THE LOVE SONG OF NUMO AND HAMMERFIST is a novel about two monsters who fall in love, start fires, and take part in plots they might not know are plots to begin with, available in paperback and ebook from various internet booksellers.

Numo is a small and loyal homunculus–a synthetic servant born of alchemy and mandrake root. By design, he should think only of his masters’ needs. But instead, he can’t stop thinking about Hammerfist.

Hammerfist is a lady battle-homunculus, much larger and with much sharper appendages, made for the bloody contests of the sporting arena. She has eyes like the purest embers, a mane like a sea of moon-glitter, and, Numo discovers, a horrible brain disease that is eroding her sanity. He is desperate to help, but presents of flowers and tree sap aren’t enough. She needs a way to get out of the arena. She needs a revolution.

Numo only wishes he knew what a revolution was.

But it doesn’t matter. If it will save Hammerfist, he’ll do anything. Except, of course, the things he doesn’t know he’s supposed to do.

Things like keeping the revolution a secret.

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Book Depository, and other online vendors.

Front cover by Tomasz Biernat; paperback wrap and interior by Qamber Designs.

THE FIRST CHAPTER: FOR YOUR SAMPLING PLEASURE

Numo was born of a mandrake. This was not a problem in itself—over half the homunculi in the holy city of Moaki were created this way, since it was the least expensive-and-still-legal means of making a servant. Numo had never seen the process himself, but he imagined it involved an alchemist plunking the pendulous root into a consecrated pile of goat dung and ululating majestically, or somelike.

But a homunculus born of a mandrake was small. His limbs were uneven. His movements were awkward. And as a runner, he was an utter disappointment.

It was not his place to wonder why his master had him delivering a message, though wonderment kept knocking at his mind like a wandering mime at the door. Numo banished it and pumped his legs harder down the winding streets of the enormous terraces carved into the mountain. He had to deliver the missive. Safely, quickly, or they wouldn’t let him out into the city again.

Numo did love his warming-ovens in the hypocaust, make no mistake—a stoker he was, bred and buttered, all the days of his life—and his excursions into the woodier foothills for kindling and fallen branches were pleasant enough. But in the strange wide labyrinth of buildings and terraces, the sights and scents of the rock-hewn city were so intoxicating he thought he might throw up from excitement.

Throwing up, he understood, was something that exciting people did.

Numo bumbled down the steps of one of the steeper alleyways and broke into the main square on the biggest terrace of the city. He paused for his besooted lungs to heave inside him, rebelling against the mixture of altitude and calisthenics. The arena was just across the square. He’d made it.

He staggered up to the guard at the public entrance—a great swooping circular doorway made of white dragon-birch, like the grand entrances at his master’s house, but flanked by stone instead of wood. Numo didn’t know much of anything about stones, except that they had a general lack of flammability.

“I have—I have a—” A sad wheeze came out of his throat and his lower lip stuck to one of his little tusks. “I have a message, for master Tungsamran. I need to deliver it personally, per my master’s instructions.”

The guard looked down, prodded his nostrils in disdain, and went “pffaaah.” It was an uncultured noise and one Numo was not accustomed to hearing in his master’s household.

“Er, do you need to see it, sir?” Numo took the scroll from his leather bag and held it out. It was half as tall as he was.

“Tch. What kind of master sends a drake for such a thing? Eh?” The guard poked him in the belly with the end of his watershot torch. The human guards at his master’s home had those, but he’d only ever seen them discharged on public holidays—shots of brilliant blue alchemical fire fueled by a stream of water, spurting off into the sky like fountainous fireballs. Numo had never seen one used for poking.

He didn’t care for the experience.

“No master who ain’t a fool sends a drake with a message, unless it needs to get delivered slow and stupid. Why don’t you just wait outside, mm?”

Numo inhaled sharply. It was true he was slow, and not terribly intelligent, but the fustilarian had just insulted his master. He was uncertain of the appropriate response. His master’s honor ought to be defended at all costs, but the guard was a human, after all, and thus Numo was not permitted to show him any modicum of disrespect, however proper he might think it to visit fisticuffs upon the man. Or the man’s kneecaps, rather, since that was about as high as Numo could reach.

But these were evil and sordid thoughts—ones he could not have, lest his servile gland exact retaliation on his physical being—so he dislodged them quickly. He took a deep breath. “It is not my place to question my master’s intent, sir. Only to deliver the message.” Again, he held out the scroll.

The guard sniffed wetly, then bent down and took the scroll in his knobby fingers, turning it over until he reached the seal. “An alchemist’s mark,” he muttered. “Sooth and balls, I should think an alchemist of all people would have slaves more suited to messenging! Or else, ain’t much of an alchemist…”

Numo bristled. “My master is the second seat on the council, sir. Inventor of the process of drake creation.” So he’d overheard, anyway. Most of the things Numo heard were of the overheard variety. “Do you need to see the marks on my collar-plate, sir? Is the seal not more than sufficient?”

“I got a bad back, drake; not going to lean all the way down there to read your neck. The seal is good enough.” The guard gave back the note. “The drake’s entrance is just there. Follow the servants’ corridors, no wandering about.”

Numo set off at a jog down the narrow and ill-lit halls. The air inside the arena’s bowels was moist, which was an odd sort of air for him to breathe, his lungs more accustomed to smoky dryness. The damp intermixed with the sweat gathering underneath his collar and made an uncomfortable lather around his neck. Every so often another drake would pass, nod, and continue on, but there weren’t many. The arena, after all, was a place for an entirely different sort of homunculus.

He turned the eighth corner and ran into a shaft of light. The corridor had a long horizontal slit carved into it. A window, of sorts, open to the outside. Numo peered out. Above him was the squalling clamor of a crowd of humans. In front of him were the fighting infandi.

He’d seen infandi before, of course—messengers, carriers, rickshaw-pullers, guards, laborers, loggers—but these were a different sort. Prizefighters. Warriors. Numo pressed his face against the slit and stared.

Two homunculi strained against each other with iron rods in a whirling blur. They were not like drakes at all, and only a little like the wiry infandus laborers and loggers. Those types of infandus were of more humanish shape than a drake, though still smaller and more lopsided than most humans he’d encountered.

But these—these were like none he’d ever seen.

They were enormous. Muscular, dripping, scarred and plated with prosthetics and imbedded armor; they were as tall as men if not taller, with jaws bigger and jaggeder than a full-grown megalobat’s.

One of them threw her rod to the ground. Her talons and fingers were massive, like the claws of a mole ten times magnified. She curled them into spiked fists and slammed them into the other infandus with an echoing crack. Her opponent fell. When the great-beclawed infandus stopped moving to place a dirt-crusted foot upon the fallen one, she stopped being blurry.

And she was the most resplendent creature Numo had ever seen.

Her eyes were as red as bellowed embers. Her blood-spattered mane stood up a foot or more from her head and neck, cresting between her shoulders like a glorious wave of shimmering heat. Her slobbering mouth was an orangey oven of the purest fire, a font of wondrousness gaping open down to the little iron plate stamped above her pendulous bosoms. Her blood was a magnifice—

Oh no.

She was bleeding. She was hurt. Numo curled his fingers around the edge of the slit. The humans were cheering, but underneath the noise, the infandus was quietly whimpering. Under the growling and slavering, of course, but…she was crying.

Sort of.

Why were the humans so happy about it? Numo’s master would never suffer him to bleed all over the floorboards.

The dust under the infandus reddened. Numo’s heart-chambers pounded so hard they seemed to choke the breath out of him. His lungs went squee inside him and he gasped. Was he dying? Was this what death was? He wasn’t quite sure. He’d never seen it.

Flowers rained down in blues and yellows and purples. Humans tossed them in the air like they tossed their hats on the festival of Ong-Nklak the Millipede Lord. Numo clutched his chest in relief, as if squeezing his anteventricles would slow them. Plants had healing properties, he’d heard. So humans were tossing plants at her for medicament. Thank goodness. Should he throw a flower? He should find a flower. Where would he get a flower?

“What are you doing?” a voice said. Numo turned. Another drake, his face scarred in the pattern of a waffle, shoved him in the shoulder. “Get a move on. Drakes aren’t to watch the matches. Not here for pleasure, are you?”

“No, I—”

The drake didn’t wait for an answer. He snorted up a surfeit of mucus and trudged away.

But he was right. Numo was here for a reason, and this wasn’t it. He’d forgotten his orders. He was a terrible messenger and the masters wouldn’t let him out again. He needed to move.

So why wasn’t he moving?

Numo turned back to the slit in the wall. The infandus was being led away in shackles. Already. He hadn’t thrown her a flower. He needed a flower.

Before he could grasp exactly what he was doing or why, his feet were racing back the way he’d come, bounding off the corners, faster than he’d ever run before. He erupted into the light, panting and wheezing.

“’S amatter? You see a monster?” The guard laughed. Numo ignored him, which wasn’t proper, but he had no time. He looked up, down, to the left—there. Growing just along the stone of the arena walls was a yellow flower. He pointed. “Sir, what is that flower?”

The guard furrowed his brows and looked. “Dandelion. Hardly a flower.”

“It has healing properties?”

“Do I look like a doctor?”

Numo ripped the dandelion from the ground and sprinted back down the hall until he came to the slitted window. More infandi were hurling stones and boulders at each other, whole teams of them, running between chalked lines smeared across the dust. But she wasn’t there.

He careened down the hall, knocking over the occasional drake, which was also not proper. This was the first time in his life he didn’t care about proper. Numo was on a mission. He didn’t quite understand what it was, which was unsettling, but exciting. He was one of the exciting people.

A sign pointed downward, and Numo ran down a dirt ramp before slowing to a plod. Things were going sparkly and he couldn’t seem to suck down enough air.

He emerged into a huge open space that smelled like festering flesh and flowers and musk and urine. There were sounds of desperate breathing. Growling. Dripping. Numo slunk around another corner and peered out.

The stables. Numo had seen stables for goats, but this place was different. More metal, more chains, more restraints and locks. And the stalls, if they could be called such, were full of infandi.

He padded forward, clutching the dandelion to his chest. Numo heard the whimpers before he saw her. He followed the sound, even though it pummeled at his innards. What if he was too late? What if his flower was not enough? What if she was angry that it had taken him this long to provide her with a suitable gift?

He saw her. She saw him. Her two sets of eyelids blinked and he stared into the limpid pools of beauteous inflamed lava that were her eyes. Her snowy white mane terminated in a crest of black, bedecked in entrancing spatters of brown and red. Her formidable maw hung open to her armored bosom and her fangs glinted in the dim beam of sunlight lancing through her stall like crystals in the dark. On the gate was a gold plate with an inscription. It said

HAMMERFIST

Numo’s organs flipped and seemed to eject themselves right into his throat. Hammerfist! The name was a song, a hymn, the dulcet tone of a gentle waterfall pounding the rocks below it into submission.

He stepped forward. She was still bleeding. He wasn’t too late. But where did her other flowers go? Perhaps they hadn’t been the correct ones. Maybe no one else thought to give her a dandelion, and a dandelion was exactly what she needed, and his flower would be the best one.

“I saw you,” he said.

Hammerfist leaned down. She cocked her head. She sniffed. It was a sound like a gust of wind through a cave.

“I saw you…um.” All thought seemed to have fallen out of his head. “I saw you fight, and I didn’t have a flower at the time. But I have one now.” He stared at her. He realized he was still clutching the dandelion, and thrust it out in front of her single gaping nose-hole.

She sniffed again. An odd rumbly noise came out of her.

“I…I hope it helps. With the bleeding, and such.”

She said something. It sounded like a mongoose with its vocal bits ripped to shreds and put through a meat-saw. It was their language—the infandus language. Numo didn’t understand. And she didn’t take the flower.

He swallowed. His hand shook. He laid it down on the ground in front of her nostril. “I do apologize if it is not meet. I just was so very sorry to see you hurt.” He wrung his hands. “And I think you’re beautiful.”

Hammerfist recoiled and made a tiny high-pitched “hrouh” noise. Numo had no idea if she was happy or sad. Then she leaned down, under the lowest wooden bar, and nuzzled the dandelion. She pulled it into her stall with the tip of a claw and curled her massive hands around it, pulling it close to her breast.

Numo thought he might void his bladder.

The infandus crouched again, stuck out her muzzle, and gave Numo a gentle shove to the chest. Feeling her breath against his skin was like nothing he’d ever felt. It was a flush of heat in winter, a hard smack to the elbow, a cartwheeling pair of scissors in midair aimed at his face. One of her tongues unrolled, and for a second he thought she might eat him, but when it fully unfurled, it revealed a note. Numo opened it carefully, so as not to tear the spit-saturated paper. It was only a few lines, written in infandus and in the drake shorthand usually reserved for banalities of inventory and general notes pertaining to household tasks. None of the human tongue, which was strange. And possibly illegal.

For too long the alchemists have made slaves of their unnatural children. For too long have the malicious wights of humankind beaten down the innocent. The revolution comes. If you are of a willing heart to aid your brethren and end their suffering, please come to Rawang’s veterinary practice on 17 Middlemonth at six in the evening.

Hammerfist reached out with a claw, straining to get her enormous scimitar of a finger past the small gap in the wood, and poked two holes in the paper. They pierced through the words “please come.”

“Okay,” said Numo. He scarcely knew what he was agreeing to, and didn’t understand the word “revolution” except as it referred to revolving, and had no idea where the veterinary practice was, or what his master would need him to be doing at six, but he nodded vigorously, like it was the surest thing he’d ever been sure about.

With this, Hammerfist withdrew. She sat back in the shadows, her eyes smoldering at him from underneath the crescent-shaped metal browguards implanted into her face. Numo was hypnotized by them, those volcanic eyes, and his fists uncurled. The scroll he was supposed to have already delivered fell to the floor.

“Oh no! Oh no. I’m sorry, I must go.” He picked up the message and bolted. He had orders. He had a job. And he was afraid that, if he didn’t run, he wouldn’t be able to leave her.