Knaves

by Abbott, Alana Joli; Meadors, Melanie R. ;

  “And I got to name the invention too,” Amina says, satisfaction flowing from her.

  Khalil rolls his eyes in annoyance, but I feel his real emotions of affection. “Yeah, I’m really looking forward to going on the transmission and saying, ‘Prepare yourself, world, for the power of … The Friendanator!’”

  Amina claps her hands excitedly.

  I turn back to the blueprints. If you look at it a certain way, the two knobbed black probes do resemble eyes, and the very narrow opening for the beam does curve upwards on both sides. It actually does look like a giant smiley face, if one is inclined to see it. I have no doubt Amina is very much inclined, especially now that I can sense her feelings.

  Unfortunate emoji design notwithstanding, this is quite the grandiose plan right out the gate for a first-time evildoer.

  Khalil nods. “Yeah, I know, it’s a lot. But hey, go big or go home, right?”

  More seriously, he says, “I just didn’t know what else to do. How to fix things. I know other people change laws, or even start revolutions, which is awesome. But that’s not me. This is what I do. I’ve always been good at science.”

  “Good?” Amina interjects. “He’s a genius. They said so at school like a million times, and skipped him like fifty grades,” Pride and love dance off her. Unrelated, I feel a strong urge to settle deeper into her arms. Which I of course resist.

  Khalil shrugs. “Whatever that means. But yeah I have always been good at making things. When I see a problem, I just start thinking up a solution. Whether I want to or not, I just start seeing what could help and how to build it.”

  “I remember you made that car where you pressed the button and it folded down into the size of an Xbox. That was so cool,” Amina says. “Oh, and the portable swimming pool that did the same. That one was less cool in real life.”

  “Yeah I forgot to take into account where the water would go,” Khalil chuckles. “Hey, I was only seven when I made it. But yeah, as I stopped being a kid and got older, I started being aware of what’s happening in this world. And what’s happening to people who look like me. How much we are at risk. In the crosshairs.

  “I took Mini to a #BlackLivesMatter protest for a young Black teen—she went to the high school not that far from mine. She was just two years older than me. She was killed by police for nothing. They said they thought she had a gun. It was her history textbook.” His tone, full of pain, doesn’t begin to encompass his radiating emotions.

  Khalil’s eyes drift away. “I had to do something. So I said I was going to this demonstration, and Mini insisted on going with me. And then at the protest, the police came out looking like storm troopers. They attacked us all, even though we were peaceful.”

  “It was so scary,” Amina says wide-eyed, and I feel her remembered fear. But I also get blurry mental images—maybe because they are both remembering the same incident. It is hazy, and skips back and forth between their perspectives, like a stuttering old movie projector.

  “They started shooting tear gas, and Khalil pulled his beanie off and made me put it over my mouth and my nose.” Amina’s confusion and fear. Khalil’s terror as he realized what was happening, not for himself, but for his sister.

  “Luckily we were at the back so it wasn’t as bad there. We could get away. Khalil snatched me up and ran like four blocks, coughing the whole time.” Playing split screen, Khalil coughing violently leaning against a wall, tears streaming down his eyes. The other screen, Amina staring up, concern all over her young face. But the feeling from Khalil, despite his wretched condition, is just joy as he looked down at his sister. And I notice in both memories, their hands clutched together tightly.

  The visual images fade as their thoughts diverge from the shared trauma.

  This room is so dusty, I think irritably as I blink rapidly.

  “My bro is like a real-life superhero.” Amina smiles.

  Khalil pats his high top again, radiating self-conscious embarrassment. “Yeah I don’t know about that.

  “But that’s when I realized that this was all happening because there are lives that just don’t matter in this world. Because of who they are. The color of their skin. Where they are from. The police saw that Black woman as less than human, and that’s why they could murder her and say it was justified.” His conviction burns so brightly off him, I can almost feel the warmth.

  “And the more I thought about it, the more an invention began to take shape in my mind. It really came together when I remembered what my mom would say whenever Amina and I fight—I mean, when we used to fight, because obviously I’m too old to fight with her now. And I saw you roll your eyes, you’re not slick,” he directs the last toward his sister, who good naturedly sticks out her tongue. “Anyway, yeah, so after mom broke up a fight, she’d always say we should try to put ourselves in other person’s shoes, try to see through their eyes. Feel what they feel.

  “That’s when it hit me—if everyone felt what everyone else felt, they couldn’t say we aren’t human. I mean, I know it’s not going to solve everything,” Khalil continues, and the brightness tempers slightly. “I know from studying history that this brutality isn’t just caused by people not understanding one another, or needing to learn to ‘tolerate’ each other. There’s a whole system in place that keeps it all going. People often are part of it without even being conscious of it. Also there are lots of folks who know exactly what they are doing, and still do really horrific things. For money. For power. I know this won’t stop that.”

  I feel hope pouring off him. “But maybe it will help wake up those white people who don’t know, who didn’t understand their role. Maybe they can then join with the Black people, the Brown people, who have been living through this every day for years, for decades, for centuries. And then maybe all together, they will decide that this system has to change completely. I don’t want to be in charge of that. It’s not my place to say how things should change. I just know they should.” Khalil’s certainty is so unshakable, so solid, it fills me as well, and nests in me.

  “It also doesn’t last that long,” Amina adds. “For us, it’s like a day that we can feel and hear each other’s thoughts, then it fades away.”

  “Yeah, and I posit less time if you’re not in a controlled environment, and instead integrating with the feelings of multiple people—well, creatures. Beings. Actually, I hadn’t considered before now the implications for life forms other than human,” Khalil muses, slipping into scientist mode. “I’ll have to do more field tests with the prototype and see how far these results extend.”

  He starts to reach for his laptop, his gaze already far away.

  “Ok, but do that later!” Amina says. “Finish telling Wuzzie—can’t you feel how curious he is? It’s almost overwhelming.”

  I blink up at her, surprised. No human has ever understood how it feels to be a cat before. They make jokes and think they do. But then they yell at us for climbing on things, for exploring everywhere we can. If they actually understood us, they would know it wasn’t a choice, but a biological compunction.

  Amina gives me a little squeeze.

  Khalil laughs. “Ok, ok. The rest is simple. When I realized how much money it would take to construct the Friendanator, I knew I’d need way more resources than I could ever scavenge and adapt, which is how I make most of my inventions. So I joined OEV.”

  I feel disgust, but I can’t tell which of us three it’s coming from. “I mean, I don’t like OEV, but at least they are honest about what they are doing. OEV is funded by the same places that fund pretty much everything—oil, weapons manufacturing, wealth from centuries of taking money from every day working people, stealing labor from Black people, stealing land from indigenous people. They try to pretend that they are in opposition to those forces, and then the world governments act like they are working to stop them. But really it’s just two sides of the same coin. Symbiotic. They need each other.”

  My whiskers shiver. I am a little ashamed to say I
’ve never wondered about the funding for my villains. I mean, of course, I know about the OEV, and it fills all the villain cats I’ve met with trepidation. But I never considered before where they get their seemingly endless stream of money.

  “To get them to fund the Friendanator, I fudged the blueprints a little. Ok, a lot. I told them it will control the minds of people globally, and we could use it to get everyone to transfer all money and nuclear codes and everything to OEV.”

  Khalil does a good beginner evil villain laugh as the mischievous delight pours off him. “And I told them it would work on everyone unless you are wearing one of these on your heads.” Khalil pulls out what looks like a colander with springs haphazardly glued to it.

  “So extra bonus that the day of, all these uber rich evil dudes are gonna be walking around looking ridiculous. It might actually help us to see who is in cahoots with them—probably gonna be a lot of these up in the White House that day.”

  Amina laughs so hard she snorts. Having observed a number of the OEV leaders at various functions, I definitely appreciate that trick being played on them—it’s the very least they deserve. But I still have a question, which Khalil senses.

  “If you’re wondering what protection there is from the Friendanator,” Khalil says, “there isn’t one.”

  My surprise encourages him to explain. “All of us humans, and I guess now animals too, and who knows, maybe plants, we are all going to be affected. Mini—Amina,” he corrects himself quickly as Amina makes a face and starts to open her mouth, “Amina and I are going to be part of that, just like everyone and everything else on this planet. We’re all in this together.” Again that blazing certainty.

  Amina twirls around with me in her arms. “Yeah, it’s evil do or die. Evil-do or do not, there is no evil-try!” she says in a singsong voice.

  As Amina spins closer to the pile of clothes I had… christened upon my arrival, she starts sniffing. She kneels down and sniffs more, then looks at Khalil, clearly communicating without words. I feel nothing from either of them—apparently you can not only transmit feelings, you can direct them. And whatever they are both thinking and feeling, they don’t want me to know any part of it.

  Real fear claws at my throat in that moment, and I know it is all mine this time. I had quickly learned to sparingly deploy Cat Secret Weapon #3, as it makes humans incredibly angry. In fact, my bald patch is a direct consequence of the utilization of Cat Secret Weapon #3.

  Somehow, though, my biggest fear this time is not physical reprisal. I have already experienced so much of that from humans. I know how to elude and, if cornered, how to give as well as I get. But surprisingly, what I most fear now is feeling (literally in this situation) Khalil and Amina’s anger, their disappointment, their disgust. I feel like I am that barely-grown kitten all over again, meowing piteously as the only human to show me any kindness abandons me.

  I have to get out now. Leave on my own, while it’s still my choice to make. I twist and kick, trying to get Amina to drop me without hurting her.

  “Hey,” Khalil steps forward and gently takes me from Amina’s arms. “It’s cool, Wuz. I get it. Change is hard. Those were my old scavenging clothes anyway. They should have been thrown out a long time ago. I was kidding when I said that was your bed, but of course, you couldn’t have known that then. Your real bed is in Amina’s room—she insisted on it.” Khalil strokes from the top of my head to the end of my tail, and I feel the tension leave my body. Because he has opened his feelings back up to me, and all I feel is warmth and care and… I’m not quite sure what else, but it makes me feel like a bowl of warm milk does.

  “Well, I just knew Wuzzie would want to sleep with me rather than you! I mean, part of why I didn’t notice the pee smell earlier is because your whole room is funkety funky anyway!”

  Khalil makes a mock grotesque face and she giggles.

  Amina takes me back, settles on the bed, and pets my head. “Wuzzy Buzzy doesn’t have to worry, does he, Khalil?”

  “Naw,” Khalil pets the secret tail spot that more unsophisticated cats love. I will say I don’t find it completely awful. “Wuzzie’s home now.”

  The purring emanating from me is, I assure you, strictly a ploy to lure them into a false sense of security, so they will be caught completely off guard by my next ambush.

  As I think this, Khalil and Amina look at each other, and burst out laughing.

  My tail twitches furiously. This is going to be awful. I mean, if a cat doesn’t have their inscrutability, what do they have?

  THE BLOODLETTER’S PRAYER

  Cullen Bunn

  THE LAND, THE Bloodletter remembered, was once fertile and rich, an expanse of lush fields and thick forests.

  Now, though…

  He crouched, running the fingers of his gloved hand over the dry, cracked earth. The movement stirred whispers of dust drifting across the ground. What was once abundant soil had shriveled to a barren, fractured shell where nothing could grow. One might think this place had never seen a drop of rain.

  The Bloodletter rubbed his fingers together, letting the dust fall through the still air. He stood, looking into the distance, across the badlands. Desolation where there had been trees and crops, grass and streams of clear water.

  And cities.

  He had visited the great cities of old. He had studied within them when he was but an acolyte. He had studied in the spired libraries of Cereakis. He had been cut and beaten and trained in the art of the sword in the halls of Rellisar. He had been tortured in the scream-haunted dungeons of Sendarken. Even now, decades later, he still bore the scars of his studies—across his back, his shoulders, his chest, his knuckles, and his face. An ache in his left wrist. A hitch in his right knee. His flesh, his muscles, his bones traced a history of grueling training and brutal ministries. The scars remained but Creakis, Rellisar, and Sendarken had all crumbled.

  No rain, he mused, but blood in great supply. And blood did not yield crops or feed cities.

  Ghosts, but no crops.

  Once, before the gods went to war, he had been one of a thousand missionaries sent out with scriptures and blade to guide, to comfort, to protect, and to punish. Now, though, the mantle and robe of his order were threadbare and worn, his leathers scuffed and gouged. His chain of holy symbols and reliquaries had been cast into the dust years ago.

  He no longer resembled a priest.

  The blade at his side, though, still marked him as a Bloodletter.

  He had wielded the sword while discharging his sacred duties. The blade was still sharp, honed in battle during his travels through the war-ravaged wastes, etched with the words of sacred texts. But while the sword served the same purpose as it had in the name of the gods above and below, it could not be described as the same weapon. Something had changed in the years after the Godwar. The Bloodletter had plunged the blade into the heart of the Mad Bishop, and the metal had been tainted by the slaying. Now, if one examined the symbols closely, they might see the etched letters moving slowly, crawling around the blade, the words changing in blasphemous ways. If one listened closely, they might hear a chilling whisper, low and steady, as if the sword had forbidden secrets to share.

  The Bloodletter had listened to these whispers and lamented.

  These void-borne whispers had brought him to this wasteland, lured him with horrible promises.

  The gods, the Whispering Blade vowed, have not abandoned the Cathedral of Vanris.

  It spoke other promises, too.

  But the Bloodletter knew it did not tell him everything.

  The Bloodletter did not trust the sword. The Whispering Blade had saved his life more times than he could count, yes, but it also lied, hissed untruths with the same ease it spilled entrails and blood.

  From a hiding place among standing stones, he watched the road to Vanris for hours. He grew more impatient—more certain that he wasted his time—with every passing minute. Soon, though, he saw a group of men marching along the path. They wer
e monks, dressed in the dark robes of their order, heads shaved, skin tattooed with holy symbols. Chains marked with the symbols of a dozen gods—some of whom had loathed each other—were draped across their shoulders. Their feet were bare, kicking up little puffs of dust as they walked along. Swords hung at their sides.

  A young boy—maybe eleven years of age—accompanied them. He wore the white robes of an acolyte who had not chosen his god. The monks surrounded him, protecting him as they continued on their pilgrimage.

  The Bloodletter counted nine monks.

  Nine men who would die.

  They don’t matter to their own gods, the Bloodletter thought. Why should they matter to me?

  Only the boy was of consequence.

  Sword in hand but held behind his back, the Bloodletter rose from his hiding spot and stepped out into the road. Holding his weapon as he did, he looked almost as if he was presenting himself formally and politely at the royal courts of old. These men might be approaching their own demise, but there was no need to be rude. The monks staggered to a stop when they saw him, and they drew their own swords, held them—uncivilly—at the ready. The boy’s expression was blank. He did not acknowledge the Bloodletter.

  “The boy,” the Bloodletter said. “Leave him to me, and you can go.”

  His voice, once so soothing and clear, was now a dry and quiet. It sounded strange to him. He had not spoken to anyone—not even himself—in many weeks. He sounded, he thought grimly, not unlike the whispering of his sword.

  “Your heavens and your hells are overcrowded enough as it is,” he continued, “and they are left untended. I can’t imagine they are nice places to visit. So why be in a hurry to do so?”

  Five of the monks stepped forward, their eyes narrowed, their lips curled in sneers.

  “Heretic!” one of the monks hissed.

  “Sin-spawn!” rasped another.

  “Infidel!” cried a third.

  The Bloodletter had been called these names before, more often than not by men who would soon die upon his hissing, sigil-marked blade, men who would scream the names of vestigial gods as they fell screaming into the void, men who had served so devoutly in order to secure their place in the afterlife but who—upon death—find nothingness waiting for them.