by Nik Korpon
“I thought that burned down,” I say and continue walking, calibrating the amount of ignorance I can plead without it becoming obvious. “Even if it didn’t, they’ll cut me if I walk in there.”
No response.
“It’s a little early for me, but I’ll take us to a better bar, OK?”
Greig looks toward Belousz, but receives no answer. Finally, Greig clears his throat. “I have information that–”
“We’re thirsty,” Belousz says. Greig shoots him an angry look.
“Don’t sit down. I heard you can get a staph infection from their chairs.” I pause in front of a barter store at the corner, the walls long faded from rich brown into something closer to a scab. Sinewy dried meat hangs behind wrought iron bars in the window, partially obscuring shelves of canned goods and liquor brewed in bathtubs. I scan the dirty sidewalks for Emeríann as we wait for a line of cars to pass. Someone bumps my shoulder, spits at my feet and calls me a traitor. I start after him but Belousz holds his arm out to stop me.
“Stop with all the theatrics,” Belousz says. “I’ve got a headache and my sinuses are clogged.”
I ask if he’s tried ginger to help with that.
“I don’t feel like dealing with your crap or listening to your chatter, is what I’m saying.” He presses against his cheeks with his fingertips. “Shut your mouth before I stick my boot in it.”
I breathe deep through my nose and quell the urge to end him here in the street. In this neighborhood, they might not even notice. At the right time of day, they might even join in.
In the alley behind us a man gathers a handful of old papers, some pieces of wood, the discarded insulation lying around, and throws it all in a dented trash container, then collects more.
As the last car passes, I get ready to cross until I hear the hint of a whistled refrain. Hush, don’t explain. Half a block down, Emeríann winds through passersby on her way to Johnstone’s. Ringlets of hair bounce and sway as she walks in time with the song.
Greig nudges me in the back, suggesting that I don’t want to delay them, so I cross to the opposite side.
Belousz grabs my arm in the middle of the street. He points a crooked finger. “It’s that way.”
A soft-top convertible honks at us but Belousz doesn’t respond. The guy yells out the window and I only stare at Belousz, willing him to break eye contact. Another honk, more yelling.
I have to relent first and glance down the road. Emeríann now has almost two blocks on us but is still two blocks from the bar. “I must’ve gotten turned around.”
The horn blares and I take four long steps to him, reach inside the passenger window and grab him by his ascot. “Tell it to honk,” I say.
“What?” His hands remain on his lap, likely out of shock. The engine idles, dials and numbers flashing on the autodrive display.
I stick my head inside the car and pull his face to mine. His skin is so pale it’s tinted blue, and he is definitely in the wrong neighborhood. “Tell it to honk at me one more time.”
Greig says something I can’t make out, him and Belousz coming toward me.
“Do it,” I say to the man. Emeríann should be a block from the bar by now. She’ll soon walk inside and lock the door behind her before retreating into the back room to evaluate the latest plans with Forgall. The bar will be empty and ordinary.
Hand shaking, the man touches his mouth with manicured nails and meekly says, “Honk.”
I almost laugh, then slam his forehead into the dashboard, breaking open his brow and loosing rivulets of blood. He shrieks and presses his palms to his face to staunch the bleeding. He screams drive and the car jerks away. I pull my arm out before the window frame breaks my elbow and fall to my knees, the wheels barely missing my outstretched fingers.
Greig throws himself aside as the car passes him. Then Belousz, with his feet planted firm, cracks the guy in the side of the head with his fist. The man yelps stop and the car’s brakes lock, causing it to swerve onto the sidewalk and crash through the plate glass window of the barter store. Through the shattered glass I can hear the owner yelling, though I don’t know if it’s directed toward us or the vehicle perched in the meat display.
Belousz yanks me up by the elbow.
“You done yet?” The tone of his voice hasn’t changed and it pisses me off that even now I can’t get a rise from him.
“He deserved it. He was wearing an ascot.”
He shoves me forward then beckons for Greig to hurry up. Greig’s fussing about the store but Belousz only grunts. I try to slow my pace but the two flank me on both sides and force me along. Taking the sidewalk at a brisk stride, passing buildings and banks and shops, all various shades of faded maroon and cracked umber indicative of the neighborhood, we’re in front of Johnstone’s within a minute. There’s no name painted on the heavy wooden door, no hours or rules for entry, no obvious markings that would make the building a rebel bar. Here, if you don’t know then you don’t know.
Behind us, a crowd gathers around the barter store.
I pull the door gently, in case. It rattles in my hand. “Guess it’s closed,” I say.
Belousz and Greig cup their hands above their eyes as they peer in through the front window.
I hang back a couple feet, casually wandering to a position where the shadow of a streetlamp falls over the window. Above me is an advertisement for goggles the resource workers in this neighborhood used to wear, painted on the cement wall years ago and faded by the weather. Something is rotting back here, the vicious tang heavy on my tongue, and I hope it’s a discarded lunch. I catch a vague outline of someone at the bar drying glasses. Even from back here it’d be hard to mistake Forgall for Emeríann, him being a good foot taller and wider, especially when he bellows something at the two onlookers.
They ignore him and spend another moment peering inside. Greig says something to Belousz that I can’t understand. Belousz shakes his head, says, “He’s right. They won’t let him in.”
“Then what good is he?” Greig says.
When they turn, I have my hands clasped before me, channeling indignant at having my time wasted as much as I can.
“Still thirsty?” I say to Belousz.
“Dying.”
I clap my hands once. “Well, if you gentlemen are done chasing ghosts, I’m going to go do my job that I’m now late for. If Lady Morrigan has a problem, you’ll be hearing from her.”
“Where are they hiding it?” Greig says.
“Hiding what?” I say.
“There are no scarves,” Belousz says to him. “You might want to adjust your report.”
The muscles of Greig’s jaw tense and flex. “This is a rebel bar and you damn well know it.”
“Look at all the buildings. Nothing’s new, nothing’s painted bright, or even repainted in the last twenty years,” I say. “It’s a working-class neighborhood. They’re just normal people getting by.”
“You can call a brick a bunny rabbit,” Greig says, “but it’s still going to give you a concussion when someone throws it at your head.”
“That’s lovely.” I clap my hands again for some reason. “But I don’t know what to tell you.”
Belousz glances over his shoulder once more, then nods toward me. “I believe him.”
Greig might have given himself whiplash turning to his co-conspirator. I appraise Belousz with a long look but can’t get a bead on his intention.
“I’ll sit on it for while, to confirm,” Belousz says to Greig. “You go on.”
Greig does not look pleased.
“I’m going to leave you to it.” I turn and walk away, half-expecting them to call my name or try to stop me. When I get to the corner and they’ve not said anything, I double-time it to Riab’s father’s apartment, anxious at the thought of finishing this job and destroying what’s left of Emeríann’s past.
* * *
The same dust, the same soot. The spool with the dandelion and silverware. The room, the city, the l
ife is almost exactly the same as yesterday, as the day before.
The only thing different in the room is the wet, slurping breath of an old man lying in his bed. A depression has formed around the needle mark, like his skull is collapsing. His eyes are open, though it’s obvious they’re merely a fogged window.
The difference between a memory junkie and a memory husk is focus. A junkie stares into the distance, but has a point in staring. He can’t grab what he’s searching for, but he knows it’s written somewhere in the ether. The husks are a complete void. They blink and twitch and occasionally seem to respond to stimuli, but there is nothing behind those movements. Their body hasn’t figured out there’s no longer a reason to move. It might be possible for me to take only part of their memory, but there’s no way to know what you’re harvesting until you watch it, and there’s no easy patch for the hole in their cortex membrane. I figure that if I’m going to ruin someone’s life by stealing what might be his best years, I might as well destroy him completely. Maybe, in some small way, I’m preserving the history of the country; by stealing and distributing memories I’m preventing our history from being completely remolded in the Tathadann image. And by selling those memories for booze money, I’m preserving my liver by pickling it. So, everyone wins.
Either way, this poor man has done nothing to deserve his fate, but not deserving Tathadann treatment doesn’t mean you won’t get it.
A creak in the next room. I hold my knife before me, tipping my head to listen. A grunt and long exhale. Without putting a full foot on the ground, I creep to the edge of the mattress and see a candle flickering in the reflection of a glass on the wire spool. The father sits in a worn chair beside it, his back to me. From the thin crinkle, it sounds like he’s reading a book. Still no sign of the wife.
I try a closer look and he coughs then reaches for his glass, drinking half of it. Another cough and he’ll have to come through here and this will again be more trouble than it’s worth.
I pull out my kit and assemble the vial and needle. No time for the pleasantries of introductions or iodine. Sorry, Riab’s father. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we expect. We should both be aware of that to a lethal degree.
When he turns a page, I take two quick steps forward and slip my arm around his neck, pressing my bicep against his throat. He swings his arms back, one finger catching me below my eye, while his other hand claws at my forearm and his legs try to topple the chair backward. I can’t remember if Riab ever said his father had combat training, but he has good instincts.
I readjust my grip to steady his head and stab his temple.
First shot.
He slackens in my arm, hands slapping me more out of muscle memory than attack strategy. Within a minute he’s a lump of flesh in the chair. I tip his head slightly to aid in the flow. My stomach sinks when I glimpse the cover of the book lying on the ground. It’s an underground book, one that’s not sanctioned by the Tathadann, about how they exploited the Resource Wars to assume power. Of course. Of course.
The fluid barely passes the halfway line before I switch Walleus’s vial for mine. This man, who lives at an address that has popped up on my list twice in two days, whose name made Walleus flinch, his memories are coming with me. In some way, I owe it to him to not let his memories languish along with all the others. The Tathadann’s methods for choosing targets are as arbitrary and varied as their vices, but targeting Riab’s family – and giving the list to me instead of another harvester – this feels like a test of my loyalty. His name will show up in my order to keep them satisfied. But his memories – some that could be used against Emeríann – they will come with me.
As the second vial nears the full line, I slip in a third, turning his head completely horizontal. And though I know it’s ridiculous, I still squeeze his skull as if it was an orange to get out every last drop.
When I’m assured I have everything I can get, I stow away my kit then heft the father up and over to the space beside the grandfather. I place two coal slivers on his eyes, then sing a short verse for him and hope his wife returns soon. And if not, it will be only two more entries on the long list of lives the Tathadann has torn apart.
8
Walleus
The man’s head bounces off the dashboard so hard I expect it to separate from his neck and fly out the window. But he was wearing an ascot, so he kind of deserved to have his face broken.
The car speeds away only to crash into Hurleigh’s barter shop, throwing out shards of glass like party confetti. I stay against the corner of the building and watch Belousz and Greig lead Henraek down the sidewalk. Headed to Johnstone’s no doubt, if Greig’s here.
When they’re safely three blocks down, I push off the corner and follow. I bump into a man with dirt caked in the deep furrows of his forehead. He looks up at me, says, “Goddamn traitors. Everywhere I look. To hell with you all,” then shoves me aside. I start to go after him when I hear a huge whoosh and a wall of heat hits me. I duck back with my arms over my face.
Five-foot flames burst from a trash container. A man holding two sticks stands ten feet from it, mesmerized by the fire.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yell at him.
He turns to me. The flickering makes the scar on his face twitch like it’s alive. His eyes are on me but his brain is worlds away. “I have to know,” he says.
What the hell is wrong with this city?
This business with Belousz and Greig is more important than some lagon lighting trash on fire, so I leave him behind and continue.
They stand in front of the bar, Henraek hanging back, likely so he’s not seen as leading the Tathadann right to their door. Henraek eventually leaves and Belousz and Greig argue, Greig stomping off like a petulant child.
Belousz, he hangs back and waits. He pulls something out of his pocket and cups it in his hand, almost stroking it. I walk to him quick as I can while not making a scene or getting too out of breath. He startles when I touch his shoulder, shoves his hands in his pocket.
“You OK?” I say to him.
“I’m observing,” he says, looking at the ground, pointing at the bar. “No scarves.”
I squint, though there’s no way I’d be able to see in anyway. At least this little field trip was in fact Greig’s idea. “Is she gathering on me or gathering to move on them?”
“Does it matter?” he says.
“To me it does.”
“I don’t know.” He says he has to go, too quick to be natural.
“Wait.” I lay my hand on his arm, hunker my shoulders down to look him straight in the eye. “I need something from you.”
“Name it.” He still won’t meet my eyes, only the space around me.
“Toman.”
“Toman?” He cocks his head, finally looking at me. “What of him?”
I glance around us, checking for anyone within earshot. “You know where his store is?” He nods. “Good. He needs to go.”
He leans away from me. “What did he do?”
“He let himself get greenlit. That’s what he did.”
Belousz takes a deep breath, looks over toward Johnstone’s then quickly back my way. That big bastard stands behind the bar, staring at us. If Greig had any idea who Forgall Tobeigh actually was, he wouldn’t even consider calling him the Lumberjack. I wasn’t there when he took out that platoon with the axe, but one of my soldiers was positioned across the street and watched it. He said it looked like a big, bloody ballet. No wonder Henraek is jealous of him, proud warrior and loyal rebel that he is. Even overcame the taint of Macuil Morrigan that runs in his family’s blood. Handsome fella, too.
“I’ve been keeping an ear out for Daghda,” Belousz says. “There’s some talk, same as usual, but I have seen a couple new hill-people show up. I don’t know if it means something or if I’m seeing it because you said it.”
“I’ll worry about them later,” I say. “Listen, this thing with Toman, it has to look like an accident. Underst
and?”
“OK?”
“If your fingerprints are on this,” I say, “he’s going to kill you.”
“Who, Daghda?” He snorts out a laugh.
“No.” I scratch my chin, exhale, feel a heaviness sift down through my chest. “Henraek.”
9
Henraek
The sky is a dome of pitted steel, even at midday. A half-dozen droids hover alongside an office building the color of old charcoal, spraying a flame-retardant solution on the walls that aren’t burnt. The mist drifts down over us, the closest approximation to rain.
The pile of rubble in the alley where the young girl had crowned herself Queen of the Struggle has been usurped by a family of seven, reconstructed with the lintels of a shipping pallet, the makeshift sleeping area spilling out beneath a tarp attached to the buildings’ sides with metal spikes. One girl sits before her sleeping family, bouncing half a rubber ball on the ground, playing jacks with splinters and nails. The white scarring of chemical burns radiates through the dirt on her neck and arms.
I cross the intersection of Muirin and Eisol, the proximity to Johnstone’s and inches of bourbon tingling like an electric field on my skin, when I hear Emeríann’s voice.
“I need a strong man,” she says. She points at something large hidden beneath a swatch of old canvas. “Help me with this, will you?”
I glance around to make sure no one’s following us.
“You OK?” she says.
“Fine.” I peek under the canvas and see a stained dry sink, tarnished brass handles and cloudy yellow filigree accents at the corners. “You couldn’t happen upon some stools that don’t wobble?”
“Beggars and choosers, love,” she says as we grab the ends. “Saw it on my way in this morning and covered it up so no one would take it.”
