Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan; Marianne S. Jablon

  “You want to see him?”

  Berlin nodded, then blew her nose when Pazzo shuffled off. He came back a few moments later with Locas in tow.

  “This guy makes you feel bad….” Pazzo began.

  “I’m okay, Pazzo. Honest.”

  Locas waited until the old bo left them alone, then sank down on the log that Stick had so recently vacated. “Shit, Berlin. Chew got some weird friends.”

  “That include you?”

  “Fuckin’ A.” He grinned, white teeth gleaming against his dark skin, until Berlin couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Did you have any luck?” she asked.

  Locas shrugged. “Okay. Sammy’s no problem. He’s got a hard on for whoever’s dumping this shake on the streets an’ if chew can deliver ‘em, he’ll back us.”

  “What about the Dragons?”

  “Well, Jackie Won’d take your balls—just sayin’ chew had any. But they’ll be there. Billy Hu’s sendin’ somebody to look out for the Cho interests—I think it’s gonna be Hsian.”

  “At least he’s honest. What about the Bloods?”

  “There’ll be Bloods an’ Wharf Rats there—a little bit of everybody, all lookin’ to take a piece of chew, just sayin’ chew can’t deliver.”

  Berlin nodded. “And can we?”

  “John Cocklejohn tracked ’em down. Lady chew want’s called Ysa Cran. She’s tight with someone from across the Border, but the word don’t say who. Chew gotta deliver her, Berlin. There’s no way me an’ John can handle her. She’s feral, man.”

  A faraway look came into Berlin’s eyes. “Oh, I can deliver her.”

  “Chew know her?”

  “I know where to find her.”

  “Then what chew waitin’ for?”

  “Nightfall. What time did you set the meet for?”

  “Midnight. In the old station.”

  “Be there, or be square,” Berlin said softly.

  Locas shook his head. “Chew got some weird ways of puttin’ together words, Berlin.”

  NINE

  The wizard couldn’t help her.

  “It’s not that I won’t,” Farrel Din told Manda. “It’s that I can’t.”

  They were sitting at a back table in The Dancing Ferret. The club was quiet, drifting in the lull between the lunch and dinner crowds. By mid-evening, once the band was on stage, the place would be so crowded there wouldn’t be standing space or a moment’s quiet. Right now Manda could hear the tinkle of Jenny Jingle’s bells as she moved about across the room, sweeping.

  Farrel Din sighed. “This has been a long time coming.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not my story to tell.”

  “Okay. But why can’t you help me?”

  Farrel Din regarded her for a moment, then set about cleaning and refilling his pipe.

  “My kind of magic doesn’t work on someone like Stick,” he said once he had the pipe going.

  A cloud of smoke drifted up above his head.

  Manda nodded slowly, remembering. There’d been a time when the wizard had put a spell on the Horn Dance’s music. It had affected everyone who could hear it except for Stick and the elf he was trying to avoid killing at the time. He hadn’t been able to avoid it.

  “Is there anyone who can help me?” she asked.

  “Shoki.”

  “Who’s Shoki?” She had a dim recollection of hearing the name before. It seemed that Stick had mentioned it once. “Where can I find him?”

  “I can bring you to him.”

  Manda turned at the sound of the new voice to find another of The Ferret’s waitresses standing by their table.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing,” Laura said.

  Manda waved off her apology. “That doesn’t matter. Not if you know who he is.”

  “I live with him.”

  Manda glanced at Jenny, still sweeping. “He’s Koga? The Sensei?”

  Laura nodded.

  Manda reached out and squeezed Farrel Din’s hand where it lay on the tabletop.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Can I get the time off?” Laura asked.

  Farrel Din nodded. “Just be careful. You’re stepping into a grey area. Sometimes the more you try to help, the worse things get.”

  “I can’t let him kill Berlin,” Manda said, rising from the table. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Stick, but I’m not going to let him do this. Not to her. Not to himself.”

  There were times, Farrel Din thought as he watched them leave, that he wondered why he’d ever crossed the Borders to stay here. Elfland had its own dangers—there was no denying that—but Bordertown was such a mix of differing cultures, each with its own beliefs and particular guardians, that the city could never let up its balancing act between various disasters. All it had to do was lean too far, one way, or the other….

  Koga was dressed in what Manda took to be some sort of ceremonial outfit when they arrived at his dojo. He wore a kimono and hakama of black silk, with a white silk under kimono and a dark red obi, or sash. On his shoulder was his family crest, a circular ka-mon worked in white silk stitches. The big room was empty except for him. He was seated in a seiza position and appeared to be waiting for them. Two swords, a katana and the smaller wakazashi, rested in a small wooden frame in front of him.

  Laura removed her shoes and flowed into the room ahead of Manda. When she stepped in front of Koga, she knelt on the matted floor and gave him a short bow before sitting up, back straight as a board.

  They were acting like Sensei and student, instead of lovers, Manda thought. For some reason that bothered her. She fumbled with her boots and got them off, but didn’t try to copy Laura’s entrance. She shuffled across the floor and stood awkwardly above them for a moment, then sat down. It was hard to get comfortable. She didn’t feel that she should slouch, but just a few moments of trying to copy their straight-backed posture made her muscles ache.

  Koga inclined his head briefly to her. “How can I help you, Amanda?” he asked.

  You mean you don’t already know? she thought, but she kept that to herself. They were obviously going through something ceremonial thing. If Koga was the only one that could help her with Stick, she didn’t want to blow it by rocking the boat.

  “It’s Stick,” she said, and then plunged into her story. When she was done, Koga told her about Onisu and Stick and the part he had played in Onisu’s death.

  “So he thinks Berlin’s this Onisu?” Manda asked.

  “That is simplifying it, but, yes.”

  “And when he came to you…?”

  “I think he came for help. Any punk in Dragontown could have identified that marker for him. Instead he came to me. You must understand. Stick is no longer who he is—he is who he was. That is why he came to me. Farrel Din and I are the only ones who were there when it all went down.”

  “I’m confused,” Manda said. “These dragons….”

  “They are guardian spirits. Dragons are what we name them in New Asia—that’s why the street gangs call themselves Dragons. They see themselves as Dragontown’s protectors.”

  “But Berlin and Stick… they’re real dragons?”

  “They are guardian spirits, yes. They have a great responsibility, being the earthly representations of the elements. The powers they have may not be abused. Their work is done in subtle ways—not on a grand scale as poets and storytellers would have it—but in small things.”

  Manda tried to think it all through.

  “What if he’s right?” she said finally. “What if Berlin’s really stepped across this line?”

  Koga shook his head. “I talked to one of her friends. Berlin’s called a meeting tonight between the various factions of Bordertown to plead her case. That is not the action of one who has turned her back upon her responsibilities.”

  “Does Stick know this? That’d change everything, wouldn’t it?”

  “The same source told me that Stick and Berlin have already spoke
n today, but Stick is hearing only an echo of the past—he is in the past.”

  Manda rubbed her face with her hands. “So what happens? What can we do?”

  “Not we. This is my responsibility, Manda. I have to stop him.” As he spoke, he took the long katana from the wooden rack in front of him and laid its sheathed length across his knees. “You will excuse me now, please. I need time to meditate.”

  Manda shivered. This was too much like Stick sitting up on the Museum’s roof.

  Laura caught her arm. “We’d better go,” she said.

  “But—”

  Laura shook her head. Drawing Manda to her feet, she collected their footgear and led the way outside.

  “He’s going to kill Stick!” Manda wailed once they were out on the stairs. “That’s not the kind of help I came for.”

  “Believe me,” Laura said. “Killing Stick is the last thing Koga would want to do.”

  “And what if there’s no other way to stop him?”

  Laura didn’t have an answer to that.

  “I’m staying right here,” Manda said, “and when Koga leaves, I’m going with him, whether he wants me to or not.”

  “We’re both going,” Laura said. Koga was good, maybe the best that Bordertown had for this kind of a thing, but Stick was good too. How good, she didn’t know. She hoped they wouldn’t have to find out. But if it came down to a fight, she was damn sure going to be there in case Koga needed her.

  Manda sat down in a slump at the top of the stairs. “I feel like I’ve just sold Stick out,” she said.

  Laura sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. “The past’s there waiting to betray us all, Manda. You didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

  “Tell that to my heart.”

  Laura didn’t have an answer for that either.

  TEN

  The room was as dark as her soul.

  Ysa Cran paused in the doorway. She lived on the top floor of an abandoned brownstone that squatted near the Old Wall. She had a thing about coming home to a dark apartment, so she always had a lightbox going, night and day. She could afford it. She had only the best. Guaranteed to last forever or until she trashed it, whichever came first.

  Her building was spelled with safeguards—it had to be. This was where she kept her stash. This was where she could be who she was, alone, no masks, no need to strut. No one came here. The safeguards would let nobody in but one person, and that was Ysa Cran. Even a High Born like Corwyn couldn’t get through unless she let him. The safeguards came from straight across the Border and were keyed to her and her alone.

  But now the lightbox was out. The room was dark. And she wasn’t alone. She knew that without having to step across the threshold. Someone was in there, waiting for her. Someone who knew where to find her. Someone good enough to get through the safeguards. She loosed a heavy length of chain from around her waist and let one end fall to the floor with a clank.

  “Ysa Cran, Ysa Cran,” a husky voice called from out of the darkness. “No one loves her, Blood or man.”

  Ysa’s silver eyes narrowed and she took a firmer grip on the chain. She took a step forward and the lightbox came on—not in a flash, but slowly, erasing the shadows one by one, until Ysa could see the small figure in blue jeans sitting in a chair waiting for her.

  “You’re dead meat, Berlin,” she hissed.

  Berlin didn’t move except to shake her head. “Everybody’s got it in for poor Berlin and we know why, don’t we? Ysa Cran, Ysa Cran, nobody loves—”

  “Shut up!”

  “What’s the matter, Ysa? That bring back bad memories? I know all about you—living up on the Hill, had the best of everything, but somehow something got left out, right? You’re like those stories they like to tell about Bloods out in the World—you got no soul.”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  “I’m not saying you didn’t have it hard,” Berlin said. “but we’ve all had some hard knocks, Ysa. That doesn’t mean we go around fucking everybody else up. What’s the matter? You figure the world owes you something? You figure that Ysa Cran’s better than everybody else and she doesn’t have to bust her ass like the rest of us do?”

  Ysa started forward, the chain coming up, but something in Berlin’s eyes stopped her. There was a red flickering there, behind the violet. Something inhuman that had nothing to do with the hills across the Border.

  “You….” her voice trailed off.

  “No, you made the mistake, Ysa. And now you’ve got to make it up.”

  Ysa stared at her. She’d heard about the meeting that had been called tonight in the old train station. Berlin was going to be there to set everybody straight. Oh, they’d had a good laugh about that—Teddy Grim, Nabber and her. What was Berlin going to do? Hand over her ass on a silver platter? Because there was no way anybody was going to listen to shit from Berlin—not after the job she and her boys had done on her rep. Only now Ysa began to understand what was going down. And looking into the fires that burned in those violet eyes, she got her first inkling of just what they’d been fooling around with.

  “Listen,” she tried. “I never knew you were one of… one of them.”

  “You think that matters now? You think that’s going to bring Nicky back? Or those kids you burned in the house by the Market? Or the two Rats I had to take down by the river?”

  “No, it’s just—”

  Berlin cut her off with a shake of her head. “It’s time to pay the piper, Ysa. You know how it goes?”

  Ysa began to back out of the room, but Berlin was too fast for her. She was out of the chair, around the Blood and blocking the door, before Ysa even started to get away. A flicker of a hand and Ysa’s wrist went numb. The chain dropped with a clatter to the floor. Another flicker, this time a foot, and Ysa crumpled down on top of the chain, her whole right leg numb.

  “Who’s your connection?” Berlin asked. “Who’s passing the dope to you?”

  A wrist knife appeared in Ysa’s hand. She made an awkward lunge with it, but Berlin just flowed back out of reach. Her left foot seemed to float in the air as she stepped back. The knife went skittering across the room. Ysa clutched a broken wrist to her chest, biting back the pain.

  “Who is it, Ysa?”

  “Are you… kidding? I open my mouth and I’m dead.”

  “What do you think we’re doing here—playing a game?”

  Berlin feinted another kick. Ysa flinched, but Berlin could tell that this was one thing she wasn’t going to get out of the Blood. It was lying there, hidden behind her silver eyes. A locked door that no amount of pain was going to open.

  “Okay,” she said. “I guess that name’s going to be your private little treasure. I just hope it sees you through the night.”

  “What… what do you mean?” Ysa asked, but she already knew. It was all going to go down at the train station.

  “You’re clearing my name.”

  “I….”

  “That’s not open to discussion,” Berlin told her. “You’re clearing my name, period. And don’t think you can weasel out of it once we’re there. I’ve got backing like you wouldn’t believe on this.”

  But Ysa was already calculating her chances. She could plead her innocence—Christ, who was going to believe Berlin at this point of the game? Who was even going to take the time to listen to her?

  “Sure,” she said. “Anything you say.”

  Berlin smiled. “You’re so easy to read, Ysa. Maybe you should ask me about my backing before you go off half-cocked, thinking you’re going to squeeze out of another scrape.”

  “Okay. What’s your backing?”

  “Dogtown’s coming to the meeting. You still think you’re not going to spill your guts? You still think they’re going to take me down when I’ve got that pack guarding each door and my ass?”

  She watched the spirit finally break in Ysa’s eyes, but it gave her no pleasure. Like she’d told the Blood earlier, it didn’t bring the dead back.
/>
  Reaching down, she pulled Ysa to her feet by the scruff of her leather jacket and propelled her out the door. Ysa staggered against a wall, trying to keep to her feet. The one numbed leg barely held her weight. Berlin never gave her a chance to steady herself. She just kept shoving her along. Down the stairs. Out through the foyer. Onto the street. Down to the train station.

  They heard the distant sound of the Mock Avenue Bell Tower ring the half hour. Midnight was only another thirty minutes away.

  It’ll all be over soon, Berlin thought. Except for one thing. She still had to deal with the spectre of somebody else’s past.

  She still had to deal with Stick.

  ELEVEN

  Midnight came and went.

  Stick lifted his head slowly and gazed across the Museum’s roof. A bat moved in his field of vision, a quick silent swoop, then it was gone. He closed his fingers around the katana’s lacquered wood sheath. His mind moved in the past. He saw a red-eyed rogue dragon and a man clad all in black silk. He watched the blade rise, then come down, as quick and smooth as the bat’s flight. Blood sprayed. The night was suddenly filled with its hot scent.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Stick rose silently. He thrust the katana into his belt and and left the roof-top at a gliding walk. Down through the Museum he went, one more ghost in a building over-filled with ghosts.

  On the street outside he paused, nostrils widening to take in the still night air. Bordertown held its secrets close to its vest, but unerringly, he turned and drifted down the street, making for the old train station that bordered Dogtown. Behind him, low to the ground, Lubin padded silently in his wake, but he never noticed the ferret.

  He was still moving through the past, trying to reach a point in it before the figure in black silk buried his katana in dragon flesh. He quickened his pace, grinding his teeth as he loped down the silent streets. It was long past time for him to shoulder the responsibilities that he’d once shirked. He wasn’t sure how it had come to be that he could return to the past, that he could give Onisu the freedom now that in another life he hadn’t been able to. All he knew was that this time he wouldn’t fail her. No matter what face she wore. He would do what had to be done.