by Nina D'Aleo
Copernicus glanced over at Diega turning down the Ory’s engines. She had more bruising around her neck and arms. She thought he didn’t know what she did to herself, but he could see it clearly. He just chose not to question it at this stage. As someone who’d been bashed senseless too many times, he failed to understand why someone would put themselves through it voluntarily, and until he could understand it he didn’t feel that he could speak with her about it. An autopsy of Diega’s issues, as well as his own, would have to wait until they weren’t under the immediate threat of death.
Silho leaned forward in her seat, looking over his shoulder to the holograms. Her warm fingertips brushed against his neck, sending nerves blazing like electric fire through his body – so hot it almost hurt. He’d never felt so out of control for a woman before – not even for the girlfriend who had cheated with Christy Shawe, the former gangster king, who had once been his best friend. He and Shawe had resolved old anger and reconnected during the battle against the Skreaf, and now he felt he could look objectively on this past. He remembered that even before the cheating, he’d always been sceptical of the word “love”. He’d felt like it was an indefinable emotion that people forced into a fabricated word to make more sense of their lives. But now he actually felt it – love – so powerful that it was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on anything other than his need for her, not just to be near her, but with her. He needed to show her how he felt, otherwise he was going to lose his mind. All they needed was some time alone when somebody wasn’t trying to kill them. He would make it happen – after the fight-in.
“Scullions,” Silho said close to his ear. “They’re seeing a vision.”
Her words jolted him back to clarity. He hadn’t picked it up, but he should have – the people in the crime scene holograms were scullion seers.
Diega glanced over at the images and demanded, “How do you get ‘vision’ from them looking at the ground?”
“I grew up in the Matadori,” Silho reminded her. “We often camped near scullion settlements and towns, and I saw this all the time, groups of them standing together to strengthen their sight.”
Copernicus looked back and saw Jude watching Silho with some resentment in his eyes. He used his viper bloodline skills to study Jude’s heat pattern and the vibration of his thoughts. The Ar Antarian was burning up with anger. Copernicus had never seen Jude angry at Silho before – it had always been the aggravating opposite. So something must have changed. Something must have happened. Copernicus’ jealousy twitched, but he reasoned if Jude was furious, that could only mean he wasn’t getting what he wanted – who he wanted. Silho.
“So,” Diega continued, “you’re saying – here they are happy back together, then they see a vision – and the mother goes crazy? That must have been some vision. Maybe they saw the gruel the camp cook was making for their dinner.”
Jude’s silver skin flushed. “You’re joking about the dead?”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were so religious,” Diega mocked.
“And I didn’t realize you were so heartless,” he shot back. “Seems to be the current trend with you women.”
“Either way,” Silho said, and Copernicus heard the tightness of her voice and sensed her body-heat flare up as well, “it’s never a good sign when the people with the strongest intuition about the future start killing themselves.”
Diega snorted. “Strongest intuition! Brabel, seriously – there’s no such thing as seeing the future. They’re a bunch of addicts, lunatics and charlatans.”
Usually Copernicus would have shared Diega’s cynicism, but something about Silho’s words kept him quiet. Since they’d defeated the Skreaf and returned from Woulghast, he’d had a bad feeling, an ominous ill-ease, as though something was following them, but every time he turned around there was nothing there. He hadn’t spoken to the others about it. They were already stressed and anxious enough as it was, and there was the possibility that his feelings were just a hangover from running so close to death in Woulghast – and that these hologram images just showed a random tragedy.
From the backseat, Eli stifled a half-giggle, half-cry. Copernicus glanced back at him. The imp-breed was staring at the holograms and looking green. Since becoming a tracker, Eli had been involved in many investigations of brutal murder, and Copernicus knew it got to him more than any of the others, but he’d never seen Eli so on edge before. The war had taken its toll on all of them.
“You with me, Eli?” he asked.
Eli immediately lifted his head and said, “No – I mean, yes. Yes. Definitely yes.”
He took his otter out of his pocket and wiped his nose on her, before realizing she wasn’t his handkerchief. He looked startled, embarrassed and apologetic to the otter, and Copernicus turned away pretending he hadn’t noticed.
“Good. Let’s move out, then,” he said to the other trackers.
He jumped down from the craft and stretched out his legs, flexing his toes inside his boots. He’d spent the past few hours training and getting strapped up. He felt ready to face Caesar. He wasn’t ego-blinded enough to think it wasn’t going to be a difficult fight, but he was confident he could take him. Caesar’s greatest advantage as a fighter was his speed – and Copernicus was faster. He’d proved that in the desert and he was sure the King of the Pride hadn’t forgotten either – so he already had a mental advantage.
From beside him, Diega called, “Eizenef aregz’amon,” and with a crack of magics morphed the Ory-5 into a silver coin.
She started to push it into a pocket on her belt but Copernicus said, “No – hide it in your boot or somewhere. If something goes down and we lose our belts, I want to make certain we have transport.”
Diega nodded. Jude pointed to the sphere of light at the end of the storm-break tunnel and said, “There’s a viewing platform there that overlooks the palace gardens to the Hero’s Walk and Oberon’s Arena.”
“Take the lead,” Copernicus told him, and Jude gave what looked like a shrug of annoyance before complying. They moved out, their bootsteps echoing through the tunnel.
They came out where Jude had described – a thin balcony looking out over a vast expanse of garden and the great dome of the amphitheater glimmering in the new light of the sunsrise. The air behind and around the dome was blackened with the hordes of transflyers, mass-movers and flighted people descending in for the fight – and further still behind them, in the mists of the far distance, Palace Sirenseron rose imposing and magnificent into the clouds.
Copernicus sensed a sharp spike in Jude’s heat and looked over. He appeared composed and expressionless behind his black-lens glasses, metal arms crossed over his chest and SevenM perched on his shoulder, but inside he was a mess. It was no wonder. He had more reason than any of them to be stressed. Not only was he half-machine-breed, about to be completely surrounded by gangsters who had spent the last months slaughtering and imprisoning his kind, but he was also half-brother to the Androts’ fallen leader, Kry, as well as the heir to the Ar Antarian throne. He was the rightful king returning to the Palace, the home he’d fled from after his uncle found out his true bloodline and tried to have him killed. It was a lot to deal with in one hit. Copernicus considered that maybe this was the only reason behind his agitation, but the way Silho had been avoiding Jude’s eyes suggested otherwise. His body tensed. He wanted to know exactly what had happened – right now – but he restrained himself from questioning Jude. The team had to focus and stay together, at least a little longer. After the fight-in, he and Jude were going to have a conversation, and if he found out he’d done anything to Silho, there was going to be serious trouble. Best case scenario: Jude would be out of the trackers and out of their lives, permanently. Silho kept saying she was handling it, but Copernicus sensed the situation had gone beyond her control. She didn’t understand the way feelings could get twisted.
Eli was also watching Jude, but with concern rather than suspicion, and came out with the question most m
en, Copernicus admittedly included, were too afraid to ask.
“Are you okay, Jude?”
The Ar Antarian remained silent for several moments, looking as though he was wrestling with his words. Finally he said, “I’ve failed.”
“What do you mean?” Eli asked.
“The Androts … I should have done more to help them, to change things, but instead I hid.”
“You weren’t hiding!” Eli told him. “You went into Woulghast and saved the world!”
Jude pressed his lips together – it wasn’t enough. Copernicus understood. Jude felt called to the plight of the Androts.
“And you’ve been doing everything you can to help the machine-breeds ever since,” Eli continued.
“I should have done more!” Jude raised his voice. “I should have stepped into the war and tried to stop Kry or even helped him. Look at what’s happening to the machine-breeds now! Caged, beaten, starved, slaughtered – for what? The innocent suffering for the madness of a few …”
“And that’s why we’re here,” Copernicus said. “To fight Caesar and win their freedom.”
“And if you lose?” Jude asked. The question seemed to echo out over the vastness of the garden, amplifying Copernicus’ silence. Before, Jude would never have questioned him.
Eli’s stomach yodeled mournfully, Copernicus swallowed his ill-ease and Jude ran a hand over the Androt barcode on his neck. Copernicus eyed the mark – he’d told Jude he needed to cover it and that he needed to keep SevenM hidden. Clearly he wasn’t in the mood to be told, but it was for his safety and the safety of the whole team, and Copernicus wasn’t going to compromise that for anyone’s emotional turmoil.
“You want to free your people? Put the robot in your bag and cover your neck,” he said to Jude firmly enough for Eli to break out in red splotches.
For a moment he thought Jude was going to challenge him again, but then he relented just as Diega and Silho caught up with them.
Silho stared, awed by the vision of the palace before them. The red highlights of her hair glowed like strands of fire in the sunslight. Diega just drew her electrifier and said, “Are we doing this or what?”
“Arm up,” Copernicus responded, and they all unsheathed their weapons.
As Silho drew hers, a piece of paper fluttered out from her belt. She lunged for it, but Eli moved quicker, snatching it out of the air. He went to give it back to her, but she hesitated to take it. Copernicus sensed something strange about her heat pattern, an unusual flare of mixed feelings. He took the paper from Eli instead and opened it, he saw the words – In my mother’s house are many mansions – Silho Brabel.
“I found it,” Silho told him, apprehension tightening her voice, “at the house. It has my name on it, but my father never knew that name. I thought maybe Bellum had put it there; maybe there was some kind of curse or enchant attached to it.”
Jude immediately took Silho’s shoulder, his anger at her forgotten. He turned her toward him to let SevenM check her. “Do you feel okay?” he asked.
“I think so,” Silho said, not meeting his eyes. She stepped back from him, but Jude stepped forward again, keeping his grip on her arms.
“You need to say if you don’t feel right.”
Diega rolled her eyes and Copernicus fought against the urge to drag Silho away from him.
Eli stepped in fast. “I can run some tests? See who or what wrote it?”
“Good,” Copernicus agreed. Eli took out a bag, and Copernicus dropped the letter inside. Silho’s eyes lifted from the paper to his. Jude watched the exchange.
“Time to go,” Copernicus said, he stepped over the edge and walked down the vertical slope to the gardens, while the others unfurled their hook-ropes and rappelled down.
*****
Together the trackers walked, each wearing full military garb and body armor, down the Steps of Consequence, to a square landing that led through the Hero’s Walk to Oberon’s Arena where the fight-in would take place. The square was packed to capacity, and their presence drew immediate attention that spread like fueled fire through the masses. Soon everyone had turned to stare. Copernicus scanned over the crowd, over the people who would fight for the title of Boss, standing with their support groups. Most races and sub-races were represented, with the exception of marine-breeds, plant-breeds and spectral-breeds – and there were no machine-breeds of any type.
Copernicus kept the trackers moving, leading them to the edge of the crowd. It shifted and a path opened for them to walk through. It should have felt powerful, stepping up to a crowd of this magnitude and having it roll back and part before him – a sea of flaring body-heat, fear and hope, anxiety and excitement crashing in sparking red-orange waves – but it didn’t. There were too many staring eyes, too many thoughts and feelings and questions pressing in on him, pushing down on him. He hated the attention, but circumstances were what they were and either he had to be here now or somewhere else, hiding – and he didn’t hide. Copernicus knew he was many things – most of them ugly – but he was not a coward. He looked for Santana and his United Resistance soldiers, but couldn’t see or sense any of them. It was strange that they hadn’t arrived yet.
The trackers started through the crowd, which pushed back further to let them through. Everyone avoided Copernicus’ eyes, but stared at his back when he’d passed, staying on him all the way to the front where the gangsters and their animals had assembled. Many of them he recognized. They all glared him down with expressions that said he was a rat and a dog and would never be anything but that. Their hostility rolled off him without leaving a mark.
Each of the gangs were accounted for, except for the Greenway Galleys. Christy Shawe’s absence left a big hole, figuratively and literally. Copernicus had spoken to him just after the Lancaster Square announcement, trying to convince him not to attend. He’d told Shawe the truth – as soon as he and the Galleys got there, Shawe’s ego would make him challenge Caesar, and then he would most definitely lose. His eyesight was poor and he had never been quick. Galleys were made to fight in groups, back to back, relying on their strength and endurance to wear down their enemy. If Christy could land a punch, it would be deadly, but Caesar was too fast for that, and although Christy’s skin was armor-tough, Caesar’s claws were the sharpest of retractile razors and he would keep at Shawe until he hit an artery and bled him out. Christy needed to keep his head down now and challenge later when circumstances were more in his favor. Fortunately, and for the first time ever, Christy Shawe had listened.
Finally the team pushed through to the front of the gangsters, where the Pride, decked out in their gold and purple, stood on the steps leading up to the Hero’s Walk, a long ceilingless hallway that the gladiators used to pass through to get to the amphitheater. At the front of the Pride were Caesar’s eight daughters and his cousin Smudge, with her black panther, Inski, sitting beside her. Woman and cat narrowed their yellow eyes, exactly in sync.
Behind them, the walls of the Walk were hung with the rarest and most valuable art of Scorpia, guarded by statues of all the Ar Antarian kings, the first to the last, from Oberon U to Miron U XI. Half of the statues had been smashed up and replaced with carved lions. The head of one of the stone kings rolled off as they stood there, and fell through a window in the Walk, crashing many stories to Level 2 below. A very distant boom sounded a minute later. Copernicus glanced at Jude. He could see Jude was angered, but on the surface still remained cool and composed. Diega, on the other hand, made no effort at all to hide her contempt, both for the setting and for the gangsters around her. She was keeping her electrifier primed. The colors of her rainbow skin flashed warnings, her eyes blazing with hostility. She was standing nearer to Jude than she had in a long time. Since the bust-up of their relationship, they had been like negatively charged magnets. Eli stood close to Copernicus’ elbow on one side with Silho on the other. The Oscuri Trackers, fractured in places but united in purpose, stepped up to the Pride.
Moments later,
the shadows of the Hero’s Walk stirred and Caesar K-Ruz appeared, flanked by his great lions, his young son at his side, looking like a miniature version of his father. At the sight of the Pride King, sound just evaporated. Copernicus completely blanked his expression and straightened his form. He could see Eli’s wings trembling under his shirt, where he kept them bound with bandages to stop himself spontaneously taking flight during moments of stress. Caesar came to the front of the Walk where he stood, unnaturally still, casting a huge lion shadow over the wall behind him. The very tip of the shadow lion’s tail twitched and Caesar narrowed his darkly-rimmed golden eyes. Copernicus wasn’t swayed by his theatrics and mind games. To him Caesar still looked like he had when they were kids – except now he’d grown a beard and a massive ego. On either side of where the Pride King stood, two gigantic holograms of Caesar sparked to life. Copernicus could see the gangsters had set up a city-wide feedback system that would project holograms of the event down through all the levels.
Caesar spoke with his smooth Crook’d Town accent. Without raising his voice, his words carried easily across the entire square.
“You, who have come here today, believe yourselves worthy to be the bosses of your people. You will fight for this honor and you will fight for your land. Every level of Scorpia 650 and above will today be allocated. All major skyways and mass-transfer elevators are neutral territory. No fighting shall take place in neutral territory. This is the gangster way and it will be respected or the gangs will punish you. Every level below 650 is no man’s land – enter at your own risk – as is the Matadori Desert from the city wall to the boundary wall.
“I will lay the first claim to land – the Crook’d Town Pride claims Level 1 Sirenseron, Level 2 Standingbar and Level 3 Sejon – and all of Crook’d Town will remain ours from Oldfield to the Greenway borderline. Is there anyone here who wishes to challenge me on this?”
