy?”

  “Because…?” I let my voice trail off. Blaise looked like a schoolkid who knew the answer to the teacher’s question.

  “Because they can’t maintain that form for very long.”

  “So they’re powerful enough that everyone fears them, but they can only pop up to give orders and punish.”

  Blaise nodded. “Wasn’t there something about how they wanted to change our universe into one more compatible for them?”

  I was finally seeing where Blaise was going.

  “So those forms they have stolen are like protective suits, but they must have limits.”

  “They must have a place where they can go that has the conditions they need.” Blaise spread his hands.

  “Which means that’s where we need to go to find them.” I nodded.

  “We probably need to get Guido freed first,” Kyo added.

  “And probably free up Zaccora and work things out with my girlfriend.” I sighed.