Story 5: The Man with the Amber Finger

Still marvelling at the feeling, Shep took every opportunity to touch his amber finger to every surface he could. Mardz was right; it was startling how realistic everything felt. There were even other side effects, ones that could be turned to use. Running his finger along a metal railing produced a small shower of blue sparks, as did running it vigorously through his hair. The next person he touched after that, a drunk leaning queasily against a wall, suffered a small lightning shock and jerked upright suddenly. Shep turned around and walked away before he could be identified.

The possibilities played out in his mind. Could this be turned into yet another weapon at his disposal? It would certainly be good for prospective clients to hear; marks killed apparently by lightning strike, not a single person around them hurt in any way and no evidence to suggest who it might have been. Perhaps it could even be used at range.

Shep stopped short. The identity of the ideal person to test it on floated across his mind, and, with a wide grin, he started to move in the direction of the Fong estate.

The moon was high in the cloudless sky as Shep crouched in the bushes under the balcony. He had made certain this time that old man was, in fact, in his bedchamber; no distracting wenches to ruin the day this time. Getting in to the estate had been a simple act; the guard, when watched long enough, had needed to relieve himself and had just walked away. Getting out would be just as easy; there was a ladder that the groundskeeper used to trim the taller trees laying down behind the gazebo and it had been the work of a moment to set up it.

Shep flexed his hand and mentally engaged the incredible strength of his climbing fingers. He felt the simulated muscles tightening and placed his hand against the wall. Exactly as designed, the fingers dug in to the brickwork and he lifted his feet from the ground to hang, one-handed, with only the barest grip. 

Perfect.

Hand over hand, he climbed; the first floor balcony windows were dark, but the second had golden lamplight spilling out of them. A woman was dancing for a man inside, but this was no whore; the man was in a dressing gown with a cigar in one hand and a brandy in the other, while the woman was wearing only the slightest wisp of silk across her body. It barely covered everything that the man was looking at, and as she sinuously wound her way across to the window she let the silk drop, apparently unaware that she was giving Shep the same show. He smirked, knowing that the darkness outside and the light inside would mean that she couldn’t see anything but the reflection of her own face, and then she pulled the cord that closed the curtains. They swished shut, blocking out the light.

Shep hung there for a minute, allowing his night sight to return, then continued his climb. His grey-black cloak provided the perfect cover against the wall and, in short order, he was climbing over the balcony’s rail.

As he moved his hands along the rail he felt a tiny series of scratches and knelt down to look closer. Sure enough, they perfectly fit his hand and he scowled again at the memory of his defeat. Not this time, he swore.

The general’s window catch was easy to defeat and, silent as a shadow, he was inside the bedchamber. It was plushly appointed; a deep pile carpet underfoot, velvet-upholstered chairs and everywhere he looked there was gold. The deep breathing of the general and the tiny ticking of a clock were the only sounds in the room.

Shep crossed to the bed and looked down at him. How to do it? Suddenly there were options, deviations from the plan. He could see the brandy on the bedside table, exactly as promised, but there were so many other more artful ways it could be done.

Sadly, he flicked the tiny catch on his poison reservoir and moved to the brandy. The heavy glass stopper came out with barely a tinkle and he tapped his index finger against the rim of the decanter.

Nothing happened.

Shep swore; of course nothing happened. He had forgotten that Mardz had drained the poison out and replaced it with an empty reservoir, not the full one he had gone into the workshop with. For a moment he stood there, incredibly angry with himself and feeling just the tiniest hint of embarrassment. Thank the Tree that no-one was here to see this complete and utter failure.

He replaced the decanter’s stopper and moved back around the bed. A knife, then. Eyeball seemed one of the best bets; less messy than slicing a jugular. Or directly into the heart, though he wasn’t sure that the knife would reach far enough for a clean kill. And once again, he was defeated through lack of preparation, as he hadn’t brought any of his other tools with him.

Shep scowled and shook his head. At this point it didn’t matter what he did as long as the mark died. He looked down at his hand; the amber finger winked up at him, catching the reflected moonlight, and a slow smile spread over his face.

He knelt down and began to rub his hand on the carpet. He began to feel heat almost immediately in the hand, and noticed that a tiny spark of light had grown in the centre of the amber finger, about where his second knuckle was. It grew until it suffused the entire finger and Shep was forced to move his rubbing under the bed so that the glow, now more like a candle flame, did not cause more light than was necessary.

The hand began to feel tense and heavy, almost pregnant with power, and he gritted his teeth. The rubbing movement was becoming harder now, almost like his hand was sticky or like he was trying to push through treacle. The glow brightened until it was as strong as a lantern. He stood up, keeping his hand behind his back.

His shadow fell across the bed, straight across the general’s sleeping body, and Shep paused for just a moment to wonder how her looked. Backlit by the finger’s eerie yellow light, a black shadow standing by an old man’s bed like Death come to call at last. He savoured the thought, the image it brought up in his mind.

Then, quick as a snake, he leaned forward and plunged his middle finger into the general’s eye. With his other hand he clamped down on the general’s mouth, and not a moment too soon.

The finger, amberic power dancing off of it, slid smoothly into the old man’s eye socket and he felt it break through the delicate bone behind the eyeball. It was warm and liquid, and from the very tip he could feel a spongy sensation as he encountered the man’s brain. Almost immediately the finger began to spark and flash, blue and yellow, but strangely remained silent; the old man’s guttural shrieks, muffled by his other hand, were the only noise, along with the frenzied movements of his feet as they jerked up and down under the covers.

Lightning began to dance all over the man’s body and Shep watched as his other eyeball seemed to swell up and pop; eye juices splashed onto the general’s face where it immediately began to bubble and boil. His heaving chest seemed to shrink inwards as a strange smell of cooking flesh reached Shep’s nostrils and he could see a tiny point of burning cloth appearing on the coverlet directly above the man’s heart. Twin wisps of smoke came from his nostrils and the shrieking stopped. Shep kept his hand there a moment longer, then released it. The man slumped back onto his pillow and Shep slid his amber finger out of his skull.

He stepped back, first checking the finger then admiring his handiwork. The finger looked like it always had; the glow had receded and it was once again a perfect model of an ordinary finger, apparently formed of pure amber. The general, on the other hand, was a sunken burned-out corpse, to all appearances having internally combusted.

Shep moved to the window and out on to the balcony. He carefully closed the door behind him and swung his legs over the side, re-engaging his climbing fingers. As he climbed down, he wondered what clients would pay for this sort of display. There were any number of twists he could put on this; divine intervention, people burning up from the weight of the sins in them, or it might even be worth farming this out to the rest of the Silver Hand, for a price, of course. Thoughts of extravagant rewards bought using the money from exorbitant contracts he would soon attract, Shep made his escape from the manor, leaving behind only the remains of his mark.

Story 5: The Man with the Amber Finger

Waiting. Yet again. Shep cursed the fates that had caused his precious hand to break, forced him to meet with that short drunkard, forced him to wait outside in the drizzle waiting for the engineer, who was already ten minutes late.

It wasn’t even as if the mission had been that hard. Sneak into a minor general’s bedchamber; slip a little extra something into his brandy, the one he always kept by the bed; sneak back out again. Hardly the stuff of legend, but one had to pay the bills. It had been so simple as well. A whore paid to keep the guard busy, but not too busy; a small poisoner’s kit stashed in a bush on the other side of the wall into General Fong’s residence; a quick climb up the drainpipe up to the balcony and in through the window, which was never closed. It had to be while the general was sleeping because he brought the brandy to bed with him and the first thing he did each morning, the drunkard, was have a glass of hair of the dog.

If only the whore hadn’t gotten ideas above her station. She’d done her job, alright; then one of her whore friends had walked past and the spare had been snagged by the general’s personal assistant. Apparently the old man had chosen that night of all nights to exercise the one muscle he never seemed to use.

Shep hadn’t know any of this, of course; like a fool he had climbed up and, hanging from the balcony by his one silver hand, he’d heard the sounds of their frenzied coupling. Down below, he’d seen the distracted guard get back to his duty; apparently the first whore wasn’t anything like as good as her partner.

Then the balcony door had crashed open, crushing his hand against the stone balcony and causing the fingers to open reflexively. Only his training prevented him from screaming, but even he couldn’t suppress a grunt as his flailing hand caught on to the balcony on the first floor. He hung, tendons screaming, from his inferior flesh hand, then dropped into the bushes below.

Shep remembered how he had looked up from the bushes to where he could see the general bending the whore over the balcony edge, and cursed. Damn passion. Damn love and closeness. What good were they? Normally they got you killed. That time, they’d kept someone alive.

He examined the hand. Each one had a large chunk of amber, about the size of half an eyeball, embedded in it. Small wires and metal contacts connected it to the hand and then the hand to the body. The process for connecting the hand was excruciating but had its benefits; when it worked properly Shep could use it for anything he had used his old hand for, and more.

The index finger contained a thin but long dagger on a spring; the middle finger, poison. The fourth finger was a combination glass cutter and knife, while the little finger and thumb were both designed to be incredibly strong, perfect for crushing bones or hanging from precarious positions. The palm concealed more items; a pull-out garrotte, a service hatch for the amber and, most amusingly, knife sharpener. He could literally sharpen his weapons by running them through his palm, one of the most threatening things that a potential mark could watch.

The sound of a key turning in the lock made him turn around, hand in the small of his back ready to grab the knife hidden there, but when the door opened it was Mardz. The little man looked the worse for wear.

“Ah; y’here, an’ early too!”

“You’re late, you insufferable little man,” Shep said, stepping quickly into the workshop as Mardz stood aside.

The inside of the warehouse was immaculate and, for a moment, Shep wondered if Mardz had simply stolen it from a more-organised engineer. Every tool shone; every surface was meticulously clean and there was already a large blueprint up on the wall of his hand.

Shep walked over to it and looked it over. He nodded appreciatively. None of it reached his face, but he was impressed. “How did you get this schematic?” he asked.

“Y’ain’t the first one I’ve done,” Mardz said as he came over and began to wash his hands at the stone sink in the corner. “I’ve worked a bit wi’ the Hands before, though never with what we’re about to do. The basic design’s the same for each of ye and I got the rest of what I needed last night.” He grinned over his shoulder. “Can’t help but look, y’know.”

There was a large chair in the middle of the room, tilted back slightly, with an armrest raised up near a large magnifying glass. “I sit there, I presume?” Shep said. Mardz nodded and Shep moved to the chair.

Several tools were laid out on a small table next to the chair; pliers, screwdrivers, small cutters, nothing that he hadn’t seen before. One small metal dish held the finger, though, and he picked it up with interest. It was hard, not particularly heavy with that curious warmth that imbued amber seemed to have. It had a carved nail on it and the joints had been scored into it. The whole effect was startlingly real in shape, if not in colour or texture.

“Arm,” Mardz said as he sat on a stool next to the chair. He pulled the magnifying glass down and, as soon as Shep had dragged his gauntlet up onto the armrest, Mardz was poking and prodding. He picked up two tools and, one in each hand, began to make adjustments.

Completely unable to feel anything except the tugging at his wrist, Shep looked down curiously. The amber was obvious in the centre of the back of his hand, cracked and dull; Mardz was loosening the trappings around it to get it out, but to do that he was having to amputate all the fingers.

“Service hatch is buggered, I’m afraid,” Mardz muttered. “Havin’ to go in the old fashioned way.”

“Watch the fourth one,” Shep said.

“Poison?”

“Mm.”

It was slightly mesmeric to watch him work. In short order he had stripped down four of the fingers and was working on the index finger.

“I need a finger from you, Shep,” the dwarf said, finally looking up. “Otherwise, when I release this one the blade will unsettle the spring and the whole thing will ping off. No telling where the spring will go, let alone the extremely sharp blade I’m sure you have in there.”

Shep turned on his chair and applied his finger. Soon enough, the hand was more or less a stub as Mardz unfastened the final plates.

“Turn your hand over and knock it on the chair a few times, will you?” Mardz said, getting up and moving to the workbench. “Got to get that amber out and it’s stuck in there good. You really did a number on it.”

Shep lifted his hand up and nearly hit himself in the face with the stump. It was so much lighter than it was normally and Shep, used to the weight by now, found that it just felt odd. He turned it over and banged the amber out onto the floor where it shattered into three pieces.

Mardz came back, kicking the pieces of amber out of the way. They skittered off under the worktop and were lost. “Right then. Which finger are we having this as?”

“I have to lose a weapon?”

“Aye. I mean, I guess you could have six fingers, but you wouldn’t be able to control one of them.” Mardz tapped the amber finger on the table. “It’s the opposite principle to when people get limbs cut off, but they still itch. You’ve never had six fingers, I take it?”

“No,” Shep said. “The middle finger, I suppose; can you switch the middle and ring fingers, but put the amber on the middle one?”

“Aye, we could do that,” Mardz replied, and set to work. As he began to reattach the mechanical fingers, he hummed a little tune that set Shep’s teeth on edge. The assassin grimaced but said nothing.

“I could do somethin’ with the gap where the amber was before,” Mardz said suddenly. “Poison reservoir or something. Or anything like that; lamp oil, handkerchief dispenser, bell so that people knows yer coming…” He grinned.

“A poison reservoir…” Shep mused. “Could you arrange it so that it ejects from the index finger? That way the blade would be poisoned and, with the blade sheathed, I could dispense the poison directly out of my finger. That has… possibilities.”

Mardz nodded and set to work. Within a couple of hours, Shep had what looked like a small glass bulb where the amber had previously nestled.

“I don’t carry poison,” Mardz said, putting his tools down. “You’ll be able to source that yerself, I’m sure.” He picked up the amber finger and turned it around in his hands. “Last thing, then,” he said quietly.

The hand nearly looked complete; just the middle finger was missing now. Several connectors were ready to be closed on the finger when it was seated in its socket, but otherwise there was very little to show for it.

“Ready?”

Shep nodded. Gently, Mardz inserted the amber finger into the socket and locked it in place. One at a time, he took a pair of pliers to the connectors and closed them down so that they both held the amber in place and allowed energy to flow from it.

The feeling was exactly as it had been the first time for Shep. Every connector that closed enhanced feeling and feedback, but if losing control of the hand had felt like numbness, this was the pins and needles that followed. By the time the final piece of metal was clamped down on the amber, Shep was struggling not to scream out loud. Mardz finished and stepped back hurriedly.

“Damn it, damn it to the hells and back!” Shep shouted, leaping up. He clutched his hand to himself, squeezed it between his legs, shook it; nothing assuaged the tingling.

Even in the midst of his agony he was startled by the look of the thing, and as the intense pain receded he began to be aware of the effect the amber was having. Where he could control the other fingers at a thought - and quickly did so to prove it, causing the blade to shoot out, poison vial to open, the garrotte to pop out and be wound speedily back in again - the amber finger lay there like… a normal finger. He touched something with it. The feedback was intense, almost identical to his normal hand. Experimentally, he blew on the finger and was surprised to feel the breeze. He licked it, and was amazed to feel the wetness, the sensation. It was slightly muted, to be fair, but it was more than he had ever received from his gauntlet before.

He looked over at Mardz. “Everything seems… normal.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it, how realistic the feeling is,” the engineer replied. “I couldn’t quite believe it myself. Can you imagine how this will change things in the future? No longer will people have to suffer losing limbs through accidents or amputations. And the power in that amber should supply your hand for the remainder of your natural life.”

“I think it’s best for both of us that I am never mentioned in any of your writings,” Shep said, allowing a note of warning to enter his voice. “The secrecy of my identity is something of a priority to me, naturally.”

“Of course,” Mardz said, starting to tidy his tools. “In fact, you’re all done now; if you wish, you can just leave the money on the desk on your way out.”

Keeping his eyes firmly down, Mardz heard a whisper of cloth and the tiniest clink of metal and, by the time he looked up, his customer was gone. The bag of coin lay on the desk.

Story 5: The Man with the Amber Finger

Shep walked into the bar with his customary swagger, making sure to keep his left hand near the hilt of his dagger. It wasn’t like he expected trouble walking into a dive like this; it was more than he always expected trouble. The shirei’s man was by the bar, of course, dressed in commoner’s clothes but conspicuously not drinking anything. They made such an effort to blend in, Shep thought as he walked to an empty table, but there was always an air of officialdom about them.

He checked the corners quickly; one exit back out on to the street, one either side of the bar itself. The barkeep was keeping to one end of the bar; no doubt his weapon of choice was there. Some of these places could get pretty rowdy at the end of a workday as the farmers and swamp-clearers returned. It wasn’t unheard of for the shirei’s soldiers to mix things up a bit, ensure drinks were purchased and then return later to mop up the overspill.

He reached his left hand up to undo the catch on his cloak and let it spill down onto the seat, then moved it to one side and sat down. A quick, nonchalant check around the room to see that no-one was looking, then a second. No-one got anywhere by rushing. Then, slowly, feeling the weight of it bearing down, he brought his right arm out and lay his hand on the table.

Outwardly his gaze didn’t stop roving around the room, but inwardly he saw again the initiation into the Silver Hand, the painful procedure that severed his hand from his body and the long period of matching a suitable mechanical replacement to him. And now look at it. No more was it the sleek and deadly weapon of the country’s foremost chapter of assassins. Now it was a hunk of metal, its tiny gears and clever joints frozen into a grasping claw.

It was heavier, too, he was sure. It must be something in his head that made it seem that way but the simple fact of not being able to move a part of himself under his own power made it seem inert, useless. Like pins and needles but worse; complete lack of sensation.

Shep looked around. The contact wasn’t here yet; he’d insisted on being second to the meeting, told Shep to put his hand on the table as the signal.

It was amazing; despite his hand not even being in working order, peoples’ attention just seemed to slide off of him. Unless he actively revealed his weakness, people were only too happy to assume that he wasn’t there for them, and that was enough to know.

A dwarf entered. Short, like all his kind, and stocky; their home was cold and barbarous, mountain-covered and snowy, and it showed in the people who favoured it. The dwarf looked around, caught Shep’s eye and came straight over to him.

“You S?” he said, turning the chair opposite Shep around and straddling it.

Shep nodded.

“That the problem?” the dwarf said, cocking his head down towards the hand.

“Keep it down,” hissed Shep. “You’re paid to be discrete.”

“Oh aye,” the dwarf said and stuck his right hand out to shake. “Name’s Mardz.” 

Shep looked down slowly at the hand and then back up into Mardz’s eyes. The dwarf grinned and pulled his hand back. “Guess we won’t shake on it, eh.”

Shep got up, grabbing his cloak clumsily from behind him. “I think that I am wasting my time,” he said, and moved out from around the table.

“Sit down, ye great ass,” the dwarf responded. He sat back and Shep, stood by his chair, sneered at him. Mardz’s hair was ginger and cropped short, but his beard was prodigious. It did nothing to his his slight potbelly, barely covered by the brown leather jacket that he wore. Around his neck, the sign of engineers all over Ehrian, a pair of smoked-glass goggles hung. He wore dirty grey cotton gloves on both hands, stained and spattered with some sort of chemical.

“I am willing to pay a lot of gold to the person who can help me with my… problem,” Shep said. “Currently it is not you. I suggest, if you don’t want me to follow through on any of the nine ways I could kill you one-handed right now that you become that person as fast as you can.” He turned and sat back down, but any hope he had the his words had instilled anything but amusement into Mardz was quickly squashed.

“Well now, this ain’t really the place for threats, is it?” the dwarf said, sitting back and putting one foot up on the chair. “I’ve got a mighty fine workshop near here that’s completely secluded. Ye could just bump me off there and there’d never be any the more to tell. There’s even a garden out the back; I’m sure my roses could do with the fertiliser.”

He leaned forward and pulled something out from his shirt. “Or, I could help you and me both. With this.” He opened his hand just enough for Shep to see what was inside.

A carefully-carved finger lay inside the dwarf engineer’s hand, made out of the purest amber. Shep’s eyes widened, but he sat back to give himself a moment to think.

“Amber. So? Every Silver Hand knows that it’s the amber providing the feedback response, the amber powering the joints and turning my hand from a lifeless gauntlet into a weapon. What of it?”

“Ahh, but have you ever seen aught like this before?” Mardz said, putting the amber back into his shirt. The chain it was hung on jingled merrily. “It’s more than twice what would normally go into one of yorn gloves and it has some… secondary benefits.”

“Twice the amount means twice the power?” Shep snorted. “I’m betting you mean twice the price as well. This is ridiculous.”

“Same price. All I ask in return is a little feedback from you. Test out my theory and I’ll make us both rich and famous.”

Shep studied the little man for a moment. The last thing he wanted was to be famous, but rich? Wasn’t that what everyone wanted in the end? They said money couldn’t buy happiness but it sure as hell bought a lot of drugs and whores.

“I’m listening,” he said.

Mardz leaned forward conspiratorially. “I found the details in a very old book someone unearthed at the SIC,” he said. “It talked about a past civilisation living right here, on Ehrian, that had the secret to repairing any injury.” He signalled to a passing barmaid and Shep waited while he ordered a pint of the local brew.

“I’m assuming they used amber in some way,” he said as soon as Mardz’s attention was back on him.

“Ye’d be right. They had a way of making it much quicker than the natural method. They could have a replacement hand or foot or whatever in place before the wound had even scabbed over, so the text says. Quite amazon’.” His beer arrived and he took a long sip. “Ahh, that’s the stuff. Wonder if they could make replacement livers too, eh?”

“And you’ve managed to, what, find someone’s finger?”

“Made it myself, following’ their instructions,” Mardz said. He smiled proudly. “Took a while to get it just right, but the results will be pretty good, I think. When was the last time you felt like you actually had a finger, not just a killin’ device?”

Shep watched while Mardz finished his drink. Then he leaned forward. “I take the price I was quoted still stands?”

“Aye.”

“Well it was exorbitant. Do you think that I am able to carry around that kind of money? And besides, what guarantee do I have that your work is really all that you say it is?”

Mardz leaned forward, a killing grin on his face. “Evidence, eh? Y’wants something to back my word up.” He began to loosen the fingers of his left glove, all the while grinning that same damned demonic grin. “Perhaps ol’ Mardz is takin’ ye for a ride, takin’ yer gold and not deliverin’ even a whit of what he says. Or maybe…” he trailed off, then in one smooth movement whipped the glove off of his hand.

Pure amber, clear as a spring morning, was fastened on to the dwarf’s wrist. He waggled the fingers and Mardz was amazed to see each finger, each joint, perfectly moving. It was as if the very flesh of his hand had been turned to amber where it lay. The engineer’s grin widened in time with Shep’s eyes.

“No fingerprints, o’course; I could have modelled the veins on had I thought to take a sketch of the original. Aye, I had good reason to pursue the research. Lost this,” he waved his hand, “to one of the fearsome creatures that stalk in the swamps. Infected, it was, nearly took the whole arm. But this little beauty saved me. Cost me everything I had but, oh, it’s worth it.”

Mardz took out a tiny pin from his jacket pocket. “Can you say the same about your mitt?” he said, dropping it with his right hand and picking it up with his left. Shep watched carefully as the amber hand rolled the pin back and forth, then delicately plucked it off the tabletop.

“…Fine,” he said. “I’m convinced that your services are perhaps worth my money.”

“Aye, and all of the fee I mentioned,” the engineer replied, putting his glove back on. “Now then, to business; meet me tomorrow, at this time, at my workshop. I’ll do the business for you and get you back on the road in no time.” His eyes narrowed, though his grin remained. “Gold up front or no service. And no tricks, lest you want your hand crippled forever and a day.”

Shep nodded once and rose, leaving as the dwarf grabbed the barmaid for a second time.