by Andy Graham
Ray had been with Stann in the tunnels under the Bridged Quarter of Tye. He’d seen the way Stann’s eyes, sniper’s eyes, had blazed as he took out man after man with his rifle. The crack of the single shots, ruthless and perfect. “No. Guess old Grandad Taille’s still got some bile left in him. Got a lot of good there, too.”
“You had another grandfather,” Vena said quietly. She was tracing something in the damp that was spreading across the table. It looked like a smiling face. “Rick Franklin. I met him a few times. Bethina introduced us. Much as I disapprove of vigilantes, I know he would have approved of this.”
“Looks like we have a plan,” Ray said.
“We do,” Martinez said in time with Vena’s nod.
“Matt?”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to. Will you do it?”
Matt’s anonymous colleagues from the Council, snivelling and twitchy, both nodded. “Then yes,” he said. “We have about two dozen Resistance fighters hidden in the vicinity.”
“Stella?” Ray asked. “Do you want to come to the capital? Maybe you could pick up some stuff from your home, something for Emily and Jake?”
She hooked her hair out of her eyes with a clawed finger. It was her ring finger. Her three-banded wedding ring made an audible clink as it slid down to her knuckles. “I will go to Donia with Vena. I am going nowhere with you.”
Ray had hoped for a softening in her attitude, not forgiveness, just maybe a hint of understanding. But as Stella’s other hand gripped the curls of her sleeping daughter’s hair, that prospect seemed even further away than peace.
“And if you do happen to bump into your brother while you’re in Ailan, who I believe is still holding Jake hostage, try not to kill my son like you did my husband and everyone else you claim to care about.” With that she scooped Emily up into her arms and swept out of the room.
The door thudded closed behind her, shaking more drops free from the ceiling. As the noise died, five pairs of eyes swivelled to look at Ray. He cleared his throat. “Guess I’ll go see Chester alone.”
21
A Meeting. A Refusal
The click of a rifle’s safety being switched off rattled round the entrance hall. It echoed off ceilings, bounced off marble floors and skittered across the glass boxes that circled the room. They housed the old control panels that had once driven an earlier incarnation of the Brick Cathedral. Dials the size of a child’s face, buttons like bruises and double-handed levers of brass sat in sheets of burnished steel. The controls had never been this clean when the Brick Cathedral had been a power plant. Now the refurbished building held the wealthy of Ailan, people who were more interested in a sanitised, not-quite-as-honest version, of the past. The redevelopers had scrubbed the grime out of the building and added a little retro sparkle. The way things should have looked if they hadn’t been inconvenienced by budget cuts and reality.
All of that flashed through Ray’s brain — “Observe. Act. Survive,” Aalok whispered. — in the time it took for him to hear a second rifle and see a third legionnaire approaching from his left. Maybe coming here on his own hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
With obvious movements, Ray placed his hands on his head. “I just want to speak to Field-Marshal Chester.”
“Got an invite?” one legionnaire asked, finger hovering over his trigger.
“No invite. No guns, bombs or knives either.”
“Plenty of guts, though,” a second legionnaire said. “Walking in here like that.”
“Chester will want to speak to me.”
The sergeant of the legionnaires, his face pock-marked with acne scars, signalled his men to lower their weapons. They were from the 6th Legion, the Iron Clad, a bull and gate on their sleeve. Their insignia had been modified with a small tree of green and silver. “And you are?”
“Ray Franklin.”
The sergeant snorted a laugh. “And I’m Bethina Sodding Laudanum.”
“She’s dead.”
“I know that, son. We all know that. The whole country knows that.”
“The VP killed her.”
“Big words for an unarmed intruder in one of the most secure locations in the country. How did you get in here, by the way?”
Ray shrugged. “Done it before. Did it again. Hope I don’t have to do it again.”
The sergeant blew out his lips in an exasperated sigh. “Another bleedin’ warrior poet.”
A man wearing a suit worth the price of a small house slid past. His evergreen smile fixed on the unfolding drama, his sculpted hair a cross between a wig and a crash helmet.
“You going to take me to Chester or shoot me?” Ray asked.
One of the legionnaires patted Ray down. It was hurried and not very gentle, but Ray was glad he had left his gear hidden in the smugglers’ tunnels under the Ailan walls. After cupping him between the legs — and Ray thought he detected the hint of a squeeze and a wink — the young man stepped back. “He’s clean.”
“Way I see it is this, son,” the sergeant said, with a level of officiousness that could only be reached by a low-ranking official. “You may or may not be Ray Franklin. You may or may not be Bethina Sodding Laudanum. You may or may not be lying through your arse. What you are, though, is trespassing. So, given that you did us the courtesy of coming in here unarmed, I’m going to cut you a deal. You tell us how you got in here, and we won’t give the cleaning crew any need to complain about any mess.” He grinned, one of his front teeth was cracked into a triangle. “The blood splatter from a good beating takes ages to clean up properly. It gets everywhere. Wouldn’t want to break one of these glass panels with your pretty little head now, would we?”
“They’re probably safety glass.”
“Just means we have to hit it harder to smash it and hope your skull doesn’t fracture first.”
The man with the suit and the hair and the smile was watching curiously. Fearing violence or hoping for it? The expressions on the surrounding legionnaires had shifted subtly. Some men, even uniformed men, hated violence and would do anything to avoid it. (There were stories of legionnaires deliberately firing to miss in battles.) Some got used to it. Once their uniform was on, violence was just part of the job, like filling in forms or picking muse berries. Some men had already seen too much. The hardening on these men’s faces made Ray think that they would do what had to be done and get no pleasure in it, but do it well. Skovsky Senior had asked in the chopper on the way here whether Ray really wanted to go into the Brick Cathedral unarmed. Ray’s reply that weapons wouldn’t help him here now seemed unutterably naive. He barked a short, nervous laugh.
“What’s funny, son?”
“Naive.”
“Who?”
“Me. A friend of mine called me that once. Guess she was right.”
“When was the last time you saw this friend?”
Months ago. I thought she was dead. I thought I was dead. “A while back. She’s pregnant now.”
“Nice.” A leery smile spread across the sergeant’s face. “By you?” He loosened the baton in his belt. “Take a photo of yourself with you next time you see your friend. She’ll need it to recognise you.”
The sergeant was the other type of man, Ray realised, the type that embraced violence all too readily, the type that required ever more bloody experiences to get the thrill they craved.
“Hold him still, boys.”
The men closed. Ray dropped into a low crouch. He could take one out. Maybe two with luck. The sergeant was close enough for Ray to count the fight-or-flee lines around his eyes. As Ray weighed up which man to go for first, a metronomic click of boots on marble cut through the lobby.
“That’ll be enough, Sergeant.”
The blood rose in the sergeant’s face as it left those of his patrol. It dawned on Ray that the men were going to get all kinds of hell for no other reason than their immediate superior had been denied his fix.
Four of Field-Marshal Chest
er’s personal guard, the Praetorians, long-time rivals to Ray’s former legion, stood in formation behind a grizzled captain that must have been well into his seventies. Unlike the crossed swords of Chester’s Praetorians, and the bull and gate of the 6th Legion, the captain’s uniform was unmarked save for a golden tree stitched onto his left breast.
“Sir.” The sergeant’s voice was crisp and percussive. “We apprehended an intruder. He claims to be Ray Franklin.”
The captain stared at Ray, head tilted to one side.
“Sir, this man broke into the Brick Cathedral. An intruder, sir. The 6th Legion takes its responsibilities seriously and will not let the field-marshal down. Let us question him and we will—”
The captain held up one finger. The sergeant fell quiet, a vessel throbbing in his temple, frantic and tortuous.
“Ray Franklin, you say?”
“Yes.” Ray stepped away from the quietly seething sergeant towards a man he felt he should trust.
“Sir—”
“Sergeant.” A hint of steel edged the patience in the captain’s voice. “Search the perimeter. Double the watch. Check security. I want no more breaches or you, and you personally, will be held responsible. Not your men. You. Understood?”
The sergeant snapped to a stiff salute. Eyes flicking from the ever-so-carefully neutral faces of his legionnaires.
“Still here, Sergeant?”
The sergeant pivoted on his heel and stamped off, his face a sunset of embarrassment
The man with the expensive suit and sculpted hair was watching. Standing in the main entrance, he was framed by light from the twins moons and bathed in the sounds of the evening — the hissing of wind through leaves and the lapping of the River Tenns on the banks outside. He smiled, an evergreen, vacuous smile, and stepped out into the night, pausing to let a spotless cleaning truck rumble past. As the main door closed, a stillness fell over the lobby. The marble walls and floor magnified every sound, no matter how small: the rustle of one man’s uniform, the squeak of another’s feet, Ray’s own pulse. “I’m here to see Field-Marshal Willa Chester. My name is Ray—”
“—Franklin. I know who you are.”
“You do?”
“You look like him: the jaw, the chin, the battered, jaded look.”
Ray took the outstretched hand, warily. “Like who?”
“Rick Franklin. Your grandfather saved my life in Castle Brecan when your mother was still a young girl. The least I can do is save you a beating from a sadist with sergeant’s stripes on his uniform. Now, Chester’s waiting for you.”
Ray had been in an apartment in the Brick Cathedral before. He’d broken into David Prothero’s when he’d needed help. The Spokesperson for the Unions was dead now, thrown from the top floor of the VP’s tower on Midwinter’s Eve. A father killed by a son who had progressed — or regressed — to murdering his mother and whose madness was threatening to spill out across society as a whole. Being here again grated on Ray’s nerves, as did Chester’s taste in decor. After months on the run, unless it was utterly functional, any kind of decor, no matter how subtle, seemed wasteful.
One wall of Chester’s official residence was decorated in a similar manner to the foyer: glass dials, brass levers and circular stopcocks that had been polished and press-ganged back into use. That’s where the similarity ended. Hanging from other walls were flags. Some were burnt, others bloody, some were torn, others whole. A pair of gladii were propped up on a drinks cabinet bristling with bottles. A plumed helmet sat on the huge desk that sprawled across one end of the room. The apartment was, unsurprisingly for Chester, austere, traditional and a touch over the top.
Dangling on the outside of the building was a window-cleaning mop-bot. If the machine was from the spotless service truck Ray had glimpsed, then the mop-bot was the ugly side of the cleaning company: the beast that did the dirty work so the beauty could live clean. Its nozzled face spat cleaning fluid from a muzzle-shaped mouth. It had a thick rubber blade on a stumpy arm that scraped across the glass. The noise it produced made Ray feel his teeth were being drilled in two. He clasped his hands behind his back to keep them still and watched and waited for the woman opposite him. That was the third ‘thing’ that was unsettling him: Chester.
She was reading a red leather book, the pages of which were covered in sweeping black letters. As the mop-bot’s rubber blade squeaked along the window, Chester laid the diary, still open, alongside a selection of fabric patches scattered across her desk. A lot of the legions’ equipment had detachable patches for names and units. They could be added to caps, sleeves, rucksacks and so on. Military patches weren’t unusual; this logo of a golden tree was.
“You want my help,” she said.
The speech Ray had prepared on his way here vanished. “How do you know?”
“I was informed.”
“By who?”
Moonlight shone off her short-cropped white hair, gleaming on her black skin. There was a hardness to her expression that reminded Ray of Brooke. “A mutual friend,” she said.
“Laudanum.”
Chester inclined her head. “You’re quick.”
“Not really. Only a handful of people knew I was coming here. She’s the closest one to you.”
“She wants revenge. As do I.”
“For Bethina?” Ray asked.
Chester’s gaze drifted to a brass nameplate on her desk. Ray could just about make the inscription: J. Rainehoff.
“In part,” Chester replied.
A long squeal of rubber on glass set Ray’s teeth on edge. The mop-bot was in the centre of the window, the rubber leaving a trail of water behind it that leaked down the window. The grizzled captain who had escorted Ray up to Chester’s room set a bottle and three glasses before them. Ray watched the clear liquid slosh into the shot glass. He wasn’t sure when the last time he’d drunk anything alcoholic was. His time hiding in the Weeping Woods had been dry, the Morgen Towers didn’t have much in the way of booze, and between those two relatively fixed points, he’d been on the run.
Ray clinked his glass on the captain’s. “You never told me your name.”
“Lacky. After your grandad saved me in Castle Brecan, I got nicknamed Lucky by most of my colleagues. They all wanted to work with me, reckoned my good fortune would rub off on them.” His eyes lost focus for a second. Whatever he was staring at brought a pallor to his cheeks. “My luck was to have met your grandfather. He was a good man. He would have been proud of you.”
Ray snorted. “I’ve not exactly covered myself in glory recently.”
“You’re not watching the world go to shit without standing up for what you believe in, either. Your grandfather would have approved. Look me up if you get out of this in one piece. I’ll tell you what I can about him.”
Ray swallowed his drink. It burnt all the way down to his toes. “Damn, that’s good.”
“One to balance you out?” Lacky asked.
“I shouldn’t.” His glass was full before he knew it.
“Those that went before us.” Lacky raised his glass.
“Will keep the watchfires burning.”
Chester had watched the exchange in silence, not even commenting on the unofficial changes made to the Salute to the Fallen. The mop-bot was now directly behind her. It sprayed a soapy liquid on the window and scraped it off with an eye-watering screech of rubber.
“You want revenge?” Ray asked Chester. She nodded, one finger tracing the outline of a tree on the patch. “So you’ll help?” he continued as a cat appeared from nowhere. It leapt onto Chester’s knees and curled up on her lap.
“No.”
“But I thought—”
“I cannot help a deserter. It would undermine everything the military stands for and everything I have built up.”
“You tried to stage a coup.”
“Maybe so, but I cannot help you. An army is built on discipline and loyalty. Much as I may agree with your reasons, I cannot help you or Vena Laudanum.�
��
“You’re cutting your nose off to spite your face. Sticking to principles that will do more harm than good.”
Chester smiled as the mop-bot squealed. Chester rubbed the cat behind its ears. It hissed and leapt across the desk, leaving the patches spinning in its indignant wake.
“Do you know why I limp, Franklin?”
“What? No. Why’s this important?”
“Despite having less than no money for most of her life, my mother was determined that her only surviving child should have the same opportunities in life as every other child. She decided that those opportunities were based on reading. If you can read, you can learn. If you can learn, you can think. If you can read and think, you can write. So she taught me. Slowly, at first, because her letters weren’t great. But she persevered, even when she was blind with tiredness from looking after me and holding down three jobs. Problem was, people like us weren’t allowed to read back then.” She pinched her dark skin. “The authorities warned my mother. She persisted. She was warned again: they said they’d chop off a toe. She persisted. I remember her telling me that there was nothing they could do to her that would stop her from giving her child what every child deserved, that she’d sacrifice a toe for a better future.” Chester took a swig from her glass. Her lips curled back over her teeth as the alcohol hit. She pulled off her boot, draping a sock over the arm of her chair. One big toe was missing to leave four black toes, the nails painted an unexpected pink. “They weren’t talking about her toe. They made her do it, too.”
As the ramifications of what Chester’s mother had been forced to do to her daughter sank in, the mop-bot shuddered to a halt outside the window. Squat, ugly and angular it eclipsed one of the moons, framing Chester in a haze of shimmering shadows.
“Why are you telling me this?”
A smile crinkled Chester’s face as one hand drifted out to stroke the red diary on her desk. “I’ve learnt things in the past few days that have changed my perspective on certain events. Captain Lacky here” — he nodded his acknowledgement, curious but cautious — “also recently learnt that the Silk Revolution was engineered by former president De Lette. It only seemed fair that you learn something new. It’s often said that hate and love are flip sides of the same coin. Hate and ignorance are the same side of that coin. Think of this as my attempt to lighten your ignorance. Besides, you accused me of cutting my nose off to spite my face. And it seemed a logical progression.”
