Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  Somewhere between multiple attempts on my life, some sleuthing, being rescued by my ghost mentor’s demonic ex-lover, and a showdown with the bad guys in an industrial ruin, Jackie had been dragged into the middle of the chaos thanks to one man: Dillon Sark.

  Needless to say, all of this had some serious psychological effects on both of us, especially knowing that Sark, though badly beaten, had escaped and was still at large.

  It was a point of frustration and shame that kept me up some nights, wondering what rock he’d crawled beneath. But for Jackie, it was like the trauma awoke an angry engine inside her. The bruises hadn’t even healed before she was on the hunt for training: gym memberships, self-defense classes, martial arts programs, survival skill exhibitions. If it focused the mind or hardened the body, she was there, putting in the time and the sweat. It was impressive enough to watch from the outside, but for me, it was downright surreal. Jackie didn’t sweat, didn’t strain, hell, didn’t work, because she didn’t have to. Beauty and well-to-do parents meant she didn’t need to. But when that illusion of security became stripped away, Jackie had found herself wanting.

  So she’d upended her life with me rather than trying to piece the broken bits back together. She left university, got a job at a department store, and followed a relentless training schedule. She was determined to become an independent woman and never be a victim again. She walked away from the partying, binge drinking, and the lads, her unholy trinity of weaknesses. In truth, her day-to-day life had changed much more than mine, and though she seemed happier and healthier for those changes, their catalyst didn’t sit right with me.

  How could I be happy for my friend’s new life when I knew it was trauma––trauma caused by my life and problems––that sparked the change?

  “You’re doing it again,” Jackie said at my shoulder.

  I jumped and looked up guiltily.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, but Jackie’s confused expression told me that perhaps my melancholy introspection wasn’t what she was talking about.

  She pointed at the griddle. “How about you peel up the bread before it burns.”

  I gave a little cry of dismay as I realized my distraction had almost cost me my last sheet of kisra. I eyed my stack as I turned off the griddle. It wasn’t as much as I’d planned to have, but there were only going to be three of us. When making the Sudanese dishes, I tended to make too much. My mother always insisted, even on her and my father’s meagre incomes, that we prepare enough food to share with a guest or neighbour. Everyone in our building had tasted our food at least once.

  I slid the kisra laden plate into the warm oven, next to a pot of bamia tabiq I’d made earlier. My father, who was a finicky eater, often praised my mother’s bamia tabiq, a savory stew of okra, onion, and lamb with some tomato paste to help give it a vibrant orange-red colour, especially when he had kisra to dip in a piece at a time.

  When I’d asked Uncle Iry what he wanted for his first meal in the UK, he was singularly unhelpful.

  “Whatever you make will be fantastic, Ibby,” he told me, grinning from ear to ear. “I will just be glad to be with you.”

  So I figured his brother’s favorite dish was a good option. But, just in case he was not so inclined, I had a backup.

  Moving to the refrigerator, I lifted out bowls of lamb marinating in an oily sauce of bay leaves, coriander, black pepper, jalapeno, and garlic.

  “You didn’t tell me we were having shaiyah!” Jackie cried as she eyed the meat ravenously. Thanks to her fitness preoccupations, Jackie’s need for protein had turned her into quite the carnivore. I typically did the cooking, but the pan-fried meat was such a favorite that Jackie had learned to make it herself. Honestly, the last time I’d taken my life into my hands and snuck a few bites that she’d made, I thought hers was just as good as mine, maybe better.

  “Jackie, I need you to make the shaiyah, too.” I untied my apron strings with one hand, as I dabbed my face with a dishrag. I was officially running late.

  Jackie frowned, eyeing the bowl of meat on the kitchen counter balefully.

  She chewed her lip. “Ibby, I don’t know. What if I mess it up?”

  “You got this, babe.” I handed her the apron before she could protest further. “I’ve got to be at the gate when he gets off the plane.”

  Jackie was already tying the strings. “Just because your only living family is leaving his war-torn land to come live with us, you think you can dictate things to me? Cook this, bake that!”

  She looked at me, both of us smirking at how comically small the apron looked on her muscular form.

  “Only because you are the best friend a girl could hope for.”

  Jackie rolled her eyes and scooped up the bowl of marinated lamb.

  “Now flattery,” she groused with mock exasperation as she struck a sassy pose, finger-wagging. “I’m on to your game, missy!”

  “Nothing escapes you, Ms. Holmes,” I called over my shoulder. “Where did you put my purse?” I asked, looking at the coffee table Jackie had cleared in anticipation of Uncle Iry’s arrival.

  “Sorry, luv, I put it in the hallway, next to your stash table.”

  I looked down the narrow hall that lay off the living room toward the rear of the apartment. My “stash table” as Jackie had come to call it was a waist-high end table with a drawer where I kept a few pieces of bangled jewelry and four very special rings. Last year had taught me to always have them with me when I went out, but when I was home, I usually deposited them all there. I could see the table from every doorway. I saw my purse propped up against the table leg; the paper Uncle Iry would need for customs and immigration, as well as my own paperwork, was jutting out of the thin, fraying leather.

  Because Uncle Iry was coming to the UK on a ‘family reunification’ visa, I had obtained a special pass to get through security and meet him before customs.

  I opened my mind, just a little, to the chorus of metallic auras, which had become an everyday part of my life.

  I’d learned to keep calls of metal in the background, a kind of layered white noise. With some practice I’d learned the texture of different metals so that, without much effort, I could draw out the strand of a specific metal from the ambient humming. The more exposure I had to the metal, the smoother the transition.

  The rings and bangles in the drawer I knew well. A gentle push had them sliding the drawer open without dumping the whole thing on the floor. That level of control had taken time and practice. When it came to moving metal, my will still tended to be more of a blunt instrument than a fine scalpel, but I’d been practicing. No use lifting a car off a person if I was merely going to send it tumbling onto another poor fellow nearby.

  With another thought, the rings and bangles rose up and down to scoop up my purse. Their cargo secured, I held out my arms and drew them all to me––soaring through the air like a cricket ball. The rings, which I’d separated again after last year’s experiences, found their well-worn spots. Two slid onto my fingers while the other two joined the links of a necklace I always wore. The bangles hauled the purse up to my shoulder. Momentum had it slap against my hip, but I was already turning toward the door, unphased. As an afterthought, I sent the bangles slithering down from the purse strap to cup my wrists.

  It had taken a few seconds, and while it was marginally faster than hustling down the hall to grab everything, it was an easy way to build practice into my day.

  After all, with Uncle Iry living with us, I wasn’t going to be as casual with my power as I could be with Jackie. He still had no idea what had happened last year, and for his sake, I was hoping to keep it that way.

  “I’m off,” I called and left the flat to make my family whole again.

  2

  The hour-long trip from Covent Garden to Heathrow was uneventful except for a growing sense of agitation. My legs bounced as I sat on the train. I must have looked ridiculous: dressed nicely, hair done up like a woman heading to a date or nice party, but squirming
and fidgeting like a bored grade-schooler. I had plenty of time to make a fool of myself, but also enough time to introspect.

  I was going to get my father’s brother, as far as I knew my last living relative. I suppose that as an Inconquo, an ancient bloodline of warrior-mystics, I had other, distant relations, but Uncle Iry was the only one I knew and who knew me.

  But did he know me?

  The question struck me hard enough to still my bouncing feet.

  Did he really?

  My parents left Sudan before I was born, using money that my uncle and father had pooled from working in an automotive garage together. The unrest in Sudan had driven Iry out of Nyal, and it was years before he and my father were back in touch. I was five or six the first time I heard his voice, and it wasn’t until I was a teenager that my parents ceased monitoring my communications. They let me use the internet on my own, but I could only chat with people they knew and trusted. That limited it to three friends from school, my kickboxing instructor, and Uncle Iry. Due to his late-night availability, he was the only one to talk to online when I was feeling restless, which was a common thing for me at that point in my life. From there, it grew into a real relationship, and after my parents died, he became an ocean of sanity and stability in my storm-tossed world. But always through a computer or a phone, and from thousands of miles away.

  Now, up close and personal, would he even like me?

  My heart beat faster, and my fidgeting started again, as I kept thinking of all the reasons he might be disappointed––or even resentful. Wasn’t I the reason my parents had left Sudan? That meant I was the one who’d not just taken his life savings, but, more importantly, his brother. I was the reason Iry never got a chance to see his brother in person again, never had a chance to say goodbye. And since my parents’ death, as much as he said he loved talking to me, I knew that I’d leaned on him more than he on me. He was the one loving me, carrying me through it all with his regular calls, no matter what they cost him. I was mourning the death of my parents, who I’d spent the last two decades with, while Uncle Iry had to bear the grief of twenty years away from those he loved and the certainty that he would never see them. He didn’t even get the chance to speak the Janazah before his brother was taken to the grave. By the time I could get in touch with him, Mother and Father were already buried.

  He’d given so much, even as so much was taken from him, how could he not be angry? I was sure once he saw the luxury and comfort Jackie and I lived in, he would be disgusted. Even bringing him here to the UK, more of the money had come from what he’d earned working for Greater Nile than what I’d scrounged together with my internship. Once again, Iry sacrificed all that he had for his family, and I benefitted.

  With these thoughts running laps around my head, I was an absolute wreck by the time we pulled into Heathrow station. I tried to tell myself that I was being silly, but it was no use. As I climbed onto the platform, I was practically trembling under the weight of my guilt and self-loathing.

  Only the conviction that not showing up to meet him would deepen my insurmountable debt kept me putting one foot in front of another. The perpetual crowded bustle of Heathrow helped, the press of people didn’t give me a chance to break down or turn back.

  Moving on auto-pilot with the crowd helped me calm down a little, at least enough to confirm which terminal I was going to. I’d been planning this for months, and if you’d have woken me up in the middle of the night last night, I could have recited them to you on the spot, but not now. After my destabilizing trip here, I was having trouble even remembering what airline he was coming in on.

  I finally found the displays, and after one panicked moment, I remembered the flight plan.

  He would probably be exhausted, and even if all my anxiety was nonsense, I could hardly expect him to be cheerful. If he were not the grinning, gracious Iry I’d come to expect on my computer screen, then I just needed to brace myself for whatever happened. As I found his flight and gate number, I began to wonder if I’d been categorically stupid for insisting a welcome feast after such a draining day of travel.

  Something snagged my eye before I turned to head for the gate.

  A shabby-looking man was leaning against the far wall, his eyes fixed on my face. His clothes were rumpled, and the way he held his body seemed awkward. His face was gaunt and unshaven, but his dark eyes stabbed at me with something like hatred. The furious glare was what had drawn my gaze, something familiar about its intensity, but no sooner had I taken notice than my line of sight was broken by passing travelers.

  When the crowd passed, he was gone. Trying to convince myself I was being paranoid, no doubt a product of my wretched ride, I checked the gate number and arrival time one more time and then headed out.

  ---

  The man staring at me from the crowd hadn’t helped my mental state, and looking nervous while moving through airport security was never a good thing, but either the blokes at their stations were really bad at their jobs or just very trusting. Maybe both.

  “Everything alright, miss?” a portly security officer asked as he checked my ID as my bag went through x-ray.

  My mouth remained sealed shut. When I didn’t immediately answer, he raised his gaze to watch me through square-framed glasses. I knew I just needed to say “yes”, but for a handful of terrible seconds, I couldn’t force the words out. The longer the pause went on, the worse it looked, but my mouth was not cooperating.

  “Yeez,” I managed to eke out, in a kind of mangling of my parents’ Sudanese accent. I don’t know why I was speaking this way, but I couldn’t very well stop once I’d started. That could only make things worse.

  “Joost exzited to see my, a’am, eh, my uncle.”

  What little scrutiny had crept into his spectacled stare vanished, and a smile brightened his round, pasty face.

  “Lovely,” he chortled handing me back my ID and waving me toward the body scan station. “Always a treat to see family.”

  I swallowed quietly and returned his smile.

  “Yeez.”

  I silently whispered a prayerful apology to my parents and every other Sudanese-Brit as I stood in the body scan and then collected my bag.

  I managed to hold it together and was soon standing near the gate.

  I’d made it with only two minutes to spare before passengers began to appear, which was just as well because much longer and I might have had a full nervous breakdown. I tugged at my clothes, checked the paperwork, looked around, and generally acted like I had spiders in my knickers. If I gave myself too much time to think, I would be in tears by the time I saw Uncle Iry. He deserved better than that, and if nothing else, I would greet him with a smile, spiders or no.

  The first few passengers shuffled off, first classers in business suits, most of them looking sour. Following them were young families, at least two with squalling infants, which might have explained the sour looks. After that, it was a hodgepodge, and I strained to keep an eye on the doorway as they milled about. I was scared that I’d somehow missed him, but then a gaggle of women in hijabs scuttled free of the portal, and Uncle Iry came striding out.

  In the time it took me to recognize that it was indeed my uncle, Irshad Bashir, he’d spied me with our family’s bronze-coloured eyes. He broke into a smile that was like dawn breaking and came bounding toward me.

  I found myself running toward him as well. In the back of my head, a stupid, repetitive voice reminded me to smile, smile and don’t cry, smile and don’t cry … but it was no use.

  By the time we threw our arms around each other, my vision had blurred with tears. He drew me to his chest, so thin but still so strong, and a sob tore from my throat. I held him tight, pressing my face into his shoulder, partly to muffle further sobs but also because it felt so very good to be held by him. His arms around me, I was safe and welcome, more at home there in the airport than I’d been in my own flat since my parents died. His grip tightened, and I could feel him taking great, hitching br
eaths.

  I forced myself to look up into his face, even with my tears, and smiled as I saw moisture glittering on his dark cheeks.

  “Welcome home, a’am,” I managed around the lump in my throat.

  He bent his head to rest on mine.

  “Ibukin, ya binti,” he whispered, his voice choked with emotion. “Ya habibti.”

  As the words rolled over me, I broke into fresh sobs. There was an aching relief at that moment. The last time I’d felt such arms around me and heard such things spoken was the last time I saw my father alive.

  ---

  “I still can’t believe I’m here,” Uncle Iry muttered as we stood in line at customs and immigration.

  After the tearful reunion, we’d joined the line-up, our arms still around each other. I think both of us subconsciously feared if we let go some new tragedy would sweep us apart again. Whatever came next, we would face it together, a family made whole again.

  “Neither can I.” I leaned against him, savouring how much he was like my father. My heart was still raw, but each time he gave my shoulder a paternal squeeze, the wound became a little smaller.

  “I hope you plan to have food,” Iry said after his stomach gave an audible rumble. “If not, I might need to go foraging.”

  He made a snuffling sound like he was sniffing for food, and I laughed, but a bit of the warm fuzzies gave way to the sad realities in front of me. For all the ways he reminded me of my father, I could never confuse the two, if nothing else because of how thin my uncle was. He was tall and broad-shouldered in frame, but there was no spare flesh on him. With my arm around him I could easily pick out each rib through his thin shirt. His emaciated body indicated that he’d been eating only the barest minimum of food to ensure he had enough money to emigrate.