by Stephen Hunt
My robot simulated a snorting sound. ‘Yeah, as if that was going to happen.’
Simenon finally appeared bearing the dockets for all my purchases. Hundreds of barrels of Poor Man’s Mud that could rot in the warehouse for all I cared. There was only one thing worth saving on Hexator. Lady Alice Blez.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Escape.
We ran on the jog to Alice’s palace to reason with the lady. Mozart’s heavy stomping passage was still enough to hold the more reckless of Frente’s hotheads at bay, although I noted our passage was now followed by furious cries of “Moneyass!” and sharp cutting gestures across throats. Lucky for us, my robot friend’s presence, as Simenon in our escort merely invited jeers of “Godcarrier!”. When did that become a crime among the revolutionaries? I wondered.
‘Doc, over here!’ called Mozart as we passed an unlit alley.
I looked inside, half expecting to find some poor slum dwellers beaten to death and relieved of their coins, but what I discovered was far worse than that. Yes, after the highs of the spore blossom season came the inevitable lows.
Simenon peered between us, little comprehending the significance of what we’d found. A pile of discarded leather jackets and trousers. ‘Watch uniforms, Master Roxley? Was there an ambush here, officers murdered and stripped of their clothes?’
‘No, it’s worse than that, laddie. Watch officers have started taking their uniforms off and dumping them. Gone their badges and hiding in plain sight as citizens. Forget barricades going up, this is what the start of a real revolution looks like.’ A revolution as good as lost by the Four, from the look of things.
I hastened to the Blez fortress, given wings by our grim discovery inside the alley. At least the house guards manning the walls appeared alert and their numbers well-reinforced. Major Rolt, at least, could be trusted to keep Alice alive for as long as he drew breath. Likewise, her somewhat psychopathic robot, Link. But numbers counted for everything, and when this revolt flickered at full flame, I feared there wouldn’t be enough household warriors on all of Hexator to keep Alice safe from harm. But Sweet William, yes, he might yet.
‘Stay here,’ I told Mozart and Simenon when we had passed through the Blez’s fortified gates. ‘Watch for trouble outside.’
‘What, while you go off and make some?’ asked my robot.
‘No, Moz, I’m in the salvation business today.’
I was led into Alice’s presence by her guards. She received me in her private quarters, but I had more important business than extending her my “additional” services; however much I ached to lay my wares before the highborn lady. I gasped out to Alice the little I had gleaned from talking with Falt Seltin and Lady Trabb, as well as the much from the beat of the streets and alleys outside her stout walls. The horrors of the auction she had already received a full account of, as well her vast profits from the same. It was hard to keep my sense of desperation from tripping over my pleas to her.
‘If only the Lords Derechor had lived,’ sighed Alice, ‘this latest infighting would never have broken out. It’s their weakness encouraging the rebels. A four-legged stool with one leg kicked away.’
Two, if you counted Lord Blez’s murder, but I did not say it. I fought the urge to drag Alice away from this madhouse. Link, on duty outside her chambers, would doubtless have something to say about a little light kidnap. ‘The Derechors rest far from this realm, Alice, and there’s more than a low-level civil war being waged inside their house. Frente is going up in flames. I know for a fact that Commander General Laur has been considering bombing rebellious districts in the capital with his airship.’
‘Never while I hold a vote on the Four,’ said Alice.
‘Come away with me,’ I begged Alice. ‘Allow me to keep you safe on my vessel.’
‘Flee the moon? I thought your Humanitum eyes Hexatorians with as much distrust as the import restrictions it places on my people.’
I tried to make Alice understand the urgency of her predicament, how near to the wind her house sailed. Why is it that when words are so important they always fail me? ‘Identities can be faked, papers purchased, even inside the Humanitum.’
‘What of your gods’ perfect laws?’
‘Some of our gods are imperfect enough to play the trickster,’ I insisted. ‘Come with me, Alice. Let me do this for you. Allow me to save you. I hold a few markers with some quite dubious people.’
‘Why does that not surprise me? I know Hexator’s population’s been falling for longer than it’s been rising, but you can’t possibly beg enough fake papers for all my people from your imperfect gods. I don’t think your foldship is large enough, willing enough, or generous enough to participate in a planetary evacuation.’
I reached out to stroke Alice’s cheek, which she allowed. ‘But I can save you and your child.’
‘These are my people, William, for better or worse. They need me. What would I be in your world? A savage, a throw-back, a barbarian princess to be whispered about and pitied?’
‘You’ll be alive,’ I said.
‘I don’t wish to live forever,’ said Alice.
‘Then we share that, too.’
‘Listen to me, William, and listen to me well. The rest of the Four have reason to be afraid, but never the Blez. The rebels won’t harm me. Half those young churls are only alive today through my house’s assistance to their mothers and fathers.’
‘Revolutions start with good intentions, but they always end the same way, with the guillotine’s click and the waterwheel’s clack. How could I see your body broken on a wheel down in some filthy canal?’
‘Would you watch from orbit, safe in that fine warm foldship of yours?’
‘If I had to,’ I cried. Yes, I would force myself to watch if it came to it. How could I do otherwise?
‘Hexator is my world to protect. It shall have my bones as it holds my soul.’
‘Please,’ I pleaded.
‘You can’t save everyone, doctor, you must have learned that. You shouldn’t even try.’
Damn her. Alice could be every bit as proud and stupid as me. Which is why I had to protect the highborn beauty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
First. As farce.
‘Get out of here,’ urged the inn’s owner, Mistress Miggs, seeing the three of us returning to my home-away-from-home. ‘You need to make for the port! Watch are still holding the line, there. You need to leave! They’re dragging every moneyass they can find and giving them a right clapper-claw.’
The “they” in that statement being Jack Skull’s revolutionaries, I assumed. I wondered if Jenelle would be guarding the spaceport? Pity the poor revolutionary that tossed a torn-out cobblestone in the woman’s direction. Stones would be returned with interest that would make a loan shark blush.
‘I’ll pay for another week and keep my rooms,’ I told the lady, passing her a small bag of coins. ‘I expect to be back.’
‘Just go! Please!’ begged Mistress Miggs, gazing down at my bounty like I was insane. She pointed at Billy Bones slinking guiltily up the stairs. ‘And do take that permanently hungry beast with you!’ I suspect Mistress Miggs had her safety as a known provider of hospitality to an offworlder at the fore of her mind, rather than my own safety. Or that of the hound.
‘Master Simenon,’ I said, ‘be so good as to follow Billy Bones to our rooms and retrieve my medical case.’
Too late. A gang of about fifteen revolutionaries bundled into the tavern behind us. If they wanted a drink they had brought far too many improvised weapons inside: machetes, hammers, knives and yes, I think there was at least one simple repeating crossbow, too.
‘Cock and pie!’ swore their leader, a bull-chested man with far too much blood on his shirt for it to be his own. ‘If it ain’t Captain Grand, still with a few fingers for my chopper if I’m any judge.’
‘You don’t look much like a judge to me.’ I raised a hand to my ear. ‘Sink me, but would that fierce roar be Hexatorians
singing the song of angry men?’
Bull-chest and his unmerry band stared, dumbfounded, at my failure to adequately register either the importance of the revolutionary cause or their own grand dedication and vital role within it. What else could I expect? The little scallies had probably been beating Humanitum freetraders to within an inch of their lives, or an inch beyond it, for much of the day. They were due a break. I had quite a few in mind.
Simenon stumbled back in panic, tripping over an ale-bench, which should have satisfied the mob’s sense of self-importance at least a little.
‘No, actually, that sound was this young fellow, and the next sound’s my robot,’ I stepped aside, allowing Moz egress to their ranks. ‘My mistake.’
‘I don’t usually do class war,’ growled Mozart, ‘but today’s my day off, so you mugs are going to be the exception that proves the bleeding rule.’
I’m not certain the rude mob understood Moz’s point until my robot made it more bluntly. An operating force in excess of 100,000 pounds of forward acceleration makes for quite a blunt argument. Moz didn’t wade through them like butter. Butter would have put up more resistance to his steel landslide.
One game fellow did make it through the metal storm to try to embed a Golok-style machete in my skull. The rust on the blade alone should have killed me. He was a fine butcher, but alas, I am no steak. I side-stepped the brutal rush and closed his wind-pipe with a rapid jab, receiving a satisfying crunch of annular ligament as my reward. I shattered his left kneecap with a sly Hiza Geri kick strike to give the rascal something to dwell on other than his current breathing difficulties. I found the inn keeper’s eyes gazing at me from behind her counter while I introduced my new friend’s face to the wooden surface upon his collapse.
I winked at our fine host. ‘I’ll pick up the tab for any damages when I return.’
‘Don’t,’ moaned Mistress Miggs.
I wasn’t sure if she meant don’t return, or don’t bother paying for the damages?
‘No trouble, Mistress Miggs, I’m leaving our dog behind as security for the payment.’ I glanced down at my crouching guide. ‘Best you abandon your bench for the counter’s rear, too, Master Simenon,’ I urged the lad, mindful of the injuries he’d received traveling to the plantation. ‘You’re too much of a spear magnet for this rude business.’
I needn’t have worried. With Moz at the fore and his circuits quickened our business was quickly concluded. One-sided negotiations are always those which please me best.
I waited for Simenon to stop shaking and head upstairs to retrieve my medical case. Then I removed an injector to give stabilising shots to the rebels most likely to die. I wasn’t licensed to practice on Hexator, but I doubted if my new patients minded. Had they still their wits about them, they would have minded Mistress Miggs tender mercies far more. Our innkeeper strode among the wounded, applying her vengeful boot with liberal curses about thieving wastrels. My ministrations done, I strode towards the tavern’s exit until Simenon made to intercept me.
‘We can’t head outside, Master Roxley, it’s going to be bloody murder!’ implored Simenon, hopping gingerly through the strewn bodies. He acted as though his footsteps might heal the rascals’ broken bones and energise them for fresh mischief. ‘It’s too dangerous!’
‘That’s why we’ve got to go, lad.’
‘The Blez palace?’ asked Mozart.
The robot knew me too well. ‘Yes, Moz. Back to her palace.’
‘Lovely,’ said Moz, ‘a nice bit of kidnapping it is, then.’
Alice required introducing to the safety of the Expected Ambush, a willing émigrée or no.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Second. As tragedy.
Our way back to Alice’s palace took us down dark streets, lanterns shattered to hide the pillage and rapine of those rising from the gutter. Losing money and dignity was the best part of that deal if you were one of those lucky enough to survive. A slit throat is the surest way criminals guarded against retribution from victims’ families. It wasn’t an easy journey with so many roads denied us. Not always by the revolutionaries’ barricades, either. Neighbourhood protectors blocked dozens of streets, mountains of furniture and overturned wagons manned by guards as motley as the would-be revolutionaries come to “liberate” their wealth. Shopkeepers, beggars, guild craftsmen and ex-Watch thugs protected their own families and streets, trusty shotguns kept by the latter even after shrugging off their uniforms.
We clung to the darkness, relying on my m-brain’s low-light mode and Mozart’s thermal vision to plot our way through the shadows. Our odd trio attracted a few random shots from the barricades as Simenon blundered through the looters’ dropped valuables. I think nervous amateurs manning barricades fired into the darkness largely to keep their spirits up. Avoiding roaming gangs of cut-purses and footpads proved harder than it should. However, a few cracked necks from Mozart proved encouragement enough for such scum to hurry back to locating households with doors softer than my ruthless robot.
When the first crack of energy split the sky, I wondered if the Expected Ambush had been caught in orbit by that great spider of a wurm warship. But no, I saw roiling clouds building and cutting out the nebulae and stars. Even a fierce storm wasn’t going to clear the streets, tonight. It was as if nature sensed mankind’s violence and had decided she too must join us. Towers of vegetation shivered in the hot wind, sensing the battering they were about to receive.
Simenon seemed suitably shocked when I activated my stealth suit and scouted ahead near invisible, ensuring the revolutionaries capering across Frente’s districts did so in manageable numbers for a humble trader and his ‘bot.
‘What,’ I teased Simenon when I returned, ‘you mean to say your clothes can’t do that?’
‘Crap tailors on this world, then,’ said Moz.
Black humour for a black day. I dare say the soldiers of King Leonidas had jested similarly at Thermopylae before arrows turned the sky dark and wrote their ranks into history.
When we eventually returned to the Blez palace I gasped to find the fastness protected by a mere skeleton crew of household warriors. Surely Alice’s warriors haven’t deserted her? Unprotected enough walls that those abandoned inside proved sluggish to open the gates for me, however loudly I yelled and demanded the access granted to me by Lady Blez. Eventually one of the house’s senior stewards emerged nervously, glancing around to ensure there wasn’t a gang of looters sleeping in my shadow.
‘I have come for the Lady Blez,’ I said. I forgot to mention my scheme for Alice’s removal from danger in a manner no Blez would approve of.
‘Our mistress is gone from here, doctor,’ said the steward. He had a sturdy umbrella to protect him from the lashing hot rain now falling.
‘What?’ I entertained nightmare visions of Alice and an ill-prepared refugee convoy fleeing for the Blez plantation along the same dangerous highway I’d barely survived. ‘Where, sir, where?’
‘The Lady Blez’s called for peace talks with Jack Skull and the rebels. She’s left for the old cathedral to meet with the revolutionaries and broker a lasting peace for our capital.’
I winced. A peace? A lasting piece of her head on the end of a pike, if she counted on so-called Jack Skull’s goodwill and tender mercies towards any aristocrat. ‘Nobody tried to talk her out of this madness?’
‘I begged her ladyship, sir. We all begged Lady Blez to stay safe behind these walls, but she would hear none of it.’
No, I sighed. Of course, she wouldn’t.
‘Bring her back safe to us here, please, doctor!’ called the steward as I strode away fast.
Back to this last stand in waiting? Hah. Not within a long light year, if Sweet William had anything to do with proceedings.
A web of barricades and near encounters on the way to the old cathedral followed, ruffians screaming such unkindnesses as, ‘Moneyass! Cut that filthy moneyass down!’ and ‘Hexator or death!’. They sent us scuttling down a road int
o a square which seemed deuced familiar to me. A storm-flash lit up the reason why as we dived for cover inside the closest alley.
Modd’s teeth, I hope Jenelle’s far away from this foulness!
The Watch’s citadel had long since fallen. I dare say few enforcers stood ready inside to repel the revolutionaries when Jack Skull’s army came marching up to its armoured doors. Watch officers were still being dragged outside, lined up against the walls of their own citadel and butchered. Firing squads for the luckier victims. A spear through the chest or a sword sawing through a neck for the less fortunate. Crude hack-a-work. Many of the rebels swayed drunk on looted barrels of ale, crates of broken wine scattered across the street. The people’s thirst for drink liberally matched by their thirst for revenge.
Daylen Wang, aka Jack Skull, capered in hell’s rain like a happy demon among the piled corpses of his hated oppressors. Daylen swigged unstintingly from a wine bottle while kicking at some poor fellow. As he stepped back, I saw the unlucky victim singled out. Of course. Halius Laur. The rebels had made the chief of the Watch a human maypole, dancing around him while metal flashed sharp in the citadel’s damp lantern light. These devils were having at Laur with fierce abandon.
‘Do any of those buggers look like they’re getting ready to attend peace talks to you?’ asked Moz.
‘Only if their intention’s to dictate an unconditional surrender.’
Rain-soaked steel glinted back at me in the flash of lightning. Now I realised what else the revolutionaries had liberated from inside the Watch citadel … the Commander General’s expensive collection of military wall cutlery! Swords, blades, and sabers of every design and vintage. Each priceless antique taken and used at least once to test Laur, the Watch’s leader hacked apart slowly on the streets while we watched his bloody end. What’s that old saying about a slow death of a million cuts? These cruel agents of change all too happy to put it into practice. Rebels lined up for their grim turn in the circle surrounding Laur, each fighter eager to boast that they had played an active part in their hated persecutor’s end.
