Skate was silent. I am no monster, Skate. I found another way. That had been the claim. She found that she couldn’t match the horror on Haman’s face with her image of Belamy. Whether it was deception or not, she believed Belamy was more than a monster.
She kept this to herself.
“So what, Haman, he just won’t die of old age now?” Boss Marshall continued to puff as he had before, but his wide eyes betrayed a deep fear of the subject. “That’s a handy trick, no doubt.”
“More than that, I’m afraid. A lich does something quite unnatural with its soul during the process. It sort of…tethers its life force to a physical object outside itself. As long as that object survives, the life cannot truly be destroyed.”
“What do you mean?” Belamy had not gone into such detail when discussing the situation with Skate; she was eager to learn whatever he had kept from her.
“So, think of it this way,” Haman said, leaning further back into his chair and rubbing his chin in contemplation. “Your soul is tied to your body, as is every other living thing’s. When a living thing dies, its soul is wrenched away from its body. That connection between soul and body severs, and that’s what we call death. A lich, though, chooses an extra tether, an extra link to its soul. If the body is destroyed, the soul does not fly off to whatever infernal reward such a creature must surely deserve, but instead flies toward this selected object, where it resides over a period of weeks until the lich’s body re-forms. Then the original connection is reestablished. This soul container is the lich’s greatest treasure and must be protected from all harm, else the undead thing finds itself vulnerable to destruction, just like everything else.”
Skate’s mind flashed to objects that Belamy had carefully hidden from her, to a locked door in a hidden basement, to red stones and a fine statuette on the fireplace. “I think I might know what Belamy’s tether is.”
“Oh?” Haman leaned forward. “What’s that?”
“One of two things, really,” she said. “It’s either a little statue that he used to have over his fireplace but took down once I started living with him, or it’s a little red gemstone that he keeps locked away.”
Haman sat back again, a hand on his face as he considered the possibilities. Boss Marshall popped the pipe out of his mouth and looked at him. “What do you think? Those the types of things a lich might attach his soul to?”
“It can be anything,” Haman responded. He was tapping his temple as he spoke. “It’s certainly a possibility. You say he keeps these things out of sight?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t before I moved in. It’s like he doesn’t care if I see anything else he owns, but those two things are gone now.”
“I think you’re probably right, then,” Boss Marshall said, taking the pipe back into his mouth and puffing again. “Sounds like he’s taken what’s most precious to him and hidden it from you. Can’t say I blame the fellow; if I had a known thief in my home, I’d want my soul protector thing stored safely out of reach. What say you, Haman?”
The young wizard continued looking pensive. After a moment, he said, “I say that a man who has something treasured is a man who may be controlled.”
Boss Marshall did some leaning back of his own. “Go on.”
“Think of this, Boss: when we put pressure on people to get them to pay us for protection, we always do so in their homes, or their businesses, do we not? The reason that’s so effective is that by making the offer in that place, whatever it may be, the new customer gets a visual, inescapable reminder of what they stand to lose if they refuse.”
“Sure,” the Boss said, waving his hand impatiently to get him to continue.
“That works because the people treasure things: their homes, their work, their families, and so on. And once these are threatened, they’ll do anything to protect them. They effectively put themselves under our control to avoid losing whatever it is they treasure.” He stood and placed a hand on Boss Marshall’s desk. “What may a man willing to become a monster fear to lose?”
“The thing he wanted to protect more than anything,” the Boss answered, picking up the thread of Haman’s thinking. “Yeah, Haman, that’s good. A man willing to do anything to save his own life would be easy to handle if we held that which contained his own life, yeah? We get the object he’s tethered to, we may have ourselves a new special weapon.” He turned his attention to Skate. “There’s your target, girl. Find out which object he values most—not necessarily the most expensive thing, you understand—and make that your priority.”
“You mean to take him prisoner?” The question was genuine, not rhetorical; these men had been all but quaking in their boots a few moments ago at the thought of the terror they assumed Belamy to be, so the jump to trying to force him into service seemed a bit rich. “You think that’ll work?”
“I do, Skate, I do.” Boss Marshall was now sagely puffing away, his eyes narrowed and his tone that of a lecturer holding forth to an imaginary rapt audience. “This is a man who so feared his fate that he was willing to do whatever it took, however horrifying and wicked, to escape it. If we can threaten such a man with the only thing he fears, is there anything he won’t do to save himself? I think not,” he concluded with a chiding chuckle. “After all, who among us, at our best, has stared the specter in the face and refused to quail or shudder? That he has been willing to so degrade himself in order to stave off the final waking tells me he’d take to such a threat like vermin to garbage. I’m sure of it.”
“Has it changed your mind?” Haman asked. “Does this slight change in your goal in the burglary make you rethink what you need to do?”
“No.” She said the word automatically and was surprised to find that she somehow felt dishonest in doing so. Stealing something, even something extremely pricey, from the old man had not bothered her, but the idea of trapping him in servitude put a small knot in her stomach. It’s just a job, she tried to tell herself, and he’s just a mark. What’s it matter?
It mattered. She didn’t have time to explore why right now, but it mattered. “No, it just means I gotta find the things I was looking for anyway.”
“Good girl,” Boss Marshall said, nodding to her. “Better get after it, hadn’t you?” Skate took that as the dismissal it was, and ducked out of the room in a hurry. “Haman, get the door, will you?” The wizard nodded and smiled ever so encouragingly as he closed the door after her.
Twitch was where she’d left him, but he’d stuffed his small pipe with tobacco and was producing a cloud over his head as he played cards with another thief, one many years his senior. He talked without taking the pipe from his lips as he gambled, alternatively laughing, cursing, and trading insults with his opponent.
“You’re a fast dog, aren’t ya?” the grizzled thief asked through several missing teeth.
“Was a fast one that f-fathered you, sir,” Twitch said back, throwing his cards down and pulling the piled copper coins toward him, winning the hand.
“Hark at him! The pup’s cut his teeth, make no mistake,” the grizzled thief said to another thief sitting nearby. The other thief took a large gulp from his cup, belched, and laughed.