A Simple Thing

by Amy J. Murphy

  Luc decided that the question was rhetorical. “The Regime will bring prosperity to Macula…to Tasemar. They’ll defend its Citizens from Humans and Sceeloid.”

  “Humans? What’d a Human ever do t’me? Or a Sceeloid for that matter?” He leaned close in his reeking cloud of sweat and simmering anger. “Where’d you say you were from… friend?”

  “I didn’t.” Luc extended his hand, palm to the side, imitating the greetings he’d seen in the briefing vids. “Tarsk Cleo.”

  “Uh-huh.” The man looked him up and down, ignoring his hand. He froze when he saw the water nymph tattoo on his forearm. “Water Guild. You’re a long way from Gales.”

  Water Guild?

  “No. Just a water broker. I’m looking for work.” Luc jerked his chin in the direction of newly erected sign outside the temporary Regime headquarters that advertised employment for skilled workers and other trades. All lines of work were needed to construct the new government complex.

  “Want some advice?” The man leaned forward, readjusting his stance with a bobble. His tone dipped low, and he clamped a rough hand on Luc’s shoulder. “Haro don’t like complications. ’Specially not from the Water Guild. Maybe I forget to tell him I saw one of you here. For a price.”

  Luc pulled the drunk’s hand away, twisting the thumb. The man gave a bark of pain, surprise widening his red-shot eyes. Luc stepped into the hold. “You’re not getting any money from me. But I will give you a chance to walk away now… friend.”

  Just as quickly, Luc released him, moving clear in case he got the bright idea to retaliate. The drunk backed away, eyes narrowed, cradling his offended wrist, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Luc retreated to a quiet corner of the square, careful to keep his back against a wall, and accessed the transponder’s database. After a few minutes, he gave up, frustrated. The information on the Water Guild was sparse and mostly conjecture—organized crime and other offenses. Their mark was indeed a water nymph, but it was associated with legitimate water brokers as well.

  Certainly, it would make him a target, a poor choice for a Seeker’s cover story. This was more than faulty intel; this was Notker’s doing.

  Fine, old man. This lowly conscript can survive your challenge.

  In the days that followed, Luc drifted into the seedier, outer ring of the city that existed in the shadows of the temple mount. No one asked too many questions or looked too closely. The less he said, the more was assumed. Through it all, he was careful to keep the water nymph covered.

  He rented a small room above a chemist’s shop. Its one window faced the Temple of the Miseries. The view was a premium charge, announced the landlady from the doorway, reeking of graceweed and still panting from the climb upstairs. A con for more money, of course. Everyone in this corner of Macula seemed to function that way.

  After inspecting the locks and scanning for any monitoring equipment, he pried up one of the loose floorboards and stashed the med kit into the dusty space below.

  Luc became a regular at a nearby tavern, a silent shadow in the corner booth. He learned to feign sympathy at their drunken outcries against the Regime’s rule or the construction of their government complex. He deftly dodged the offers of the dirty-faced women or waiflike boys that swayed up in drugged ambivalence. Always, he watched for signs of Humans or the sympathizers that aided them. He listened for clues that would lead to the ring of conspirators and their smuggling of non-reg species.

  There was a finesse to this that had not been covered in any of his training—how to gain confidence from strangers when you were one yourself. This was navigating without a chart when one false move could set you on course with the hungry event horizon of a collapsed star.

  But there was one name that always surfaced, like the refrain from one of the temple crier’s prayers: Haro.

  Luc made it his business to know this man’s life, collecting intelligence from the public documents in the transponder’s database. Haro had six prior arrests under the former government, for smuggling and petty violence. Yet, somehow, he’d been elevated to leader of the dockworkers’ union, a roughly organized group that found ways to extract staggering fees from ships that used Macula’s laughable excuse for a spaceport.

  Trafficking Human fugitives required access to vessels. If anyone possessed the connections to do this, it had to be Haro and his ilk.

  It was no accident that Luc had chosen this tavern, this table.

  From his quiet corner, he watched Haro and his men. Their group always came to the tavern when their shift completed. Here they would spend a few hours before they disbanded to return to their louse-filled tenements on the fringe of the landing field. Their schedule did not deviate except on those nights when an ancient frigate landed, a retired monstrosity from before the Sceeloid armistice.

  On those nights, the men in this group did not go home after the tavern. They seemed to disappear entirely. It was the type of patterned behavior he expected from smugglers. The true question was, did their illegal cargo tend to non-reg species like Humans?

  Tonight was as good a night as any to act. He’d follow them after they disappeared.

  Haro entered the tavern in a flash of dingy safety-yellow as the room started to fill with patrons. In his wake were three similarly dressed men. All of them seemed to have been dispatched from the same mold—wide as they were tall, sleeves rolled up over thick muscular forearms tanned by the Tasemarin suns. Luc shifted, watching.

  Too late, he realized he’d made eye-contact with Haro. Luc cursed under his breath, calculating his chances of getting to the door.

  “Share your table, friend?” Haro called over to him. Already he’d cleared a path through the press of bodies. “Make room for some tired men, yes?”

  “Table’s all yours. I’m just leaving.” He jerked his chin, a gesture he’d seen them use to imply politeness. He pushed up from the bench.

  “Nonsense! There’s room for us all, brother,” Haro answered, settling in beside him. Metal glinted along his incisors, a decorative element that managed to look dangerous. “How I no see you before?”

  “Just lucky, I reckon.” Luc grinned, while under the table he made sure his sleeve still covered the water nymph.

  “Name’s Rus Haro.” He gave a rumbling chuckle and tapped his chest. “Fates’ blessings.”

  “And to you.” Luc did not offer his hand in greeting, or his name. The dockworker from the square might have been too drunk to remember him, but having your wrist nearly broken tended to make an impression on people.

  Haro beckoned over his companions and Luc slid to the end of the bench to make room for the newcomers before they could box him in. He was careful to angle his body toward the tavern entrance and keep the wall at his back. His view of the exits was still good.

  “I’m dry. Let’s have a drink with our new friend here.” Haro held his tumbler aloft.

  A harried server appeared with a fresh jug of Yannish brew. Luc detested the stuff, but he did not hesitate to join in. The Regime-issued augments to his metabolism meant he processed such intoxicants differently. He could feign its influence well enough. Judging from their half-lidded eyes and sloppy grins, the others at the table would not notice.

  One of them made a grab for the matron as she skirted away, growling a violent threat. This provoked a wave of laughter.

  Luc grinned for different reasons. He imagined the smugness leaving Notker’s face at learning of his unwanted conscript’s success. Suck it, old man.

  Luc tasted blood. Something warm ran into his eyes, stinging as he lifted his chin. He blinked furiously at the bright light from above. A shifting forest of bodies stood around him. He was sitting, with his arms fixed to the chair by tight webbing. Something unyielding was looped around his neck and waist, keeping him snug against the chair back.

  Dosed. Something in the drink. The food.

  It was a disconnected thought, like that of a casual observer standing somewhere outside his skull. Tim
e had somehow stuttered. Events had played out in the black spaces between scenes. He’d been present for none of it.

  “He’s wakin’ up,” announced one of the shadows beyond the ring of light.

  Luc lifted his head, aware that his body hurt in a variety of stunning ways. Ribs. Jaw. Wrists. Things felt swollen, misshapen.

  The tooth. The thought bubbled up, bright and firm against the sludge of his brain. His tongue went to the pre-incisor and found an empty socket.

  “You sure that’s him?”

  “’Course I’m sure. Nearly twisted my arm clean off.”

  “Why did the Water Guild send you here?”

  He knew that voice. Haro of the gleaming silver teeth and chummy laugh.

  Luc’s brain cartwheeled to keep pace. The mass of bodies standing over him solidified to six men. All of them seemed as immovable as mountains.

  “I’m just a water broker.” Luc lifted a shoulder to swipe at his chin. The shoulder moved in a funny way. Pain zinged into his spine.

  “You take me for a skew.” Haro squeezed Luc’s arm, twisting it. The water nymph’s ink seemed nearly iridescent under the light. “That’s the Water Guild’s bitch mark. They give you that shiny gun of yours too? You tell me why they break the truce. You already have three other regions on Tasemar. Macula belongs to us. The port belongs to us.”

  Luc’s jaw throbbed as he formed the words. “You’re making a mistake—”

  “Only mistake I see is you.” Haro punctuated this with a fist that drove the air from Luc’s lungs. “Putting your snout in our territory. Maybe we cut if off. Send it back to your Water Guild masters. But I keep your fancy tooth, no? Mine now.” He grinned in a flash of silver. “Part of my collection.”

  The soldier part of Luc calculated his counter-offensive and found his options severely lacking. He was outmatched, physically damaged. Considering this was a location that they felt comfortable enough to use for interrogations, escape was unlikely.

  The only positive was the fact that they’d not discovered his identity as a Seeker and part of the Regime that they abhorred. If that were the case, he’d already be dead. Instead, he’d been mistaken for a spy sent by a competing gang. These men were not harboring Human fugitives; they were simply petty smugglers.

  “You kill me and then what?” Luc said in Commonspeak, trying to thicken his accent. “What do you think the Water Masters will do when one of theirs turns up dead in your territory? They’ll retaliate.”

  It was a gamble. But if they realized that they had to move him…it might work.

  Haro gripped Luc’s chin, squeezing with his massive, square-knuckled hand. “Don’ worry, water broker. We no kill you here. Don’t want your body stinkin’ up the place. We send you where you want to be.” The silver smile slipped, turned more dangerous. For some reason, Luc thought of Gia.

  He released him, straightened. “Take this Water Guild bitch to the river. Use a blade. Blaster’ll make too much noise.”

  Three of the Haro’s men were selected for the grim errand: one that walked ahead of their sorry little parade and the two men that buoyed Luc up, one at each arm. Their progress was a half-drag, half-floundering over the gravel and weeds at the edge of the landing field.

  “Bet you wish you’d paid me, eh, friend?” the man on his left growled.

  “Thought crossed my mind,” Luc slurred, stumbling.

  He could feel the pharm ebbing from his muscles. His control over his body was returning, but not quickly enough. His foggy brain teetered on the edge of panic. He tamped it down and focused on his breathing. Counted their steps. Forty yards, a little under. He pictured how he would kill them.

  Their awkward march stopped.

  They stood at the crest of a steep slope. The distant floodlights of the landing field picked out the suggestion of movement far below. He could hear the mutter of the river.

  The man to his left released him. Luc sagged against the captor on his right, using his momentum to drag the man off balance. He pawed at him in a pantomime of desperation and affected a sobbing plea: “Please. This is a mistake.”

  Luc clutched at the man’s greasy fabric coveralls until he felt the metal shape. A blade.

  The man pushed him off with a disgusted grunt. “Die like a man, at least.”

  Luc’s heart quickened with the elation of coming violence. His body wanted it, craved it. That was what the Regime had made him. He grinned in the dark. The blade was in his grip now.

  “Watch him! He’s got m’knife!”

  They were all wary now. Tensed. Circling him like a trio of raptors.

  The tackle came from his left. He bent with it, sagging. They fell to the weeds. A sharp rock gouged at his spine as he turned with the attacker, using his momentum to push the body aside. His legs wrapped the struggling torso, squeezed as he took the blade to the vulnerable neck. The body went slack.

  Luc rolled. A heavy boot narrowly missed his skull. He sprang to his feet. They swung at him, their moves untrained, inefficient. They were street brawlers, not trained killers.

  Another blade slashed out of the darkness. Luc timed his dodge too late. The blade bit into his stomach. Blood cascaded in a warm wet rush. Already he could feel his strength leaking, along with the blood that ran down his leg. Adrenaline could only do so much.

  The wound shifted him into a defensive posture, rocking his weight from foot to foot as the men circled. They could wait him out now. Watch him bleed. Pick at him, like carrion birds circling dying meat.

  One of them lunged, and Luc sprang back to counter it. His right foot met only air— the steep edge of the riverbank. The darkness and their circling had stolen his sense of orientation. A blade found its home in Luc’s ribs. White-hot pain coiled out from the spot. His knees buckled.

  “That’s for Chaths,” a gruff voice hissed against his neck.

  Then came the shove. For one heady moment, Luc floundered in the night air like a blind bird. And he fell. It was forever. It was seconds.

  He tumbled down the river bank, bounding against rocks and sending out sprays of gravel. Something unyielding collided with his left knee. He heard a sharp wet pop that created a world-ending agony. Even as he drew in breath to scream, he plunged into frigid black water.

  The mad rush of the current swallowed him. Half-glimpsed boulders slouched by. He was moving far too swiftly to stop, though he grasped blindly for anything solid. The icy water sapped his strength and squeezed his injured ribs. His arms and legs were already leaden. The agony of his knee dimmed. He sputtered in gasps of air from the relentless tumble of waves. He’d never been immersed in water before, had never been trained to swim. Tasemar was largely desert, after all. And he’d come here to drown.

  A dark shape loomed ahead, a boulder crested at the river’s center. He readied himself, fighting the panic that would drown him just as surely as the water.

  He collided with the boulder, his fingertips brushing its side, slick with dynasties of algae. Then the river claimed him once more, sweeping him off into the night.

  “He dead? He looks dead.”

  “Ain’t dead, Tikar. His stomach’s movin’. See?”

  The voices invaded the glassy pain in Luc’s head. There was something wrong with their pitch. High. Almost musical.

  “Lookit all the blood. Gross!”

  Gravel crunched as footsteps approached. He could feel soft, damp earth under his face. Sunlight pressed against his eyelids. His left arm was numb, pinned beneath him. Water chortled nearby. The river. He cracked one eyelid and took in feeble green weeds and clumps of moss poking from a pool of rank brown water.

  “Tika, don’t! What if he’s dangerous? We should tell Mahir.”

  “Don’t be a baby.”

  Luc sensed the voice’s owner stoop over him. He tensed his muscles. It drove a spike of pain through his stomach. He lashed out with his right hand and seized a child’s tiny ankle

  An ear-piercing screech stabbed his water-clogged ears
. “He’s got me! The dead man’s got me!”

  Wincing, Luc released his grip. The child skittered away in a splash.

  He rolled onto his side in time to glimpse two children disappearing into the mouth of a cave along the riverbank. An uncontrollable bout of coughing shook him. He pushed up on hands and knees. His left leg revolted in agony. He told himself to crawl. Then, like a sluggish animal, his body complied.

  He collapsed, allowing his face to press to the cool mat of dead, soggy leaves. Disconnected, he noted the bloody trail in his wake, like a man-sized snail. He shut his eyes.

  The morning suns carved a yellow square on the simple plaster wall of the room. Luc watched its slow progression. That was how he counted the time here: the march of the light cast on the wall and the periodic chant that echoed from the unseen world beyond this room. One of many, it seemed, within the walls of the Temple of Miseries.

  Three days. Maybe longer.

  By now, he could maneuver his body from side to side in the narrow cot without too much pain. Meals had advanced from watery gruel to the chewy, dense bread that was gritty with the sand that seemed to permeate everything. At least he could now feed himself, chewing carefully around the empty socket in his jaw, the ever-present reminder of his circumstance.

  Temple of Miseries. How appropriate.

  His thin blanket reeked of incense and the salve that covered his wounds. Always the same man ministered to him—a withered husk, Mahir, the elder-priest. He spoke to Luc with desperate cheerfulness in heavily accented Commonspeak that often decayed into Tasmarin.

  Luc sat at the side of the bed, gave himself to a count of ten, and lurched to his feet. The pain that thundered through his left knee was monstrous. He pitched forward, hooking his hands into the window frame on the opposite wall.

  The colored glass window swung out with an uneven creak and the cool morning breeze met the sweat on his skin. Gritting his teeth, Luc took in the view of Macula, laid out like calcified rings below the temple mount. To the far left was a wedge of the landing field, butted up to the streets of the lower city. Holding up a thumb, he blocked out the view of the tavern and the brothels that had grown like barnacles to its sides.