The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom

by Dickson, H. Leighton

There was not one potted plant in the place and he doubted that anyone knew how beautiful the world was outside the fence.

  There was music everywhere, however. It sounded like a small chamber orchestra and he wondered if it was from archives. It had an organic, echoing sound to it and it was growing louder as the four of them trotted up a long wide set of stairs to a crowded mezzanine. He smiled as he spied a quartet was playing Haydn in the center of a breezeway. Two violins, a viola and a cello singing the song of strings, as people in colourful jumpsuits moved past. Everyone stared at him as he went by, gave him a very wide berth and he realized it was because of his hair. Everyone else was bald.

  Shaved, he realized, for he could see the shadows above the hairlines. Even the women. It made sense in a way. If they believed that every living thing existed to kill, then it would be important to remove any safe harbor for bacteria, mites and parasites. The human head was a gold mine for critters.

  Beneath her goggled cap and tattooed eyebrows, Damaris Ward was likely as bald as a billiard ball.

  “How many people in DC?” he asked.

  “CD?” she corrected. “Seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-six.”

  “More or less,” he grinned.

  “Exactly. We have sixteen women pregnant.”

  “Seventeen if you count the Scholar in the Court of the Empress.”

  “Scholar? What Scholar?”

  “I don’t think you’ve met her. She’s a skinny girl with orange and black stripes. Smart as a whip for a monster.”

  She raised a tattooed brow but said nothing and they passed through the colourful breezeway into yet another corridor.

  Finally up a spiral staircase and into a building with huge screens on the walls and armed guards flanking the doors. Ward was waved through and Solomon watched as the door swung open on pulleys in the ceiling. Ramshackle, he thought again. He wondered what their power source was.

  In to another room, smaller and dark with floor-to-ceiling bronzed ArcEyes. A waiting area and he was surprised to see books on a table. Books. He hadn’t seen a book in ages. He couldn’t help it. He picked one up, opened the cover, breathed in the woodsy smell of very old paper, fading ink and time.

  “We wait,” said Ward. He smiled at her and she didn’t seem to know what to do with her eyes.

  After several long minutes, a door swung open and a woman stepped out. She was short and stocky, had eyes like little stones and her buzzed head revealed a shadow of silver hair.

  “Cece?”

  “Jeffery Solomon, you old dog…”

  And he swept her up into the air, spun her around and around, utterly ignoring the look of horror on the face of Damaris Ward.

  “Put me down, you idiot,” grumbled Celine Carr in her clipped English accent. “You’ll bust my other hip.”

  But she was smiling and did not let go of him when her feet touched the floor.

  He held her out at arm’s length.

  “You look…”

  “Old,” she said. “It’s alright. You can say it. It has been a millennium or two, after all…”

  “When the hell did you wake up? And how? Max—“

  “One moment, Jeffery.” And she glared at the other woman in the room. “Thank you, Jiān Ward but I am completely safe with Dr. Solomon.”

  “Si,” said Damaris but Solomon cut her off.

  “Could you please check on my friends?” he asked. “Just make sure they are alive, unharmed and together. I’ll sort this out asap. Would you do that for me please, Damaris?”

  “Si,” she said again. “I’ll do this for you.”

  “And please let me know once you know they’re safe.” He glanced at the woman he knew as Cece. “How would she let me know?”

  “Transfer,” ordered Celine.

  Ward reached up to the wire at the base of her skull, pulled the tiny plug from its tip, reached over to affix it to Solomon’s. He gasped as the current buzzed directly into his brain, but then grinned.

  “You just gave me your number. I feel like a seventeen year-old kid.”

  She rolled her eyes and took back the plug but she was smiling before withdrawing from the room.

  “In here,” said Celine and she led him into another room. It was completely black with six large screens and a set of rolling chairs.

  Celine wheeled a chair towards him, lowered herself down.

  “Sit, Jeffery. The titanium is wearing out of these old legs.”

  She had been right earlier on. She looked perhaps seventy-five but he knew she had to be older. Her face was hard, weathered and sharp as steel, but truth be told, she had looked the same even before they went under.

  “Would you like some tea?” she asked and he grinned. Cats, Brits. Funny how both loved their tea.

  “Nah, but thanks,” he said, reaching over to take her hands and she raised a brow at him.

  “Ah, yes. You still need to touch. I remember.”

  “It’s a weird thing, coming back like that.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “So? SleepLab Two was obviously a success.”

  “Moderately,” she agreed. “Six of us survived. We woke about forty-five years ago. From what I understand, there was a meteor storm and that damned satellite was sent into a very high orbit. On every anniversary of the wake date, it would repeat the signal. I don’t know how long it was doing that, centuries I think, but somehow, it started the process. We lost Khofi Mamadou.”

  He nodded. He hadn’t known Khofi well, but still.

  “It took years, Jeffery. Years to make the preparations to wake everyone else. The Canadian Shield is a very harsh place in winter. It was such a damned struggle…”

  Her eyes grew distant as she remembered.

  “But we did it. After six and half years, we began waking the others. We had decided on five outposts, with Marathon as the central base, but five new outposts to begin civilization here in NorAm. Each base got five hundred residents. We tried to distribute the occupations, arts and skills as evenly as we could. Yellowstone is Portillo’s, Banff is Jorgenson’s, Washington took Cimarron and Claire has Rocky Mountain.”

  And she smiled wearily. “Shenandoah is mine.”

  “Paolini stayed in Marathon?”

  “He seems to have the toughest skin.”

  He nodded, looked down at her hands.

  “Celine, everyone else at Sandman One is dead.”

  Her face became stone.

  “We were afraid of that.”

  “Have you heard from 3?”

  “Nothing.”

  He sighed.

  “The IAR succeeded, Cece. They made people, living, breathing people with thriving civilizations.”

  “With their experiments.”

  “Yes, with their experiments. The people I came over with are not animals. They’re friends. They saved my life. I owe them.”

  She sat back. “You’ll never convince them of that here.”

  “Maybe I can’t, but you can.”

  “They’re probably dead by now, anyway. The creatures they keep in the compounds are horrific. Gruesome caricatures of animals. Monkeys, bears, sloths, snakes.” She shuddered. “Have you ever seen a deer with fangs?”

  “I’ve seen a few horses with ‘em.”

  “And the rats—“

  “Don’t talk to me about rats,” he grumbled. “But remember, that was Tuur Oewehand’s work, his monkey/rat hybrids. That has nothing to do with my friends.”

  She studied him, her eyes small and sharp.

  “This is a different world, Jeffery.”

  “More different than you know, Cece. That woman, Damaris Ward, she believes that the air has been poisoned somehow, that people can’t leave this compound without turning into beasts. You know that’s not true. You know it’s just the success of the IAR. It’s engineering, Cece, not epidemic.”

  “Modification, not mutation.”

  “Exactly. Out there, the air is sweet, the land is bountiful. It’s a ve
ry good place to be.”

  “Perhaps so, but we’re still starting out. It takes time. People need time.”

  “But start it right, not with lies.”

  “Well, I suppose we’ll never know how you would have handled Europe then, since your entire compound was lost.”

  She turned and moved her hands across a console and five screens began to hiss and flicker.

  “We’re using up all the comm time for this, Jeffery. There are only three working towers on the entire continent. We only get an hour a week. It’s been bloody hard…”

  As one by one, the human faces of his colleagues from centuries past appeared on the screens, he couldn’t help but think about his feline colleagues. He missed them more than he’d expected and prayed that Damaris Ward would find them not only quickly, but alive.

  ***

  Kirin shook his head. This tale of Ancestorland was growing worse with the telling. Perhaps his brother was right. Perhaps this journey was worth the danger. Perhaps there was only one way to stop this threat to their way of life. Perhaps the dogs would listen.

  He cast his eyes across the fire to where the young dog was staring at him, brown eyes hostile still.

  Kirin sighed. Perhaps they would all die in the Year of the Cat.

  It was late and the Alchemist had started a fire. She was humming and the baby was cooing happily on a skin while tea was steeping. Bo Fujihara’s aromatic pipe carried over even the woodsmoke, rich and heady in the cold night air. Soldiers had finished stripping the village of the last of the tents and the resources had been distributed amongst the few wagons that accompanied them. It was a strange and quiet moment, the hush before the rumble of a storm.

  The night was filled with the sounds of restless horses and wind and two thousand Chi’Chen practicing hand-to-hand combat by the lights of many fires. The fighting was fascinating, he thought as he watched—hands and feet, arms and legs and even tails all moved like striking serpents. They fought with grace and honour, for when a match was won or lost, a very respectful bow was given and received. There was a crowd gathering around one pair, both members of the elite force known as the Snow, and he shook his head. Their blows were lightning, so swift that he could barely follow their movements and he realized it was an art form. Like Jujutsuh or Kenjutsuh or even his own Bushido. They were skilled beyond skill, trained beyond discipline and he found himself approving. He was certain his own troops could not fight like that.

  He looked back to the fire and the teller of stories.

  After this last installment, Kerris had curled up, head in Fallon’s lap. She was stroking his hair and whispering to him. Kirin watched them with a growing ache in his chest. He wondered if it were fear or jealousy. Neither one would be a welcomed companion on this journey. Perhaps he was simply missing Ling. He had not read her letter and he wondered at that. Perhaps he did not know what to think of the fact that Sherah al Shiva had borne him a son and they both were here, around this very fire. It was a strange and surreal thing.

  It was a strange and surreal night, he realized, this night in a ransacked foreign village. Strange and surreal and sad, so he rose to his feet and left the fire, contenting himself to watch the monkeys.

  The other half of the Magic were sitting together around another fire under the flaps of one of the gars. The Seer, the Monk and the Oracle were not holding hands for a change, all equally exhausted from their morning spent working on the Shield. The wound in Sireth’s chest had begun to ooze once again from the exertion of the trail, but Ursa was preoccupied with the army so he sat cross-legged in the tent, eyes closed in meditation and healing. Nevye and Setse were watching the Chi’Chen exercises just outside the flap, their eyes fixed on the poetry of motion and martial art.

  Another match came to an end and the pair bowed, fists to cupped palm. Setse clapped her hands fiercely and another round with different pair began.

  “It’s marvelous, isn’t it?” said the jaguar. “How they move like that. Like a mongoose and a cobra. So fast. So sure.”

  “Indeed,” said Sireth, eyes still closed. “They are a miraculous people.”

  “It’s a blessing,” the man went on. “When your body responds as quickly as your mind. Quicker even than your thoughts.”

  “You speak like you know this,” said Sireth. “Alchemist, Seer and Soldier?”

  “Oh no,” said Nevye. “No, not me. Not for a very long time. Forget I said anything.”

  There was the crunch of very high boots on snow.

  “Bah,” the Major snorted as she approached from behind. “This little chicken cannot fight.”

  “Ursa,” said her husband but she pushed past the jaguar and ducked under the gar.

  “Here,” she said. “I want you to take this.”

  And she handed him a dagger. It had a silver blade and a phoenix carved into the hilt.

  He did not take it.

  “I told you I didn’t want a dagger,” he said.

  “I may not always be here to protect you,” she snorted. “And you need protection.”

  “This dagger would not have stopped the arrow.”

  “I want you to take it.”

  He looked at her for a long time.

  “Take it,” she repeated.

  “Ursa…”

  “We are in a hostile land and the dogs have killed you once already.”

  “That is not the steel I need from you.”

  “That is all that I can give.” And she pushed it into his palm with such force that a thin line of red sprang up along his thumb. It fell from his hand and into the snow.

  “Don’t take it, then,” she growled. “You are being a fool, not a leader.”

  There was silence for a brief moment, only the crackling of the fire and the weight of thoughts and the cold night sky. He sighed, bent forward, picked up the dagger.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “I found it in the armory at Shen’foxhindi.”

  His eyes studied the carving. A phoenix, symbol of life from death, flame from ashes, rebirth, renewal, the wheel of life. Fitting, he thought to himself. He had died and now he lived.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “It is a military blade. You are not military, but still.”

  She was not looking at him, her pale eyes evasive and he knew she had something weighing on her mind. It would have been simple to learn it, a mere drifting of a thought but he would never, not with her. She had not been tamed with their marriage, merely joined.

  “Are you done for the night?” he asked.

  “No. In the army, you are never done.”

  “I see.”

  “Even a small party of dogs can be dangerous. Look what they did to you.”

  “I should have seen it. I was distracted. I was searching for something else.”

  “They should have seen it, then,” she said and gestured toward the jaguar and the Oracle sitting outside around the fire, watching the matches. “They are weak.”

  “They are learning. Not all of life is as orderly as the army.”

  “You defend them again.”

  “Never in this world can hatred be stilled by hatred; it will be stilled only by love and peace — this is the law of eternal.”

  “Brahmin,” she growled and her tail lashed. “The law of eternal will still die at the blade of a dog.”

  “Have you not had enough of blood?”

  “There is never enough blood.”

  “Stay with me tonight.”

  “I am working.”

  And she turned to leave, ducked under the flap of the gar. Outside, the Oracle clapped her hands as yet another match came to an end.

  “Amazing,” said Nevye. “I can watch them all night.”

  “Shar Ma’uul fight,” said Setse and she sprang to her feet, onto the tips of her toes like a dancer. “Fight me, Shar! Teach me!”

  “Yes, little chicken,” snarled the Major and she swatted him as she walked past. “Stand up and figh
t the little girl.”

  “Ursa,” snapped her husband from the gar. “That’s enough.”

  She whirled back to the fire.

  “He needs to know what it is like to fight a dog. He needs to know what it is like to be beaten by one. Maybe then he’ll pay attention to the arrows of dogs.” She grabbed him by the back of his robes, hauled him to his feet. “Fight the dog, traitor.”

  “No,” moaned Setse. “No hurt Shar.”

  “It’s alright,” said Nevye as he scrambled to get his feet underneath him. “I understand her anger, I do.”

  “I don’t think you do,” hissed the Major.

  “No, I do. Really.”

  “Then prove it, little chicken. Fight me instead.”

  “Ursa,” the Seer rolled to his knees. “That’s enough.”

  “Pretend you’re a monkey and not a coward and a traitor. Fight me.”

  And she hit him.

  It was a little hit, just a cuff to the side of his head. Sireth slipped out from the gar, moved toward his wife but Nevye held up his hand.

  “No, no,” he said, rubbing his head. “She’s angry. It’s alright. Really.”

  She hit him again, this time a sharp jab to the chest.

  “Aiya,” he grunted.

  “Ursa, stop this. Now.”

  “Stop, bad cat,” wailed Setse and her brother appeared at her side. “Bad cat, Rani.”

  “This is how we do it in the Army,” said Ursa. “But of course, you wouldn’t know. You’re not a soldier. Only an Alchemist and a traitor.”

  And her hands struck again and again and again. Nevye staggered under her blows. Sireth looked to the sky. The owl, Hunts in Silence, landed on his shoulder, wings wide, beak open.

  The silver fist flew one more time. The jaguar blocked it with his wrist.

  “What?” he said, as they all stared at the sight.

  She struck again and again he blocked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t… I don’t know how—”

  Again she struck, again he blocked until they were moving like the Snow, like a cobra and a mongoose and soon, Yahn Nevye was smiling.

  Setse clapped even more fiercely. “Shar Ma’uul brave fighter!”

  Mi-Hahn dropped from the sky onto the Seer’s opposite shoulder. He closed his eyes as his wife’s high boot heel sliced upwards. The jaguar caught it easily.