by C. A. Bryers
Salla’s eyes opened, and he knew they would not close to sleep for the rest of the night. All he could think was that this nightmare, this vision, whatever it was—it could be a grim warning foretelling a terrible future that awaited them.
He chased the thought from his mind. Come on, Saar. The Eyes don’t work anymore. They can’t show you anything. He shook his head again as if to transform the thought into a statement of fact.
It was a dream.
That thought was a glimpse of land to a man lost at sea. It protected him from losing all hope. But as he lay there watching the room grow brighter as the sun’s glow began to melt away the night, there was one thought that he could not escape.
What if it wasn’t a dream?
Could he risk taking that chance—could he risk her, if this had indeed been a vision of the future brought on by the Eyes?
2
“Man, you don’t look so good.”
In the bright afternoon sunlight, Dao Zhan looked him up and down as the pair stood at the intersection of two busy streets in Del Topal on the isle of Sinjon. It was Arts in the Islands Day, a holiday designed by the city’s local government to prove that Del Topal was as rich in the arts as its more famous sister city further down the cape, Del Triva. The edges of the weather-beaten streets teemed with artists displaying various works for sale, and it stretched on in all directions for as far as the eye could see.
“Don’t get me wrong, you look better than I figured you’d look since I thought you were dead and all, you know? I’m glad you’re alive, man.” He hesitated. “But you gotta understand I got questions. I haven’t heard a word from you since Kit’s thug dropped you in the water, right? When the Majdi showed up at Tempusalist and started questioning us, they started asking about you, if I saw you in the city. I mean, you weren’t there in Tempusalist at the same time we were out on the Rose, were you?”
Salla nodded. “Yeah, I found my way there.”
Dao clapped his hands, laughing out loud. “That’s just straight wild, man!” His exuberance was quick to fade. “But really, Sall, come on. You let me go on thinking you were dead. Here you were, running around Tempusalist, and then cavorting around an island paradise for two months, and you couldn’t let your old brother Dao know you were still up and kicking? That ain’t right.”
Same old Dao, Salla thought. The big Shozoan was never one to mince words, especially not with someone he had been relatively close to for the better part of six years while both worked and lived on the Mayla Rose.
“I’ve been keeping my head down. You know how it goes. I think the better question is what happened to you? It’s only been a couple of months and you look like a good chunk of you is no longer with us,” Salla said, deflecting the heat a little bit from himself.
Dao, while tall for a Shozoan and still carrying a lot of bulk, was indeed looking leaner than the last time Salla had seen him.
Dao shrugged the compliment off. “Ah, you know. Found myself a wife, and she’s got me eating healthier.”
“A wife, Dao?” Salla gaped. “You never mentioned anybody you’d even been seeing.”
“I wasn’t! Met her right after the whole Gran Senji thing. Figured it was meant to be since she’s a chef, so I didn’t waste any time trussing myself up with her,” he said with a hearty laugh, casually flashing Salla the opela mark tattooed on his inner wrist. “She’s a good woman, and helping keep me straight. Got me a regular gig now on an airship. So come on now, what’s going on with you? Why do you look like you ran all the way here from Kijika-whatever-you-called-it, man?”
As Salla started to speak, he couldn’t help but notice a pair of men wearing the light brown uniforms of the Odyssan Watch coming toward them. The fronts of their protective vests were covered in small pockets that were stuffed with various tools of their trade, and the fixed stare behind the shaders both men wore never wavered from the two former scrappers.
Dao followed his friend’s fixed gaze and let out a long sigh. “It’s okay, Sall. We all got a pardon from the Majdi for what we tried to do to help the Gran Senji, but these smug local shiminakas still keep an eye on us.”
“Language, Dao. If you’re gonna curse at them, at least do it in common Odyssan so I can follow along.”
“Pleasant afternoon, isn’t it, Zhan?” one of the men called out as they neared.
“Suppose it is.” Dao’s tone was immediately flat and unfriendly. “What can I do for you fine gentlemen today? Empty my pockets again? How about we try something new, and I can drop my pants in front of all these nice shoppers so you can see if I’m hiding anything down there? I know, how about we do it down by the culinary quarter, give them something pretty to look at while they eat. Sound good?”
The two Odyssan Watchmen traded a glance, and the one on the right spoke. “We don’t like this any more than you do, Zhan. How about—”
“Who’s your friend?” the darker-skinned of the pair said, pulling a small device from one of the pockets on his vest.
“He’s a friend, that’s who he is. What are you doing?”
“Checking my CCD on him, that’s what. Seems familiar. Might’ve seen his face on a briefing we had a month or so back.” He laughed as he looked down at the compact criminal datalog. “Never know when luck might drop a gift in your lap, am I right? Now, what’s your name, friend?”
“Sibo Lar.” As soon as the name was out of his mouth, Salla silently scolded himself, remembering the alias was one he’d used in his scrapping days. He could feel the sweat begin to rise from the skin at the back of his neck. “Came to town for the art festival and bumped into Dao here.”
Fingers tapped at the device, and the Watchman peered at him through the dark lenses. “You didn’t happen to be a friend of this man while he was out on these fine waters stealing from the Odyssan populace, were you?”
Salla shook his head before the question was even finished. “No, no, no. I mean, no.” He glanced at Dao. “No?”
Dao’s eyes were closed, and he too was shaking his head with the slightest trace of a wince. “We became friends after he helped save my sister during a shark attack. He knew me back then, but didn’t know what I was doing for a living.”
Salla expelled a heavy, regretful sigh. “What a mess that day was. How is Mey, anyway?”
“She’s fine, Sibo.” Dao turned to the two Watchmen. “Satisfied?”
The man with the CCD was still tapping the buttons on the face of the device. “Not finding much on a Sibo Lar.”
Dao snorted. “Maybe that’s because he’s not a criminal in your little datalog.”
The Watchman shrugged and turned the CCD around to show them the display screen. “No, but something about this face here looks familiar.”
Salla felt as though his insides had taken an abrupt plunge. What he saw before him was an image of himself on the scuffed screen, his face framed by ragged knotlocks under the header of “KNOWN ASSOCIATES OF DAO ZHAN.”
The Watchman looked at the CCD again, grinning. “Salla Saar…Sibo Lar. You didn’t sprain anything coming up with that name, did you?”
Salla coughed, eyes darting for an escape route. “I can explain.”
“No you can’t,” Dao said with a long-winded sigh, eyes gazing up at the heavens.
The two Odyssan Watchmen just stood there and stared, waiting.
After a moment’s consideration, Salla shrugged. “Dao, when you’re right, you’re right.”
With that, Salla turned and ran. Unfortunately, right behind him was a painter’s makeshift display booth, and he crashed right through it. Shouts of alarm sprang up in all directions as he kept going, pounding his way through the narrow strip of land between the line of booths and the buildings behind them. Whipping his head about for a moment to catch sight of his pursuers, Salla spotted both Watchmen hounding his trail. Suddenly, the corridor of space terminated ahead at the bend of the building he sprinted alongside, leaving him no choice but to dart back into the street.
Salla tore through another artist’s little exhibit, swatting a pair of easels aside as his body careened into the artist herself, knocking them both to the ground. Rolling with the fall, he glanced to make sure the woman was unhurt as he scrambled back to his feet. The Watchmen burst through the opening after him, and ahead, now there were people in the streets putting their bodies in the way to halt the pursuit. Spotting a sliver of an opening to the right, he made a dash for it. A few patrons and artists tried snagging him by the arms, clothes, anything, but Salla had momentum on his side, and he broke through.
Another stolen glance behind, and the two Watchmen were still there, hurtling through the crowd like ravenous dogs let loose to hunt. As Salla cut away from the masses filling the streets to dart between two buildings, he found himself wishing he’d never come to find Dao, never come back to the Odyssan Archipelago. He had been safe with Natke—
But she wasn’t safe with you, he thought darkly as he charged up a staircase leading into an open doorway. His body shot inside, and a new outburst of cries rose up from the well-dressed gathering around what appeared to be a private exhibit for Del Topal’s more elite artists and art patrons. Pushing his way past a couple who simply stood and gaped at him, Salla headed for a spiral stairwell at the back of the room, hoping it might lead somewhere he could hide. The metal steps rattled as he made his harried ascent, and judging from a second round of howls below, the Odyssan Watchmen were still on his heels.
When the spiral staircase ended, Salla found himself in an attic, surrounded by row upon row of paintings lining the walls. There was nowhere to hide, and no doors through which he might escape. His only option was a window, but there was no telling if there was a terrace, a switchback staircase, or nothing at all outside it. He pushed the dusty glass pane open and was greeted by a burst of fresh air and empty space before him. Looking down, a weathered brown awning lined the building just above ground level.
“Don’t move!” one of the Watchmen shouted, rising up fast from the staircase to confront him.
No choice, Salla thought, letting his body tumble through the opening and into the void. The awning might as well have been an illusion fabricated by his mind to convince him to jump. He felt his body tear through it as if he had fallen through a sheet of paper, and his body landed hard on the ground underneath. The world tumbled away into shadow for a moment, but when his eyes opened again, he saw a blurry vision of the ragged hole in the faded brown fabric overhead. With a groan, Salla got to his feet and loped off around the corner. Though aching, nothing seemed to be broken, and he pushed himself to go faster.
A couple blocks further down the road, now well away from the art festival, Salla’s presence of mind was beginning to settle under a shroud of haze. He couldn’t tell if the Watchmen were still after him, or if he’d lost them with the unexpected plunge. Right now, it didn’t matter. All he knew was that he was mere seconds from collapse. Staggering into an alleyway cluttered with sacks of trash and other debris, Salla felt the world about him giving way. His surroundings made a dizzying spin and then…nothing.
***
The humidity had dissipated and the skies were dark by the time Salla woke. Shuffling to the opening of the alley, still sore, he peered into the streets. The sounds of the art festival had long fallen silent, the music, the excited sales pitches and questions from passersby replaced by the buzzing of insects and the idle conversation of a couple enjoying a late-evening stroll. Regardless of the drastic change in the town’s activity, Salla still kept a wary eye out for Odyssan Watch patrols as he ambled into the street. Further down the road, he eyed an information kiosk and stepped briskly toward it. Snatching a city map from the stand, he unfolded it and began to get his bearings. Once he’d found the location he sought, Salla put the map away and began what promised to be a short journey from where he now stood.
The Majdi were persistent, he had to give them that. Even though the two Watchmen who had chased him through the art festival were no Majdi, he had little doubt it was the Order who had directed the Odyssan Watch to capture him. Underneath the image of his face on the compact criminal datalog, it had read in no uncertain terms that he was to be detained for questioning. Salla knew what that meant. Or rather, he had a terrible idea of what that might entail. Because the Majdi Order were perhaps the only ones in the world who knew of the Eyes of the One, who understood their nature, it fell upon them to contain that power should it ever escape. That power was in him now, dormant as it might be at the moment, but it was loose in the world and the Order could not permit it to remain as such.
“Still free,” he whispered under his breath, looking up between buildings at the starlit cobalt sky. He gave a halfhearted laugh, his gaze falling back down to his feet. “Free. Right. Because this is freedom.”
How much longer could he go on like this? When would—
***
When Salla opened his eyes again, the cracked black pavement of the street was a foot from his face. He was in the midst of lifting himself up off the ground, he realized, and had no idea how he’d gotten there, or how long he’d been down. A resonant pain throbbed from the side of his face, his arms trembled weakly, and Salla rolled into a sitting position.
“Yeah,” he wheezed, “this is fantastic.”
With eyes closed, Salla let the cool night air waft past him, sitting with his back to the wall in an otherwise empty street like some hapless beggar. There was no panic associated with these episodes anymore. They occurred so frequently, these bouts of blinding pain and blackouts were becoming no more unusual than waking up in the morning and falling asleep at night.
When he felt the strength returning to his arms and legs, Salla struggled back to his feet. He felt like an old man, sixty years suddenly added to his life without his knowledge or consent. The slow, awkward gait that got him moving again steadied and quickened, and Salla began to feel like himself again.
A quarter of an hour later, in one of Del Topal’s many housing districts, Salla stopped. The pavement had ended a few blocks behind, and now he was shuffling through a sandy lane dotted with footprints and rutted overlander tracks. The houses rested on higher banks of sand on either side, segmented structures with rounded doorways and windows, lending them a more primitive aesthetic.
One home sat on each corner of the intersection upon which he stood. He was in the right place, but there was nothing to signify which house was the one he wanted. Thrusting a hand into his pocket, Salla produced his comm, opened it, and tapped out a message onto the small keypad. Then, he waited.
To his left, a light flicked on, and Salla had his answer. Once halfway there, the door to the house opened, and a large shadow parted from the darkness within, stepping into the bright wash of moonlight.
“Evening, Dao.”
Dao shuffled through the sand in front of his house, meeting Salla halfway. “What are you doing here, man? After that duck-and-run you pulled, you come here? They were spittin’ questions at me for over an hour in that street, and you come wandering back like nothing happened? What’s wrong with your head, man?”
“I’d make a list, but I don’t have any paper.” He dropped his gaze like a scolded teenager, absently digging his boots into the sand. “I’m sorry, Dao. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”
The big man shrugged with a heavy sigh. “It’s all right. We go back far enough for me to let a thing or two slide, you know?”
Salla leaned to the side, looking around Dao’s broad frame. “Nice place.”
Dao chuckled, looking back at the house. “It’s the lady’s place. Nothing too lavish, but it’s not like we ever made that big score all us scrappers dream about, right? So, this is what we got. I like it.”
“Can’t picture you married, Dao.”
“Hey, it’s late, man. How about stuffing the small talk, you know? Why are you here in town? Why’d you leave that girl you were with?” His face twisted in thought. “Wait. I don’t even know how you
made it after Kit and that hood-head Loc Soto of hers dropped you off the Rose.”
Salla nodded. “There’s a lot to tell, I know. I don’t know where to begin.”
“How about the last time I saw you? Falling headfirst into the water, tied up hand and foot?” Dao’s hands parted expectantly. “Seems as good a place as any.”
Salla told him. He told him everything about how he’d survived Kitayne’s mutiny, finding Natke Orino and convincing her of what he had to do to set things right. He even touched upon his previous relationship with Natke, where the two of them had lost their entire team in the caves at the bottom of the jungles of the Kanejungdara—the very same caves that he and Natke had returned to in order to retrieve the Eyes of the One, a power that would lead them to the lost city of Tempusalist.
The tiredness seemed to ebb from Dao’s face as he took in the tale, eyes often widening in amazement, but never disbelief—even when he told the story of the Magsem, the spirit attached to Tempusalist that acted as the arbiter of tephic for the Majdi who called upon that power in the region.
“That—that ghost thing. It touched you? What did it feel like?” Dao’s eyes were lit up, the corners of his mouth fighting to hold back a broad smile of vindication.
Salla knew what his big friend was thinking. “This isn’t about ghosts or proof that our ancestors might really be out there for us, Dao. I know you believe, but what I saw up on that bridge wasn’t some lost family member. Ever since that day…” He let the words trail off. He didn’t want to describe what was happening, or where he suspected the blackouts and the horrific flashes of agony were all heading. “It’s bad. It’s getting worse. I don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
Concern was written all over Dao’s face. “What are you gonna do? We’ve got to get you somewhere. Someone’s got to be able to help you.”
Salla shook his head. “I don’t think there is any help. The only ones who might know anything about this are the Majdi—”
