The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  “I don’t get it,” Brooke said. “Is the purpose of bodyball to score goals or hurt your opponent?”

  “Both.”

  “Makes no sense. If you want to fight, fight. Don’t dress it up as a game.”

  “It’s entertaining.”

  “It’s dishonest.” The slow-mo highlights had started. The image paused on Lind’s top lip. It was blackened and bloody and resembled a giant slug.

  “So what do your people do for fun in the Donian Mountains?”

  “We talk, we listen, we read, we write, we draw, we laugh, we fight and we love.” Her eyes cut away from Ray’s. “And when we play team games, we don’t throw balls around, especially not the adults.” She grabbed the remote off Lynn and changed channels.

  “What do you throw?”

  “Rocks.”

  “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  “That’s the point. It’s an honest game.”

  “Guess dishonesty is the best policy after all.”

  The smirk or slap he was tensing for in reply to his bad joke never came. Brooke appeared not to have heard him. “My brother was untouchable at our game until—“ Her hand slammed hand down on the bar.

  “What?”

  “This is why I don’t watch your dumb sports, it reminds me of him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My brother’s dead, Ray,” she shouted. “Executed by an Ailan legionnaire, and now I’m part of the mission being sent back to the Donian mountains.”

  A couple sitting at a table behind the two legionnaires stared. The man, whose neck blended seamlessly with his mouth with no chin in the middle, nudged his companion. Lynn, the bar manager, shot Brooke a concerned look and reached for the remote. The volume on the TV crept up a notch.

  “My brother died when your government was ‘exporting their democracy’ to us for the third time,” Brooke said. “I thought we’d been doing OK before then but apparently not. The Elders decided enough was enough; they didn’t want our way of life to die out with us. So they surrendered and united with Ailan. Most of them, anyway. My family have never been docile and they fought on.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Ray had read enough history and been part of enough similar situations to know what the government response would have been.

  Brooke laughed into her glass, her eyes gleaming. “We had children that could have outfought your regulars in the mountains back then. Especially when they sent in rooks with rusty gear. Unfortunately for my parents, some of their children did decide to fight the army. When the 10th Legion was sent in, the Rivermen, or whatever we were called back then, my stupid brothers decided to fight, too.”

  “Doesn’t sound stupid to me.”

  She traced a finger through a puddle of beer, drawing angular lines. “You’re doing it again, your binary approach to moral problems. Not every death is a galvanising experience that lives on and inspires millions. Sometimes a death is just a death. It leaves nothing but a hole that will never be filled. The edges may blur a little but the hole lives on forever.” Her voice was flat and level. “When they captured my brothers, they killed one. I was standing on the dust next to the Dawn Rock in our town. Watching. Grit between my toes. Orchard blossom in the air. My brother refused to kneel so they shot his kneecaps off. Then they put two bullets in his head.” She tapped a temple and the base of her skull. “They did it in front of us. Someone like me did it. Someone like you. A legionnaire. Do you know what never feels like, Franklin? Knowing you will never see your brother again? Never?” She stared up at the ceiling and blinked back the tears.

  “How could I? I’m an only child, you know that.”

  “Don’t be so literal. You know what I mean.”

  Lynn brought another round of drinks. Ray paid, tipped her and asked for a drink to be left hanging. Around them, the bar was coming to life, filling with voices and laughter and stories. People dropped coats, damp with the autumnal mist, on chairs. One woman warmed her hands on the candle on her table. She joked to her friends she was stocking up on heat for the night.

  “Don’t you people believe in an afterlife?” Ray asked Brooke. “I’m sure I read that somewhere.”

  “We do, the End Times, too. But after years in your cities, the Sci-Corps and now the legion, surrounded by people like Orr, who can’t see past his own prejudices, and Nascimento, who can’t see past his own mirror, I’m not so sure either is true.”

  “I’m not from the Gates.”

  “And Orr is from nowhere now. I get it, you’re different.” The sarcasm dripped from her words.

  Ray kept his mouth shut. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a woman trying to ignore a well-dressed man looming over her. Whenever she turned away from him, he moved round to face her, trying to slide a drink into her hands. Ray flashed a glance at the manager. Lynn nodded and sauntered over. As she did so, the doors opened and a blocky man in a suit walked in, a flesh-coloured jaw-piece connected to his ear. Ray considered telling Brooke and then realised he had just missed her last few sentences. Some friend he was turning out to be.

  “Hamid reminded me of Kames, my brother,” she said. “His face, the wiry build, the slow, methodical approach to life, the same sense of relentless loyalty and justice.”

  Ray coughed up the drink he had half-inhaled.

  “I know what you all thought. Hamid knew, too.” Brooke’s lips twitched into a faint smile.

  “You spent a lot of time with each other.”

  “And you spend a lot of time with Nascimento – should I start spreading rumours?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Should it be?”

  Ray opened his mouth to protest as Brooke nudged him. Martinez was going through his parade drills, using his mop as a surrogate rifle. The table he was performing to cheered each time the mop flicked drips of water at them. The cheers changed to jeers as the ex-legionnaire was moved on by the unsmiling man in the suit. He whispered something into Martinez’s ear that made him glower.

  “Yes,” Ray replied as Brooke turned back. “I mean, no. I don’t know. It’s just...”

  He stole a look across the bar. Lynn was leaning on the bar next to the harassed looking woman. The man standing next to her had both hands raised in an innocent gesture.

  “Even in this day and age all the old prejudices and assumptions still refuse to lie down and die.” She glanced at the growing commotion behind them. “Enough of this conversation. It’s too maudlin.” She pointed to Ray’s leg. “Nascimento told me you’ve got to go see the specialist. When’s that?”

  “What?”

  “The medic! Sure you don’t want to get your ears checked instead of your leg?”

  “Tomorrow.” He realised he’d been trying to work the feeling back into his foot. How could his back and his foot hurt, and nothing in between? “Tomorrow, Dr Neufeld will click his fingers and I shall walk straight again.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. I’ll let this Neufeld tackle this one with you, though.”

  She stood to put her jacket on. “Hamid and I were just friends. He was too much like Kames to be anything else for me. He kind of filled the ‘never’ hole for a while. When I explained why he wasn’t going to get any further, Hamid said he understood. But I didn’t want him to think I was leading him on.” There was a shout. The splintering sound of glass breaking. A curse. Brooke stopped doing up the dry-zip of her jacket and pointed behind Ray. The dark-haired woman had knocked the drink over as she tried to push it away. The man’s voice was rising, gesturing to the damp patch on his suit. Ray got to his feet, the pain in his back forgotten.

  Brooke caught his arm and squeezed it. Tall as she was, she still had to look up at him. “Maybe that flame never died in Hamid. Maybe he did think I would crack and roll into his arms. I’ll never know now. But I came to see him for who he was – Ernest, not Kames, and loved him for it. As a friend.”

  The bar manager was trying to calm the situation. She sa
id something to one of the staff, who hurried into the back room where Martinez had disappeared with his mop. The woman at the bar was standing up, eyes wide as the man gesticulated at the bar staff. Martinez came out of the room. His scarred face went purple when the other man snapped at him. Brooke let Ray’s arm go and gave him a shove.

  “I’m fine. Go do your knight-in-shining-armour thing. You boys love that stuff. If I go over there now, I’ll hurt the guy. Badly. I’m not ruining my new jacket and clean record for a jerk.” She kissed him on the cheek, ignoring his shocked look. “Thank you for trying to say the right thing.”

  7

  Playground Economics

  David Prothero ran his thumb along the edge of his pocket watch. In his hurry to get to the Kickshaw this evening, he’d left it at home. He’d considered leaving it there but it hadn’t felt right; he’d felt more naked than when he didn’t have his phone on him. So he’d gone back for the watch. That meant he’d arrived late. Late meant lazy, he’d always told his daughter. It had put him more on edge than before, especially as it had been his suggestion to meet the president here. At least the manager had honoured her promise to give the place a scrub. Lynn had even got rid of the cobwebs festooning the ceiling beams. He flashed the buxom bar manager his most charming smile as she set their drinks down and turned his attention to his companion.

  The last few decades had been kinder to Bethina Laudanum than to him. His hair was greying, hers was the same oil-black colour as always. It was less severely cut but still austere. She never followed what was deemed current but was never too far from it, either; acknowledging rather than imitating. Whereas he was getting ‘a little paunchy’, as his daughter, Anna, kept pointing out, Beth remained lithe and elegant, if not quite as athletic as she once was. What hadn’t changed in the forty years or so they had known each other was her her attitude. She was still harder than nails. She was also on the phone.

  With a polite nod and an imperious wave of a finger, Beth let him know that she was on an important call. Prothero smiled to himself. He knew the rules: he had made Beth wait, she was making him wait. Knowing that didn’t help his mood. Nor did his blasted leg. The rush to get here had aggravated his knee pain. He should have picked up his pills when he went home for the watch.

  On the other side of the bar, a crash sounded from the tail end of the disagreement he’d been half-following. The man behind Beth turned, hand twitching towards his lapel. A second man by the main door, who could have been split from the same rock face as his partner, shook his head. The president’s abnormally large shadow settled back onto its heels.

  The disagreement at the bar comprised two young men arguing over a woman while a crowd watched. It was classic, old-school entertainment, tested through the ages. The taller of the two combatants, though that implied there was a fight rather than a rout, had to be military with that hair cut. The legionnaire had the thinner man pinned to the floor. The creases in his jacket sleeve twisted at uncomfortable angles. The legionnaire looked like Ray Franklin, but the high and tight made them all look similar. Prothero guessed that was the idea.

  Beth pocketed her phone and started the conversation they were here for with no preamble, greeting or ceremony. “My position remains the same. There isn’t enough money for a living wage. You know that. I don’t see why hard work should be punished. Many of the wealthy have worked hard to get where they are, and those born rich are at no more fault than those born poor.”

  “There is plenty of money, Beth. You know that.”

  “Still arguing like a teenager? Snappy sounding solutions work well for the public but rarely make the grade in reality.”

  They’d been over this so many times it was verging on boring. Neither was prepared to give ground, and each maintained the absolute certainty that they were right. He was right, Prothero told himself. How could his views be juvenile? After a long silence where neither person was prepared to break eye contact first, she bowed her head. In anyone else he would have taken it as a victory. With her, it made the hairs stand up on his neck.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said as she poured him a drink, “and I am not patronising you. I never would. It’s just not as simple as you make out. You’re aware of that as well as I am.”

  “Only because you and your kind say so.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he regretted them. Bethina had the faintest of smiles behind her wine glass. “Our kind? David, please. Think about what you’re saying.” Her phone buzzed. “I’m sorry. This call is—“

  “More important than the problems facing your public?”

  “How do you know this isn’t the solution you’re waiting for?” She winked at him. “If you’ll excuse me?”

  “But—” It was too late. She was already talking. Prothero eased his leg into a different position. This was not going as he had hoped. He should be used to it by now. Every victory he had won over the years, whether they had left small or big scratches in the surface of what he was facing, had been fought like this. It never got any easier. He’d been advised not to take it personally, to leave it in the office. He’d tried, but whenever he left his comfortable office in its serviced building, he was confronted by real-life examples of what he was fighting for and against.

  He saw the inequalities and the limitations that kept most people on the start line their entire life. He had witnessed countless examples of the paradox of not being able to get the right job without the right qualifications or vaccinations, but not being able to afford those things without a decent wage. People could see the possibilities, see who was in front of them, but knew they could never catch them. If they tried too hard, they may lose their place in the race: pay a forfeit, be disqualified or be sent back to the start line.

  The whole system was based on fear. Do as you’re told, don’t rock the boat and you may have a chance of promotion; don’t play by the rules, you get thrown to the sharks. His argument that it was inherently wrong wasn’t helped by the fact that the woman opposite him had dragged her way up from the streets of Gallowgutter, one of the capital’s poorest areas, to the top of the presidential tower. She was living testament to the claim that the system could work.

  Bethina pocketed her phone. “Where were we?”

  “You were—“

  “Patronising you.” She grinned and muttered something about uptight men and their pride. “I’m joking,” she said in a voice like a primary school teacher. “We were talking about money. The status quo has to be maintained for everyone’s benefit. I know you disagree but the people you champion have the same options and possibilities as everyone else.”

  “Not every one has the brains you have or had the same lucky breaks.”

  “No,” she replied. “But should I suffer for that? Would it have been fairer for everyone if I’d both thought and tried less? I did what I had to do to get where I wanted to be. The world wouldn’t be a better place if I’d played the role it expected me to play. In fact, I believe it would be worse. I took my opportunities when they arose and made them when they didn’t. You of all people should appreciate that.”

  “I do. I understand. It’s just—“

  Her phone buzzed. “I’m so sorry, David.”

  He slammed his fist on the table. “This is important.”

  “If our country has survived without financial parity for this long, it can wait one more minute.” She smiled guilelessly and took the call.

  A sudden burst of laughter floated over to them. A table of drinkers burst into song, drowning out the jukebox. Prothero grabbed his pocket watch. She was doing this on purpose, trying to unsettle him. Beth was one of the few people who could get to him like this. Anna came close but that was to be expected. Family was supposed to annoy you.

  Beth and he had spent years battling across what passed as a virtual ballot box. For every victory he’d claimed, there was always a sting in the tail. Not even their mutual respect and old friendship, which at times s
eemed held together by need or habit, could temper it. Beth’s call finished. She made a show of switching the phone off and giving it to her bodyguard before turning her full attention to Prothero. It made him feel, as it once had, that he was the only person in the world.

  “You do know there is no such thing as a perfect system?” she asked. “At least not when you add people into the equation.”

  “We’d settle for better.”

  Her eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. “We?”

  “Being born in a stable doesn’t make you a horse.”

  “No,” she replied, “but a horse born in a house is still a horse. Seeing as you bring this up, where were you born again?”

  “You know where,” he mumbled. “New Town, on the border.”

  “The disputed border. And you have never told me if your family measured their wealth by money or antiques. Or was it your vintage wine collection?”

  “Give it a rest, Beth.”

  Beth, however, didn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood. “Nor did you tell me if you made your protests about the unfair system while your maid was changing your silk sheets or waited until she had finished?”

  “Stop. Please.”

  “And did you tip her or just try and sleep with her as was your perceived right as a male born into a wealthy family?”

  “Enough,” he snapped, fingers curling around his pocket watch. “That’s way out of line. I never tried to sleep with the staff.”

  “The staff,” Beth whispered with a slight shake of her head. An uncomfortable silence settled over their table. Someone yelled something obscene at the bar. The vanquished suitor was leaving, dusting himself off and shouting vague threats over his shoulder in an attempt to claw back some face. Prothero wasn’t sure what had started the dispute, but the lady had just offered the victor, the legionnaire, a seat next to her.