The Phenomenal Fracas (GBS2G6) [Round Five: The Ambitus Phenomenon]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

---

They called him the turncoat. The sand-devil. The finest - the most ruthless - of the King's hunting dogs. Tamerlane could've cared less.

None of it registered as anything more than vague disgust on his returns to the palace - the politics, the whispers, the ladies' vapid chatter, the servants' askance glances, the rumours, the routine of it all.

There was only the hunter, the King, and their prey.

He shouldered the latter a little more securely; ignored the doorman and the muttering as he strode - heedless of their precious protocol - into the throneroom. He could feel the eyes of two lackeys of the court upon him, servile masks rendering them expressionless. Tamerlane ignored them.


"Just look at him. He's finished."

Sand slithered upon iron flagstones, the errant finger-twitch which would've swept it all up distracted - clutching, enfeebled, life-and-death to a shored-up dam.

Iron? The throne room's floor was marble. Flagstones were supposed to be, well... stone. Not metal.

Then again, what did it matter? The walls were paper, if you really wanted to point out what was wrong - but more to the point, he'd lost.

"I don't think a defeatist attitude's the way to go about this, Fourth."

"Easy for you to say. Your entrant can regrow all the arms it wants."

Another success, but no victory. No end in sight. The throne would be forever vexed by traitors and rebels and enemies of the state. There was always someone else the King wanted dead.

A pause, then:

"I can accept our little wager's played out, Fifth. Letting it drag on is pointless."

The spider chuckled. "You mean to say that risking Victoria's ire is pointless, hm?"

"You caught me. Now tell me how much I owe-"

Fifth's laughter pealed through the court this time, an inadvertently alien and nerve-fraying sound. The king ignored it-

and smiled, but it failed to reach his eyes. Tamerlane rose only as His Majesty's applause rang out, thrice as loud as any others' in the throne room who cared to hurriedly join in. His latest wife (actually, come to reluctantly recall, she was the same one from his last visit, and the one before that) reacted much the same (apparently memorable) way she had before - knuckles whitened, a sob was choked back, and she stared at Tamerlane as though he were a monster.

He ignored her. The king leant across - grinning at Tamerlane all the while - and took her hand in his, soothing her, asking if anything was the matter. The hunter felt a jolt of adrenaline, dizzying and disorienting in the sense the palace was no place for it, until he remembered


the cold, and the whisper-bellow of wind, and pain like being ripped limb from limb-


"Hello."

Tamerlane, with clear reluctance, came to. A gaunt figure sat hunched over in an armchair, watching the sand-slinger in a lone candle's light, with a deranged little smile on his face.

"Those angels sent you-" Tamerlane didn't see a door, much less angels, at the floorboarded wall his host motioned at "-to make a deal with the devil. I'm guessin'." He laughed, a noise as thin and starved as he was. "Which of us would you reckon, then?"

Tamerlane tried to sit up, then realised what the problem was. He settled for screaming - a good few loud, lusty minutes of the inarticulate stuff - his companion simply waited for him to finish. With a wall somehow at his back, head spinning, breathing through gritted teeth, hand clamped to what was left of his arm, the early symptoms of shock messing fucking royally with his comprehension of what were his recollections and deliriums and what was going on around him right now, Tamerlane finally replied, "what?"

"The angels," as if the conversation were perfectly normally paced. "Were they coming for me, or you?"

Tamerlane tried to shrug, but his inability to do so was almost more eloquent. The man stared for a while longer, before reaching some decision, unfolding from his seat, taking a few uneasy steps, and crouching beside the dust-mage.

"Two really important things you've gotta remember before I give her you, alright? Your life's at stake here. Heh, well, that and the reputations of Beringer and Saenger, but I doubt they've got any angels on their side." The agent's grin faded, drifting for a moment through his own unstable mind. "Soulless cunts'd probably sedate and dissect it," he muttered, before gently slapping Tamerlane across a bandage-wrapped cheek. "Hey. Stay with me. You gotta remember this."

"The Foundation's goons'll kill you if you don't tell them I told you. They're devils, see. Liars. They don't care about the life or suffering of any livin' thing, including their own. You got that?"

Tamerlane nodded, while his companion rattled off some series of landmarks within the Edifice. Worst-case scenario, the madman would hurry up and put him out of his misery. His powers were diminished here, as he vaguely recalled someone mentioning - even the sand he dragged into a pre-emptive deflective slam felt wet and sluggish.

The agent asked if he could remember all that. Tamerlane shrugged again, feeling strangely disconnected from everything as the man pulled out a knife from somewhere. Worst-case scenario then, he supposed. He peeled back Tamerlane's duster, leant on what remained of the hunter's left shoulder for support, then drove the point home with the last of his strength. There was the faintest genuine grin on his face, before the agent grimaced in pain and collapsed.

Tamerlane caught him, put him down, albeit with some difficulty. The fresh knife in what was left of his arm hurt, unsurprisingly, like a bitch, but more puzzling was the lifting of that awful dizziness. Blood loss, or the loss of it. "Shit," growled his saviour, alerting Tamerlane to the unrecognisable (yet somehow concludable) sound of boots on safety glass above. "Course they'd've monitored my vitals. You watch yourself, there's no need to have her make any more room for herself than she's got."

The dust shaper found his feet this time, growling with frustration as the sand slopped lazily about. He reached for the knife, but flinched at his companion's ragged cry. "What did you do?"

"Made a transaction," the agent laughed weakly. "Can't help you with what's above, though. That knife's a selfish lover, see. Won't let anyone - anythin' else do you pain. Make you suffer."

"When she reckons it's time to leave, though," gasped the agent, not bothering to lift himself from the floor, "then you'll die like me, cause some wounds never heal, and she's a master of them specific. Ain't it a blessing fit for angels, though, to know for sure how you'll die?"

Tamerlane said nothing, just listening - in the pauses while the men above took a crowbar to the cell's roof and only entry - to the man's weakening breath and the prickle of his blood through the knife wound in his back.

---

"Not worth it."

"Sure it was, Fourth. This'll make things far more interesting."

"He'll be dead before the round's out, Fifth. It changes nothing, other than how close my neck is to getting wringed out by Seventh!"

"We had a bet," smiled the gentleman, eight eyes glittering upon his mask. "PUrely for entertainment's sake. The wager was a favour, and you've paid that for losing, and I at any rate have been thoroughly entertained. If it changes nothing, like you say, then I can't see why Victoria has any reason to be upset. More to the point, I can't see why you insist on not enjoying yourself."

"He gave himself up," groaned Fourth, eschewing Fifth's good logic for the chance to complain. "The idiot doesn't realise they'll kill him as soon as he's spent his only bargaining chip."

"It really is childish to get so upset over a mere game." Fifth wished his mask might move, if only because the prospect of a laughing spider amused him.

Fourth would've hit him if he weren't so spineless. He settled instead for a look of deepest loathing.