by Nik Korpon
“But don’t you feel like a liar?” he says.
“That’s enough,” I growl.
I chew on the bone to keep my mouth occupied. How am I supposed to explain revolution or murder? That when someone takes the land your family owned for generations, only to destroy it on the off-chance they’ll find some small amount of resources they won’t even let you use, the only appropriate response is a gun. That when those people ruin the world around you and tell you everything’s the way it’s supposed to be, the only thing to do is tear their world apart. I can’t explain that to an eleven year-old.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“I know you don’t. And I hope that you never have to.” The phone rings again.
He shakes his head. “I don’t even know what that means.”
With no real response or explanation coming from me, he goes to answer the phone. Cobb glances up at me then back down to the counter, and though he can’t speak, I can feel disgust radiating from him.
“You too?” I say to him.
“Tyrell Deckard is downstairs,” Donael yells.
I stop in my place.
“Where?”
“Tuhc from the gatehouse is on the phone.”
I hurry into the living room and snatch the phone, telling Donael to go clean up Cobb. When he’s in the kitchen, I speak into the mouthpiece. “Who is this?”
“Mister Walleus, this is Tuhc from the front gate. There’s a man down here real insistent on seeing you. Says his name is Tyrell Deckard,” Tuhc says. “Should I send him up?”
Donael reappears in the doorway holding Cobb’s sauce-stained shirt.
“No,” I say. “No, I’ll be down.” I hang up before Tuhc can respond.
“What should I do with this?” Donael says.
“Put it in the laundry. What else would you do with it?” I lay my hands on Donael’s shoulders. “I need to take care of something. I might be a couple minutes. You guys watch a movie or something. Get Cobb ready for bed if I’m not back in thirty minutes.”
“What kind of name is Tyrell Deckard?” he says.
“He’s an old friend.”
“Sounds like a dumb friend.” He snickers to himself.
Instead of a proper response, I purse my lips and nod at him, then shut the door and double check that it’s locked. I slip one of my keys between my index and middle finger in case, then feel guilty for doing it, but tighten my grip anyway.
* * *
Henraek’s back is to me as I approach. Inside the gatehouse, Tuhc – after all these years I now know his name – has conspicuously lowered his head, focusing on something to avoid catching Henraek’s anger and finding himself with some untreatable injury. There are no bricks or boards in Henraek’s hands – and again I’m glad they clean this area so frequently – so as long as he doesn’t have a gun shoved between his ass cheeks, there’s nothing to indicate he’s intent on murdering me, unless it’s with his bare hands, which wouldn’t be that surprising.
I slink up behind Henraek and grab him by the elbow. “Deckard?” I say, yanking him away from the gatehouse. “What the hell is wrong with you? Just because you don’t care about your life doesn’t mean you have to inflict yourself on me.”
“I didn’t use my name. That movie’s a thousand years old anyway.”
“Stop being a prick.” I keep my head down, face tilted away from any cameras. “Come on. Not here.”
We walk three blocks in silence, getting away from the immediate surveillance. Once into the alleyway, he spins me around by the shoulder.
“Belousz was part of it,” he says.
“Part of what?” I swallow hard.
“Mebeth gave the nod and Belousz gave the order. Then him and that robot satyr tossed Aífe’s body in the trash after they shot her.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Stop asking me that. How do you think?” He kicks the lone bottle across the pavement. This alley is probably cleaner than my house, and with the white walls, brighter too. “I’m not going to ask you to move on Belousz. I wouldn’t do that. But you need to help me with Mebeth.”
“Henraek, don’t be stupid. That would be catastrophically bad. For both of us.” Not to mention Donael, as well.
“I’m calling in all favors right now, you son of a bitch. Don’t you dare step away from me.”
“You know goddamned well that going after Mebeth would be suicide. No, not suicide – torture. Stuff they haven’t even invented yet but will sure as hell try on us.” His nostrils curl slightly, and I know he understands. “Anyway, Toman was the one who shot her, right? Take it up with him.”
“Oh, I did,” he says, his voice riding on bloodlust. “You’ll never see a smile as big as his.”
“Then let it go,” I say.
“How can you say that?” He slams his hand against the brick wall behind me, his face inches from mine. “If someone murdered your wife, destroyed your family, I would walk beside you through every acre of Hell to help you kill them.”
“Listen to me, Henraek. If you go after Belousz, you’re going to screw everything up for me, which means it’s going to get even worse for you. And that’s saying something.”
“Why are you doing this? They deserve to die.” His spittle speckles my face.
I slap him and he looks more surprised than angry. I pounce on the distraction to redirect. “Stop playing the martyr before you get us both killed. You take out Belousz and it proves that you still side with the rebels, because anything that isn’t Tathadann is automatically against the Tathadann. And if you’re a rebel, then I’m a rebel because I vouched for you. So what you need to do is go home or go to the bar or go to one of those abandoned houses in Amergin and break a bunch of stuff, then sleep it off and come into work like this never happened. You hear me?” I relax my hands, not realizing they’d balled into fists.
Face blank, breathing level, he puts his nose to mine, says, “After everything we have been through, you would choose them over me.”
“I am choosing you, choosing us – keeping both of us alive – by telling you to go home to your girlfriend.”
“I can’t, because she’s out retrieving Forgall’s body, who got blown up by your new best friend.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I know you two were close.” I let the barb sink in, mostly because I’d rather deck him instead. “But you’re projecting again. Belousz would have no reason to hurt Forgall.”
“Why, because they were sleeping together?”
I wince. I didn’t know he knew, which makes me wonder how many other people know now.
“Yeah,” he says, “you’re not the only one privy to secrets. And still you protect Belousz.”
“I’m not protecting him. I told you, Morrigan is on edge, and anything you do to push her before I can take care of things is going to royally screw me. Greig is on my ass, looking for anything at all to prove I’m a sympathizer and should be removed from my position. I’m doing everything I can to stay out of a stochae and you trying to murder a fellow Tathadann member is not going to help the situation.” I lay my hands on his shoulders and am surprised he doesn’t try to stick a knife through them. I’m even more surprised that, for a few seconds, he actually seems to soften, like he’s finally hearing me. “So please, for me, leave it alone.”
But as brief as the expression came, it disappears. He shoves me against the wall, steps back, and looks me up and down. Sizing me up, like I’m in the middle of an auction. “Who is this fat bastard before me? Who says all this ‘leave it alone’? Because it sure as hell isn’t the man I crawled through Hell with. Who are you? Did you eat Walleus?”
“I know you miss your family. Really, I get it.” I step forward, hoping to move him a little but he stands tall. His breath crashes against my face yet I lean closer still. “But they’re dead. You think knowing how helps? Trust me, it doesn’t, because then you picture it over and over.”
“Her murder means Donael
could be out there.”
“He’s not, Henraek. And killing someone else won’t make it so. Donael is dead.” Even saying the words makes my voice hitch. “If he was alive, you would’ve found him by now. And you haven’t.”
“But I don’t know that. You know what that not-knowing does to you?” He beats his fist against his chest, and it’s as heartbreaking as it is infantile. “Loss is a vacuum and it consumes everything.”
“Go to hell, Henraek. My wife died trying to abort my deformed child. You abandoned yours so we could play commando in the streets.”
“I was fighting for–”
“She begged you to stay and you left.” My stomach touches his, my face close enough that I can see the whites of his eyes shot through with red veins. “So I’m telling you, you won’t live long enough to enjoy knowing why she died if you don’t back off. Morrigan has a hard-on for you the size of my thigh. They know Emeríann and Forgall were planning something. I saw the photo of you and her carrying something that looks a hell of a lot like a bomb.”
This doesn’t faze him. “Do you taste blood when you talk? Biting your tongue to keep all those secrets in?”
“Secrets? You’re talking to me about secrets? Does Emeríann even know about Riab?”
His eyes narrow. “That has nothing to do with anything.”
“Oh, sure,” I say. Times like this I wish I had a little girl instead so I could channel her smarm and tone and push him to punch me. “So she doesn’t know you gave the order that led him to be a part of a premature attack on a site that knew we were coming, that you gave it because you were half-drunk the whole week and trying to burn down the world, and that he could barely field-strip his weapon, much less run point on an ambush.”
“He was ready. He had heart and he had determination.”
“Suck my dick with that pamphlet speech,” I say. “You knew they’d get slaughtered and sent them in anyway because you were hurt and wanted everyone else to hurt too.”
“You are no saint, Walleus. We needed every man in order to stay alive and you abandoned us. You left us to die.”
A street-sweeper backfires, echoing through the alleyway.
“I tried to get you all to come with me,” I say, pressing my finger into his chest. “But I’m not your whipping boy, and you’re only angry because no one thinks you’re important anymore.”
And then he starts singing. “Down near the river where our brothers bled–”
“Henraek, shut up.”
He steps forward, pushes me back two paces. “I knelt on the bank and my father said–”
“I said, shut the hell up,” I shout at him. My voice careens off the washed walls.
He pushes me with both hands, slamming my back against the wall, yells in my face, “This is your land, all that you can touch–”
“You say one more thing and I’m going to shoot you.”
“And we’ll water our crops with Tathadann blood.” Arms spread like some gigantic bird of prey, he dares me to do it.
“I warned you. You live, you die, I don’t care what you do.” I spit in the middle of his chest then shoulder past him. “But they’re going to kill you, Henraek.”
I slap a trashcan and knock it over in front of him. Full cuts of meat and empty containers spill over his feet. I kick the can then walk back toward my house, hungry to be surrounded by my family. Even when I’m blocks away, I can still hear his voice singing, the words jagged glass on my skin.
19
Henraek
I head toward Johnstone’s to wait for Emeríann and Lachlan. Although I prefer fighting on my own, I’m going to need help taking out Belousz and Mebeth. And involving Lachlan and his people on this will not only give them something to cheer about, it will also bring me into their circle.
As I round the corner I see Belousz standing beneath a lamppost across the street from Johnstone’s, staring at the darkened window. My fingers instantly curl, feeling his phantom muscle separate beneath my fingertips, his bones clack against my nails. Leaning on the post, one arm wrapped round while the other swings casually, his posture isn’t the poised one of surveillance, but a pensive one. His back foot kicks absently at the ground. For a flash I feel an odd compassion, some vicious empathy bloom in my chest. Then I kneel and grab a length of rebar from the dirty sidewalk, crushing the feeling before it can mature.
But as I approach him, he lets out a long resigned sigh, then shoulders himself off the post and walks away. I follow from far enough away to stay unseen but close enough that he won’t easily slip me. I figure I at least owe Walleus the courtesy of killing Belousz privately, to keep any guilt by association away from the chicken-shit.
I trail him for several blocks, leaning against a wall with a Tathadann newspaper covering my face when he stops at a market and emerges with a wilted bouquet of flowers. We weave past alleyways and avenues, through crowded markets teeming with pickpockets and men selling “traditional” snake-oil, past stalls offering roasted carcasses and vendors hocking trinkets in guttural tongues, until we come to a tenement building that lists to the right like a tooth about to be ripped free from the gum. Six-inch gaps between the bricks, the internal structure visible even from across the street. I lean against the soot-covered wall of a building and wait, the rebar held beside my leg.
When Walleus and I arrived in Eitan City years ago, invigorated by escaping Westhell County before it collapsed under the weight of the resource companies, we’d don moth-eaten fatigues and carry sticks with bandanas tied around the end, ranting about government conspiracies with a half-bottle of tea in place of liquor between us. We were playacting with things far more serious than we could comprehend, as teenagers are wont to do, and thought we were being subversive or artistic, that we were peeling back gauze from the collective eye by provoking a reaction. Now, with a clutch of dead souls and a ruined family strung around my shoulders, I have to say: it’s not so funny anymore.
After a few minutes the door opens. Belousz emerges.
I stand, toss my head to either side and feel the crack trickle down my spine. I pop my shoulders and wait for cars to pass before crossing, ready to avenge my dead wife.
A frail woman steps out behind him, wearing an assemblage of leftover burlap clippings and fabric swatches. She clutches a pocketbook in one hand and the wilted bouquet in the other.
Goddamn it.
She balances herself using his arm as she crosses the threshold, then slaps it away as she shuffles down the sidewalk beside him. I give them a head start so I won’t need to walk conspicuously slowly. It still takes us a full five minutes to walk two blocks and this is shaping up to be a hell of a task, until they veer off to the right and enter the darkened mouth of a decommissioned factory. I follow them into the shadows.
It’s not a factory but a clandestine temple. Rows of benches filled with the mannequins that Tathadann soldiers use for target practice, arranged in various penitent positions. Some lack an arm, a hand. A rat crawls through a hole in one of the devotee’s skulls. Cobwebs hang in the corners, off the candelabra, so thick they look fake. Lording over the altar is a fifteen-foot statue, a thick serpent’s tail coiled beneath a woman’s torso and head, her outstretched fingers sharp like claws. The pungent smell of moldy sawdust and stale incense is expected; less so is the sting of fresh disinfectant.
I creep along the shadow line in the rear breezeway to the side wall, minding each step. In this building, even a single nail would cause an avalanche of echoes.
Two trails lead through the dust of the center aisle up to the front bench, one with footsteps and the other inconsistent shuffle lines. Belousz assists his mother down a row, sitting beside her. Their whispers are static. It appears that her clothing isn’t actually patchwork, but a dress that likely predates Lady Morrigan’s wardrobe, though hers didn’t weather nearly as well as Morrigan’s. I’ve never seen this goddess up on the altar before. She’s not from anywhere around here. I wonder how many people know of th
is, how many still come to worship, what would happen if the Tathadann found out.
“I know what to do, Môr,” Belousz says, bowing toward the goddess before sitting back on the bench. She smacks his knuckles and he bows twice more.
“I been telling you this for years and still you ain’t listening.”
“You never made Dad suffer through this.”
“Your fær was a godless heathen.”
“Being born in Eitan doesn’t make him a godless heathen. You two were from totally different cultures.” Though he remains respectful, the edge in his voice is audible. He gestures at the statue. “He didn’t understand the attraction of Berôs. None of us did.”
“Don’t sass your mother. You listened to me more often, you wouldn’t still be kowtowing to that swollen cunt. It’d be your operation, not his, and your mother wouldn’t be forced to live in such a shithole. You know Moira down the hall, her son is building a room in his house for her.”
“Her son is an unrepentant lagon, Môr. She’s going to get sold at a market for parts,” he says. “And I told you I was taking care of it.”
“How? Waiting for him to die? Waiting for that useless cunt Fannae to kill him off?”
“Goddamn, Môr.”
This gets him a slap across the mouth.
“Watch your damn mouth in front of her.” She gestures up to Berôs and when the light shifts inside the church, the shadows give the statue’s face the appearance of judgment. Whether her censure is for Belousz or me, I have no idea. I’d wager that both of us are pretty much paid up on our ticket to Hell. “If you had half the initiative your brother had–”
“Then I’d be dead too.” Belousz practically spits at her, but reins himself in. He says something in another language, every word holding too many letters. She responds but doesn’t sound convinced. “You’re not the only one who’s tired of the Tathadann. Fannae is a relic and their party is sputtering. It’s time for a new day.”
