Titanshade

by Dan Stout

  Heavy worker’s clothing kept his torso warm, but his unprotected face and scalp were a bright pink splotched with the pale tinge of early frostbite. But he did wear gloves, and that had allowed him to salvage a jagged piece of rebar. He crouched low, peering at me from around one of the fuel tanks, set back a safe twenty yards or so from the drill tower itself.

  I was tempted to take a shot at him, but I resisted. It was a likely miss, and a wasted bullet. I stared him down instead.

  We were both breathing hard, the smokestack condensation of our breath whipped away by the wind.

  I yelled, forcing my voice over the noise of the equipment. “You’re under arrest!”

  I could have said something more, something clever designed to play to his ego and force him into making a mistake. But my energy was fading, the sun was setting, and I just plain didn’t care if he listened to me or not.

  I didn’t expect him to start laughing.

  “Arrest me?” Numb lips slurred his speech like a drunk on a bender, but it didn’t stop him from running his mouth as much as ever. “Well, I can’t have that, Detective. This is the second age of Titanshade, and you and I need to save this city from outsiders.”

  I took a slow step toward him, then another. Drawing closer to firing range.

  “The first age,” he said, “was when my forebears arrived at this place. An oasis of warmth in the cold, a haven to practice their religion.”

  I kept moving, closing the gap between us while he talked. But he faded back, faster on his feet than I was.

  “The second age,” he said, and the wind stole his words, making it sound as if he was in more than one place at once. “Came with the discovery of oil beneath the ice. When my family raised Titanshade from nothing. A piece of trivia about the northernmost city in the AFS, and they turned it into the heart of the world’s economy!”

  The wind swelled, pelting my eyes with snow and ice. Eyes watering, I squinted, trying to focus. He was gone.

  I turned, pivoting back and forth, trying to get a fix on his location. The sun was fading fast; the surroundings were going to dusk, and only the crown block at the top of the rig remained bathed in sunlight.

  “We make, and they take,” Harlan called out, but I couldn’t tell if he was ahead of me or to the side. “The world runs on Titanshade’s blood. I have a duty to protect this city, to protect my family’s heritage. I’ll not let the second age of this city end on my watch.”

  Snow crunched behind me. He’d managed to circle around.

  He closed on me much faster than I expected. The rebar in his hand darted toward my face like a fencer’s rapier.

  I wrapped my left arm around my head, protectively folded in like a chicken wing. When the rebar struck, the pain was white hot. I couldn’t tell if my arm had broken or not. Either way, I knew I wouldn’t stand against another strike.

  He was too close, my gun out of position. I fired, knowing it would go wild, just trying to force him back, to give me room to get a proper bead on him. Instead he hit me again, this time across the back, a heavy overhand blow that sent a ripple of pain crashing over my shoulders and down each arm. I couldn’t take it, and both arms went numb.

  My revolver fell, striking the ground with a small thunderclap—the impact had discharged it. Chill air snapped as the bullet whipped past my face. I’d come within inches of being killed by my own weapon. The shot’s recoil sent the revolver sliding across the ice.

  Harlan pulled his arm back, winding up for the finishing blow, when the ice rumbled beneath our feet. For the son of a roughneck, it was an unmistakable sound. I couldn’t help it—I looked at the rig.

  On a drill as ancient as that one, whatever blowback preventer had once been installed was the better part of a century old. Or maybe it never had one. Either way, when it did strike, it blew. The ice seemed to shrug beneath us, and there was a whooshing sound as the pressurized liquid sprayed a hundred feet in the air before scattering and raining down on two small men paused in the middle of a fight for their lives.

  Harlan threw his head back and let loose a scream of joy.

  “You see?” he crowed. “Treasure found at the greatest of depths!” Arms out, Harlan spun around, reveling in his vindication. Far below anything that the geologists had said was possible, the rig had struck a reservoir. He was right after all.

  And he was still a killer.

  I dove at him while he was distracted by his victory. We collided and the rebar fell to the snow with a crackling thud.

  He swung his hands wildly. We were both so exhausted, so constricted by our coats, we fought almost like children throwing tantrums. One of his hands slapped across my face, turning my head. A few feet in that direction a dark object lay on the white of the ice plain—the rebar.

  I shoved off of Harlan and scrambled for it, scooping down to get a good grip as the cold metal seared my exposed hands. I turned to him, holding my prize, while the strike roared like a jet engine behind us.

  Ten feet from where I stood Harlan was doubled over, hands on his knees, breathing heavy and staring at me. On the ground beside him was my gun.

  For once he didn’t run his mouth. He picked up the gun, pointed it at me, smiled, and pulled the trigger.

  There was only a click as the hammer fell on a spent shell. He stared at it, shocked at this simple failure. I charged and he had just enough time to look back at me, mouth open, as I swung the piece of rebar as hard as I could. It struck his temple with a sound like a rain-soaked paper bag ripping open.

  He dropped, and I let the rebar fall from my hand. I didn’t need a medical examiner to tell me that Harlan wouldn’t be getting back up again, now or ever. It was over.

  The well’s geyser still arched skyward, and the stream dissipated as it fell, tiny iridescent drops, shimmering in the short-lived winter sun. I looked back the way I’d come. My tracks were already disappearing in the shifting snow.

  I turned a slow circle in place, trying to locate the doghouse. The radio was in there somewhere. I just had to make it back and call for help.

  The patter of drops from the geyser sounded like the applause of an invisible crowd as they fell on the ice and snow around me. I allowed myself a smile. I’d done my job, the sun was setting on this whole nightmare, and the only question was whether I had the strength to stumble to shelter and keep warm until the cavalry arrived.

  I tried to orient myself to head toward safety. The ice plain was coated in a wide circle by the strike spray. Iridescent drops colored the snow where they landed, and my clothes glistened with streaks of color. I don’t know how long I stared, denying the reality of what I was witnessing.

  Harlan and his disfigured genius Heidelbrecht had pumped Jermaine full of manna and oil, intending him to be drawn to petroleum reserves like a compass needle points due north, or an ancient whale could home in on a destination from across the ocean. It almost worked. They’d simply found the wrong treasure. There was only one liquid that shimmered like that, and it wasn’t oil.

  I fell to my knees and threw my head back, watching the manna rain down around me.

  In the fading sunlight the glittering iridescence formed an uneven, impossible rainbow across the wide bowl of the sky. Staring up at the display, my coat’s hood slid off. The manna wet my head and coated my eyes, my hair, my face. It mixed with my tears of exhaustion and wonder.

  Drops of manna traced curved paths over my cheeks and ran into my mouth. There was a pinch on my tongue then it melted away, like cotton candy. There was absolutely no flavor.

  40

  IT WAS TWENTY-FOUR HOURS BEFORE anyone left me alone in the hospital. I was questioned, debriefed, and quizzed by so many bureaucrats and shrinks that I lost count. They wanted to know if I knew about the manna strike in advance, if Harlan had known, if I had used the manna to save myself, and then they wanted to step through the whole th
ing one more time.

  What they really wanted to know was if I was some kind of secret sorcerer or just the luckiest man alive. Exposure to that amount of raw manna was unprecedented. Some of my interviewers thought it may have partially cauterized my fingers, working with the clotting agent I’d already applied. Others conjectured that manna may have been what kept me warm and awake long enough for the rescue party to find me.

  It was all theory. No one knew for sure what it would do to me, or to the land around the strike. For all they knew the entire region was a toxic natural disaster. So the questions kept coming, as fast as I could tell them I had no answers.

  Bryyh finally put an end to it. She didn’t say anything to me, but her voice barked orders and insults outside my room and next thing I knew I was being told to get a good night’s sleep so we could start again in the morning. Once the pencil pushers were gone I checked myself out of the hospital. There was an old friend I needed to visit.

  The first thing I did was find someone who knew the far side of the Mount. I’m a city kid; I can navigate a maze of side streets and back alleys but stick me in a ravine and I’ll wander lost for days.

  It took more doing than expected. Turns out there’s not much call for hiking among the boneyards and sky burial grounds on the northeast side of the Mount. But cash talks, and early the next morning my newly acquired guide and I set out.

  We drove as far up the Mount as the winding funerary roads allowed. When the roads ran out we hiked in silence, my hired guide shooting occasional, furtive glances at me and my disfigured hand. Word of the strike on Cedrow land was getting out, and there wasn’t any avoiding my name being linked to the whole mess. That meant headaches for me and the TPD, but that was a worry for later.

  Now Jax, he’d benefit from the attention. Hemingway, too. A boost to their careers and their names in the papers. The whole thing was enough of a feather in their caps that they could keep their heads down and cruise to a pension on that alone.

  Of course, pensions weren’t an option for Myris. I picked up my pace on the trail, trying to burn off the shame of her death. One more life sacrificed for the greater good, one more grieving family to be consoled.

  At least Talena was safe. With Harlan dead, Paulus had no reason to pursue a scapegoat for the killings. On her own, Paulus might have simply left the kid to rot in the system, but Gellica would help see that the charges were dropped. It was one bright spot I could focus on. I’d fulfilled my promise once more. Jenny’s daughter would be safe, the wolves kept at bay.

  It always came back to Jenny. She’d been my lodestar for over a decade, no matter how bad each of us had screwed up. And I was drawn to her still. She was the reason I’d come to the far side of the Mount.

  * * *

  It took the better part of daylight to make the hike, even with the guide’s help. We stepped between boulders and loose dirt, treading carefully from one ankle-breaking hazard to another, the steady crunch-crunch of our boots the only sound. My newly acquired companion grew more nervous as the day moved into twilight, but I pressed on. Eventually I found what I was looking for between two desk-sized boulders.

  That trial at the CCC hadn’t been as well-intentioned as I’d thought. Whether they knew it or not, the doctors who eased Jenny’s pain by sharing it with me had created a manna bond between us. A bond that held fast even beyond death. My bones ached for no medically sound reason, and I felt a pull toward the Mount that no one could explain, all because Harlan Cedrow had used terminally ill patients in his mad search for oil.

  Even if they knew the plan, I doubt the doctors had thought it would last. It’d surely never occurred to anyone that the sky shepherds might leave something behind. Until I learned how Jermaine Bell-Asandro had been used as a living dowsing rod, I’d never known I needed to look. Now there was no doubt I’d found what I’d come for; I could feel it in my bones.

  Pulling the objects from between boulders, I felt the sarcoma that scarred their surface. The jagged, biting spines erupting from two femurs and a hip bone that had caused Jenny so much pain. A pain I’d carried with me long since it had ceased to trouble her.

  Dropped by the shepherds after Jenny’s sky burial, they’d been caught between the rocks for years. I might never have found them, if not for the relentless, painful tug that led me there. It was time to break the link. Time to let the past rest.

  I could have cremated them, brought them back to town for disposal. But Jenny was a traditionalist.

  Setting a fist-sized metal bowl on a flat rock, I struck a lighter and gave spark to the incense inside. Then I formed the bones in a pyramid around the bowl, letting the smoke wrap around, through, and then above them. The scent would alert the condors circling overhead that an offering awaited.

  I stepped back and encountered the sudden, bleak realization that I had no idea what to do next. I didn’t have a speech ready, and I’ve never so much as touched anything resembling insight or wisdom in my life.

  All I knew was that I missed her. That I’d always miss her.

  In her final days we weren’t back together, at least not romantically. We’d each burned that particular bridge to cinders. But we were united as two best friends, going through her treatments and pain together.

  For all the bad times, I was lucky to have known her. So I said the only thing that made sense.

  “Good-bye, Jenny,” I said. “Thank you.” Voice catching, I bowed my head. “Thank you so much.”

  I pressed two fingers to my lips then held them in the column of smoke, sending a prayer and a kiss aloft with the incense.

  A long moment later I walked away. Above, too far to be seen, the sky shepherds began their slow, spiraling descent from the darkening sky.

  On the trail back to the funerary roads we moved as fast as we could. Neither my guide nor I wanted to be caught outside on the Mount at night. Still, when we came to a low rise I stopped to catch my breath and scanned the horizon.

  From the other side of the Mount the lights of Titanshade created a glowing haze, outlining the jagged edges of the Mount at the periphery of my vision. To the north and east the ice plains continued as far as I could see, frozen and indifferent to the struggles of those who walked the Path.

  But to the south was something new. Dark shapes with piercing headlights traveled in columns stretching far into the distance. From my vantage they looked small, beetle-like and unstoppable, an endless stream of troop transports and camouflage-wrapped trucks. A military convoy from Fracinica and the other city-states that made up the AFS, on their way to secure the new national interest.

  The third age of Titanshade had arrived.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WRITING IS A SOLITARY ACTIVITY, but turning a manuscript into a book is far more than I could handle on my own. What follows is an incomplete list of the friends, family, and collaborators who helped bring Titanshade to bookshelves. My sincerest thanks to the people on these pages, and my sincerest apologies to anyone who I may have inadvertently left out.

  My parents taught me storytelling and provided me with unwavering support. I could write an entire book simply on the ways that they helped me grow and learn, but one quick example will have to suffice. When I was young I played with tiny knights and dragons, creating adventures on the living room floor that I described to my mom. She wrote them down, spacing out the sentences so that I could copy her handwriting on the lines beneath. She taught me to write by copying my own stories.

  Mandy Fox is my lodestar. She is collaborator and coach, critic and best friend. I’m never as happy as when I’m with her, and I plan on staying by her side for as long as she’ll have me.

  Nat Sobel read my short story in Darusha Wehm’s excellent Plan B Magazine, and thought I might have a novel in me. Turns out I did, but I only found it through the encouragement and guidance of Nat and the rest of the team at Sobel Weber: Judith Weber,
Siobhan McBride, Sara Henry, and Adia Wright.

  Another huge thanks is due to my editor, Sheila Gilbert. I couldn’t have asked for a better match. Sheila immediately saw the fun and intrigue lurking in Titanshade, and helped push this novel over the finish line in the best form possible. DAW has been amazing to work with, and I’m forever grateful to Sheila, Betsy Wollheim, Katie Hoffman, Josh Starr, Leah Spann, Jessica Plummer, Lauren Horvath, and Mary Flower.

  If you picked up this book because of the amazing cover, it’s because of Chris McGrath, who is not only an incredibly talented artist but a patient and thoughtful collaborator. Chris took the time to read the text and ask questions to get the feel of the book, while still bringing his own artistic flair. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but with artwork like his on the front of my book, I don’t mind if you do.

  The novel itself was born out of a 90-minute flash fiction challenge on the Liberty Hall site. I owe a huge debt to the participants and to Martin Waller and Mike Munsil, who made the machine work behind the curtain. My challenge cohorts that week were Christine Lucas and Pixiepara, who both provided feedback and encouragement to move ahead.

  Throughout the process I leaned heavily on my fantastic local writers’ group, Writeshop Columbus. The guidance and gentle correction I received there has been fantastic, and the retreats gave me a chance to hone my craft. Special thanks to the Writeshoppers who reviewed my early versions. They include Brian Justus, Jordan Kurella, Sandra J. Kachurek, and Jerry L. Robinette.

  In addition, my online Novel Buddies Stephanie Lorée, Setsu Uzumé, and Jodi Henry each served as sounding boards, cheerleaders, and drill sergeants at different parts of the process. Thanks, guys—I couldn’t have done it without you!