by Andy Graham
“Who?” Vena’s voice was cold. She had made her way back here without Ray noticing. He cursed himself for getting sloppy. As for the Resistance fighter, he had disappeared. Maybe Vena had turned him into a frog.
Martinez pushed himself to his feet using Ray’s shoulder, fingers squeezing the flesh bruised when Ray had failed to rescue Dan Swann. “Rose, Vena. Ray and me were talking about Rose. But we could have been talking about Dan or Lynn or Dylan or Seren or Sebb or Kayle or—”
“Bethina,” Ray cut in.
“Or Bethina.” Vena’s eyebrows tightened over the brow of her nose. “My sister.”
Ray stood. His leg hurt. His back ached. His shoulders, knees and pretty much every other joint he’d heard of felt like they were full of gravel, his muscles full of mud. “Your sister, Bethina.”
Vena twitched her coat tight. “What are you getting at, young man?”
“You don’t seem to be too upset about her death.”
“Nor do you over your mother.”
“I’ve been busy—”
“Killing people. I saw that.”
“Saving us,” Ray said.
Vena took one, very precise, step closer to Ray. Her coat brushed against his thighs. From this distance, Ray could see quirks in the lines framing Vena’s eyes. Captain Aalok’s voice sounded in his head: “Once you get close enough to count the wrinkles around someone’s eyes, there’s no running away. You gotta be prepared to do one of two things. The first is fight them; the second also starts with F.”
“Frolic?”
“Close, Franklin. Just because Brooke’s here, there’s no need to play the gentleman.”
“All due respect, Captain Aalok, sir,” Nascimento’s voice boomed. “But if I’m that close to someone and that someone happens to be a cute woman and I just happen to be not fighting them, the only wrinkle that counts is the one I can stick my cock in.”
The voices faded to be replaced by the laughter of Ray’s old patrol, Brooke’s loudest amongst them. Some of those people were dead. Some fighting for the other side. One was . . . What was Brooke? Still waiting for him under the Donian Mountains? Still pregnant?
Vena’s ice-blue eyes bored into him, snapping him back to the present. “Since when did private grief become invalid, Ray Franklin? At what point did public grief become a prerequisite to a functioning society?”
“Since—”
“You didn’t save us,” the whisper slid through the room like a knife through skin. “He saved us. Dan saved us. You let him die. You killed my husband.” Stella clutched her daughter to her shoulder with a bone-white hand. “Ray Franklin, progeny of Rose — the famed leader of the Resistance, hiding behind a woman’s skirts and letting other, better men die in his place.”
“Stella,” Martinez said. “It’s—”
“It’s OK, Tino.” Ray gave Vena the faintest of nods. The fighting would have to wait. “I’ll deal with it.”
“It?” Stella shouted.
Emily woke up, tears welling up in her eyes.
“It?”
“The situation, Stella. ‘It’ is the situation.”
Vena was watching, waiting, assessing. A hint of a smile dancing on her lips that was as cruel as it was amused.
“I’m not going to let Martinez try and handle this, just like I didn’t let Dan die. I’m not going to hide, just as I didn’t hide on the towers. You were there. You saw what happened.”
Stella jerked to her feet. A hand lashed out. Ray caught it. The impact hissed up his arm into his neck. Stella wrenched herself free. Drew back her hand for another shot. Emily struggled in her mother’s arms. Stella held her. Crushed her. Caught between a need to hurt someone and calm her daughter.
“I’m sorry, Stella. I can’t say or do anything else at the moment.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What would you prefer? Dr Swann?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. With a shuddering sob, she said, “That was his surname, Dan’s name. Don’t call me that. Never say his name. You murdered him. You let your brother steal my son. You let Dan die.”
“I didn’t ‘let him’ die.”
“You let him!” Her scream shook dust down from the ceiling. “You killed Dan. He was happy. We were happy. Happy! The day we got married. I surprised him. Told him I’d take his surname. He didn’t think I would. I didn’t think I would. He wouldn’t take my surname, why should I take his? He was happy. We were happy.” Her voice faded, switching between muttering and whispering. Emily was watching from the safety of her mother’s claustrophobic embrace, one wide eye framed by dirty blonde curls.
“I’d change a lot of things if I could,” Ray said quietly. “All the way back to that first night we met in the Kickshaw. I can’t. But I’ll do what I can to make this better.”
“He’s dead. What do you mean better? He can’t be dead. That’s impossible.”
Martinez placed an arm around her shoulder. “We love each other. Dan and I are happy.” Guided her towards a door opposite the tunnel and jabbed it open with his crutch. “Where’s Jake? My son.” Stella grabbed Martinez’s shoulder. “Jake’s alive. He has to be.” And her voice faded down the tunnel that led deeper into hell’s cleaning cupboard.
Ray and Vena stood in silence. A steady plink plink plink marked the time. He was counting the drops, he realised. He’d just broken double figures when Vena said, “Well done.”
“For what? Don’t think I handled that well.”
“You kept it about Stella. You didn’t bring your mother, Rose, into the argument. That was well done.”
“Thanks. And I know what my mother’s name is.” His tongue stumbled as his brain caught up with what he was saying. “Was,” he added.
“Is. She’ll always be your mother. Just as my sister will always be my sister.”
“Now you’re making this about you, not me.”
She smiled. “Good, Ray. Very good.”
Ray resumed his counting of plinking from the tunnel, wondering if this was the moment the old wooden structure would cave in. “Do you think the mighty Resistance are ready for us? Do you think they’re going to tell us why they made us wait here?”
“Which question do you want me to answer first?”
“Don’t care.”
“Don’t be petulant, you’re too old for that.”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“I know exactly how old you are. Don’t be petulant.”
“Sorry, Mum.”
Vena stiffened, and let out a hiss of air from clenched teeth. “Are the oh-so-mighty Resistance ready for us?” She muttered something that sounded like ‘if only we’d known’ and said, “I don’t care if they’re ready for us anymore. As for what they’re doing? They’re scurryfunging.”
“What?” Ray’s head whipped round. “You making up words?”
“Nope. Look it up if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m not sure I trust anything on the internet your government controls.”
Her face darkened. “Not my government anymore. Look it up on the Light Net if you don’t trust the regular internet. Most people with access to the Light Net believe anything posted there purely because it’s not under government control.”
“Do you blame them?”
“Yes.” Her voice was laced with irritation. “Maybe if people tried thinking, we wouldn’t have to do it for them. But then—”
“The people would have no one to blame.”
The dying glow of the lantern danced in her eyes, carving her face into dark hollows, blackening Captain Aalok’s close-enough-to-fight-or-frolic wrinkles around her eyes. “Glad to see the intelligence you inherited isn’t letting you down. To scurryfunge is the last minute cleaning you do when you have guests already on the way. But in the Resistance’s case, I guess they’re trying to make the place look more suitable to a Resistance hideout.”
“‘With vintage folding cameras and ear trumpets cobbled together with thick wires,
crocodile clips and circular-keyed typewriters to make hi-tech computers.’” A slow grin crept across his face. It felt odd, as if he’d borrowed it, as if he was betraying Stella by smiling.
“What?”
Distant voices echoed from the tunnel where Martinez had led Stella. “You said that to me back in the Morgen Towers before this really went to shit. You told Rose the Resistance was a little shabby, that it needed a little dressed-down glamour to add shine to the cause. That Bethina would feel embarrassed to attack such an outfit, that it would be doing them a mercy not to expose them for the sham they are.”
Vena smoothed the front of her coat. “Yes, I did, didn’t I? You have a good memory.”
“Yes, I have.” But you didn’t say all that.
Martinez spun his crutch on a table that had been made from tea crates and splinters. One box had black letters marked on the side, another burn marks. The smell of tea leaves hung in the air, tickling the back of Ray’s mouth. Six sets of eyes followed the crutch as it clattered to a halt. The muddy rubber stopper pointed at a man from the Resistance who appeared to have lived under the lake his entire life and had something vaguely fish-like about his bulbous, staring eyes. “Your turn, Matt,” Martinez said.
“This is petty.” Matt picked some fluff off his black roll-neck sweater. His hair was cut into a Mohican that was braided into a long plait at the back. “Why can’t we just have a normal discussion?”
“Because your idea of a discussion is us listening to you talk,” Ray said.
“I heard everything you said—”
“Such as?”
“You wanting to send a delegation to warn the Donian people while you go talk to Field-Marshal Chester. I cannot allow such a thing. It is utter madness. You—”
“Time’s up.” Martinez spun the crutch again. Matt jerked as if he had been slapped. “I used to do this when I was a kid,” Martinez said in an overloud whisper to Ray. “With a bottle of bathtub brandy in Axeford. Bunch of us, boys and girls. That was fun. Bottle points at you and a girl and you disappear behind the Arch Trees for a snog and fumble.” He sighed, theatrically. “Much more fun than this. More useful, too.”
The rubber end of the crutch squeaked to a halt in front of Vena. “It could work. Willa” — she coughed delicately into her fist — “Field-Marshal Chester and Randall Soulier do not get on. She may be tempted to aid a coup against him. Her loyalty was to Bethina and the government, but seeing as Randall killed Bethina . . .” Vena’s voice wavered. “Seeing as he killed my sister, Chester might be persuaded.”
“You’re as mad as Franklin,” Matt said.
The crack of Ray’s palm slapping down on the table echoed around the small war room. The table was scratched and marked from years of use. Decades of grime embedded into grooves and little holes that looked like fork marks. Stella, sitting next to a weathered hatstand that held rolled-up maps, whistles and torches, paused her relentless smoothing of her daughter’s hair to glare at Ray.
“Mad?” Vena quirked an eyebrow at the man. “Madness is hiding in a room under a lake.”
“This room is safe.”
A drop of water welled up from a damp patch on the ceiling. It glittered as it tumbled through the air, catching and refracting the dirty yellow from the bunker lights on the walls into countless mucky rainbows. It landed, smack bang in the centre of Matt’s fishy eye.
Sometimes, Ray thought, the timing of chance events is almost too good to be true. Sometimes, Fate, Destiny, Chance, Happenstance and Luck — the little gods that humans place too much faith in (until they are shouldered aside by the bigger gods of False Modesty and Excuses) see an opportunity for humour that can’t be passed up.
Matt squawked and rubbed his eye with a dirty thumb. His hand was covered in black spirals of ink that swirled up under his sleeve.
“Spiky ink,” Stella muttered. “Cool, exotic tattoos that don’t mean what you think they do. I should have stopped then. When I met you. I should have left then. Gone home. To him. To Dan. My children might still have their dad. The 10th dan Dan.”
“She said that in the Kickshaw. The thing about tattoos,” Ray answered Martinez’s questioning look. “The first time I met her.”
“She’s as crazy as the rest of you.” Matt folded his arms.
“Madness is insulting a wife who’s just lost her husband,” Vena replied. “Madness is insulting a woman whose sister has just been hung. Madness is insulting a legionnaire who has just watched his brother murder their mother.” Her breath came in puffs of mist in the cold room. “Madness is continuing to say such things and think you can get away with it unscathed.”
Matt leant across the table, one finger (this one tattooed with what looked like a wax-tipped moustache) pointed at Vena. “Are you threatening me?”
“Yes.”
Matt, to his credit, attempted to match Vena’s glare. Matt, to his credit, appeared to realise that he’d have more chance outstaring the sun. Vena, to her credit, didn’t smirk for too long once he dropped his eyes.
“The plan is mad,” Matt said, a trace of petulance in his voice. “Even if we could get to the Donian Mountains, we’d be trapped there without support and there’s no guarantee Field-Marshal Chester will help. Can we trust her?”
“Over a middle-aged man who lives under a pond, wears a poet’s roll-neck sweater, sports a braided Mohican and tattoos that are a generation out of date and has enough gut for two and not enough balls for one?” Vena took a big breath in. “Yes.”
Matt’s face flushed red. “The Resistance is not strong enough. We need to consolidate. A great pre-Flood general once said, ‘He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.’”
Vena snorted. “In your case, I think it’s more a case of ‘He who fights and runs away, lives to run another day.’ You really think the VP is going to let you live? He’s drunk on blood, power and vengeance. He has control of the 13th Legion, the Unsung, but the loyalty of the rest of the Ailan Legions still lies with Field-Marshal Chester. She hates him. He hates her. He has not consolidated his new position. The VP’s weak and, despite his brilliant mind, is not thinking clearly. You need to strike now.”
The impassioned echoes of Vena’s speech faded. Even Stella stopped glaring at Ray to watch Vena. Matt was less impressed. “You’re the president’s sister. What’s in it for you? What do you really want?”
“What do I want?”
“The more altruistic a politician’s behaviour, the more selfish their reasons.”
“Stability and peace,” Vena said. “It is only a matter of time before the political infighting ruins Ailan. I also fear that the VP is truly mad and all the good he, Bethina and I have achieved over the years is about to be undone. He is going to take us back to a fictional golden age when the country was only great for those born healthy, wealthy and the same colour as the decision makers, which were usually those with the biggest guns. And now . . .” She interlaced her fingers, the pulse on her neck picking up in tempo. “And now he has the biggest gun yet, a new weapon, a genetic bomb—”
There was a hissing intake of breath. “I thought that was a rumour,” Matt said.
Vena shook her head, her oil-black hair catching the light. “Worse, I fear he is deranged enough to use it. It will decimate Mennai, and much of Ailan and spawn an apocalyptic arms race. No matter how much good he has done, and despite my personal attachments to the man, I cannot condone this. Genocide on a worldwide scale, Matt, that really is madness.”
A silence settled on the room, broken only by their quiet breathing. A second drop of water fell onto the table and soaked through a fading black number on the table. Without a glance up at the source of the problem, Matt placed a beer coaster over the drip marks. “What do we do?”
“I’ll go to Chester,” Ray said. “I’m ex-military.” There was an involuntary stress on that word that hurt more than he thought it would. “I can get in more easily than you. I’ll pick up a new uniform on the way.�
� He plucked at the cloth of the jacket he was wearing. It was barely recognisable as 10th-Legion issue.
“Pick up?” Vena quirked an eyebrow at him.
“It’s easy to find a stray legionnaire if you know where to look.”
“Remind me to offer you a consultancy job to look at security once this is over.”
“And if Chester says no?” Matt asked.
Martinez coughed loudly, made a show of twisting his crutch around so the stopper faced him, and said, “The Axeford Veterans. Not wanting to speak ill of the dead or incite your wrath, ma’am.” He gave Vena a polite nod. “But they’re no fans of Laudanum and even less enamoured of the VP.”
“They’re old men, Tino,” Ray said.
“Bullets from old men with guns kill you dead just as well as those fired by young men. Plus, old men don’t sleep much, aren’t as interested in what most young men want to be doing, which to be honest is getting carnal, and the elderly are some of the crankiest, grumpiest fuckers I know. I don’t fancy pissing off some grandpa with a gammy knee, a leaky prostate and a gun. Do you?”
“And the old women?” Vena asked mildly.
“Reckon we’ve just seen how tame old women can be, ma’am. Long as the old folk don’t need to do too much walking, we’d be better off recruiting them than kids. Less life ahead of them to lose, too.”
“Axeford’s gone, Tino,” Ray said. “I went there. It was wiped off the map, just like New Town.”
Martinez had spun the crutch towards Ray when he was talking. He grabbed it again and pushed himself to his feet. “Axeford’s gone, but the vets live on. Pockets of them in all the Free Towns in the area. Men and women who still remember the Greenfields story when Axeford rode to save Tear. Men and women who know that life is not fair, that life is not fixed by preaching love and tolerance, that waiting to be saved by royalty and governments is futile. These are people who will fight for what they believe in, men like your grandad.”
“Stann Taille.”
“Just like Stann Taille,” Martinez said. “He’s fearsome, is Stann. Balls the size of the proverbial ballpark. You really going to tell me that Stann Taille isn’t dangerous?”
