Dusk

by Ashanti Luke

  Cyrus held the tip of the spear down with his staff, but the other end of the spear came around again and pointed at his eye. “Step off or step into the round. I don’t have time for games.” Cyrus snapped, the fury in his voice unmistakable, yet Six’s eyes seemed relaxed. He was either overconfident, unable to discern Cyrus’s rancor from his grace, or he didn’t care.

  “I thought you would never ask,” he smiled and stayed his own weapon, but it did nothing to abate the incense swirling around in Cyrus’s head. Cyrus stayed calm as the spectators began to form around them, because he knew once he stepped into the round, rage would be of no use to him against this man.

  Whether Six knew it or not, there was more at stake than a ceramic cup. These people, as relaxed and demure as they seemed in their little crater, were a warrior people. Inside this hole they called home, they were afforded some pause, but to the Eurydicians, they were outcasts, true apostates. They were mere animals trapped in a constricting corner, and they fought as such. There was no mistake that Paeryl had become their de facto leader. He was loud, he was melodramatic, but he also possessed a command over the spirit oft neglected by those with less naturally salient power.

  Which meant in order for Cyrus to accomplish his already sketchy plan, he needed to win this fight.

  The problem was Six was fast, too fast, and he was stronger than the other Ashans. His attacks were sharp, precise, his defense seemed impregnable, but he was cocky and aloof—which meant his precision in battle did not necessarily translate well in armistice. When the fight was over, he was uncouth and brazen just like any other Apostate, but unlike the others, when the swords were on the ground, he was also sloppy.

  Six attacked first, as Cyrus had expected, but he had not expected the attack to come with such force. Cyrus could see how sharp the tip of Six’s dual-ended spear was as their weapons clanged together. Cyrus rebounded from blocking the attack and swung a counterattack, but Six had already brought his own weapon into the path of Cyrus’s swing and had moved the opposite spearhead around. Cyrus side-stepped, ducked under the attack, and moved his staff toward Six’s midsection. Six planted the tip of his spear into the ground and hopped over Cyrus’s attack, using the leverage to lift his body as he spun over Cyrus’s staff and swung his legs at Cyrus’s head. Cyrus ducked under Six’s airborne body to a gasp of the crowd. As Cyrus passed beneath Six, he brought the back end of his staff into the bottom of Six’s spear. The spear dislodged from the ground and Six lost his leverage, but he managed to get his feet beneath him and thrust his spear toward Cyrus. Cyrus moved and parried, but the other end of the spear came around in a blinding flurry of stabs. Cyrus was amazed he managed to block the attacks as he backpedaled away from the assault.

  Then, Six spun the opposite end of the spear toward the outside of Cyrus’s leg. Cyrus had anticipated the attack, but it was still too fast for him to dodge completely. He stepped his left foot over the attack and stopped it with the bottom of his right shoe. He brought his right leg around, swiveling his body and, clasping the shaft of the spear between his legs, he spun his own staff around at Six’s head. Six ducked just as Cyrus had expected. The crowd gasped again as Cyrus spun his own staff behind his back and then thrust it out at Six’s ribs, forcing him to let go of his spear as he hopped clear of the attack.

  Cyrus followed the lunge with a sweep his staff, but Six, with the poise of a feral cat, flipped backward, over Cyrus’s attack, and in mid-air, grabbed his own spear with both hands, and wrenched Cyrus from the ground with the momentum from the flip. Cyrus had seen the whole move play out and still could do nothing to maintain his footing as the momentum of his own swing had shifted his weight just before Six’s unorthodox attack. Cyrus breathed out as he fell, avoiding the shock of his lungs contracting, but his head still smacked against the ground. A dark static spread from the inside of his vision outward as the impact shock passed through his head, but Cyrus instinctively rolled backward to avoid any attack that may have followed. The momentum of the roll, however, wrenched his own staff from his hands. Expecting to use the staff as leverage to get to his feet, Cyrus did not quite get his legs beneath him, and, as the dark haze over his vision faded, it revealed Six, standing on Cyrus’s staff, lunging the spear point toward Cyrus’s chest.

  But Cyrus continued to roll onto his shoulders, kicking the spear attack skyward with the flat of his left foot. He flipped his hands behind his head and hopped from his shoulders onto his feet beneath Six’s spear. The ease of the kip-up convinced him that his own cartwheel over his staff could work. As his body moved forward, he let his legs move over his head as he grabbed the staff with both hands and snatched it from beneath Six’s feet. Six must have side-stepped as the staff came from beneath him, because as Cyrus came to his feet and whipped his staff around, Six was no longer where he had been standing, and his own spear was coming around at Cyrus’s leg again.

  This time Cyrus was able to jump over the attack, and as he rose, he pulled his staff around to his side. He had expected Six to parry, but Six moved toward the attack. He lifted his own spear over Cyrus’s staff, and spinning toward Cyrus, knocked the staff from Cyrus’s hands and sent it spinning into the crowd. Before Cyrus could react, there was a foot in his ribs. Cyrus heaved, managing to absorb the shock without losing his breath, but stumbled backward. He pedaled his feet behind him to gain footing, but he saw Six’s spear closer than it should have been. And then he realized the spear was airborne. Cyrus pedaled his feet back faster, but there was a sudden flash in Cyrus’s consciousness, as if his own mind was trying to spare him the horror of his own impalement. When the flash cleared, he was falling, and all he could see was the irrationally short shaft of the spear glinting in the sunlight as something caught under foot and sent him to the ground.

  And then he realized it was the spear stuck in the ground behind him that had taken his legs from under him. He had not been impaled. His senses had not censored his injury. It had been the glint of light, reflected just perfectly into his own eyes that had blinded him. His coccyx hit the ground hard, sending a peal of pain up his spine as he looked up the shaft of the spear to see Six barreling toward him.

  Six should have known he was vulnerable to attack, and yet he was still charging. Six must have been gambling on his own ability and speed to counter any attack Cyrus would have thrown in the nanoseconds it took to cross the two meters between them.

  So Cyrus didn’t attack.

  Cyrus cowered, threw his hands up, and planted his foot as if to scurry. And then, just as Six was almost on top of him launching his own attack, Cyrus sat up, grabbed the middle of Six’s spear with both hands and twisted it, scooping the blade from the dry earth, sending a shower of dirt and dust directly at Six’s face as the blade came up in the wake of the silt. The blade moved up through the skin next to the scar on Six’s chest, just over his heart. Six reeled from the attack and Cyrus spun the other end of the spear around while planting his heel into the outside of Six’s knee—not hard enough to dislocate it, but hard enough to send him to the ground. Six bounced when he hit the ground. He tried to get his hands up, but by the time his body settled, the spear tip was already at his neck.

  Six sat there, wordless and huffing, as the dust around them cleared. There was something in his eyes Cyrus could not really place. It was not hatred, not disdain, but it wasn’t reverence or congratulation either. But it didn’t matter. The din of the crowd told Cyrus he had won, whether Six’s eyes admitted it or not. Cyrus set the spear down and climbed wearily to his own feet, while Six sat there with his blank stare of refusal. Cyrus walked over and extended his hand, but Six huffed again with blood trickling from the fresh, but superficial, wound on his chest. When Cyrus did not withdraw his hand, Six slapped it away and stood abruptly. Cyrus dropped back, throwing his hands up into a defensive stance. From the corner of his eye he saw Tanner and Uzziah surge forward slightly from the crowd, but Six was already pushing his way through the mob on the opposite side. As
Six disappeared, the crowd moved toward Cyrus with looks and cheers of wonder, all recounting their favorite parts of the contest. Someone mentioned that if the scar did not heal, they would now have to call him Seven, and there were several snickers from the crowd, but they all seemed more focused on Cyrus than Six. Which was more than Cyrus could stand. He had not come to this compound to flex his muscle, to usurp a position in Paeryl’s van, or to abdicate the Apostate’s champion. But their champion had called him to the round, he had thrown down the gauntlet, and if Cyrus was going to ask these men and women to risk their lives for him, he could not have picked up that gauntlet and handed it back.

  But Six had crossed the line and Cyrus had to put him back on the side where he belonged. In a real fight, Cyrus was certain he had little chance to win, but if Six’s childish pursuit reared itself again, now Six too would wonder about the outcome. And that was all Cyrus needed.

  Cyrus excused himself from a flurry of back pats and moved outside the crowd himself to find Loli, because even though he had shown the Apostates what they needed to see, and he had given Six more than he had asked for, he wanted to make mag-lock certain that regardless of what Six’s problem with him and his presence here was, that at the conclusion of any rematch Six might educe, one of them would no longer have a problem.

  Cyrus found Loli in one of the darker corners of the crater dipping her wineskin for water. “I don’t mean to bring it to you like this, but your people are a straightforward people.” Cyrus was still catching his breath, but as he spoke his words were firm. “Let your betrothed know that I only extend my hand to a man once to have it slapped away. If you have any love for him in your heart, tell him that if he comes at me sideways again, I will set his six down to zero.”

  Loli laughed at Cyrus’s comment and it took him aback. “Why would he challenge you again? He saw what he wanted to see.”

  “Why would he challenge me openly in the first place? He tried to kill me.”

  “If you are not in the crematorium right now, either he wasn’t trying to, or he couldn’t. My betrothed has many idiosyncrasies, but imprecision in battle is not one of them.”

  “Fair enough. Just seems like he’s had breach in his keel about me since I came here. I just want to make sure it’s over.”

  Loli laughed again, “How can something that never existed come to an end? Six issued an open challenge because he believed you were what he wanted you to be, not the other way around.”

  “Maybe that’s the way youth expresses admiration.”

  “Youth? He’s always been like that—for the 180 gyres we’ve been betrothed, and the 109 before. Since he first set foot in Avalon, he has let his emotions carry him beyond the Miasma in that way, and kept them to himself in the other. It’s as if diplomacy had been erased from his mind the day he watched his parents die.”

  Cyrus looked both dumfounded and apologetic.

  “You didn’t know? My father went on an acquisition to Druvidia. He had sent Aerik and the rest of the van back to get the grav-lev. What my father didn’t know was the reason why the silent alarm had been so easy to circumvent was it had already been triggered by mistake by a man who had worked in the building during the day. The maintenance man had brought his family to the building for evensong and to watch the dome darkening. When the Echelon saw the van leaving, they assumed everyone on their scan was an Apostate and they leveled the building. My father managed to get to the basement and under some cover before the top floors collapsed. After the dust cleared, he found Six pinned under a support beam. He was bleeding heavily from his chest. The Druvidian scouring crew came to search for and identify the bodies, but Aerik and Tessla were able to rescue Six and my dad. They were, however, too late to stop Six from finding the remains of his parents in the rubble. They brought him back here because they felt guilty, but mostly because the Eos could save him better than Druvidian medicine. His wound healed, but it left the scar on his chest. Afterward, he refused to tell anyone his name. I think it was because it reminded him of his life before. We don’t bring children here without their parents; the ones that have come here due to misfortune or duress never really get over it. I think he couldn’t deal with what he lost and he never told us his Ashan name, so we just called him Six because of his scar. It was still a reminder of his past, but he seemed to glom onto the name.”

  “Why not his drawn name?” Cyrus sensed another awkward moment even as the words left his mouth, but he had to know.

  “Oh,” Loli smiled again, but this time she seemed taken somewhat aback herself, “we would never evoke that card.”

  Cyrus felt the swelling in his chest subside. He had not realized the fight had uplifted him to such a high degree until he felt the pride receding as the pall of his own ignorance overshadowed him. He could see Loli, normally unaffected, was visibly uncomfortable, but he had to know.

  “Which card?”

  Loli hung her head a bit. It was less shame than it was the weight of something much greater than Cyrus could see. “My betrothed is the only Apostate since the exile that has drawn the Death card.

  And then, without thinking about it, it hit him; what was 180 gyres here was close to fifty years on Earth. When Darius had told him the Eos extended life, he had not told him how much it had extended it. Humility washed over him, forcing out the shame of his own ignorance. “I sincerely want to apologize for bringing this to you like this,” they weren’t the best words, but they were all he was left with.

  “Not necessary. How could you know?” Loli smiled again, this time naturally.

  Cyrus wanted to say something else, but he simply nodded and took his leave.

  When Cyrus returned to the Forum, he found a thin, silver, double-handled vase sitting in the center of the floor. At first he had not noticed it, but it did not take long for him to realize what it was. It was the Amphiphoreus—the spoils of the Hundred Hands champion. Cyrus did not know how to feel about this quiet concession, but it was a quiet concession indeed; and most importantly, it meant that despite all his harrumphing, Six had gotten the message.

  • • • • •

  Tanner sat working a small piece of limestone with a knife. There were other pieces of limestone, in two different colors, laid about him as he worked. He looked up briefly as Cyrus approached and then went back to his work.

  “What are you building?” Cyrus asked.

  Tanner worked diligently at the piece of rock in his hand, “I promised Fenrir I would teach him to play chess, so I’m making a chess set.”

  “I know you’re a purist and all, but Jang and Darius could probably throw a hologram together in the time it took you to ask them.” As the words leaving his mouth resonated in the air, Cyrus saw the folly in them.

  Tanner pored over his carving as he spoke, and it was hard to hear his voice over the scraping, “Have you noticed how melancholy the inside of the compound feels now? And how no matter what burden has nested in your head, the sun always brings some sense of levity. At first I thought I imagined it, but look at these people. They live in conditions we would have called squalid. Conditions we might have experienced our first year, but we would have long since overcome by now. And yet, they don’t just accept it, they relish it. I sit here, carving this bishop out of the earth they live on, and I can’t help but see exactly how far east of Eden we have gone.”

  Everything about Tanner had always been corporeal. He was a man that had been born three thousand years too late and the fervor that guided his hands in the carving of the stylus-tip head of the chess piece was his defiance of the sterile, automated world that imposed itself upon him.

  Cyrus sat next to Tanner and picked up the spare knife sitting next to the pile of rocks. “Well, I may as well help out.”

  Tanner set his own knife down and picked up one of the larger, browner stones. “I could use another king,” he said as he handed over the rock.

  Cyrus took it from him wordlessly and began carving himself.

 
• • • • •

  Jang and Toutopolus worked with Doree of Sevens and Thendyr of Wands to configure a stand-alone gravity drive to the Xerxes unit so that Darius could control all the parameters needed for training in the practice room. If everything went as he expected, they would be able to set the room to mimic anything from three Gs to the gravity of Earth, or even to practice in zero G. That was specifically why Tanner had requested it. He had facilitated some zero-G training on Eros, and he wanted to institute some here just as a precaution. He and Cyrus had also set a regimen for increasing the gravity to closer to Earth specs for endurance and agility drills because training in Earth’s gravity on the Paracelsus had made a difference in the escape. It had been too dangerous to attempt to have a separate gravity parameter for any part of the Paracelsus during travel, but the specs that Cyrus and Milliken had specified for the volume and the material strength of the room itself were the only criteria Jang had to worry about here.

  And it wasn’t much of a worry at all. For such simple people, Doree and Thendyr internalized Jang’s requests very quickly, and rarely had to have anything, even the more complicated ideas, explained to them more than twice. When Jang did have to explain something again, it was usually because of the language barrier. Many of the ideas from Earth didn’t translate well in the Apostate’s dialect and vice-versa, but the barrier never held up for long. And now, as Jang worked to calibrate the Xerxes unit to the specs Cyrus had set, it seemed to really not matter at all. Everything was foreign to everyone, and it was exhilarating having to figure out some way around some new problem every day—especially with Doree’s help. Fenrir and Aerik spent most of the time in the forge building materials Tanner had requested. And Thendyr spent a lot of time learning planetary physics from Cyrus, so that gave Jang and Doree a great deal of time alone. Jang had initially thought it impossible to want to spend this much time around one individual woman, but until now, he had rarely noticed. It was when Doree was not there, or when there was no tedious task like trying to phreak the Echelon comm-sat, that Jang would feel the drain of being away from sunlight that Cyrus had warned him about, and it was hard to convince himself that it was not largely due to the absence of Doree rather than his new biological augmentation.