The Breakers Series: Books 1-3

by Edward W. Robertson

  He folded. A noose of intestines spilled from the cut. He said something—bargaining or begging—but Raina didn't listen. She'd once watched a ferret fight off a big yellow dog. All it had done was strike without end.

  He was holding his gut, so she went for his throat. He shrugged his shoulder and the knife bit all the way to the shimmery line where the hard edge had been forged to the springy body. Karslaw kicked at her. She stumbled back, then rushed forward again, undaunted as a wave. He scooted away, warding her with his foot, so she hacked at his toes.

  "Kate!" he bellowed. "For the love of God!"

  "Stop it, Raina!" her mom said. "You're killing him!"

  Raina smiled grimly. "And it's better than I imagined."

  He had kicked the smaller knife from his foot. She snatched it up and slashed and stabbed in an unbroken chain of blows. At first he blocked with his feet and arms. She took all that was offered. When his limbs grew too useless to hold up, she cut his face instead. He yanked it to the side with a sob. The movement gave her his neck.

  She took that, too.

  He slumped. Blood leaked from dozens of cuts. She sat crosslegged to watch it soil the carpet. Karslaw met her eyes and Raina watched until his spirit became hers. Its power roiled over her, dazzling, a rush so potent she would have fainted if she hadn't been sitting down. He had killed so many things. Strode like a colossus across the land. It had been enough to bring him to the brink of empire. And now all of it was hers.

  Her mother stood agape, face white, pistol dangling in her hand. Raina felt her father there, too. The three of them gazed upon the body, once more a family, united in the death of the man who had torn them apart.

  She went to the doorway and called out. "Bryson! Carl needs help."

  His head poked from the stairwell. She went back to sit beside the body. Gunshots happened downstairs. Raina knew she should care, that her friends were there and that she should help them get out, but she had made the world holy and she would not disturb its fragile perfection. She was one with all creatures and things, the center of a universe without ends or borders.

  After a while, her mother sank to her knees and cried. That, too, was a piece of the order of things; Raina had cried for her first family, too. It had done her no good. She hadn't had the energy to grieve for long. Survival meant getting up. Drying your eyes. And retaking your part of the world.

  * * *

  She didn't stir from Karslaw's body until the men from Avalon came to the gates.

  The battle had been a rout. With so little notice to organize, and the walls nullified before the fighting began, the Catalinans had offered few pockets of defense throughout the palace. There had been little sign of the lasers they'd used to dominate the Osseys in Long Beach and the rebels at the Dunemarket. After the battle for the staircase, her people had gotten into two brief firefights; following Karslaw's death, they went door to door through the palace. One of the enemy committed suicide. The rest surrendered. Bryson led a team into the basements and found a knot of women clustered in the darkness. All were taken to the main hall and held at gunpoint. One of the women informed Bryson she was a former veterinarian and he allowed her to see to the wounded of both sides, starting with Mauser and Carl, both of whom were bleeding badly.

  Then came the call from the gates. Raina went to the window. Torches flapped in the distance, borne by an indistinct mob. She knelt beside Karslaw, set her tanto to his neck, took up her laser, and went downstairs, leaving her silent mother with what was left of the body. The front hall was a mess of blood, scorched carpets, bullet-splintered wood, and frightened islanders. Raina paid them no mind.

  Someone bright had thought to pull up the drawbridge and tie its severed ropes back in place. Raina made a note to reward them. She climbed the stairs and stood directly over the gates. A few dozen armed men approached from outside, wary faces lit by torches and lanterns, and drew to a stop fifty yards from the castle walls.

  A thin, dark-haired woman detached from the group. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

  "I took your palace," Raina said. "And Karslaw's head."

  "Bullshit. Who let you inside?"

  Raina bent over, picked up Karslaw's severed head by the hair, and slung it over the parapet. It weighed seven or eight pounds and her throw barely cleared the moat. It thunked onto the road and rolled down the ruts.

  The woman glanced up at her, then at the head. "What is that?"

  "The end of an evil time."

  The woman hesitated, then approached the dark round shape. She stopped flat a few feet a way, then sank to her knees, covering her mouth with her hand. "What have you done?"

  "Freed my father from the man who murdered him." Raina gazed down from the heights. "I'm done here. Or would you rather die with your chieftain?"

  The woman drew a pistol. "Fuck you!"

  On the walls, Raina's troops trained their rifles and looted lasers on the woman. Her people were few in number, but they had cover and firepower. From the torch-lit mob, a man ran forward, arms raised above his head, and moved in front of the woman with the gun.

  "Stop!"

  "Then tell the woman to walk away."

  The man turned and hissed something to the woman. Her arm quivered. She lowered the pistol. He looked back up at Raina. "What's going on in there? Did you hurt anyone else?"

  "There are prisoners," she answered. "Many of the soldiers are dead."

  "What do you want?"

  Raina thought about opening fire. They could wipe out much of the islanders' remaining strength here and now. But that would mean the war would go on. The few they had left would become fewer. Karslaw was dead and she had felt his will die with him. If she pressed the fight, the others would come for her. They might have someone like her. The woman with the gun, perhaps.

  She didn't want this island anyway. It was a bad place, tainted by the people who had made it what it was.

  "To go back to my home," Raina said. "In exchange for peace and our prisoners, you will stop the occupation and end all taxes, tributes, and claims to the mainland. What's yours is yours and what's ours is ours."

  "You're rabble," the woman said from below. "You're nothing. We'll wipe you out and burn your little street mall to the ground."

  The man wrapped his arms around her. "Knock it off! This war was supposed to bring us peace. Make us safe. But it's been one loss after another, hasn't it? Hannigan's mission to Mexico. Our excursion into the ship. The shelling of Avalon. Now Karslaw's dead because of it, too. We had peace before this started. You think the answer is to fight more?"

  "Do you have authority to make decisions?" Raina said.

  The man flung up his hands. "You just wiped out the authority. I'm doing my best. Can you give me a minute?"

  "Take your time."

  He spoke with the woman, who allowed herself to be led back to the group waiting down the road. The man gathered the people and talked back and forth. They were too far away for Raina to hear much.

  Bryson stepped up beside her. "What happens if they come back shooting?"

  "Then they earn their deaths."

  He nodded. "Carl's looking like he might make it. Mauser's pretty chewed up."

  "He'll die?"

  "Don't know. Ate a lot of shrapnel. If he's got a chance, we need to get him out of here."

  She nodded. The Catalinans continued their talk. After a minute, the man walked back to the gates alone.

  "Say we accept," he said. "What happens then?"

  "You go back to your town," Raina said. "Then we leave. We leave the prisoners here. In an hour, you can come back."

  "How do we know you'll keep your word?"

  She pointed to the head resting in the dirt. "That was all I came for."

  The man bit his lip, teeth flashing in the light of the lanterns above the front gate. "You got a treaty or something to sign?"

  "If you want it on paper, come to the Dunemarket in three days. Alone. You won't be harmed."
/>   He saluted with two fingers. "See you there."

  He walked back to his people. The mob retreated across the valley, disappearing behind the ridge at the other end of the bowl of grass and crops. There was a stable around back and Raina's people put together a wagon and team and loaded up the dead and the wounded. The prisoners were tied and locked in the basement.

  All this had happened without Raina's approval or input. It was time to stop watching and start acting. She climbed the staircase to Karslaw's room where her mother sat vigil over the body. She had blood on her face and her hands and her dress.

  "It's time to go," Raina said.

  Her mother didn't move. "He was a good man, Raina. He would have made a better world."

  The argument was not worth having. Raina held out her hand and her mom took it and let herself be led outside.

  They opened the drawbridge and swung the wagon off the road to the north. The pale man and his crew had left sometime after the fighting and Raina didn't know if she'd see them again. It was strange to think, but they must have lives of their own.

  There was no sign of pursuit from the mob of Catalinans, but the rowboat was missing from shore. Raina glanced around, spooked, but the only noise was the toss of the waves. She swam to the boat and maneuvered it closer to shore while the others broke up the wagon and lashed together a platform to float the wounded and dead to the ship.

  They were halfway to the mainland when the sun rose, its yolk breaking over the hills in a flood of warm pinks and yellows that soon turned blood red. If it was an omen, Raina didn't take it for a bad one. It was a celebration.

  * * *

  When she told him the news, Carl smiled his private smile and turned to examine the painting on his wall. "Won't leave much time for lessons."

  "I'll make time."

  "So should I call you President? Generalissimo Raina?"

  She shrugged. "I don't have a title. They just want me to keep the market safe."

  "Sounds like it will become more than that."

  "You could help me."

  "I don't think so." He went to the wood stove and removed the kettle and poured them both a mug of tea. "How's your mother?"

  Raina sat and touched the wood table. She liked its solidity. "She moved into the old house. She still won't see me."

  Carl frowned at the steam rising from his mug. "The old people knew about a condition known as Stockholm Syndrome. In this condition, captives come to consider their kidnappers friends. Some victims even helped their captors escape police or take new victims. It defies logic, but it's real."

  "I think he put a spell on her," she said. "But it should have died with him. It doesn't make sense and I don't know what to do."

  He reached across the table and tapped the hilt of her blade. "Sometimes the best place for knives is in their sheathes."

  "I don't like your riddles."

  He rolled his eyes. "I'm just playing my part. I think you should let her be. She spent too much time too close to Karslaw. She must have had to do a lot of things she couldn't stand. Like share the same air as the man who killed your father. The only way to survive a thing like that is to lie to yourself. Convince yourself it's not as bad as you think. If anything, you should be proud of her for having the strength to make it all these months."

  Something lurched in her heart. "That's going too far."

  Carl shrugged and sipped his tea. "In any event, now she has space again. With time and distance to think, she'll come to see the truth."

  "What if she doesn't?"

  "What if?"

  Raina sat back. Eventually, she nodded. She didn't like Carl's riddles, but she did like his questions. Somehow he found a way to turn them into answers.

  Hers was right there. She had done all she could. If that turned out not to be enough, she would survive. She always had.

  * * *

  The mass of bandages groaned. "I feel like the Incredible Hulk's shirt."

  "What?" Raina said.

  "Ripped to pieces and tossed aside." Mauser sighed, his visible eye fluttering. The other was behind a thick pad of bandages. Some of it had been left in the grass at the Catalinans' castle, shredded by the blast.

  After the vet tech at the Dunemarket had stabilized him, Raina had traveled all the way to Orange County in search of a real doctor. It had taken four days, the promise of wealth and protection, and letting slip that she had been the one who lit the spark that burned the Osseys from the land, but the man had finally agreed to come with her.

  Under Raina's supervision, he asked around the Dunemarket, pricking fingers and smearing the blood on white strips of paper, scowling vaguely at the results until he found the blood he liked and propositioned the owner for a hefty donation. He had done the surgery right there in her house south of the market. The vet tech attended and Raina watched, carrying out bloody sheets and gauze. Piece by piece, the man sliced the shrapnel from Mauser's flesh and, with a series of little clinks, dropped it in a fat-mouthed jar. After, Raina took the jar. If Mauser didn't want the pieces, she did. They would be good luck.

  "You're hopeless," Mauser said. "I don't know why I even bother gifting you my words."

  "Then you should give them to others."

  "Raina! Are you breaking up with me?"

  "They put me in charge," they said.

  "Of what? The market?"

  "Everything."

  He laughed, then winced and groaned. "Are people that easily swayed by the eagerness to be violent? Well, what's first on your agenda, Genghis?"

  "Choosing my advisor," she said. "There's lots of stuff I don't understand. Sometimes when I talk to people I make them angry. You're good at confusing people until they calm down."

  "Are you asking me to your cabinet?"

  "Will you say yes?"

  He smiled, good eye crinkling inside the nest of bandages. "I would be honored."

  But it would be a while until he could even walk. She had things to get done. If she stood still, the world would pass her by.

  Inspired by the signal lights on Catalina, she established a watch in the lighthouse on the southern tip of the peninsula, placing a green lantern in its turret. If the lighthouse keeper saw any boats approach from the island, he was to light the lantern at once.

  Meanwhile, Estelle lived a couple miles inland on a hill high enough to see the lighthouse. Raina gave her a lantern of her own, then found a merchant willing to relocate to the wooded ridge a few miles from Estelle. His new home was close enough to Raina's that she could see it and its signal from her front porch.

  She sent a small colony to the bridges of Long Beach that the Osseys had used to ambush travelers. She armed her people with two of the lasers they'd looted from the castle and instructed them to set up a little bazaar of their own. They would send the good strangers on to the market and turn the bad strangers back. It wasn't much, but with so few of them left, even a buffer as small as that felt like a big step toward their future.

  Martin's mother had died in the assault on the castle. Raina didn't like digging Martin's body from the mass grave in the Dunemarket—the corpses were so greasy and fat she could only tell which was his by his Godzilla t-shirt—but she had even less love for the idea of the son being forever separate from the mother. She donned gloves and put his body in a red wagon and bore it to the coast. At the house where he and his mother had lived for all the time Raina knew them, she dug a deep, wide grave and laid them both to rest.

  After, she set down the shovel and knelt on the damp, brown dirt. Sweat dripped from her face onto the grave.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "You were a better friend than I ever let you know."

  Wind gusted from the shore. She turned to face it. If there were spirits in it, she couldn't tell them apart. A whip-tailed lizard skittered from the grass, saw her, and went on its way. She crouched and touched the hot sand. She supposed it was hers. Everything from the bridges of Long Beach to the bluffs bordering the path of the Pacific Coast
Highway. Once upon a time, other men had ruled it, men with cars and planes and glowing computers. Men so great they sent ships to other planets. But then a plague had come and those men had died. She might have, too, but she had chosen to survive instead. Every day she faced that choice again, and every day she said yes.

  She drew her knife and cut her palm and squeezed out the blood. The first drops she put on Martin's grave so some of her would always be with him. The next she shook out on the sand and surf so the ghosts of the past would know this land was hers.

  EPILOGUE

  He decided not to move to the green hills north of the bay after all. It was just too close. Anyway, he'd spent plenty of time in Los Angeles. It would be a shame to leave so much of the world unseen.

  He meant to go further. As he headed north, he took his time to pick his way through the city for all the gear a lone person needs to enter strange lands, then followed the highway up the California coast.

  He had no special regrets about the last few months. Other than the endeavor as a whole. And the possibility, however slim, that Lorna really was pregnant. He was fairly confident that was a lie meant to keep him around until Karslaw got his meaty hands on the lasers, but he had no way of knowing for sure. In the end, there was nothing to be done about it. Short of kidnapping the hypothetical little bundle of joy. Anyway, Lorna was safe on her island. She would probably make a better parent than he would. She was certainly loyal to her family.

  Depending on how you looked at it, the open road was either very exciting or incredibly dull. But dull was all right. He figured he could handle several years of dull before his next attempt to die of misadventure.

  * * *

  The Catalinans stayed on their island. Her mom kept to the house on the shore. Raina piked Karslaw's head on the antenna on her roof. Mauser caught an infection, fought it off, and got good enough to walk around. He was missing his left eye and he had a permanent limp and he claimed the fragments the surgeon couldn't slice out of his body picked up radio signals on clear nights, but Raina was pretty sure he was joking.