by Nik Korpon
Inside the elevator, there’s a black smudge on the seven button. I push the button too, then notice the dirt and grime on my hands and wipe it on my pants. The man standing next to me has the hair of a pony and reminds me that he called my people yesterday to stop his toilet from running.
“I don’t care about the water,” he says, oblivious to the dust and debris covering me, “but if I have to pay utilities a dime more because of this, I’m taking that dime from your ass.” He jabs a thick finger into my chest for emphasis. Eight years ago, I would have wrapped my arm around his neck and squeezed until his eyes bulged. Now, though, I take a deep breath then knead the back of my neck and apologize for the delay. Maybe Walleus was wrong. Maybe I have learned something after all this time.
The door opens at the seventh floor and I exit. He yells after me, “And this goddamned elevator needs to be cleaned again.”
Sconces and patterned wallpaper on the walls instead of holes and soot marks. These lights don’t flicker with the ebb and flow of electricity. I can walk down the center of the hallway without worry. I examine the door handles until I find one that is smudged with grease then press my ear against the door. It’s muffled but I hear movement inside. At the far end of the hallway, a resident left a room service tray outside their door. I retrieve it, eat the remaining half of the sandwich then put the glass against the door. Sounds like the kitchen is inside the door to the left, a hologram TV playing quietly. Some type of talking heads program. He bangs around, running water and heating something up.
Seeing that he’s living the good life, he really should have invested in a better lock. I pop the face of the thumb reader with my knife’s tip and short-circuit the electronics in less than ten seconds. In the reflection of the room service plate, I find his silhouette. He’s filling a pot at the sink. I adjust my grip and go.
He looks up, water still running, stunned with shock. His mouth opens to say, “What?” Then it explodes in red as the plate cracks his teeth. I pounce on him before his body hits the floor. I grab his shirt and smash his head against the tile.
“Why did you shoot her?”
“What?”
I smash it again, twice. His pupils become loose. He mutters something violent.
“Aífe Laersen. You shot her. Why?”
“I don’t know who–”
I release his shirt, his head thumping again on the tile. I grab a shard of broken plate, hold the tip against his cheek.
“My wife. In the café.” I press it and the skin puckers but doesn’t break. “Why?”
He opens his mouth, ready to loose the words that will finally smother this fire smoldering inside my chest. Then a glob of spit lands on my face. Despite his recent community makeover, he is programmed to lie and kill that which stands opposed to the Tathadann, as Emeríann is only too happy to remind me.
I feel my cheeks burn and realize I’m smiling.
I stab the ceramic shard through his cheek and yank it, ripping from molars to lips. Ragged skin flaps as he yells, splattering the tile with red.
He thrashes and writhes, smearing a blood halo over the tile, until I stab the needle into his temple.
“I’m going to find out anyway. You could have just told me.”
There are slivers of coal in my kit but I would rather eat them than have them grace his eyelids for the journey.
After I close his apartment door behind me, I walk down the hallway, thinking I should be floating, but my feet still touch the floor. It makes me wonder if maybe Walleus is right, that knowing won’t really change anything. I’d never believed that I could close that door in my heart, that it would no longer ache for Aífe and Donael, but there should be a difference. And there is a bit, but maybe not enough. Maybe it will never be enough.
I step out of the elevator and hurry through the lobby without seeing anyone else. Outside, near the alley, the crowd has begun to thin. As the gawkers blocking my path turn away, I glimpse a hump of a body sprawled across the sidewalk.
Oh shit. Oh shit shit shit.
Even from this distance, without even seeing properly, I recognize Forgall. A man kneels beside him, smoothing his hair back off his forehead.
This cannot be happening. Not now. Not today.
I sprint toward them, slip on a glass bottle and shatter it. The man glances up and then scurries away before I can react, and I see one of his eyes is covered with skin. Did Morrigan have Belousz track me? Did Walleus? Or is he here for Forgall? But how would he know Forgall was here?
When I get to Forgall, his face is not pale so much as it’s a complete absence of color. A jagged spear of metal sticks out of his stomach. I press my fingers to his neck, feeling the faint pulse beneath his skin. His eyes are closed like fists, his breath seeping between his lips. If the shrapnel hasn’t shredded his intestines already, it will if I try to remove it. Between the blood flowing onto the concrete and leaking through his internal cavity, he’s going to die and I can’t get him back to our neighborhood by myself.
“What the hell are you doing over here?” I say, feeling an unexpected knot in my throat.
“You got sloppy.” He coughs, his eyes drifting open, and blood flecks my hand. “They’re watching you. They don’t trust you either.”
“Who doesn’t?”
Even with a piece of metal lodged in his gut and blood leaking over the concrete by the glassful, he still manages to give me a withering look.
“How do you know?”
“I found out this morning. I came to clean up for you, take out the scouts and protect the revolution. I told Emeríann she should’ve kept you away.” His head tips to the side. His lips continue to move, and I have to put my ear beside them to hear him. “I don’t know why I ever believed you.”
I smear his hair back, doing my best to comfort him. I have a sudden longing for Walleus and the flask in his pocket. Goddammit. We are going to bomb the hell out of them.
“Forgall,” I say, jiggling him to keep him conscious. “Those maps you got, are you sure they’re solid, they’re not disinformation? Forgall, I can’t take Emeríann into a set-up. I need to know if we’re safe.”
His head moves, but it could be a nod or my doing.
Blood shimmers on his stomach, on the ground beside him, a viscous puddle of dark rain. In his hand is the statuette of Nimah. It’s too late. He’s not even here anymore.
“Close your eyes, Forgall, and think about everyone you love. It makes it easier.” Of all the people I’ve consoled while dying, I never thought it’d be Forgall, though for all our differences, we devoted our lives to the same thing. “Listen to the rhythms of your body. Go with them. Go meet your grandmother again.”
His head rocks up and down slightly, the faintest nod that evaporates with his breath. His eyes stare past me, lips slightly parted, his mouth filled with dead air.
I slip the statuette into his pocket and lay my hand on it, closing my eyes for a moment.
Then I let my face fall blank again. I leave Forgall’s body behind me, heading home to find out what happened to my wife. But not before diffusing Emeríann. After all, she’s going to need someone to help with this bombing now.
16
Walleus
I’m not in my booth more than five minutes and Greig’s already swaggering his way through the customers of the Gallery. Why can’t anyone leave me the hell alone? The grin plastered on his mug makes me wish I had a pair of pliers, some bleach, and thirty uninterrupted minutes. It’ll be some consolation when I get Forgall in here, let some of the men go to work on him while Lady Morrigan and Greig watch, and listen to all the nothing he says. Big man like Forgall? They can torture the hell out of him and he won’t say a word. Not only will I re-establish my stature in her eyes, I’ll do it while standing on Greig’s forehead. One of the plebes leans down beside me, repeating in my ear that Lady Morrigan is urgently wanting me to raise her.
“I heard you the first six times. Go get me some more coffee.” I shove a mu
g at him, sloshing some coffee on the stomach of his freshly pressed uniform. “And find Belousz. I need to talk to him now.”
He hurries away as Greig approaches, standing before my table without acknowledging me, looking around at the paintings like he’s never seen them before.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I take a deep breath then exhale. “Say your piece and go, Greig.”
“Hadn’t seen you for a while. I thought you’d like an update.”
“I was out a couple hours. Sick kid.” I sift through the stack of reports I’m supposed to review, separating the important ones from the others. “You have sixty seconds. Starting now.”
“I spent some time out in the street.”
“Your mother kick you out again for not ironing her underwear right?”
He doesn’t take the bait. “People are saying some interesting things about Daghda.”
I swallow, consciously tell my hands to continue sorting. There’s no way he knows about Stilian. It’s an age-old rumor he’s now picking up on. “People have been saying things about him for twenty years. Course, you’re not old enough to know about most of that.” I risk a glance up at him. “He still coming back? Or is that next month?”
“Lady Morrigan might not take it so lightly,” he says, then clears his throat. “What’s Forgall Tobeigh planning to bomb?”
The abrupt shift makes me pause. “You’re the field scout. You tell me.”
“I thought Henraek might know.”
The use of Henraek’s name in the same conversation as bomb stops me, but I quickly resume shifting reports around on my table.
“Tobeigh’s name has never been on Henraek’s list, so I don’t know what he’d know.”
There’s a shushing of paper on my table. Several pictures land beside my hand.
“That’s the funny thing about dealing with memory,” he says. “After a while they all start blending together. You can’t tell what you’ve done from what you’ve seen.”
I stare at him for a moment before picking up the top picture, yet I manage to maintain a blank expression. In the photo, Henraek and Emeríann are carrying something covered in a sheet that looks conspicuously like a bomb, but can’t be one. Because Henraek swore to me that he wouldn’t get involved in this again, and even if he is a prick – which he tends to be – he wouldn’t be stupid enough to carry a bomb through the streets like that. Yet there he is, carrying something with Emeríann, and I can practically hear Greig’s pants stretching with his erection. Or maybe it’s actually my noose tightening.
“Help yourself out here, Walleus,” he says. “What’s the target? The statue? Clodhna? He can’t be that dumb, can he?”
“Maybe it’s a couch and they’re bringing it to a friend.”
“Don’t play stupid. He’s associating with someone under active monitoring.”
I shove the photos back at him. “What he does and who he sees in his own time is his own business. I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.” I point at the image. “This is circumstantial.”
“It might be…” He trails off, like honey drips from his tongue. “But this isn’t.”
He drops three more photos. I glance at them, expecting more horseshit conjecture, and instead see Belousz’s face, pressed against the glass of a small car, Forgall in the background. In the next photo they are exiting a building in Findchoem that has a lagonael den in the basement and rents rooms by the hour. The last one shows them in a café, Belousz drinking coffee while Forgall reads a paper. The scene is so domestic, their body language so comfortable, it’s horrifying. My closest ally in the Tathadann and the leader of the supposed uprising.
“This is only two days’ worth. There are some from this morning, too. If I followed him for a week, I’m positive I would get even more. From your expression, I think you know these aren’t fabricated.” There’s an assertive tone to Grieg’s voice that makes it hard not to snap his neck. Where the hell is Belousz? “You authorize me to move on Tobeigh and Daele’s operation or I show these to Morrigan.”
“I’ll investigate these myself and send word to you,” I say. “You do not move until you hear from me. Do you understand?”
He stares at me, chest swollen with pride, jaw muscles pulsing with newfound power, then snatches the photos. “You do not make the rules anymore, Walleus.”
He strides away but pauses at the door and I stand and let him see my full profile, debate going after him.
I call out, “You will wait for my word, soldier,” as much for the benefit of everyone else here as for him. He doesn’t bother giving a response before walking out.
The plebe inches up beside me. “Sir? Your coffee?”
I smack it away, spilling the entire cup on him. He shrieks, batting at the steam rising from his uniform. “If you can’t figure out that I’m busy, then you’d be better off in a stochae than in my division.”
He scuttles toward the back. I call out to stop him, but can’t remember his name, so I yell you a couple times. He turns to face me, his cheeks glistening, and hurries back. It’s a wonder this territory is still standing.
“Didn’t I tell you to get me Belousz?”
He nods behind me, hesitantly, though it could be an attempt to not pass out from the scalding coffee.
I look to the side and startle when I find Belousz next to me. In that moment – for once – I’ve got nothing to say. I have no idea where any of this will fall, where it places me. “Where’d you come from?”
“Hell,” he says.
“Yeah, well, welcome home.” I appraise the dirt and dust covering him. His eye is rimmed red. I wonder if it’s from alcohol. “I need you to go to Johnstone’s right now and collect Forgall. I know you know where it is,” I say, a little more bite in my words than I’d intended. “Bring him to me. Now.”
“He’s dead, Walleus,” Belousz says.
“Who, Toman?”
“Forgall,” he says, and I feel some weird combination of relief and sadness for him. “I don’t know what happened.” He takes a breath and straightens himself. “It was in the alley after the market, and Toman’s legs started going crazy. He sped past me and the charge didn’t go off quick enough. It fired after he passed.”
The skin around my skull tightens. “Wait, wait.” I massage my temples. “So Toman is alive? And Forgall’s dead?”
Belousz squints hard and clears his throat. Under all that dust and grime, his cheeks are flushed. “I saw his body in the alley.”
“Why was he there in the first place?”
“Looked like he was following Henraek.”
“Well, why was he following Henraek?” I say. Does Henraek know about them?
“I have no idea.”
I clench my fists and press them against my mouth, bite down on my knuckle so I don’t scream or tear some patron’s throat out with my teeth. Part of me wonders how much he heard, how much he’s gathered, and how much is from Forgall confiding in him. Of course this would happen. Of. Course. Everything was lined up and ready and now nothing is.
No. Get yourself together, Walleus. You are not the problem. Greig is the problem. You will pull yourself together, figure out a plan. You will be cool, calm, and collected and, with or without Belousz, you will devise a way around this obstacle that squashes Henraek’s incessant questioning and buries Greig in the ground. You can do this.
“Protectorate Blaí,” the plebe says, and before I recognize a conscious thought I feel my knuckles smash against his teeth. He tumbles backward, crashing into a group of patrons. A woman’s high heel snaps and she takes out her friend, who flails her arms as she falls and catches her male escort right in the dick. All three of them go down in a jigsaw of limbs and spilled drinks.
I press my finger into Belousz’s chest, almost like I’m tapping out a rhythm, my hand shakes so bad. “Be where I can find you,” I say.
“I have to go see Mom tomorrow. But you send word, I’ll hear it.”
“You better make damn
sure. And do not, under any circumstance, go near Greig.” I sigh hard. “He knows about you and Forgall.”
His eye drops. I’m not sure if he’s embarrassed that I know or embarrassed that he wasn’t good enough to hide it from Greig.
“Love makes you do stupid things. It makes you sloppy,” I say.
He nods. What else is he supposed to do?
“I don’t know how I’m going to spin this. Anyone asks, deny everything,” I tell him. “If that doesn’t work, kill them and get rid of the body.”
I walk away before I can see his response. I can’t look at him again right now. I can’t look at anyone. All I want is a dark room and a full bottle. But nothing I could do could stop this now it’s been started.
Before leaving, I write up an intelligence order in Fomora, mark it urgent and forge Morrigan’s signature, then give it to one of the plebes. I tell him I have important business to attend to and I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but he is to put it in Greig’s hands the second he walks through the door tomorrow morning, and make sure he understands that he has a date with a stochae if he fails. It won’t occupy Greig long, but it gives me a day to figure something out.
I survey the Gallery with a few glances, not meeting anyone’s gawking mugs, then hurry out, certain that this place will crush me within seconds.
17
Henraek
Standing with my hand on the doorknob, I take a few breaths to prepare myself. I hear Emeríann inside, completely unaware. I feel churning in my gut, the proximity to Toman’s memories pushing bile up my throat. As soon as my hand moves, it will change my world. And for a brief second I wonder if I could simply stand still in the doorway, let my body functions slow then eventually cease, for as much as I need to know why Aífe was killed, I don’t want to know. Screw it. I open the door.
She’s two steps inside. “Where the hell have you been? Are you pouting or something because I said you shouldn’t be part of the plan?”
