The Rebellion's Last Traitor

by Nik Korpon

  “It’s a step away from kindling. I don’t think you have to worry about someone putting up a fight.”

  “Don’t look at it now. Look at what it will be in a month.” Her words come in spurts, between grunts of exertion. “A couple coats of lacquer, some baking soda-polish and a little paint, I’ll have people coming to the bar just to look at it.”

  My Emeríann, the eternal optimist.

  I catch a glimpse of us in the front window of Johnstone’s and smile, thinking of the brick that Walleus would shit if he saw me now. “You realize we look like we’re carrying a bomb, right?”

  “If we were carrying a bomb, I don’t think we’d be so brazen about it,” she says. “And a bomb this big would level half the neighborhood.”

  “Maybe we were going about it wrong the whole time and this is the way to do it.” I hook my fingers around the handle and open the door for her. “Act like it’s a bag of groceries and walk like it’s nothing.”

  “How about we walk like it’s something so we can eat. I’m starving.” We pass the campfire lagon sitting at the bar again – I’m surprised Forgall let him back in – and set the dry sink against the side wall.

  The junkie holds the same type of drink in his hand, the singed flecks perpetually drifting through the clear liquor, though he looks disappointed this time. Maybe the smell of burnt plastic and insulation that surrounds him is dulling his sense of taste.

  Emeríann whips off the canvas with a dramatic flourish, admiring the new addition for a minute. “Only need the right shade of lacquer to pick up on the flecks in the bar. Polish up the handles real nice.”

  If I squint my eyes, the dry sink could, surprisingly, be a nice accent to the place. I never thought there would be a piece to complement the bar top Emeríann fashioned from a salvaged bowling lane – we were never sure if that was a message from the Tathadann or if they actually believed the bowling alley was housing artillery – but she has a knack for piecing together disparate items.

  She plops down on the stool next to me and wraps her arm around my waist. Her fingers rest less than an inch from the memories I stole from her former father-in-law.

  “Are you doing anything tomorrow?” she says. “I heard they’re raiding the Gardenia tonight. Want to see if I can procure myself some stools.”

  “A lagonael den with stools?”

  “Fancypants wanting to slum it sometimes doesn’t mean they want to get their fancy pants dirty,” she says. “Anyway, you want lunch? The market’s got some meat that looks good.”

  “I’m going to pass on that.”

  “You’re missing out.”

  “I’m sure I am.” I pat her hand and whisper in her ear, asking to see the plans.

  “Ah, right,” she says.

  There’s a glass tink and the flick of a lighter. She whirls around and catches the lagon lighting up a vial of Paradise.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she yells. “Get the hell out of here with that.”

  A dirty tear rolls down his scarred cheek as he contemplates his drink. “I’ll never – know, will I?” he says. “I’ll never know.”

  “No, you won’t,” she says. “You smell like death and you need to go.”

  She opens the door for him. He leaves his drink unfinished, says, “I want – understand,” then walks into the street. A tuft of yellow insulation sticks to his heel.

  “Goddamned junkies,” she says.

  She locks the front door. Then we cross the ceramic floor to the end of the bar. The tiles are a deep shade of dirt, so speckled with stains they are the perfect camouflage for spilled blood.

  Emeríann removes the outlet cover above the floorboard and reaches her finger inside the socket, moves it up-down-up-right to engage the switch. What she wouldn’t give to have some of the security I’ve seen. The lock clicks and she slides the panel into the wall.

  “Where’s Forgall? Won’t he be pissed I’m entering his inner sanctum?” I should be able to expose any miscalculation in his plans before he gets back, but I’d like to take my time, be thorough.

  “He had to meet his contact.” She motions for me to follow her into the small vestibule. “He’ll be back in a little while.”

  When she closes the door, it’s full dark but for a thin blade of light coming from the back room. Her hand searches out my hip, brushing over the vial-belt on my stomach.

  “Hey,” she says. “Wanna make out?”

  “You’re ridiculous.” I kiss her forehead. “Let me see these plans.”

  She slaps my cheek gently. “You’re no fun.”

  We step into the back room. The light makes me squint as it blasts away the darkness. Schematics and plans with calculations crawling around the edges cover the brick walls, and there are piles of paper on two corners of the square table in the middle of the room. On the left wall are two manacles secured to the brick with four inch-wide screws, remnants of the former owners’ predilections, inside of which Emeríann has hung a half-dozen found-art roses.

  I run my fingers over the architect paper, feel the vertiginous swell of nostalgia as the faint dusting of blue powder presses into the whorls of my fingerprints. I taste gunpowder smoke, the powdered coffee Walleus and I would eat during a stakeout, which was the solution to what he deemed my titmouse-small bladder; I told him it was the sign of efficient kidneys.

  Some are a look inside official Eitan City buildings, ones that were formerly available to the public as free information before the Tathadann seized control. Others are schools – primary and other, public and private – and stores and office buildings. On the far wall is a hand-drawn map of the tunnel system rumored by conspiracy theorists to have been dug beneath the city to smuggle food and water during the Wars, in the years leading up to the Tathadann’s formation. I sent countless men in search of them, thinking it would give our outnumbered and outgunned teams a slight edge against the government forces during the Struggle, but the men either came back with nothing or they were captured and killed. Or who knows, maybe they really did find something and the tunnels led them to Nahoeg to live in eternal glory.

  “Need one?” She hands me a towel and her smile is equal parts smug and tender.

  “Where’d you get all these maps?” I say, leafing through the rolls. Water distribution plants. Comm stations. One that looks vaguely like Clodhna with a few extra annexes, likely the dummy plans they used to distribute as disinformation. Another with the approval stamp of a Promhael member. “These are official. You have to be someone to get into the room where they store these, much less the actual filing systems.”

  “Forgall has–” she clears her throat, insinuating extracurricular activities, “– made a few friends among the clerical secretaries who have become sympathetic to our cause after meeting him.”

  “Good friends to have,” I say. “They like his big hands?”

  “They’re huge, if you ask him.”

  She leads me to the four-fold plans spread across the table. A dozen pins with green or red flags at the tip sit inside various corridors. I run my finger between them, tracing the flow of power from the breakers to machinery, following the design of the wall to determine which are load-bearing and which won’t be useful. Old habits.

  “I know,” she says. “Pretty snazzy.”

  “This is east of Fomora?” I look up at her. “Near the high rises that burned down?”

  “Damn, you’re quick.”

  She starts to say something but I hold up a finger, running my hands over the plans, analyzing, feeling, absorbing. She sidles up beside me, waiting for a cue.

  “Explain it to me,” I say.

  She points to three red flags with her left hand, three others with her right. “If we attach doubled-up atomizers on these posts, we can knock out the structural support and bring the three upper floors down on the vat level. Delay charges on these ones will bring the whole mess down on the capacitors in the basement, sending a lot of debris up at Nahoeg.” More green flags w
ith her right hand, her voice swelling with confidence, imagining the metal and chunks of concrete raining down. “Then a sequence of single pulse-charges on these to short the sensors on the way out–”

  “And straight down the line they go.”

  She smiles. “Straight down the line.”

  I examine the plan for another minute, doing quick calculations in my head as I trace her lines with my finger. I’m not so sure about this. This could be a bad idea.

  “Well,” she says, and I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud, “you know how pissed you get when you’ve been working all day and the whole way home you’re thinking about how good a glass of water – any water, even the brown ones – would taste, then as soon as you get home you find out we’re dry? How angry that makes you? Is there a better way to kickstart the revolution than by creating that feeling all over Eitan?”

  “There has to be a better way to disable it,” I say.

  She clucks her tongue. “Not one that will make a statement like this. Especially with all those assholes gathered around that stupid statue.”

  Part of me is proud that I taught her to evade detection well enough that they have to resort to years-old memory as a way to gather – hoping that she kept in touch with and confided in Riab’s family, probably avenging Riab, because they don’t have much to look at otherwise – but I also have to wonder how Morrigan would know anything about this. Who talked?

  “You can’t regulate those sequences,” I say. “If one skips a line they could–”

  “I know, Henraek.” There’s the hint of an edge in her voice. “I’m not completely inept. And Forgall’s done this a couple times, you know.”

  “Yeah, so have I. More than Forgall.” Someone had to have talked, possibly one of Forgall’s people, or one of his new clerical friends. Are they setting him up? “Does Forgall understand that you’ll likely set fire to every house that this pulse touches? The crew inside the plant is one thing, but those others haven’t done anything. Not to mention the ones who’ll die from lack of water.”

  She shoves her fists into her hips, pissed that I’m disassembling something she’s worked hard on. I’m not ruining Forgall’s plan now. I’m ruining hers. “I understand that people will die. People who don’t deserve it. It’s an unfortunate reality but sometimes you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.”

  “When was the last time you saw a chicken, much less had some eggs?”

  “It’s a saying.” She steps away from me, pulling her hair back then letting it go, her hands needing something to do.

  “Well, you can call a brick a bunny rabbit, but it’ll still hurt when it hits you.”

  Her face tries to turn itself inside out. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means,” I say, flipping my hands like a flightless bird before exhaling and sitting on the edge of the table. I press my fingers into my temples. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t think it’ll work?” Her voice softens as she approaches me.

  “It’ll work. It’ll definitely work.”

  “Good. Because it has to. We’re not going to get another chance to make a statement like this.”

  I look down at the plan again, some sharp, jealous point prodding the inside of my chest. “I guess I’m saying, what’s the cost?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “But I know the reward.”

  She licks her thumb, takes my hand and rubs off two blood spots from the ascot man that I hadn’t noticed. She doesn’t ask what it is or where it came from. I don’t know if she doesn’t want to know or doesn’t care.

  We sit listening to the expansion and contraction of the walls, the faint shush of passing traffic, the jagged rattle of words and theories tumbling inside my mouth.

  “Who knows about this?” I say.

  “Me. You.” She counts two on her fingers. “Forgall’s cousin’s half-brother, Lachlan Parnell. He helped with some of the technical stuff, getting some supplies. He’s good. Smart. Used to run jewels across the border after the Struggle.”

  “I don’t know him. What about his people? You said something about them.”

  “Guys he knows from the hills, guys he fought with here. It’s the same as…” She scratches her cheek as she trails off.

  “It’s the same as when I was leading?” I swallow the words that come instinctually. They wouldn’t be useful anyway. “Do you know how many other people there are?”

  She shakes her head. “There are five total, including Forgall. Then everyone’s got their own little crew.”

  I know there’s no way to vet everyone else’s soldiers, that you have to have faith in your fellow leaders’ ability to suss out any leaks. But knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better. “What about the clerks? The ones he got the maps from?”

  “You really think he’d tell them what this is for?” She laughs. “What’s with all the questions?”

  I shake my head. “It worries me. With the ceremony coming up, and all the scouts out now–”

  “Cut the mushmouth, Henraek. What did you hear?”

  “Walleus,” I say. “He said we should lay low.”

  “What else?”

  “You know Walleus. The ‘word around the campfire’ and–”

  “Exact words.” She grabs my hand. “What did he say?”

  All the plans hanging on the walls almost make me woozy, as much with longing for the adrenaline and purpose of the days during the Struggle as with the desire for her not to get sucked into the violent fallout that this bombing will bring.

  “He said they heard something was brewing at Johnstone’s and that someone – or two someones – might be planning something. Told me to lay low.”

  She inhales sharply, and looks around the room. “Look, I know you want to be a part of this, but you can’t be. I shouldn’t have brought you back here. With your job and all, it’s – we shouldn’t talk about it. We need to be a little more careful.”

  “I know. It’s fine.” I pat her leg. “You’re going to do great.” And I wonder if I’m saying it for her benefit or mine.

  Outside the back room the bar is still locked, empty.

  “You want me to get you something to eat so you don’t have to close again?” I manage a small smile. “I’ll get some mystery meat, if you really want it.”

  A pat on my cheek, she says I’m sweet but we don’t need to give them more chances to catch us.

  When she walks behind the bar and pours herself two fingers of liquor, I notice that the boar-faced Nimah is gone. I nod at the empty space. “You sure all this will work without the hill-spirits watching over you?”

  “Wishful thinking isn’t the same thing as crazy talk.” She gives a thin smile.

  “Like hoping Daghda won’t come back to conquer the city again?”

  “He didn’t. At least, not at first,” she says. “My parents said they did a lot of good in the beginning, before Fannae got her hand inside Macuil.”

  “But that’s not the definition of crazy, doing the same thing and expecting a different result?”

  “Insanity and crazy are two different things.” She throws back her liquor then pours another, effectively ending the conversation.

  “Are you going to drink and sulk at home all afternoon?”

  “Actually, yes.” Her smile comes naturally this time.

  “You promise you’re only going to drink and sulk?”

  “Yeah.” But from her pursed lips, I can tell what she’s thinking.

  “I told you before, you don’t have to worry. I’m fine.” She stares at me until it’s uncomfortable, then gives a noncommittal shrug.

  When I get to the door, she calls my name. “I need you to support me on this, even if you don’t like it,” she says. “Even if you don’t believe it.”

  After a beat, I nod. She gives a small smile. The corners of her eyes wrinkle and her chipped canine tooth catches on her bottom lip.

  I pull the door closed behind me an
d start off down the sidewalk, that underlying concern about destroying innocent people not dire enough to ward off the visceral charge of planning an attack that still tingles in my fingers. I walk away from the bar, but in my head, I continue to trace the direction of the power flow.

  As I turn the corner, I glance up and catch Belousz, checking both ways at the edge of an alleyway. I duck into the alcove of an abandoned storefront, watching him in the reflection on the windows. He drags his hand across his mouth then hurries away, head down and looking like he’s doing everything in his power to not run.

  When he is fifty feet down the sidewalk, I come out and continue to walk. Pulling even with the alley across the street, I peek down it, looking for a body or some ritual sacrifice, and instead see Forgall with a cigarette pressed between his lips, a roll of paper tucked in his armpit. Forgall buckles his belt then leaves the alley, walking toward Johnstone’s with the gait of a man who has not a care in the world. There is no one else in the alley, no corpse or assailant lying in wait. There is only a shimmering puddle of oil and a pile of old papers, wavering in the breath of ghosts.

  I’ve never once heard Forgall mention Belousz. I wonder what Walleus knows.

  10

  Walleus

  I collect Cobb from Miss Neicy outside the Gallery and bring him inside, set him up in his booth and fire up the screen before taking care of some intelligence analysis. That coffee with Henraek this morning was tasty in a nostalgic way, but it didn’t have the scientifically engineered kick I’ve gotten used to. Damn if I’m not getting a caffeine headache without it. Or maybe it’s from sifting through rumors of uprisings and nonstarters about stolen property.

  A lot of times I wish I could bring Donael in with me so Cobb would have someone to play with, someone to color and sculpt with. And because, after a while, I miss being around him. But bringing him in here would risk them seeing each other. Even if I planned it right, someone would inevitably start talking and it’d get back to Henraek. I feel bad enough lying to Henraek – all right, sometimes I feel bad, and sometimes Henraek is a self-righteous, obsessive, egomaniacal, narcissistic son of a bitch who shouldn’t be trusted with a pigeon, much less a child – but feelings aside, it was best for the boy, so it’s the decision I made.