Fire

by Jim Heskett

  She sat across from him and wrapped her hands lightly around the cup, letting it warm her palms. They stared at each other. After a moment, he gave her the signature wry grin, the same one that always sent a little rush from her stomach into her head. But, she didn't feel sexy right now. He probably hadn’t meant it in that way, though.

  The tables at the tea shop were spaced far enough apart, so she didn't worry too much about people in the immediate area hearing her conversation. Still, she kept her voice low. "You said you had some ideas."

  "I've heard rumblings. People at the brothel talking about organizations around the city. Some call them terrorist groups."

  "White Flames?" she asked.

  “Yes, and others. Those sun worshipers we first saw back in Pinedale? There are a whole bunch of them in Denver. They’re strong here. Them, plus a lot of others are Frenchie sympathizers, which means they’re against the king."

  "Are you suggesting that we join them?" Rosia asked. “The second we align our plans with any particular group, we lose control of our end.”

  “I just keep thinking back to our educational classes from when we were young. One of the battle strategists who said something like, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

  Rosia sat back and took a slow breath. She drummed her fingertips against the side of her ceramic tea mug. Maybe joining up was a reasonable plan, but it felt risky.

  Across the room, a young lady sat alone at a table, drinking tea. Rosia recognized her from the brothel. She was one of the younger putas, maybe beyond her teenage years, but maybe not even twenty. The girl was apparently one of the putas who was able to come and go as she pleased. But, Rosia could tell by the look on her face that this young girl was not free. She wore a short skirt and a top with spaghetti straps. Along her shoulders and upper thighs, the faded hints of bruises lingered there. The girl’s eyes studied the brownish liquid in her cup, her lips pulled down into a frown.

  “What are you looking at?” Yorick asked.

  “Nothing,” Rosia said. “A sad girl.”

  Yorick tilted his head a little, spying out of the corner of his eye. “I know her. She was friends with the one who got her throat cut in the restaurant yesterday. I saw them in the exercise room together, right after we got the jobs.”

  Rosia gripped her mug of tea. The heat became pain as it leeched into her palms. How horrible it must be for this girl to lose her friend and then not be able to speak to anyone about it? The brothel staff had made it clear no one was to mention the puta who had died yesterday.

  Mourning in silence, all because of the whims of some rich man who didn’t get what he wanted when he wanted it, and so he tossed aside a human being like a spent shell casing.

  Rosia cleared her throat and turned her attention back to Yorick. “Okay, let's imagine we find a group to join. How do we contribute? Terrorist groups hurt innocent people, destroy property, and they are hardly ever effective. It’s a lot of noise and not much real change.”

  "That's all true. But, I don't know another way to enlist help. If we want to make real change, isn't having numbers on our side the best way to do it? Think about battle strategy: do you go into war with a squadron or a battalion?"

  "Are we going to war? Or are we trying to accomplish one specific task? You said the goal was to free the slaves. Is going to war the best way to achieve that? Do you expect this will be like the plantación? I don’t think if we kill the king, then everything else falls into line and opens like a flower. Maybe there is a way one press of a button can free all the slaves across the entire kingdom, but I doubt it.”

  Yorick chuckled a little under his breath. "When you put it that way, it does sound silly and…” he paused, his eyes searching the ceiling. "What's the word for hopeless and no point?"

  "Futile."

  "Yes, futile. You're right. Full on assault is probably not the best way. But, I do know this: whatever we need to do is inside that capitol building. Going around to every plantación in the kingdom one at a time is not a reasonable idea. There has to be a central method of controlling all the plantación gates, and if it exists, it’s inside that building.”

  Rosia eyed the clock on the wall. A sense of unease chilled her. Tenney should have been here by now, and somehow, the room felt different. She couldn’t say why. "So, infiltration, and not assault."

  "It makes the most sense. We get in, find a way to control the systems, and then we have the power. We open all the gates and give the serfs a real chance at freedom. Then, we make them the owners of their destiny.”

  Rosia turned her palms up. “So now we have our first challenge. Getting inside that building and finding a way to move around freely. We need access and mobility. How do we do that?"

  Yorick stared at his hands for a few seconds. Finally, he looked up. “Just like you said this morning. Diego."

  “It makes the most sense. He’s a pinche pendejo, but he’s accessible. We know he comes to the brothel, and that gives us something, at least.”

  Rosia and Yorick held each other's gaze for a few more seconds, not speaking. Seemed like the plan was set, or at least, a path forward to making a plan.

  An itch came to the back of Rosia’s head. The baby hairs along her neckline stood at attention, and she didn't know why the sudden change made all of her senses heightened. She leaned forward. "This is probably going to get all of us killed."

  "I know," Yorick said, nodding. "But I think we have to try."

  Rosia held out her pinky finger across the table. Yorick also put his forward, and they touched the pads of their fingers together. "Always," Rosia said.

  "Always," Yorick said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tenney ran as fast as he could. His top speed wasn’t all that fast, however, since he was still recovering from both a gunshot wound and a smushed foot. Plus, he didn’t know the streets in this area, and he wasn’t sure how to reach the tea shop by memory.

  His colleagues back at the sun worshipper hideout had called after him when he suddenly turned and dashed away from them. Tenney had paid them no attention. He hadn’t been clear on what his part in the potential bombing would be, but he knew he didn’t want to contribute to such a horrible event. Even if Rosia and Yorick weren’t there, no way would Tenney support the killing of innocent people. There had to be ways to protest the king and his government without murdering innocents, right?

  Among the shouts had been Santiago’s booming bass voice. He’d declared everything was already in place. That Tenney wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop the attack.

  But that couldn’t be true. Tenney refused to believe it. If he had to, he would hurl a brick through the front window of the tea shop to scare everyone out of there.

  As he ran, the ballooning clouds above finally broke open, and rain cascaded down to the earth. At first, a few splats on the concrete, then faster, then it came in a torrent. Most people out walking raced inside for shelter.

  Soon, Tenney had the streets to himself. His shoes smacked puddles, sending fresh rainwater up onto his pants. His eyes, rainwater dribbling down into them, tracked all over when he reached the next intersection. 19th and Royal Street. 19th was closer to 17th, but he didn’t know which way led to Champa.

  He would find 17th first, and then Champa. Tenney darted right, toward 18th. As he thundered along the sidewalk, the rain turned to chunky white particles. Not quite snow, but not quite rain. Hail. The chunks fattened and pelted the earth like millions of marbles cascading from the sky. His vision blurred as the air around filled with murky whiteness.

  When he hit 17th, Tenney stopped and spun around, checking all four possible directions. He couldn’t see well enough to read the street signs at the next intersections. Too far and too hazy with the warm hail everywhere.

  Car horns honked, their headlights cutting through the gloom. Tenney had to choose a direction. But, he couldn’t do it. What if he chose wrong?

  But, it didn’t matter in the end. I
nstead of finding the tea shop by sight, he found it by the sound of the explosion.

  The boom rocked a building up ahead, from around the next corner. East of his current location. He pointed in that direction and launched with everything he had in him.

  A second later, the boom turned into a reverberating wave of crinkling glass.

  Tenney rushed forward, throat closed, unable to breathe. He rounded the corner to see a plume of smoke billowing from the eroded husk of the former tea shop. Bodies strewn about. How many? Impossible to know on sight. Blood and limbs in the streets. The dead, the dying, the wailing wounded.

  Tenney’s world boiled. Were his friends dead? Had they made their appointment to meet him and been caught in the blast?

  The message board across the street had also been destroyed. No way to know if they had tried to contact him recently.

  The weather lightened, and Tenney could now hear the shouts and screams of the injured all around. The hail then ceased, and the last bits of it fell to the earth in a giant wave, pelting the dead and dying in one final insult.

  A figure near the back alley behind the tea shop scampered out from the wreckage. A man, but not someone hurt. Someone moving freely. Tenney recognized him as one of the sun worshippers. A colleague.

  Tenney’s heart thumped. He wasn’t supposed to be here. If he was spotted, then they would know he had come here to stop it. As horrible as this situation had become, Tenney’s instinct for self-preservation kicked in. Maybe there was a chance he still could avoid Santiago’s scrutiny.

  Thinking of himself at a moment like this turned Tenney’s stomach. But he had to run. Soldados would be here at any moment. Not knowing what else to do, he fled the scene.

  Yorick watched the explosion when it happened. Not from within the tea shop, but across the street. Standing at a window on the third floor of an abandoned building diagonal from the building that housed the little business that brewed and sold tea.

  Five minutes before, Rosia had been fidgeting in her seat. Yorick knew her intuition had been whispering to her. She said something didn’t feel right about the tea shop, and they should leave immediately. Yorick wanted to argue with her, to tell her that Tenney would arrive at any moment, but he could see the look in her eye. When Rosia set her mind to something, there was no sense in trying to persuade her otherwise.

  Outside, it began to rain, then storm, then finally, hail cascaded. Yorick had seen hail only a few times in his life. The little chunks hurt when they hit. He remembered that much.

  Entering the abandoned building had been Yorick’s idea. He wanted to move to a spot where they could see Tenney approach, but not be out in plain sight of any soldados who might wander down the street. Plus, loitering in a hailstorm became unpleasant, fast.

  They were both hovering at the window, watching the streets when the building exploded. Rosia gasped. She pressed her palms against the window, her face a horror. Yorick heaved in a breath, prickly needles all across his skin.

  Yorick had to wonder if that bomb had been meant for them, specifically to kill them.

  “Oh my stars,” Rosia said as the explosion bloomed across the street. “No, no no.”

  Yorick’s hand landed on her shoulder. “You saved our lives. We would be dead in there if it weren’t for you. You saved us.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Something didn’t feel right. Maybe I saw someone across the street or in the tea shop. I thought soldados were coming. Not a bomb.”

  “Only the stars know for sure.”

  She turned back to look outside as the hail stopped. Now, they could both get a clear picture of the devastation below. There had been two dozen people inside the tea shop when they’d left it. Impossible to tell how many bodies were out there now, but Yorick counted at least five torsos, and three or four times that many stray limbs. Five or six people wandering around, bloodied, screaming and crying. Awful.

  “We need to help them,” Rosia said. “There are hurt people down there.”

  “What can we do? The soldados will be here any second. We can’t be seen down there among them. What if they bring us in for questioning about the attack?”

  “But, we have to…”

  Yorick clenched his teeth. “I’m sorry, I know it’s terrible. We have to stay out of it.”

  She wiped tears from her cheeks and gave a mournful nod. “No, you’re right. We can’t do anything, anyway.” She paused, her eyes glassy. For a few seconds, they both stared, silent, only the sounds of their breaths filling this room.

  Then, determination spread across her face. “No. I don’t care about the soldados. We need to help.”

  Yorick’s mind whirred. He didn’t know what to do, but he could see the look on her face. She wasn’t going to change her mind about this. “Okay, okay. Okay, you’re right. There could be people trapped inside the building. We have to be careful about who sees us, though.”

  Then, she cleared her throat and pointed down to the street. “There’s Tenney. He’s out there. He came running up from the west.”

  “I’ll get him,” Yorick said, and Rosia nodded her approval. Yorick sped out of the room, down the steps. Rosia went after him, a moment later. They wound down the staircase and burst through the door.

  But, when Yorick entered the chaos on the street, Tenney was nowhere to be found. Rosia raced across the street toward the tea shop. Yorick hunted around for Tenney. Maybe they could all help the survivors together.

  An older woman stumbled in his direction. She had burn marks over half of her face, blood all down her shirt. Both her legs and both of her arms were still attached, at least. She appeared dazed. Her eyes wandered over his face, not focused.

  Yorick approached her, and she stared at him, listless. He took her by the hand as he looked around for Tenney. If he had been here, he wasn’t now. This lady needed help. She was too close to the unstable carcass of the tea shop.

  “Come with me, ma’am. You can’t be standing next to the building. Let me get you somewhere safer.”

  Without saying a word, she allowed him to escort her over to the sidewalk across the street. He eased her down and knelt next to her. “Can you hear me?”

  She said something in a language Yorick didn’t recognize. He couldn’t even pick out any individual words. So, he held up a hand, showing her his palm. “You need to wait here, okay? Medical people will be coming soon. Doctors and an ambulance, okay?”

  She nodded. Her eyelids heavy. The woman swayed a little, but she put her hands on the sidewalk to brace herself. Across the way, Rosia was helping a woman dig through the wreckage near the building.

  Yorick didn’t know what to do. He didn’t feel safe out on the street. There were injured, dying, dead. Plus, the soldados were starting to arrive, and he still didn’t see Tenney anywhere. The big guy had probably—and smartly—fled before the king’s men could question him.

  In the confusion, none of the soldados was paying attention to him and Rosia, but they might start soon. Yorick didn’t know what to do. All around were noise and flashes of light and color. His brain buzzed like a bumblebee.

  He needed to contact Tenney somehow. Leave him a message if he came back.

  Yorick picked up a piece of charred wood from the ground, and he sprinted to the side of the building where they’d hidden from the explosion. He drew the only message he knew how, the only thing he and Tenney would both recognize. The symbol that had led to their freedom at the plantación: two concentric circles with a cross and triangle in the center.

  He just had to hope Tenney would come back soon to see it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Yorick went back to the site of the tea shop wreckage a few hours later, but he saw no sign of Tenney. He decided to come back later to keep checking on his friend. Yorick had seen Tenney alive and well immediately after the explosion, so he hadn’t been among the injured. But, no way to know which direction he had headed afterward.
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  Yorick and Rosia had both been touched by the guilt of knowing there was little they could do to help the victims who’d been injured. They had moved a few people away from the areas close to the building, but soon, there were too many soldados wandering around. They’d had to flee.

  With heavy hearts, Yorick and Rosia resumed their daily routine, and the next day, they were both working the morning shift at the brothel. Rosia had become so good at food prep, she was often helping Yorick to clear tables since his work still threatened to overwhelm him on a minute by minute basis.

  Plus, brothel owner Zan and his underlings keeping an eye on them didn’t help, either. For the first couple of days, it had been the sideways glances from the young girl who had escorted them to their room after their interview. Yorick still had not learned her name, and she wasn’t willing to share it.

  While Yorick always kept his ears open to listen to the whispers of his coworkers, he didn’t ask too many questions.

  Since last night and this morning, Zan himself seemed to have taken an interest in Yorick and Rosia. He visited the restaurant several times a day now. Usually, he would glide around the room, leaning over the shoulders of the highest-profile guests, checking in with them about the quality of their meals. But, he would shoot looks at Yorick any time they were in the same room together.

  It seemed like an aggressive oversight, but Yorick knew his own paranoia could be another reasonable explanation. It could be nothing at all. Given all the events over the last month of his life, either option was possible.

  Yorick set the bucket at the end of a long table to clean up after a lengthy breakfast meeting by a group of politicians. Yorick had no idea who they were, but they’d stayed long past the end of the breakfast rush, meaning Yorick’s shift would not end until they had all left and he could clean up their dirty dishes.