Tracker

Asher knew he was being followed right away, so he turned into an alley, skipped up the wall onto a fire escape and through an open window into a dark living room.  He watched his pursuer through the half-closed drapes.

The Queen’s Bishop slid into the alley, tall and strange.  It stopped underneath the window, turned its eyeless face toward him, silent as a ghost.

“If you’re here,” Asher said, almost to himself, “it means you need me for something.  And you being you, that means you need someone to find your Queen.”

The Bishop said nothing.

“Alright.  I’m in.”

Rules

There were old, unbreakable rules in the Patchwork City, and some of them had to do with regime changes.  Rules old enough that most didn’t remember how they went.

The city had settled into a calm, the eye of a hurricane with the air crackling.  It had been a long time since one of the Bosses had been killed.  Longer still since one had gone missing.  After a few days, both sides realized they didn’t know what to do.

Chad was sitting at a lunch table.  His knuckles itched.  He stood up.

“We’re gonna find the Rulebook,” he said flatly.

Awakenings

Erika woke in a sweat, blind with the dream, and she waited until the world came into focus.

When she went downstairs, wrapped in a silk robe, the Doctor was hunched over it, tools in hand, steady as steel.  Nearly all of the workshop lights had been re-angled, and the scene glowed like a theatre.

“Almost done?” she asked.

“Not almost,” he said, muffled by the rag over his mouth.

He shut the panel, and the thing began to tick, slowly, rhythmically, and then faster and faster until the sound became a whir.  With a lurch, the Tinkertoy stood.

String

It all unravels, spinning away into the night sky, like a spider in reverse. Buildings hiss back and forth as their very fabric unspools, hard stone made soft, layers of material disappearing. Trees vanish in a haze of string. People scream, but only as long as they have mouths.

She walks through it all, trying to stay calm, to reassure herself that it’s a dream, but it has the stain of memory on it, or prophecy. The world is a stitch, and it has been undone.

It’s like this every night. There’s no escape. When she wakes, she’ll remember everything.

The Boys

“Burn it down,” he said, and they went to work. Biff and Thunk had pieced together some cocktails and whipped flaming bottles at windows, but Boiler stood in the thick of it, screaming fire. Chad watched the blaze leap.

With the Schoolboy dead, this wasn’t as much fun.

Chad fixed his tie and hefted one of the pawns, trussed up on the corner. “Now,” he said. “Where’s the Queen?”

It squeaked. “We don’t know! I swear. She’s been gone for days.”

“Right,” he said, and raised a knobby fist.

In a blossom of sparks, a rook burst from the inferno.

Plea Bargain

She woke, slick with sweat. Her King lay beside her, snoring. Everything was quiet. They were fine.

Quiet.

Hell.

With a boom and a rush, the wall in front of her dissolved into sand, spilling across the floor. Standing on air, his coat wrapped tight, Quick grinned like the end of the world.

His voice, music in the wind: “Checkmate.”

The White Queen stood, shivering. Quick’s feet touched ground. Her heart in her throat, she said, “I thought you’d be here sooner.”

“I took the scenic route. Ready?”

The Queen gulped and said, “I know where to find the Tinkertoys.”

Waiting for the Night to Fall

Things were falling apart.

It should’ve been a sweep, a dust-off of the North Side, a few hard drops on what was left of the Schoolboy’s empire. Instead, every corner had cost. Strategies crumbled from the inside; she paid for pawns with knights and bishops.

Quick was calling, and she didn’t know how to answer.

Now the chaos was spreading. Riots in the East, South, West. Stitch-storms. Tinquakes. And here she was, huddled in this sickly room with its peeling walls, her King by her side, listening to the highcrows screech through the window, waiting for the night to fall.

Sweeter Days

The letter, delivered in a battered knight’s helmet, powdered with stone dust, written white-on-black, read as follows:

Your Majesty.

I had such hopes for us. On some sweeter day, we’d have made a cute couple. There are some lovely stars to see in Undertown.

But now you’ve gone and shattered that precious might-have-been.

I’ll find you, O Queen. And when I do, you’ll weep for sweeter days. I will string and stitch you, gamepiece. I will break your squares and topple your king. You don’t fear right, Highness. You don’t know the songs I will sing.

Be seeing you,

Q.

Pay Him Out

Nothing was certain at first: the North Side was burning. There was war. The Tinkertoys had returned, and the Schoolboy was making deals. He’d fallen through a stitch.

Then, as the dust settled: the Schoolboy was dead as nails, and no one knew how.

The Queen gave the briefcase to her trio, bishop, knight and hulking rook. “Go to the meet. Give that to Quick. And then pay him out.”

They watched her with their eyeless faces, silent as ghosts.

“Discretion, gentlemen. No one can know we’re involved.”

They nodded and slid away, side to side, in leaps, straight ahead.

Dealing in Undertown

The White Queen thought of the Schoolboy as a brainless pugilist, a bully in blazer and tie, but she couldn’t ignore him. He owned half the North Side. A problem, because he’d taken most of it from her.

She didn’t have the muscle to go straight at him – he’d broken the very stone of that last rook – so here she was, in Undertown, with Mister Quick.

“No one can know I’m involved.”

“They won’t.” Quick’s voice was low and sweet, like a cello.

As she left, he winked at her, grinning a slow grin. It crept across her like frost.