by Chuck Wendig
Her little brother, Scooter, hops out of the way as it tumbles past. “Nice kick, sis.” He doesn’t smile, though. He hasn’t smiled in a while. And his arm still looks crooked—it works, but it’s weaker than his other one. From where it broke.
Still, she thanks him. Walks past and musses his hair. “Where’s Mom?”
“Back in her room.”
“She okay?”
“She’s okay.” But the way he says it, Gwennie knows that isn’t true. Means her mother is having another one of those days. Her gray days. Never gets outta bed.
Squirrel comes up, snatches one of the knives out of Gwennie’s hand. Balances it on a fingertip, then hops it from one digit to the next. “Papa would still say you need to do better.”
“I do need to do better.”
“I miss Papa.”
“I know. I miss mine, too.” She chances a glance at Scooter, who looks lost and sad.
Damn.
Squirrel shrugs. “I’m sorry yours is gone. But Papa will be back for me one day soon. You’ll see.”
A vein of defiance and anger in that statement. Gwennie has not yet had the heart to pinch that vein and close it off. She carries her own grief: the loss of her father, the death of Cael. Hopelessness has settled into her bones like an infection. She can’t do the same to Squirrel. The girl wants to believe her father survived the city falling, so be it. Reality will get in its punches soon enough.
She goes and sits down on her bed. No. Not her bed. Their bed. Soon, very soon, to be her wedding bed. A crummy, rickety thing as comfortable as sleeping on a grave-mound. It lists to the right, too, like a boat in a hard wind—Boyland’s heavy and gives the bed a drunken lean. Even when he’s not in it.
On her pillow is a single apple.
Big as her fist. Skin shined to a gleam.
A note tied to the stem. From Boyland?
She sits at the edge of the bed, ignoring the apple. Her stomach growls. She’s hungry. Not starving—they have food here, thanks to Balastair and Cleo living a mile over. Balastair had seeds with him. Always had seeds with him, he said. Turns out, he was the one who gave the seeds to Arthur, Cael’s father. They knew each other, though Balastair said not well, and mostly through his mother and . . . oh, King Hell, none of it matters anymore. Gwennie is starving, but not for food. She’s hungry for something else. Anything else.
They live in the shadow of the Workman’s Spine mountains. They came here, as per the map—it’s in the corner of the Heartland, miles from a small town called Tin Cup and not much else except the sonic Boundary and the mountains past it. With what little money they had and what work they could offer, they all carved out small homes here.
In one week, they’re getting married.
Because, really, she thinks, what choice do I even have? Every time she lies underneath him, the bed jumping and thumping against the wooden floor, that’s the thought that goes through her. I don’t have any choice. This is my best option. And yet, no matter how many times she thinks it, it never feels true. Some things are true and don’t feel that way, she knows that. That’s what Gwennie tells herself to help find sleep at night.
Of course, when she sleeps at night, she dreams of Cael and Balastair. She thinks of her time as a raider, a short time among the Sleeping Dogs on the flotilla. She thinks of the map that hung on Balastair’s wall, a map that showed a world much greater than just the Heartland, a world with places called the Braided Glades, the Moon Coast, the Atlas Ocean.
An ocean! A coast!
Something. Anything.
Anything but this. Living here in the upper corner of the Heartland map, hoping to be like a marble that rolled under a bed or a ring that slides to the back of a drawer, hoping to avoid attention, hoping to never be found. A while back she told Balastair she wanted to be out of here, wanted to leave, but he said they couldn’t. He said it was too dangerous. Things were changing out there. The Empyrean was a convocation of eagles protecting its nest and eggs now—vicious, ready to kill without provocation.
Then she kissed him. And he kissed her back. And it was good. She asked him again: Now will you go away with me?
But he said no, no, they need to stay safe. Shelter in place.
She cried that night.
The next day she told Boyland they were getting married. They set a date. That date is fast approaching. Nobody talks about it. It’s just assumed to be happening, like a train you know will arrive. A train you think might run you over.
She hasn’t cried since. Instead, she feels dried up. Like ground gone parched from greedy, thirsty roots. A thought strikes her like a thrown stone:
I need a change or I’m going to die here.
She looks down at one of the throwing knives in her hands.
Die here in forty, fifty years. Or die here now.
The knife is heavy. Sharp.
She grabs it, grabs the apple, and cuts into it. The note falls onto her thigh and she turns it over—
A little sweetness—B.
The calligraphy—elegant. Looks like it was written by a human of some taste, not a witless clod with all the brains of a tree stump.
Which means: a gift from Balastair, not from Boyland.
The apple skin pops under the knife as she cuts a few little slices. Chews on them. It is sweet. She barely tastes it.
Footsteps. The rickety shack-house shakes.
In comes Boyland, big dumb grin on his big dumb head. His arms are crossed, and his chest is puffed out like a dog that just killed a chicken.
“I did it,” he says.
“Good” is her only response. It’s a hollow word, a dead word.
“You don’t even know what I did.”
“Nope.”
“You’re still mopey. Okay. I know, I get that. This’ll fix it.” His mouth spreads into a big flat-toothed grin. “I’ve set us up. After the wedding, we can get rid of this shack. Build a proper farmhouse. Get a new boat, maybe—”
“What did you do?”
“Whaddya mean, what did I do? Helluva way to ask that question. Lord and Lady, Gwennie. A wife is supposed to have faith in her husband—”
I’m not your wife yet. “Just tell me. Just tell me what you did, Boyland, that’s gonna set us up for life out here in the middle of Old Scratch’s crap-hole.”
He stops for a moment, staring flatly at her, but then seems to find his center again: “I made a deal with Tin Cup’s Mercado Maven. Little goblin-lookin’ fella named Solow. I promised him fresh fruits and vegetables for a, a, a . . . what’s the word, a premium payout and—”
She finds herself on her feet, in his face. His logjam arms grab her behind her back and pull her close for a kiss—he must think she’s happy about this, which means he really is as dumb as the headless cob man out back—so instead, Gwennie pulls away and punches him in the arm.
“You ass,” she says.
“What the hell?”
“Balastair told us those were our fruits and vegetables. That we couldn’t sell them. Because selling them will draw attention to us. Empyrean attention!”
Boyland sneers. “Your boyfriend and I don’t agree on that point. Nobody’s paying attention to Tin Cup, Gwennie. We’re at the godsdamn edges of the Lord and Lady’s creation—”
The world is much bigger and much smaller than you think, buckethead.
Buckethead. That was Cael’s word for him.
Cael.
Shit.
“He’s not my boyfriend, you turd.”
Boyland keeps on ranting: “—and nobody cares about these fancy-pants fruits and veggies, nobody cares because nobody’s looking, and it’s not my job as your husband to take care of that snooty Empyrean prick and his bitchy priss ex-wife or wife or whatever it is that they’re doing now—”
“Wife,” Gwennie growls. “They’re back together.”
“And I can see that burns you, too. You know what?” Here he thrusts one of those meaty sausage fingers in her face, just an inch fro
m her nose, filling the minimal space between them with an aura of threat and menace. “I’ve let a lot slide with you. Because you’re going to be my wife and because I love you.”
“I can really feel the love.”
“Oh, shut the hell up. You ain’t been nice to me since we got engaged. I’m trying to take care of you. Take care of us. I gotta do what’s best for you and me because if we’re gonna try to bring a couple of babies into this world—”
Her laugh is a bitter purge. “You wanna have kids with me? Dream on, buckethead.”
“You’re mean. Mean as a rat snake.” He nods suddenly like he’s made some kind of decision. “I’ve been too nice to you. Lettin’ you have your way and all, lettin’ you think you’re an equal partner in all this. My father didn’t just let my mother have a share in the decisions, and she didn’t want any, either, because as a woman she knew her place—”
“Your father was a drunk, and your mother was weak.”
Bam.
He slaps her. Not hard enough to knock her out or send her backward, but his meaty paw still forces her teeth to clack together and leaves her face stinging. Gwennie roars, and even as he raises his hand again, the knife flashes, cutting the air with a hiss, and he reels his hand back. He holds his right hand with his left, and blood wells up through the fingers.
Boyland looks stunned. Not angry. Just shocked into silence.
“You killed Cael,” she says, feeling the poison bubble up out of her—it had been stewing inside her for so long, pooling in her lungs, swimming in her guts, and here it is, spat out all over him as he cradles his knife-slashed palm. “I almost had him. Almost. If you had helped me, maybe we could’ve gotten him in the skiff. And he wouldn’t have died there.”
Boyland’s voice is soft, not angry—a fraying, raggedy sound. “I had to do it to save you. If you had gone over with him, I dunno what I’d have done.”
“No. You had to do it because if he was left alive, then I would’ve gone with him. Would’ve been me and him, not me and you. He saved my little brother. And that wasn’t the first time! When Scooter was about to fall, what did you do? Tell me, Boyland. Tell me how you would’ve saved my little brother.”
But Boyland doesn’t say anything. Gwennie thinks in that moment that the real knife in her hand has nothing on the invisible one she just stuck in his heart.
“You hit me again,” she says, “and next time I take the whole hand.”
“Gwennie, wait—”
She pushes past him.
Out through the dingy shack, flinging open the rotten-board door. It falls off its hinges, rattles against the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he calls after. “I’m so sorry. I just—I don’t want to live like this anymore. In this . . . rat-trap. I’m sorry, I love you, Jeezum Crow, I do.”
She marches out toward the skiff.
“I’ll be back,” she barks.
“Where are you going?”
“To fix your screwup.”
Mole watches as a narrow little vine, thin as a rat-tail, trails across the Checks board. It gets to one of the peons, then the end of it blooms into a flower the color of fresh blood. The petals grab the piece like a soft, delicate hand, then use it to jump one of Mole’s Gunfighters, knocking that piece out.
“Aw, man,” he says. One step away and his Queen will be taken. He can move her. But he knows what happens next: Mother Esther will chase him around the board like he’s a toad hopping away from a rumbling motorvator, trying not to get ground up in the threshing bar. Dangit. “I give up.”
“Don’t,” she says, sitting across from him. Watching him, not the board. Her eyes swirl, iridescent colors. Like fly-eyes. Beyond the porch on which they sit—where they play Checks—the Blightborn continue their work at the farm. Work he sometimes helps with, though they never look at him like he belongs. She does, though. Esther never treats him like an outsider. She smiles at him now and says: “You never know. You might get lucky.”
“You said this game is about skill, not luck.”
“So is life, and yet, luck matters.”
“Uh-huh. Okay, okay.” He considers his next move. As he does, he says: “You seem to be putting a lot on that McAvoy jerk.”
“Him and Wanda. The two of them.”
“She’s special.” Mole snorts. “He ain’t.”
“They’re both special. For different reasons.”
“It true?”
“Is what true?”
“I heard Edvard saying that you sent them right into the path of danger. Not away from it like you told them. Said they’d run into trouble a couple-few days out.”
She nods. “That is true.”
“Why? If they’re so special, don’t you want them to survive?”
Esther smiles. “Only if they deserve to.”
“So it’s like a test?”
“It’s a test.”
“But Wanda could get hurt.”
Esther nods.
Mole sits up straight. “She gets hurt, I’m blaming you. Which means I’ll kill you dead myself.”
“You like her.”
“I love her.”
“Good. Now put some of that passion into your game and make a move.”
Tin Cup is barely a town. It’s more a shanty popping up out of the corn. No plasto-sheen street—just a dirty, gravel-pocked X with a collection of crummy lean-tos and houses clustered together like hobos at a burn barrel.
At the far end sits the tallest building—a three-story hatbox with a rusted sign hanging out front reading BHAGRAM’S BAR.
It’s where Solow, the Mercado Maven, will be. Solow doesn’t make his wares public, like with most markets. He “curates.” (His words.) Curates both who gets to see the collections and what goes into—and out of—the market.
Gwennie parks the skiff out front. No time to do otherwise.
She storms into the bar.
It smells like cigarillos and puke in here. The chicha beer is to die for—maybe literally, because any time Bhagram pours a bowl, he first scrapes the mold off the top before handing it to you. It doesn’t just smell sour, it smells like a cup of puke soup.
Everyone’s gathered around the bar. A bar that is, in fact, just a series of old barrels strung up together, the hoops rusted, the wood stained.
Gwennie sidles up at the far end of the bar, away from the crowd of men hovering over something. They’re jostling together, gasping and laughing. She doesn’t know many people in this town, but she sees Bhagram there, obviously, and Horgo—that pig-nosed, toothless hobo. Resident drunk. Never not here in the bar. She has no idea how he makes the ace notes necessary to pay for drinks, unless Bhagram just serves him that sour mash bile-beer for free.
Thing is, she doesn’t see Solow. Maybe Bhagram knows where he is. She raises a hand, tries to get the bartender’s attention.
“Hey,” she says. “Hello.”
He holds up a silencing, impatient finger.
“Play it again,” he says. Not to her, but to the crowd. “Turn it up this time, turn it up.”
Gwennie looks over, notices that their faces are lit by a faint glow. A visidex, she guesses. Used to be those were a rare find here in the Heartland, but since the Saranyu fell, more have trickled out—so-called jail-broken devices that still connect to the Empyrean network but don’t send out signals. Which means they can’t be tracked. You get caught with one, the skyborn bring the pain, so most folks keep them hidden. Heartlanders use them mostly to follow news and watch Empyrean sex videos.
Which is probably what they’re watching now.
And then, out of nowhere, she hears Cael’s voice.
It’s like a ghost calling out to her.
Faintly, distantly: Gwennie, run.
Her breath, trapped in her chest like a bird caught in a hand.
She looks to the window. Then the door. Expecting him to be standing there, staring in. Waving his arms. Warning her about—what?
But then she realizes.
It’s coming from the visidex.
With no thought toward rudeness or, frankly, her own safety, she pushes into the men and tries to spy the visidex. But the men push their shoulders together, walling her off. Bhagram’s the one who says, “Let her through, let her see, this is wild, wild. Replay it. Replay it!”
They grudgingly make room for her. She smells sweat and sour beer and breath that could kill a goat-fly—
All that is lost when the video begins to play.
Grainy video. Static, unmoving. As if mounted on something.
Horseheaded Empyrean soldiers—evocati augusti—march out of the corn with two prisoners, each with arms bent behind their backs.
One of them is Cael.
The other she doesn’t recognize at first. A girl.
Cael’s face is a bloody mess. They shove him toward the camera, and she realizes that it must be mounted on the front end of a skiff or a ketch-boat. He looks dazed. Beaten. When they shove him, he staggers, almost falls.
The two evocati flank him, and two more shapes come up on the side.
She recognizes the herky-jerky walk—
Mechanicals. Two of them. Chests like metal barrels, heads shaped like Boyland’s bucket skull. Each has an arm that looks like a sonic cannon. These are different from the ones she’s seen. Upgraded, if you can call it that. Swaddled in a coating of fake flesh. Big eyes. Wide mouths with gleaming metal teeth. It’s like by trying to make them look more human, they only succeeded in making them look less.
Cael looks up. She can see the moment when clarity hits—like he’s suddenly got focus, purpose, determination.
“Here it comes,” Bhagram says. The other men vibrate in anticipation. Gwennie doesn’t have to wait long to see—
Cael’s head has this barely visible twitch, and . . .
A dark shape sails out of nowhere, from way behind them. Blurry, at first, spinning. Then Gwennie realizes: it’s a cob of corn.
It hits one of the evocati.
Whonnnng.
The soldier spins toward it. Two of the mechanicals pivot, too, their hip joints whirring and clacking as they train sonic cannons on nothing.
