Deacon

by Kit Rocha

Reyes snorted. Then he held up one finger. “I don’t want any of you motherfuckers calling me crazy ever again.”

  Zeke lifted his head. “Hey, fuck you. At least Ashwin and Ivan and I have tragic fucking childhoods to make us crazy. You’re just a natural overachiever.”

  Bishop choked on a laugh, which should have cut the tension. But Ana was looking at Gabe, who shuddered as if he’d been shot. It didn’t matter that jokes were how Zeke and Reyes dealt with the darkness in the world--Gabe had always viewed it more seriously. More earnestly.

  And in a twisted way, Zeke was right. It made sense for Zeke to be here. He’d been tossed out of Eden to scrap for survival in the sectors. Ivan and Ana were second-generation Riders--raised to believe in the cause, but born to commoners, like Lucio and Bishop. If any of them hadn’t become Riders, chances were good they would have vanished into quiet, meager lives, always wondering if one bad week would leave them hungry or homeless.

  But Gabe was like Reyes and Hunter. Born to wealth, born noble. With his eldest brother wed into the Rios family, Gabe had stood to inherit the entire family estate upon his father’s death. Ana couldn’t even wrap her brain around how much money that meant--more than she’d ever see in a hundred lifetimes. Enough to do any damn thing he chose.

  Instead he was here. He’d pledged to give his life for the greater good of Sector One. Gabe was a believer, a man who valued peace so much he rarely touched a gun. A man who preferred his kills up close and personal, because he thought distance made it too easy to forget the gravity of taking a life. Who believed you should feel every life you took, because if you weren’t willing to bear that weight, then you weren’t killing for the right reasons.

  Ana couldn’t imagine a world where Gabe would accept money as an acceptable reason.

  Hunter must have come to the same conclusion. “We’ll all take some time to think it over,” he said finally, with a quick, sidelong glance at Gabe. “We owe ourselves that much, and Deacon knows it.”

  Ivan pushed away from the table, his blue eyes stormy. “Do you still want me to make my rounds in the refugee camp this afternoon?”

  “Is there a reason you shouldn’t?” Hunter asked coolly.

  His tone brooked no argument, and for a moment Ana thought Ivan might challenge him. But Hunter had that presence--the result of being born to wealth and raised with power, that invisible, inimitable confidence that only came with a lifetime of being told you were meant to lead.

  With his arms crossed over his chest, muscles bulging and jaw fixed, he was a dark, forbidding wall.

  And Ivan was smarter than Ana. He didn’t throw himself against walls.

  With a jerky nod, Ivan pivoted and strode from the room. Gabe shrugged off Zeke’s attempt to reach for him and shoved away from the table to stalk toward the back hallway.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Bishop promised, rising to follow. But he stopped long enough to squeeze Ashwin’s shoulder. “You’re fit to sit with us. Don’t doubt it.”

  Ana missed Ashwin’s murmured reply. She was too busy avoiding Hunter’s gaze as she swung her leg over the bench and headed for the door.

  She didn’t need time to think. She needed intel.

  And she would damn well get it from the source.

  Chapter Five

  The way Deacon saw it, he had two options: he could get raging drunk, or he could do something useful.

  The first option held more appeal, but it couldn’t lead anyplace good, so he ran down the mental list of projects he’d been putting off. Most of them were out because they involved planning and strategy for the Riders, and he gritted his teeth as he reminded himself that he’d asked for this. Gideon wouldn’t have removed him, and none of the other Riders--no matter how angry or disbelieving or betrayed they felt--would have balked at taking simple orders from him.

  Even if they should have.

  There was one thing on his list that he could make some headway on, though--a small fishpond beside the path from the temple to the Riders’ barracks. He’d mentally slotted it in for the fall, when temperatures were lower and digging in the heat of the day wouldn’t be so awful.

  What the hell? A little manual labor wouldn’t hurt him, and it might be all he was fit for right now. So he grabbed a pickaxe and a shovel from the tool shed behind the barracks and set up the path to the spot he and Delfina had chosen.

  He’d just broken ground along the perimeter and reached for the shovel when Ana’s voice came from behind him. “So, you dropped a bomb on us, and now you’re out here...digging a hole.”

  God help him. “That’s what it looks like.” He stabbed the point of the shovel blade into the earth, then stepped on it with all his weight. It sank into the dry earth with a scrape, and he glanced back over his shoulder. “Did you come to tell me off?”

  Ana stood with her arms across her chest, her expression fierce. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Really get your martyr on before you dig your hole and crawl into it.”

  “It’s a pond, not a grave, Ana.” He turned to face her, propping his arm on the handle of the shovel. “What do you want?”

  Her brown eyes blazed. He’d seen this anger in her before, carefully controlled, but now it was spilling close to the surface. She was gripping her own arms so hard that her knuckles stood out white against her brown skin. “I want the whole story.”

  “What makes you think you don’t have it already?”

  “Nobody’s born an assassin.” Her eyes locked on to his. “You told us all the worst parts, the parts that would hurt us and you. You didn’t give us the context.”

  Maybe that was true, but he couldn’t think of a single fact of his circumstances or history that might change things. “I don’t know what else to say. But I’ll answer any questions you have.”

  Her grip on her arms relaxed a little, as did her stance. She studied him for a few seconds, and he could see the questions piling up behind her eyes.

  The one she finally asked cut straight to the point. “How did Gideon find out?”

  “I told him.” Deacon tossed the shovel aside. “I’d been here for a few weeks, maybe a month. And I’d seen the difference between the way people spoke in the temples and what they did. Gideon was the only one who was actually serving his people, and I didn’t want to kill him. So I came clean.”

  “And he forgave you?”

  Forgiveness was a weak word for it. Insufficient. “I handed him my gun and asked him to make it quick. But he had other plans.”

  “He usually does.” She tilted her head, the tension back in her eyes. “Did my dad know?”

  Deacon almost laughed. If Will Jordan had known, he’d have wound up dead, after all--and it wouldn’t have been quick. “No. That was Gideon’s directive. None of the Riders knew, not until I told Ashwin a few months ago.”

  “What if that hadn’t been Gideon’s directive? Would you have told us sooner?”

  “I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure he ever would have been able to keep the secret. And if he hadn’t, at least in the early years of the Riders, he probably wouldn’t be here.

  Ana digested that, her thumb tapping idly against her biceps. “Do you regret the people you killed? The ones before.”

  There was a simple, easy answer--but it wouldn’t be the whole truth. Deacon scrubbed his hand over his face. “Some of them. Not all of our jobs had innocent, blameless targets. But I sure as hell regret how it all went down. Killing for justice or protection is one thing, but there’s no honor in doing it for money.”

  “No, there’s not.” Her thumb stilled, and her voice softened. “Do you want us to forgive you?”

  If Gideon hadn’t forgiven him, he wouldn’t be there to debate the finer points of betrayal and acceptance with her. And if the Riders didn’t forgive him, his life would change in ways he still couldn’t wrap his head around. But he had no right to demand anything from them.

  “I left you alone to talk things over because I didn’t want to influence any of
you,” he told her instead. “I wasn’t running away. I’m not. But forgiveness isn’t something you can ask for. You can be sorry to the depths of your fucking soul, but forgiveness has to be given.”

  “Can I--?” She licked her lips. “You don’t have to answer this one, but...how did you end up killing people for money? How did you start?”

  She didn’t give up easily--or at all. “You’re sure you want to know? Even if it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference?”

  No hesitation. “Yes.”

  “Fine.” If it was anyone else, any of the other Riders, he might have still assumed that the question was an automatic one, motivated by reflex instead of true curiosity.

  But Ana wasn’t any of the other Riders. The only thing greater than her legendary resolve was her self-control. She never did anything without turning it over and over in her mind, examining all the angles--the upsides and the potential landmines. As if every decision, no matter how mundane, could topple everything she’d worked to build.

  Maybe she was on to something there.

  “Not here,” he grumbled finally. He hefted the shovel and pick and headed back down the path. When he reached a fork in it, he veered left--away from the barracks, toward a small shrine half-hidden in the woods. It was nothing more than a couple of benches and a statue dedicated to some obscure saint. Even so, fresh flowers lay at the base of the weathered statue, crowding around charms and other offerings.

  He leaned the tools against a nearby tree and gestured to one of the benches. “Sit. It’s not what I’d call a short story.”

  Ana sank onto one of the benches and stretched out her denim-clad legs, crossing them at the ankle. “I’ve got time.”

  He sat on the other bench and braced his hands on his knees. The only place to start was at the beginning. “I was born the year the lights went out. The first real memory I have is of my parents just trying to survive.”

  It had seemed so normal to him. To him, that was life, scrambling every waking hour to make sure you had food, clean water, safety. It had taken him years to grasp the magnitude of what his parents had been thrust into--a desperate fight for survival, and with a newborn, no less.

  “We were lucky,” he went on. “Things in the cities got bad quick. But we lived out in the country. They already had a garden, some tools that would still work. Chickens. We were lucky.”

  “Was anyone really, back then?” Her voice was soft. “My dad never was shy about telling me hard truths, but stories from the first few years... He wouldn’t tell me those.”

  Because it didn’t matter how lucky you were when the whole goddamn world had fallen apart. Even if you managed to take care of all your basic needs, disaster loomed around every corner. There was always sickness you couldn’t treat. Medicine that ran out.

  Help that never came.

  Giving Ana the horrible details about the illness that had killed his parents just felt wrong, like he was trying to curry her compassion, so he glossed over it. “They died when I was young. I tried to make it by myself for a while, but it was too much for me, and I set out for the nearest settlement. I was nine years old.”

  Ana’s fingers tightened around the edge of the bench. “Nine is young to be in the world on your own.”

  He snorted. “There were kids younger than me living in Sand Harbor already. They’d comb the beaches for shit people had left behind, do odd jobs, beg. Steal, if they had to. But that’s what everyone in Sand Harbor does. It’s a haven, a place where criminals can meet up and do their business, no questions asked.”

  If he closed his eyes, he could still feel the gritty, dirty sand beneath his bare feet, hear the birds squawking and men shouting, the music spilling from the taverns and brothels. It was a hard place, and you either adapted quickly or you died.

  So Deacon had adapted.

  When he opened his eyes again, Ana was watching him, her expression caught between gravity and sympathy. He took a deep breath, ignoring the way her gaze made his skin prickle. “The Kings were the biggest game in town. Their leader was a military vet who believed in three things: training, discipline, and money. He recruited a lot of kids to cook and clean on the Kings’ compound.”

  “And you got recruited?”

  “Yeah. I made beds, served meals, maintained weapons.” By the time his instruction in using those weapons had started, it all seemed...normal. As mundane as helping his mother can vegetables or sharpen axe blades. “It wasn’t all murder and mayhem, you know. The day-to-day shit was a lot like being a Rider.”

  She tilted her head. “They were your family?”

  He thought about the men he’d known back then. Fife took the younger kids under his wing and showed them how to survive when things went wrong--because things always went wrong. Glenn had a dog he’d specifically trained to attack, but he’d never take the damn thing with him on jobs because he was afraid he’d get hurt. Nathan and Ned were twins, fiercely loyal to each other above everyone and everything else. The day Nathan fell during a job, Ned had vanished, never to be seen again.

  And then there was Seth, another kid from Sand Harbor. He and Deacon ran together on the streets there, were recruited together. Grew up together. Until Gideon, Seth was the closest thing Deacon had ever had to a brother.

  None of them were sociopaths eager to spill blood because they craved the violence. That was the old man’s one hard-and-fast rule: he wouldn’t hire anyone who liked hurting people. He didn’t trust them, because that kind of twisted shit was personal, maybe even pathological. You couldn’t rely on someone like that to make rational, financially sound decisions.

  No, aside from the fact that they killed people for a living, the Kings were mostly just...normal people. Not quite a family, but more than a bunch of strangers. “It’s hard to explain. If I try, it’s gonna sound like I’m making excuses. And there aren’t any.”

  “Deacon...” She sighed. “No one’s going to think you’re making excuses. Not for the Kings, and not for yourself. You could have led with all the terrible shit that happened to you, tried to buy a little sympathy. But you didn’t.”

  “Because it’s the last thing I want.” He rose and retrieved the tools. “I don’t lead because you feel sorry for me. I lead because you respect my abilities and my principles. If any of that changed today, then explanations don’t matter, and neither does my poor, sad-little-boy history.”

  She flowed to her feet and planted herself in his path, her body inches from his. “You lead,” she said, biting off each word, “because they worship you.”

  He blinked down at her. “Well, Jesus fucking Christ, I hope not.”

  “Are you blind? Everyone trusts you with their lives. They live for your approval. Explanations matter because--because--” Her fingers curled into fists. “God, how do you not see it?”

  The vehemence of her words made his blood run cold even as pressure squeezed his chest. For the first time, maybe, he understood how Gideon must feel. Being worshipped wasn’t a compliment. It went straight past flattery or admiration into something almost sinister. You’d have to shoulder an inhuman weight just to try to live up to those kinds of expectations.

  And you would always, always fail.

  “I do see, Ana.” He shouldered the shovel and held the pickaxe by the metal head, letting the handle dangle between his fingers. “That explains a lot. Thank you.”

  “Deacon--”

  He turned away. Instead of following the path that she would also have to use, he slipped into the trees. It might take longer, but he knew the way.

  Ana’s words had stripped away the last of his hope that the Riders might consider his confession logically and follow their consciences. Because she spoke of faith, and he already knew how that worked.

  Because true believers kept on believing, even when they shouldn’t have.

  Gideon

  Gideon would never admit it out loud, not even with a knife at his throat, but he missed Cerys’s meeting table.

&nbs
p; For decades, the sector leaders had gathered in Sector Two to bicker and plot and make wary alliances over the polished wooden surface. Shaped like a massive square, it had been the perfect size to allow them to sit two to a side and look each other in the eye without getting within arm’s reach.

  But its main selling point, in Gideon’s estimation, was its location: on the ground floor.

  The meetings of the New Council--a grand term Markovic was trying to make stick--took place a dizzying fifty stories up in the air. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows revealed blue sky and the distant mountains, along with a life-ending plummet down to solid concrete.

  Gideon recognized the irony of it--a man reputed to hold regular conversations with God being scared of heights. But he’d always been more comfortable with both feet planted firmly on the earth.

  The woman next to him, on the other hand, seemed right at home. Jyoti’s poise and elegance masked a warm heart that beat against a spine made of steel. Though Gideon had welcomed all of his cousin’s lovers into the family, he felt a special kinship to the woman who had taken over Sector Two to protect its citizens in spite of the steep personal cost.

  It took a particular sort of reckless masochism to embrace leadership over the place that had broken you. Gideon of all people knew that.

  But Jyoti hardly seemed broken now. She leaned back in her leather chair to cross her legs under her brightly patterned silk skirt. One neatly manicured nail tapped softly on the glass table as she listened to Six with an expression of intent interest.

  Ah, yes. Listening. Something Gideon had best make a habit of, now that these meetings weren’t mostly posturing and sniping.

  “...so we figured out what the guy was investigating,” Six was saying. Unlike Jyoti, who moved with liquid grace, Six was a ball of tense energy. She leaned forward to brace her elbows on the glass table, brown eyes burning with intensity. “He was investigating a couple of disappearances.”

  Markovic frowned. “Can you be more specific?”

  Six turned to look at the former councilman, and Gideon tried to read the emotion there. The subcurrents between leaders were far more subtle these days--before the war, the old sector leaders had only occasionally hidden their claws, and usually to further some scheme or another. Alliances were rare and brief.