Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  So: he’s ready.

  Good.

  The crowd isn’t really going for the song. The voices that do join in are nearly drowned by the ever-increasing general roar.

  And then the Rose Parade wagon rolls across my black-framed field of view.

  It moves without visible means, powered by Ma’elKoth’s will alone. That’s him, there in the middle—the one who looks like a hero of legend, a god from myth, standing like the figurehead of a battleship as it rolls to the center of the arena floor, fists on his hips, head thrown back. And for those of you who are new to this story, the fellow at his side—the one looking very natty indeed in the ruffled doublet and pants side-buckled down to his thigh boots—that’s Toa-Sytell, the Duke of Public Order, for which read “head of the secret police.” Very competent. Very dangerous. His face is characteristically blank as he scans the stands.

  He’s probably looking for me.

  He shouldn’t be here; I was hoping he’d know better. If he gets killed today, Majesty and the Kingdom are deep in the shitter.

  Yeah, oh well—too late now to worry about Majesty. I have other business. Business up there on that wagon with Ma’elKoth.

  Hard as I try not to let myself register the twin X-shaped frames on either end of the flower-decked wagon, there they are; I can’t look away. From one, Lamorak hangs limply, head down. He looks like he’s already dead, which would be a pity.

  I’d hate for him to miss this.

  From the other, inside a drape of silver net, hangs my wife.

  A chill opens in my belly, like I’ve swallowed ice, a freezing void that spreads to my chest, to my arms and legs, to my head. In that icy emptiness it seems that I’m watching myself lie here, hearing myself think. I can’t feel my heartbeat, just a sizzling hiss behind my ribs that crackles in my ears like lightning on a radio.

  Pallas has her head up. She looks alert and worried: she’s a long way from that private mystic bolt-hole where she’d kept herself safe. The shift of white linen that covers her is stained with a crimson trail from her ribs down her left leg. Her blood drips from her heel into the flowers below her feet.

  That rack she’s hanging from—that’s going to be a problem. Somehow I didn’t expect to find her crucified . . .

  Maybe I didn’t think this through quite as well as I could have.

  No Berne, though: that means his body’s cooling at the bottom of that well in the caverns even now. Shame I couldn’t be there myself to watch the light go out of his eyes—but I can settle for knowing I’ve outlived him.

  Ma’elKoth lifts his bridge-girder arms, and silence bursts from him like the shock front of an explosion, as though God has reached down and spun the volume dial on the world.

  He begins to speak to his assembled Children.

  I guess that’s my cue.

  I pull myself scraping forward and roll headfirst out of the vent. My hands grip its lower rim so that I can flip neatly forward and land on my feet.

  There’s no hesitation now, not even time for a slow breath. There’s no profit in any second thoughts: there are no choices left to make.

  I hook my thumbs behind my belt and stroll out across the arena floor.

  And this is it.

  I’m here. On the sand. In my last arena.

  Twenty thousand pairs of eyes swing curiously toward me: Who’s that idiot in black? What’s he doing here?

  And hundreds of thousands more, all of you here with me inside my skull, all of you who think you know what I’m about to do. Maybe I’ve got a couple surprises for you, too.

  A few of the costumed mock revelers see me now and still themselves, hands drifting toward folds of clothing for the weapons concealed there.

  I keep walking toward them, slowly, offering a friendly grin.

  The golden sand of the arena crunches as it shifts slightly under my boot heels. The sun is hot, and it strikes a reddish glow onto the upper reaches of my vision, where it glistens in my eyebrows.

  All my doubts, all my questions fly away like doves in a conjurer’s trick. Adrenaline sings in my veins, a melody as familiar and comforting as a lullaby. The thunder of blood in my ears buries all sound except for the slow, measured crunchch. . . crunchch of my footsteps.

  Toa-Sytell sees me now; his pale eyes widen and his mouth works. He tugs on Ma’elKoth’s arm, and the Emperor’s head swivels toward me with the slow-motion menace of the turret of a tank.

  As I walk toward him, my chest swells with some inexplicable emotion; I’m nearly there before I can tell what it is.

  It’s happiness, I guess.

  I am, right now, as happy as I will ever be.

  I look up at Pallas and find her eyes on me, full of horror.

  I acknowledge her with a droop of my eyelids that is almost a bow, and I mouth the only words I can give her: I love you.

  She’s trying to say something back to me, something about Ma’elKoth. I can’t read her battered lips, and I won’t have the chance to figure it out.

  It’s time for the killing to begin.

  17

  THE COMMANDER OF the northwest garrison had only just lain down, heading for a richly deserved nap after thirty solid hours on his feet. He was stretching his exhausted body on an obscenely comfortable pallet in a back room, his eyes drifting closed, when the entire building trembled and shook as though struck by a giant’s fist.

  Outside his room, men shouted in confusion and terror. He scrambled to his feet and staggered to the peg where his scabbard hung on the wall. He clawed numbly at the hilt of his sword, but before he could draw, the door burst squealing around the bar that locked it and fell in rattling splintered fragments to the floor.

  The man who stood panting in the doorway was covered in moist and clotted blood, as though he’d been swimming on a slaughterhouse floor. His eyes burned fiercely within his red-smeared face. As he gasped for breath he snarled: “Call your men . . . all of them. And I need . . . a horse. Your best fucking horse. Now.”

  Slowly the commander’s fatigue-dazzled brain registered who this was, and he stammered, “I, ah, Count Berne—! Count . . . my lord Count, you’re hurt!”

  Berne’s teeth were nearly as red as his bloody lips. “It’s not my blood . . . you stupid . . . sack of shit. Get that horse. And sound the alarm. Every man, every fucking trooper, I want the whole shit-eating army at Victory Stadium right fucking now!”

  “I, ah, my lord Count, I don’t understand—”

  “You don’t have to understand. Just do it. He talked; I knew the sonofawhore would talk.”

  Berne strode into the room and took the commander’s shoulder with a grip powerful enough to make the commander wince as the joint popped. “All your men, all the men from the other garrisons. Get them to the stadium and arrest everyone. Anyone who offers resistance, kill them.”

  “But, but, what’s going on?”

  Berne leaned close, and his eyes smoldered. The commander nearly choked on the rich meaty scent of blood on his breath. “Fucking Caine—the whole goatfucking thing’s a setup!”

  Without effort he lifted the commander off the floor and snarled into his face. “Now do I get that horse and those men, or do I tear your fucking arms off?”

  18

  FAR BELOW, HE was only a stick figure in black, a sharp contrast to the golden sand and the brightly costumed revelers, but to Majesty’s eye he was unmistakably Caine. The slight, unconscious swagger, the flash of teeth in the swarthy face, the leisurely walk that drew out and stretched the awesome silence of the Stadium. Too late now for Paslava to arrive, Majesty thought, his heart sprinting.

  His white-knuckled fingers dug painfully into his trembling knees. Without Paslava, this was going to be bloody, but there was no going back, not now, not when victory was this close. . .

  He caught the eye of Deofad. The grizzled warrior sat twenty rows away, and he returned Majesty’s look of sizzling anticipation.

  Majesty mouthed, Ready?

  Deofa
d’s reply was a barely perceptible nod.

  Majesty lifted one finger and held his breath.

  Now, everything waited for Caine.

  19

  A LANGUID WAVE of the Emperor’s hand parts the sea of revelers, and they allow me to pass. I don’t have to look back to know they’re closing in behind me, but that doesn’t matter. All that counts is how close I can get before the shitpile explodes.

  Slowly, with the same kind of deliberation my father used to use when he’d take off his belt to beat me, I untie the silver net from my waist and coil it around one fist.

  “What news, Caine?” Ma’elKoth booms with hokey feigned surprise. Whatever his other talents might be, the sonofabitch sure can’t act. Toa-Sytell at his side watches me expressionlessly, one hand stroking his other wrist up the sleeve of his blouse. Pallas croaks some unintelligible raven sounds, her breath stolen by her punctured lung.

  I stick my free hand through the garlands of flowers that hang over this huge wagon to get a grip on its wooden underframe, then climb up aboard.

  Now the silence from the crowd is no longer enforced by Ma’elKoth’s magick: everyone stands, and stares at me. This is obviously not part of the show.

  Boy, are they wrong . . .

  “I can see through the eyes of this image,” Ma’elKoth says, “and speak with its voice. Why have you come here, Caine?”

  I get up onto the platform and uncoil the net. From outside the stadium, a thousand voices shout in distant confusion and outrage, overscored by the sound of brass trumpets. Toa-Sytell turns his shoulder a bit toward me, his hand still up his sleeve. Pallas croaks again, and now I can understand her. “. . . it’s a trap . . .”

  I smile up into her black-ringed desperate eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

  The Emperor towers over me, a mountain of meat; I can smell the oil that curls his hair and smooths his beard, hear the faint rustle of his kilt as he steps close.

  “I ask again, why have you come here?”

  If he bent his neck another inch, if I stood on tiptoe, I could kiss him on the lips. The cold hollow that has opened around my heart spreads to my arms, to my legs; I’ve cycled between exhilaration and dread so many times in these last seconds that emotion has become abstract; I can no longer feel anything except a chill empty stillness. I look deep into his bottomless eyes.

  “I’m here to save my wife.”

  “Your wife?” A certain mild astonishment enters his face. “You never told Me you were married.”

  “There’s a lot of things I haven’t told you.”

  Now that I’m here, now that I’m committed, I’m inexplicably reluctant to begin. I’ve aimed the gun, but I can’t seem to pull the trigger. As long as I draw this moment out, Pallas and I, we’re Schrödinger’s cat, equipoised between life and death, and my first move will collapse our wave function into history.

  “Indeed,” Ma’elKoth murmurs smugly. “Like, for example, that you are an Aktir.”

  An invisible hand closes my throat. Even if I were cool enough to take this in stride, which I’m not, my conditioning won’t let me answer. I settle for a small smile that might look confident.

  “What are you waiting for?” Ma’elKoth says. “Here is My image. The net is in your hand . . . Second thoughts? Now, when you face the moment to strike at God?”

  I force words through my half-choked throat. “You know what a dead spy is, Ma’elKoth?”

  “A dead spy?”

  “Yeah. It’s a name a writer from back home gave to the guy that you feed false intelligence to, when you know he’s gonna be captured by the enemy. When they break him and he talks, he tells them exactly what you want them to know. He thinks it’s the truth. See?”

  Ma’elKoth’s lips quirk oddly, and a glow enters his eyes. “Lamorak . . .” he murmurs.

  Rather than being dismayed by this concept, he’s clearly amused and appreciative. His amusement grows as he murmurs down the chain of reasoning.

  “Of course. That’s why you do not strike with the net . . . You know I am present in truth, not in image. You planned things so. How else could you draw us both out of the palace, which is defended against Aktiri magick by the power of My will?”

  Lamorak makes a choking sound from up there upon his cross. “You knew. You did this to me—!”

  I nod up at him. “Yeah. I was counting on you. Shit, Lamorak. Just the other day I killed a better man than you’ll ever be for doing less than you did. Did you really think I’d let you live?”

  Now, all I have to do to make this work is get Pallas down off that cross. Toa-Sytell is sidling closer to me, his hand still up his sleeve—on a weapon, of course: he’s too freaked to be subtle.

  “But what now?” Ma’elKoth murmurs. “You are here in the midst of My power. How can you possibly hope to escape?”

  He rumbles on in this vein, but I lose the chain of his words. I’m looking up into the light of the only eyes that have meaning for me now.

  Even the most flexible thinker in the world takes time to shift her paradigm. When I walked out upon the sand of the arena, all Pallas could think of was the appalling danger to me—that horror had shouted from her eyes. She’d given up on herself, and by the time I climbed up onto the wagon, she’d given up on me, too; inside, where it counts, she’d left us both for dead.

  But she’s too smart, the life within her is too powerful. This is the point of my pointless jabber with Ma’elKoth: it gave her time to adjust. Now, as I pull the griffinstone from my pocket, holding it by my side where she can see it but Ma’elKoth and Toa-Sytell can’t, when I look up and with my eyes I ask her Are you ready?, I see a response that is fierce and potent and still somehow serene.

  Her answer: When you are.

  Ma’elKoth is still talking, burbling on with the cheery unconcern of a whodunit fan mulling over the clues. When I turn back to him, he’s saying “. . . and why carry this net, when you knew it would be useless?”

  “Oh, that.” I give him a cold chuckle. “It’s not useless. It’s the signal for the Subjects of Cant to attack.”

  “What?”

  While he’s parsing this revelation, I whip the net over his head. He bats at it with condescending annoyance, but it drapes over him nonetheless. Toa-Sytell lunges at me like a fencer, in his hand a dull flash of steel. I twist away from the blade and stamp the side of his knee; it breaks with a dull crunch, and he pitches toward me, grunting in sudden agony. The revelers below the wagon draw their blades and charge as I skip away from Toa-Sytell—and Ma’elKoth’s arms reach toward me within the net.

  I smile at him. “Didn’t I tell you about putting your hands on me?”

  He’s not thinking about what he’s doing, not registering that the net cuts him off from his magickal defenses.

  My smile grows to a wild grin as I haul back my leg and kick the Emperor in the balls.

  His testicles squish against my instep, and his eyes bug out like baseballs jammed in the sockets, and his jaw drops open as all his breath leaves him in a whoosh, and the look on his face makes me laugh out loud.

  While he’s still bending over, his hands twitching blindly toward a clutch at his injured groin, while he’s stuck in those timeless seconds between impact and discovery of how sickeningly intense the pain will become, I whirl away from him and leap onto Pallas’ cross. I tangle my fingers in the silver net that covers her and haul myself up, and we come face-to-face for an eternal instant.

  My eyes ask another question, and she says “Yes.”

  I kiss her, once. Our mouths meet hungrily through the net. I have lived every day of my life only to bring myself here to this moment, and it’s been worth every second.

  I press the griffinstone between the strands into the palm of her upraised hand. Her fingers close around it, and I speak against her lips.

  “What do you need?”

  Tears surge into her eyes. “Buy me time.”

  “Done.”

  Quarrels snap past my ears as I dr
op back to the wagon’s platform. I feel an instant’s sickening conviction that Pallas has been shot, but a glance upward shows the net sprung outward, tight over an enormous sphere of semisubstantial glass with Pallas at its center. She’s gotten a Shield up, and the quarrels bristle from its surface. But even with the griffinstone, she can’t do two magicks at once, can’t hold the Shield and get herself off the rack at the same time.

  I need to buy her a break.

  Down here beside me, Ma’elKoth snarls wordlessly from his knees. His face strains purple as he claws at the net over his head. I chamber for a kick, but then change my mind and drop my foot again.

  Some things cry out to be done by hand.

  I lean into an overhand right.

  My chest expands with raging joy as my knuckles smear his perfect nose sideways onto his perfect cheekbones and his eyes cross and flood with the pain. My blood’s up and I’m gonna kill him now while I have the chance, but an icicle spears into my left thigh.

  It’s that little fucking knife of Toa-Sytell’s. He’s a lot tougher than he looks, still going for me, dragging a shattered knee. He looks up at me with an expression of savage completion on his face: he’s done what he needed to do with his life and he’s ready to die.

  That expression makes no sense; it’s barely even a flesh wound. I pull the stiletto out of my leg like a splinter and toss it away—and let him have a roundhouse in the side of the head hard enough to kick the light out of his eyes, but not to kill him. He flops bonelessly onto his side, still semiconscious—he is tough—and I make sure of him by dropping to one knee and slicing the edge of my hand to the base of his skull.

  Quarrels still fly, but none come close to me here—they’re shooting from the seats, and they can’t take the chance of hitting Ma’elKoth. He’s getting a grip on the net, now. I have to finish him and damned fast, too. Any second those mock revelers are gonna be all over me.

  Trumpets blare, too close by. The gate, the gate on the tunnel that leads outside, it’s open—!