by G. Howell
I waited.
Draughts toyed with the flame, the shadows creeping in, then skipping back again as the single speck flickered at the end of the wick. A lone island of warm light in the middle of the storeroom. Outside, the cobbled courtyard out front was lit by moonlight, cool and pale. A single poplar tree threw black tessellated shadows across the street beyond. I tensed as a couple of Rris pedestrians passed on the far side, but they didn’t even glance in my direction and kept going until they were out of sight. I let a breath out and shifted on the barrel I was using as a seat. It hadn’t been the first time and each false alarm plucked at my already taut nerves; I had to force myself to relax. My fingers flexed on the butt of the revolver, then I angled for a better view out the dusty window. And waited.
Outside, the moon climbed higher. A cloud drifted in front of it, the world dimming even more. And out in the shadows of the poplar a single light flared as a lantern’s storm shutters were opened. A single Rris stalked across the courtyard toward me. A familiar figure in familiar clothes. He stopped and looked up, his face in the light of his lantern as he looked over the facade of the storehouse and then headed toward the door. There was no sign that he’d been followed.
“Thank god,” I hissed. The empty barrel rolled across the floor as I hastened back to the stairs, jamming the pistol into my pocket.
Chaeitch was closing the door behind him, looking slowly around the room. He saw me coming down the stairs and hesitated, his head tipping to the side. Then he started across the empty space toward me.
“Hey,” I said, “Sorry about the note, but I didn’t know who I could trust and ... Everything is...” I hesitated. There was something odd about the way he was staring at me. “Chaeitch?”
He barely slowed to put his lantern alongside the one already sitting, flickering on one of the barrels in the middle of the room. And as he came around the barrels he was drawing a pistol of his own, an ornate flintlock, leveling it at me.
“Chae...” I froze.
Unflinching amber eyes gazed over the black bore of the muzzle which suddenly seemed huge.
“What? What are…what… “ I stuttered in disbelief and the eyes didn’t flicker but the gun moved as I moved, tracking me as I frantically dodged back and there was an explosion and something whipped past my head and knocked splinters from the staircase, where I’d been a fraction of a second ago. I turned back, in time to see him striding forward through the swirls of grey gunsmoke and briefly twirling firefly sparks of burning wadding. With a blur of movement the spent gun was tucked back into his waistband even as a knife glinted in his other hand. His eyes were pure black holes, as black as the bore of the gun.
“Chaetich!” I yelled and my own pistol was in my hand, raised toward him. The eyes narrowed slightly, his stance shifting, the knife held in a grip that curled it back like a claw as he shifted to the side, crouching. “What’re you doing?!” I pleaded desperately, my hand shaking as I cocked the gun. I could see what he was doing; it was damned obvious what he was doing, but I couldn’t… didn’t want to believe it. “Don’t. Chaeitch, please don’t,” I begged.
He kept coming. I retreated, backing away. He lunged and I jerked away and the back of my shoulder impacted something – one of the wooden columns supporting the catwalk I think, not that it really matters – and jolted and the gun in my hand cracked and kicked.
There was an indeterminably short space of time that seemed to last forever where I didn’t realize what’d happened. The gun was a metal weight in my hand. Acrid smoke hazed the air, slowly clearing and Chaeitch grimaced and then crumpled forward, his knees buckling abruptly and he just folded facefirst to the floor. The knife clattered against crude floorboards.
I stared. Incredulous. Not believing what’d just happened.
What lay before me was just a crumpled form: face down on the grimy floorboards, awkwardly twisted with tail in the air, one leg tucked, the other trailing behind. Nothing dignified or noble about it. And when I reached his side his breath was rasping, making fluid noises. Dark stains were spreading from beneath his chin, dribbling from his mouth. I caught his shoulders and when I turned him he made painful mewling sounds. Blood was colored black in the dim light as it bubbled in a nostril, from a hole dead in the middle of his chest, his jaw spasming while his eyes focused on something that wasn’t in the room. I stared in shock, not knowing what to do.
“Chaeitch?” I choked out and just touched his face, stroking his cheek tufts.
And he trembled violently and then his eyes locked on me, the pupils absolutely black. Then his head lolled, searching for something. I followed his gaze, to where his hand was twitching, reaching, desperately clutching for the knife. I just recoiled, scrambling away and staring in utter incomprehension as he clawed for the blade. I could only watch in a disconnected horror as he convulsed again and coughed a spray of blood across the floor and died.
I sat and stared at the body and just couldn’t feel anything. I just didn’t understand. He hadn’t said a word. He’d come, to where the note I’d left in that hidden cubby under the bunk had said I’d be waiting, and he hadn’t said a word and he’d just tried to kill me. Tried until his last breath.
I crawled closer and stopped. Didn’t quite believe it. But he was utterly still when I touched him. Didn’t move when I tried to close those staring eyes like they do in the movies. They wouldn’t close.
There were noises outside. Subdued voices hissed and snarled.
They’d done it. They’d tricked him; they’d forced him. Somehow, I didn’t know how. But it was their fault. It wasn’t logic doing the thinking, it was just sheer shock, disbelief, confusion and fear and anger. So when the door was thrown open I just fired. Screamed a string of abuse incoherent in any tongue and just unloaded the other five rounds in the revolver one after another as fast as I could cock the hammer. Black-clad figures in the doorway vanished in a blur of movement. The gun clicked on empty and I found myself standing amongst the stink of gunpowder and blood and death.
And then I ran.
A reason I’d chosen that place was that I’d seen out the back on the previous tour: the high wall there, the way one could climb out an upstairs window, onto a roof, then cross that wall into a yard stocked with barrels. After that... there were alleys and streets, branching from those more alleyways and places where one might lose oneself. In one direction the city, the other way the farms and countryside. I’d never expected anything like what’d happened that night to happen, but I’d thought he might be followed and I might need a quick way out.
The bag was propping the window open. I grabbed it automatically and clambered through the small frame. Tiles clattered and cracked under my moccasins as I ran across the roof, not really watching where I stepped. It was probably just sheer chance that I didn’t crash right on through. Shouts yowled out and dark-clad figures blurred across the yard below. Several crouched to level and aim longarms and shots rang out, fire and smoke and sparks flaring, but I was already jumping across the alleyway to the wall, then down onto a stack of barrels.
Then I wasn’t thinking about anything but running and being far, far away from that place.
------v------
Dawn brushed the sky in the east. Stars faded as the black lightened to golds, to salmons and pale blues, high clouds glowing with the first touches of light. Dew glittered on the fields, on the trees, on the leaves of the hedgerow I was huddled beneath.
I watched the sun rising without really seeing it. I was still seeing Chaeitch die.
I felt… numb. It just... it just didn’t make any sense. None of it. He hadn’t spoke a word, just come straight at me with one purpose. The Mediators... they must’ve done it. Somehow. How? Lied to him? Told him something, but what? What could have just made him go off like that? There’d been nothing there but... intent. Clear and focused and determ
ined intent. I thought we were... I mean we’d worked together; we’d shared drinks and stories. We’d been friends. Hadn’t we? Or was it another case of me totally misreading alien body language? The blackening on my face, that’d scared him? He’d seen the gun and was trying to defend himself?
No. No and no. It just didn’t make sense. I rocked back and turned my face to the rising sun. The morning sky fragmented, tears blurring the world and my hands made helpless fists; clenching and unclenching. In the dawning light I looked at them. There was dirt there and grime and smeared lamp black. Somewhere I’d touched wet paint, something that stained my fingers muddy brown. And they reeked of gunpowder and were tacky with drying blood.
Everything gone in one horrible night. The help I’d been banking on; someone else I’d thought a friend, gone in one unbelievable incident. And with that went the plans and the embers of optimism that’d started to smolder somewhere inside.
Once again I was utterly adrift and without a clue what to do next. And my hope, my friend, was dead.
While the dew burned off the fields, the wisps of evaporating moisture retreated before the growing warmth of day; while on the hillsides the farmers went about their morning chores, I shook and cried.
------v------
Where to from there? I didn’t know. There was the Palace of course. Would the Shattered Water delegation still be there? Would they even want to have anything to do with me after... after what I’d done. Perhaps they’d been taken. Perhaps they were the leverage that’d set Chaeitch to try and kill me. My mind painted scenarios where Chaeitch was being threatened or blackmailed or coerced somehow; where Rraerch was a hostage and Chaeitch had been told to kill me or she would die.
But would he do that? Rris don’t form such strong emotional bonds as humans. Would such a threat be enough? I recalled that the individuals who’d kidnapped Chihirae hadn’t really understood just what lengths I’d go to in order to keep her safe. Thankfully they’d never realized what sort of leverage that could’ve given them over me. And anyway, if he’d killed me the Shattered Water government would doubtless kill him. There just didn’t seem to be any reason he’d do something like that.
But that mental self-flagellation wouldn’t get me answers to anything. Not without seeing, without asking someone who knew.
The palace lay cupped in the center of that broad vale, surrounded by those open meadows. Hillsides of summer gold grasses rippled in the breeze. Carefully tended paths spread out from the Palace, wending in geometric patterns through gardens and hedgerows and shade trees. Rris went about their businesses; gardeners, stable hands, groundskeepers, window cleaners and of course the guards and Mediators. A regular trickle of vehicles trundled in and out along the access roads; goods and passenger wagons and coaches. All very picturesque.
And Eisher House was guarded by Mediators.
I could see them from the hilltops, from the cover of trees that were beyond normal Rris visual range. They’d need a spyglass to see what my unaided eyes could see, and those eyes could see the figures who weren’t guards and who walked in that way that said they owned the place. Their presences was as unobtrusive as their understated uniforms, but it was there.
It made me want to scream in frustration. Just what was happening?! What had made me kill my friend? What’d made him try to kill me? The answers were... they were down there, but if I showed myself would I even get a chance to ask?
More questions. And everywhere I turned there was someone blocking me.
So, then, where? Somewhere they wouldn’t think. Someone who would know.
I sat on that hillside and watched the Palace and tried to think. While my stomach growled and exhaustion clouded judgment and images of the previous night kept scrabbling in the recesses of my brain. Away down there, the distant figures of Rris came and went about their business. Sunlight flared off the sculptured bronze of the front door, glaring like a giant mirror. I remembered back to the night I’d arrived here. I’d been an honored – if somewhat unusual - guest. Now I was a fugitive.
Thinking back to that reminded me of something else. That night I’d arrived the Queen’s colors had been flying from the flagpole on the roof high above the main doors. Now that flagpole was bare, the royal colors absent. Oddly enough, that meant the same thing as it did at Buckingham Palace in England, back home. Her highness wasn’t in residence at the time.
That meant... there was somewhere else to go. It was stupid and risky and a long shot, but hopefully it was so stupid and out of bounds that whoever was on the other side of the board wouldn’t think of it. Hell, it couldn’t be any dumber than hanging around a city where I’d stand out like a bear in a ballet. And it wasn’t like I had much choice.
------v------
Traveling by carriage had been slow, dusty and uncomfortable, but it’d been a ride. Making the same journey on foot was only marginally slower, but it meant trekking across miles of countryside. At any other time it might have been a pleasant stroll in the country. At any other time.
While I didn’t know the exact way I could remember the road we’d taken last time and the general direction we’d gone. I headed south from the Palace and found that road, and then I followed it. Using the road itself wasn’t a good idea. There was traffic – not heavy, but regular. It’d have been all too easy to round a corner and run into a group of easily-alarmed farmers. So I stuck to the fields and woods alongside the road and when traffic went by I’d take cover. Sometimes just ducking behind a hedgerow, sometimes laying facedown in leaves in a ditch or behind long grass while Rris - mounted or on foot – passed by or a farmer driving a loaded wagon drawn by a dusty bison creaked through on its way to market or wherever it was they were going.
And I couldn’t just follow the road. There were times when I had to detour miles out of my way: whenever there was traffic or I had to pass fields where farmhands were working at ploughing and tilling; when there were homesteads with Rris moving around. Once I almost blundered into a bunch of cubs playing in a small pine copse. I got out of there as fast as I could before they saw me. Frightened children might be enough to get an angry posse out hunting for what might’ve threatened them.
So while the road wound its way across the countryside, I cut back and forth across it. Detouring, circling around and sometimes doubling back. I tried to move at a steady jog which covered ground at almost the same rate as a carriage, but always the need for caution tended to slow that pace.
There was one fork in the road I didn’t remember. Of course I took the wrong one and lost an hour or two discovering my mistake and retracing my steps. It was hot, it was dusty and dry. A few times I found water in streams or even animal watering troughs, but since I didn’t have any means of carrying it with me, I got thirsty. And hungry. Oh, yeah, hungry: my stomach felt like it was knotting around my backbone
I tried to ignore it. There wasn’t a lot more I could do. Just ignore it and hope there was some relief somewhere in the future. Otherwise it’d be back to a life of stealing odds and ends from farms. And when it felt like it was getting too much, I remembered Chaeitch’s face and all that blood and the anger helped a little.
Everything considered, I made pretty good time. And it was only mid afternoon when I crested a hill and saw the green copper rooftops peeking over the trees ahead. Another hill, just another hill and I’d be there. That knowledge helped fuel the anger, helped push the exhaustion and pain from my feet back a bit, enough to keep me going.
------v------
The manor house was still perched atop the hill, no different from the last time I’d been here. The hillsides were green and gold and verdant under blue skies and summer sun. Gardens and wild meadows abutted the manor, the wild grasses growing up to the chateaux in that style I was becoming accustomed to. Wildflowers were in bloom, transforming squares of meadows to pointilated cacophonies of color above
which insects and birds darted in the hot afternoon air. Further away were cultivated fields of corn, maize, potatoes, barely and wheat; buffalo grazing in pastures behind stone and wood fences.
I’d circled around. It hadn’t been difficult to get past the wrought iron fence that surrounded the grounds, and the woods beyond had been quiet. The fields around the manor, however, were patrolled. The guards and groundskeepers were discreet, but they were there. From the woods on the next hill I watched armed figures following paths through the fields. Guards, pairs of royal guards in their gaudy uniforms standing out with polished metal glaring in the sun. No sign of Mediators.
From behind grass and bushes I watched the figures stalking along the paths. Guards, of course, but there didn’t seem to be that many of them. Back home a place like this would have dozens of guards out around the perimeter, along with all sorts of electronic surveillance. But I supposed the Rris weren’t so concerned about trying to cover outlying areas. Since they didn’t have toys like long range sniper rifles, any intruder bent on mischief would have to get in close. And without radios it’d be more efficient to place more guards at the house itself where they could respond faster. If there were more sentries up there, I couldn’t see them.
But I was able to see the patrolling guards well enough to learn their movements. Their rounds were spaced out far enough apart that there were intervals between them. Not enough time to get all the way up the hillside to the Manor, but enough time to get part of the way. So I’d have to take it slow.
