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  Yes, his current master—the only one befitting the title, in Clyde’s honest opinion—was unlike his others. He was an earnest, good man. A good man who never deserved to be startled like that, have his best bistro set ruined, the beautiful antique teapot he asked to be used only for special occasions smashed. There, he thought with finality. The broken earthenware teapot that his master had inherited from his mother’s mother’s mother. There was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The sight of it in bits and pieces was just too sad to bear. The men who did this didn’t care if anyone got hurt, which meant they were bad people. Clyde’s eyes snapped open.

  “I can wait no longer,” he told the stale air.

  He sprang to his feet, sidestepped his columns of stacked books, and went to the door to the house.

  Halting, he put his ear against the cold steel. Beyond, a faint buzzing of the fluorescent lights of the cellar corridor could be detected; the whoosh and thamp of the air circulation system activated sporadically. He listened steadfastly, calling out in the gaps of silence when the circulator shut itself off. Not a soul answered. No footfalls sounded from above. No one came to tell him it was all right to return upstairs. No tremble in the walls indicated an automobile was nearby. No ragged coughing announced the master was up and about in the early morning.

  “No, not yet,” Clyde said to himself. “What if I go up prematurely and spoil some surprise the master has for me? What if I’m sent away?” His master was a patient man, but one could never tell what would be the clincher, the thing to best a man’s patience. He’d been sent away for less. Forcing himself to turn away from the unlocked chamber door was hard, especially when it would be so easy to turn the knob, step right out—

  “I must do as he asked.”

  Making himself sit down, Clyde summoned all the courage he had sponged from the master over their time together, motes of personality he’d absorbed and made his own pinch by pinch. He needed it to force himself to think about all this and be honest with himself. He sighed, for he was fairly certain by this point the master had either abandoned him or, heaven forbid, passed on to the next world or, heaven forbid again, been made to pass into the next world by those men. He closed his eyes. Please not that.

  But Clyde remembered some of the candlelit confessions, the master sitting across from him in his chamber, unraveling all the unethical tales of business he had done in the name of economic strategy. He never mentioned by name the men he had accidentally cheated but divulged guilt to Clyde in a slow way, tackling each painful memory meanderingly, until the choice parts that were troubling him were told, the story complete. He would look at Clyde, not seeking confirmation that he had heard him or anticipating a blessing or a stoic pass of the hand as a sign that all had been forgiven. He knew how it worked with Clyde, and to merely say his piece meant the transaction was complete. Slowly he’d stand. Sometimes Clyde would have to help the old man to his feet and see him out. And the master would pull the chamber door behind him as he left, never locking it, as his previous keepers had, only closing it so Clyde could have his privacy. He’d wish Clyde good night and return upstairs cleansed, perhaps even smiling.

  As close as they were, Clyde never knew what his master really did with his time outside the manor. Perhaps he was a banker or some kind of broker or possibly an entrepreneur. The details of his occupation were always carefully omitted. All Clyde had were the subtle clues picked up between the lines, shining hints laid in the trail of each sentence, words that jumped out.

  His old friend felt bad about the things he had done, ruining other men’s lives accidentally when a prospect didn’t go right, whatever that was. Looking up the term in the dictionary didn’t help any. Regardless, his master had made a bad call on some prospects and some investors squandered their fortunes, making his master feel like an inept cheat, an accidental scoundrel. But in the end, Clyde would be there to make it all better, and after a round or two with the thesaurus, Clyde would come away with a better vocabulary, his own sort of prize for helping his master.

  But there was always the jinx that a confessor would endure in return for telling things to Clyde. Sometimes their gizmos like the toaster or television wouldn’t work right or batteries would die despite being fresh out of the package. The jinx was never the same twice, always unpredictable. It could scarcely be blamed on Clyde because of the subtle way the jinxing would inject itself into one’s day-to-day activities.

  Clyde remembered once how his master got something off his chest; he had accidentally forgotten to pay for a haircut because he and the barber were old friends and they’d gotten to talking and the financial side of the visit was completely skipped. “I plumb forgot!” he said during his confession with a jolly chortle. He still felt bad about it, apparently, and Clyde was glad to listen. But without Clyde’s consent, since his strange gift was beyond his control, his master would be jinxed in a small way for that absentminded—and somewhat laughable—crime, if one could even call it that. But apparently whatever strange spirit decided such things chose to have his master plagued with a sudden rash on the crown of his head that looked like a dozen little spider bites. His master didn’t blame Clyde but merely laughed it off, itchiness and all.

  Clyde’s reminiscing smile faded, and he shot to his feet.

  Had it been . . . his fault?

  Had the unpredictable arrangement of the jinxing summoned those intruders to the manor to harm a kindly old man? Was this his doing?

  Clyde had to do something, three weeks or no, especially if he was partly to blame. His master would tell Clyde to calm himself each time he’d gotten a cold because of confessing too much, that it wasn’t his fault . . . but this? This was different.

  Clyde exited his chamber, took the cellar stairs two at a stride. He cursed his ignorance, or what Miss Selby frequently called his lamblike innocence. For the duration of the climb, Clyde hated himself.

  Chapter 3

  A Mouflon Guest

  Every room was dark, even when he flipped up the light switches. In the dining room, broken glass crunched underfoot. Moonlight cut in through the windows in reaching slabs, splashing the interior of the house in dead white. Though the illumination was inconsistent and left shadows scattered about, Clyde glimpsed grimy trails crisscrossing all the rooms. Thick muddy shoe prints had turned themselves into dirt molds, and Clyde dashed them apart as he followed them. From the front doors that still hung open, he saw the driveway absent of vehicles.

  He followed the prints to the second floor. He searched the library and the observatory and the den where they led him. He walked through the guest bedrooms, the five water closets, even Miss Selby’s personal quarters. The tracks brought him to no one, just empty spaces that echoed each and every call of, “Sir?”

  He didn’t need to be following the footprints; he knew this place, his home. But this space felt alien now, he realized, returning downstairs. He knew every fiber of carpet, every knick in the banister, and every decorative drawer pull. It was always quiet, certainly, but it had life in it before. Now the manor was a soulless place.

  He repeated, “Sir?” to the spaces the footprints hadn’t traveled. The music room, the drawing room, and the library, his question beginning to sound defeated and hopeless, even to his own ears.

  There was still one place he hadn’t looked.

  Clyde drew a deep breath, steeling himself. Just as he was about to pass through the kitchen for the back doors, the lights flickered once, and he was momentarily blinded and twitching at the alarming brilliance. Every lamp, every chandelier, every electric brazier exploded with light. Starbursts leaped at his eyes from every direction.

  He saw his own hazy silhouette in the panes of the back doors leading to the gardens. For a second he thought it was his master, until he noticed the reflection was wearing a tuxedo.

  The flash was gone as fast as it’d come, though, like lightning without the accompanying rumble. It felt like a sign. A gentle prodding.

>   “Fine, then.” His voice bounced throughout the house and echoed back to him. Solemn, he marched to the back doors, admitting that it was just the inevitable he was delaying: checking the last place he’d seen his master.

  Outside, the air was cold, the night impenetrable. After his eyes adjusted, Clyde saw exactly what he was hoping he wouldn’t see.

  There he was.

  Right where he had last laid eyes on him.

  Clyde realized that his fears had been woefully met. The tears came at once, his chest tightening like a wet towel being mercilessly wrung. He fell to his knees in the dew-soaked grass. Staring at the crumpled heap that had once been his beloved friend, Clyde let himself fall apart.

  The only man who had treated him with dignity. His one genuine friend. And now? Now he was gone.

  After he had cried himself dry, Clyde realized his perception of time had been incorrect, his patience greater than he had originally thought. He had been in the cellar for quite beyond three weeks.

  It was clear to him now, seeing what remained of his friend in the ethereal light of the moon. He’d read in a biology textbook about decomposition. If it had been only three weeks, there would be more of his master left, wouldn’t there? What a horrid thing to think about, but he decided it didn’t matter. He sidled forward on his knees.

  A shrunken gray husk, facedown among the tatty remnants of clothing, was all that remained. With a slender white hand, Clyde touched the hoary bones. A few ribs were shattered, the back of the skull had a jagged crater buried in it—Could a gun have done this?—but it was obviously his master. Clyde recalled the loud bang, and his heart sank. Desperate, he thought perhaps this wasn’t his friend, but then . . . No. No question about it: round spectacles, broken, lay beside the body. If his master had survived, he would’ve picked those up immediately. He wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere without them.

  He thumbed the garment’s lapel: tweed, soaked through with rainwater and dried blood. Clyde pinched a swatch of the man’s jacket that hadn’t been ruined. A stamp-sized piece of fabric tore away. Mindlessly, he deposited it into his own pocket. It just felt like the appropriate thing to do.

  Nothing else to tend to, he stood and adjusted his bow tie—a nervous habit—and said a few words of requiem. His own weeping interrupted him, and he ushered out the rest of the prayer falteringly. Succumbing to the sorrow, he collapsed yet again onto the lawn, palming his face tightly with both hands and weeping in hitching sobs. He was still in the thick of it when a metallic click sounded behind him.

  Jumping to his feet, he faced the individual he was sure had been his master’s murderer. Anger boiled his blood, but he didn’t let it show as he studied the armed man. It was hard to keep his expression serene, though, when he saw that the killer before him . . . wasn’t a man at all.

  Standing there was a furry creature, easily seven feet tall and wearing blocky leather armor. Massive horns sprouted from its head and coiled on either side of its wide cranium like two glued-on nautilus shells. Its face was broad and pug-like, and the creature stared back at him with wide, horizontal pupils. In its rust-colored fur, tiny spikes lined the bridge of its nose, crossed its forehead, each quill topped with a black tip. It was stout, almost paunchy. Clyde’s gaze ended at the creature’s feet, seeing not ten toes but three, each ending in a thick claw. Clyde’s anger was immediately quashed by an avalanche of bafflement.

  Apparently realizing Clyde was no threat, the creature angled the flared barrel of the blunderbuss away.

  “What are—?”

  “Are you human?” it interrupted in a surprisingly even voice, neither gruff nor ineloquent. In fact, an occupation in radio might befit the furry, horned man if this whole gambit as a looter or murderer didn’t pan out.

  Terrified, Clyde stood frozen. He knew he had the attributes of a human: arms, legs, generally hairless body save for what grew atop his head and in a thick band over each eye. The minor, if obvious, differences unsettled all who looked upon him. His impossible paleness, his whiteless onyx eyes. He didn’t know what else to consider himself if not human, so he nodded.

  “Do you live here?” the creature asked, taking a cautious step to the left to see around Clyde. Its focus flicked from Clyde to the skeleton behind him, then back to Clyde.

  “I do, yes.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “It is . . . was my master.”

  “Master? You a slave or something?” The creature zeroed in on Clyde’s butler uniform. “Or were you paid to call him that?”

  The bulky creature slowly took a step to the side. It kept the blunderbuss’s butt pressed against a hip, gripping the weapon as nonchalantly as anyone from Clyde’s comfortable little world would wield a throw pillow. But that world was gone now, and now this creature that smelled like burnt cinnamon and old sweat was in it, right here in the backyard—the place for tea, long talks, and shared laughs. Well, the place that used to be the place for those things.

  Clyde remembered he’d been asked a question, then shrugged absently, for he had no answer and felt too drained to conjure up one. Instead, he posed a question of his own. “Did you do this?” He had no idea what he would do if the creature admitted his involvement, but it would start off with a thorough tongue-lashing—that much was for sure.

  “Kill that poor soul behind you there? No. Just got to this ward about an hour ago,” it replied casually, circling Clyde slowly.

  Clyde turned to keep him in sight.

  The creature’s wide-set eyes narrowed, studying Clyde’s frame as if he were a tailor assessing measurements from a distance. “You’re not armed, are you?”

  “No.” Clyde took this partly as an insult, for he had stumbled upon a theme in his books: only bad guys used guns.

  At this, the thick thumb of the creature found the blunderbuss’s hammer and lowered it with care. The weapon was on a strap, and when the towering creature let it go, it swung down to its fuzzy flank. With its freed hand, it withdrew a metallic rod from a narrow leather sleeve. It gave the rod one swing through the air, and it glowed a ghostly cobalt blue. “Seems about right. You don’t look the type.”

  Because I’m not. Clyde huffed.

  “I should be off. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “What were you doing here anyway, in my master’s chateau?” Clyde asked hurriedly, trying to be polite.

  “Scavenging. But I see that you stayed, despite what happened, and I’ll move right along. I promise you I didn’t take anything. Do you happen to know if any of your neighbors here in this ward are home? I don’t want to surprise anyone else . . . or get shot for intruding.” He chuckled.

  “I don’t know.” He had never seen any neighbors.

  The creature sighed. “I guess that’s the price one pays for the gentleman scavenger’s life. Risk over reward and such, yeah? Well, take care. I’m sure the Patrol will be by eventually to bring you into their warm, warm bosom.”

  There was a strange tone in that. Sarcasm? Was that what it was called?

  The creature turned again to leave.

  “Wait,” Clyde blurted. “The Patrol? What are you talking about?”

  The creature stopped again and turned around all the way. “The Royal Patrol. You know, the prime minister’s guard?” Slowing it down, he said, “You do know about the king’s guard, yeah? The armor, the guns, the autos with no windows, the metal barricades that have sprung up all over Geyser?”

  Those were a lot of words and terms he didn’t understand, Geyser being chief among them. The creature seemed to have used it as the name of a place. Clyde had read the dictionary a few times all the way through and really remembered only the ones he had difficulty picturing. A geyser, as he recalled, was an underground spring that shot up occasional spouts of hot water and steam. He didn’t know about any of those other things. King’s guard, prime minister, Royal Patrol? What?

  “Good Meech on this cloud! You suffer a bonk on the head or something? Where’ve you been?�
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  “In the cellar.”

  “Since the day you were born, it’d seem.”

  “I thought it was only three weeks, but seeing how my master looks,” he muttered, “I must’ve lost count of the hours at some point.”

  “Looks to me it’s been a wee bit longer than that, yeah,” the creature said with a humorless chuckle. After a nasty glare from Clyde, it stepped forward, ducked its head slightly, and said almost apologetically, “Do you even know where you are, Pasty?”

  “My name is Clyde, and yes, I know exactly where I am. I am at the chateau. Plainly.” He thrust his arms outward for emphasis, indicating the gardens, the fountains, and the sculpted shrubberies, which, he now noticed, looked quite overgrown.

  “No, I can tell you know that much, but I mean here, as in the big picture. What continent we’re on, what place we’re currently at. You seem a bit . . . confused.”

  “You’re the confused one. This is clearly private property, and you’re trespassing as if you own the place.” He stopped and scoffed at himself. “Why would one trespass if they owned the place?” He worried a little about himself then. How long had he been down there? He seemed to have gone a little wonky. He returned to the point. “How do I know you didn’t steal anything?”

  “Calm down. I didn’t take anything. I just got here, like I said. I like to go ’round the place first, make sure no one’s home before I pick through what’s inside. It’d be quite embarrassing to be stuffing my rucksack full of goodies when a resident came out of the powder room, wouldn’t it? Listen, I don’t think you know the severity of what’s going on here. Why didn’t you leave with the others?”

  “Why would I have left?”

  The creature nodded toward Clyde’s decomposed master. “Because a whole lot of that happened. Listen, fella . . .” The creature took a step forward.