The Rebellion's Last Traitor

by Nik Korpon

  “Then stopping complaining,” she says, before yanking me up to my feet. My shoulder throbs but I squeeze hard on the handle of my gun to focus. “I’ll cover. Move.”

  When she dips around and fires, I jump out and sprint for the door, crouching low as I can, given I only have one arm to maintain balance, and duck between the bundles of tubes. Behind a vat, I spin around and level the pistol to cover her. As she comes toward me, the guard steps out and trains his sights on her. I pull the trigger half a dozen times. Two land, his chest and neck exploding in red. Lucky shot. Both of them are down.

  Then I hear a ticking noise.

  “Oh no.”

  The pulse-charges.

  “Go!” I scream at Emeríann.

  She sprints toward the door that opens into the hallway. More ticking. More charges sequencing. More concrete and rebar about to rain from the heavens. She hits the door so hard it knocks her off her feet, the glass window nearly shattering as it swings back and slams against the wall. The cameras pan across and I almost laugh. A heavy hiss behind us, the atomizers warming, building up the energy that will make the posts disappear.

  I scoop her up and we round the corner and find the young guard standing in the middle of the hallway. She should still be out cold. Her gun is raised, her hand trembling.

  “Look, kid,” I say, “we’ve about ten seconds to get out of here before–”

  A crack. My ears ring. A red splash at the base of her neck. The poor girl collapses on the ground, screaming and writhing. Emeríann is still in position, hands aimed, steady.

  “What the hell, Em?” I start toward the girl, out of instinct, but stop myself. Emeríann lowers her gun. “She wasn’t going to shoot us. She’s a kid.”

  “Her choices affect other people’s lives too.” She sniffs, swallows. “She’s old enough to know that.”

  The girl’s screaming has faded into whimpering grunts, fear and pain sluicing between her gritted teeth. Her fingers are pressed against her neck, coated with blood. “Please,” she says, “please.” The floor is smeared beneath her.

  “We can’t leave her here, she’ll be crushed,” I say. “That’s a terrible way to die.” I press my fingers against my eyes. I don’t vocalize it, but I know we can’t take her with us and she’s going to die anyway. “Dammit,” I yell, then pop out my clip to make sure I have enough bullets, and when I look up Emeríann has her gun trained on the girl. I say, “Em, I can,” and there’s another crack. The girl’s head slaps against the floor. The hole in the middle of her face is shiny and red, framed with jagged edges of bone.

  A loud hiss behind us, then a rumbling, the patter of concrete chunks hitting concrete floor, the keening of iron bars bending under tons of metal and tile and tubing. A cloud of dust beginning to form, particles of walkway posts and dust swirling.

  No time to mourn this girl. It’s happening.

  I grab Emeríann’s arm. We sprint.

  Twenty feet.

  A ferrous scream as the walkways tear free from their moorings and collide mid-air.

  Ten feet.

  A sizzling, electric roar as the charges ignite and disperse their energy.

  Doorway.

  We explode into the street, hurry across with hands covering our heads, hunks of the building falling down around us. I wager a quick look back. The façade of the plant is poked through with holes, giant swathes of brick and mortar tearing away from the sides and falling inward, a faint glow emanating from the lower levels where the metal burns so bright it evaporates. I feel the building’s rumbling roar inside my chest as if it’s pumping my blood.

  We run until the streets become choked with people. Signs held aloft. Effigies on poles. Chanting. Shouting. Assembling. The plumes of dust and debris are visible even from a dozen blocks away.

  “What the hell is going on?” I yell to her.

  Emeríann falls on me, her face flushed, slick with sweat. Ecstatic. “The distraction.”

  She pounds on my chest, crushes her lips against mine for what seems like years, then pulls away and raises her hands over her head and screams.

  Catharsis.

  She starts singing. Down near the river where our brothers bled. The man next to us hears her and joins in. Another. Another. Another. Soon she climbs on top of a car, calling people to her with her arms, her voice. A siren song. I knelt on the bank and my father said. Someone nudges my arm. I turn to find Nael, one of our old bombmakers.

  “You should come with us,” he says. “You’re going to want to watch this.”

  Emeríann starts another verse, the crowd singing so loud I can’t hear the rest of what he says. At the chorus, the volume doubles. Hundreds, thousands of voices becoming one singular, massive entity.

  I yell, “I need to stay here,” but he screams something that looks like, What?

  I point at the crowd and he gets the idea, slapping my injured shoulder before heading off with four other men. Any pain is quickly blurred by adrenaline. Emeríann stands on the car’s roof, arms aloft, head back, throat elongated. Resplendent.

  “This is our land, all that you can touch, and we’ll water our crops with Tathadann blood.”

  26

  Walleus

  More and more I’m finding myself in the car with no place to go and I wonder if there’s something to Henraek’s talk about unmoored spirits and all that.

  Even though heading back to the Gallery is as undesirable as getting drunk with Goerde and all his buddies, I find myself telling the car to drive in that direction by force of habit. As soon as I realize what I’m doing, I tell it to turn left and drive in the opposite direction, as far away as possible from the Tathadann’s personal influence on me. Petty, maybe, but I’m not in the frame of mind to give a shit at the moment.

  Belousz is dead. Greig is likely plotting, looking for some way to exhume that seed of doubt planted in the Old Lady before it can bloom into a stochae with his name on it to be stacked alongside everyone else who has been stripped. And the old woman? She’s probably drinking fetus-soul tea or whatever it is she does to keep her alive. I seriously doubt she’s going to find anything more about Daghda – seeing that it took four of my men a couple days to find one small memory, and I don’t expect she’ll want to be publicly seen looking for him. This coup, though, this one I’m holding tight to my chest until I see how it shakes out – figure out if I’m a hero to Morrigan for my keen intelligence gathering that prevented a revolt that would fracture the party, or a leader of the new party that will stand on the ashes of the old Tathadann. Or a new resident of some country far away from here if the whole thing collapses and the rebels take over. I think of the hill-people who keep showing up.

  Either way, I don’t feel like going to the Gallery.

  Donael and Cobb are still in school, but regardless, much as I love them, I don’t really feel like hanging out with them and Donael is still too young to share his first beer, lest he develops a taste and turns out like me and Henraek. And Henraek, he’s probably tying one on with Emeríann and her people, though I hope they keep it out of the scouts’ range. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find him beat to hell tomorrow because one of them called him a traitor and he wouldn’t let it pass. His pride is matched only by his stubbornness.

  I was always the more rational of us, the one who could sniff out an angle and reason my way through a situation without letting emotion make everything go tits up. Sometimes that meant swallowing my pride when the situation needed it. Like when Henraek goes into his poor-me rants about the son he didn’t pay much attention to in the first place and I sit and take it without comment. He called me cold and calculating; I preferred to think of myself as pragmatic. Henraek, though, that stubborn bastard would chew through his own coffin to avenge his death. I’d always thought of myself as tough – present physique notwithstanding – but that son of a bitch had some internal drive that destroyed any normal person’s understanding of strength. I was honestly surprised he didn’t ove
rthrow the Tathadann by pure will alone.

  So out of everyone I know, there are exactly zero people I can turn to. Forgall had a field of people there to remember him. It didn’t matter if he knew them or not because they are kin to him.

  And here I am, with my car and some food wrappers and an old bottle I should have thrown away weeks ago. The bar is the only place I can go where there are people who aren’t trying to kill me and I don’t feel like dealing with a hangover again.

  * * *

  After a thirty-minute looping and meandering drive, my car pulls into the driveway and I slouch my way to the house. As soon as I push the door open, the kids rush toward me.

  “Oh my god, you’re not dead!” Donael throws himself against me.

  “No, I’m not.” I hold him tight to me. Cobb hobbles off the couch, clicking like a maniac. “Why aren’t you in school?” It takes a minute for what he said to sink in. “Why would I be dead?”

  “I’m so glad you’re home.” His voice is muffled, speaking into my chest. Cobb reaches us and I bring him into the fold.

  “Donael.” I say his name again but he doesn’t respond and I nearly have to pry him off to get an acknowledgment. “What happened?”

  Donael points at the television. On the screen is a banner that reads Rebels Strike! and a live stream of the water distribution plant up in Fomora, a smoldering pile of rubble and steel beams jutting out at odd angles. Ropes of black smoke connect the heavens to the bombed out carcass. A close-up shows two lonely fire trucks with hoses, spraying chemicals to try to keep it under control. Two figures come up behind it and cut the supply hose with an axe. The TV switches to a shot of the Gallery – which actually looks worse than the water plant, if that was possible.

  “They blew up your work,” he says, finally disconnected from me. “Everyone got sent home early from school and there’s no water.” I heft Cobb up on my hip and we all go to the couch.

  The newscaster with a politician’s haircut and aspirations says that the rebels have claimed responsibility for the attacks, citing the recent murder of one of their members. The screen switches to a couple amadans with bandanas tied around the lower halves of their faces, yelling rebel slogans so loud and vehemently that you can’t understand what any of them are saying.

  “It’s starting again, isn’t it?” Donael says.

  “No, sweetheart, it’s OK.” The boys huddle close to me and I pat their backs to reassure them that I’m here and not dead. “This is a couple idiots who have nothing better to do.”

  I try not to show my excitement at watching the Gallery burn. Damn if that ain’t a beautiful sight. Wonder if Emeríann launched their plan early to honor Forgall’s memory, or if this is a good old-fashioned riot. I wish I had a live feed of the old woman’s face right now, could sit back with some popcorn and watch.

  This is the opportunity I should have been looking for a long time ago. I’ve kowtowed to the Tathadann’s wishes for too long. Morrigan doesn’t care about me. Greig is trying to take me down. This isn’t going to help.

  What I need to do is talk to Henraek and Emeríann. With all I know about Tathadann operations, I could inform the rebellion and maybe, between their balls and my brains, we could actually take down this iron beast. Pick up where we left off, do something good for a change. Make the city a better place for Donael and Cobb.

  With the thought of being able to take the boys to Hoeps matches and go see Donael play in his own without fear of being caught in crossfire, set up a campsite out near the hills and show them both what a real picnic is without keeping constant watch for tripwires or ignition devices, I feel the blood course through my head, my arms and hands and fingers, my whole chest opening with the lightness of possibility.

  And then it rushes out through my feet, my chest collapsing and shattering and debris spreading under the weight of realization.

  If the Tathadann was gone, there’d be nothing separating my and Henraek’s lives and – oh, shitting hell – there would be nothing to keep Donael and Henraek apart. As soon as the great beast falls, so falls my family. Our movie nights and popcorn breakfasts, every first day of school and Donael’s first girlfriend, teaching him how to clean a pistol and giving him advice on how to meet his love’s parents and watching them walk into their own house. And, and, and.

  Without the Tathadann, there is no Donael. They brought him into my life, and their destruction – their absence – will rip him away.

  Henraek has to fail. The rebellion has to fail. For my son, for my family, it has to fail.

  I have to help the Tathadann, Morrigan, Greig win. I lock my knees so I won’t collapse in front of the boys and lay my hands on their shoulders. I need to feel them.

  I need a drink.

  The report switches back to the water plant. The newscaster speaks over a clip showing the smoldering building, saying officials have an explanation: the rebels are inciting riots on the basis that the man Forgall Tobeigh was murdered by Tathadann soldiers. However, Tobeigh, who was thought to be a major architect of the plot to bomb the water distribution infrastructure, had in actuality been leaking information to a Tathadann operative for several weeks. At least they got that in.

  “Why are they doing this?” Donael says. “What does cutting off everyone’s water prove?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “It’s selfish and damaging to everyone.” I wonder who I’m talking about.

  A grainy photo flashes up on the screen and my stomach drops out my asshole. Greig’s surveillance. Henraek and Emer carrying the bomb-that-can’t-be-a-bomb across the street.

  I see Donael squinting at the picture. It cuts back to the newscaster, but it’s too late.

  “That was my dad,” Donael says. “Is that from today?”

  “No, it wasn’t. That must have been an old picture or something.” My skull is suddenly too large for my skin. My body is on fire.

  “They said it was the people who bombed the water thing.”

  “Then it wasn’t him.” Another photo flashes up on the screen, this one an establishing shot of Johnstone’s, and in the left corner is a man who looks a hell of a lot like Belousz, leaning on a lamppost, staring inside the bar. “It wasn’t a clear picture anyway. Look at that one. You can’t tell anything from them.”

  “I know what he looks like,” Donael says, turning to face me, his face flushed and eyes swelling. I swallow hard. “He’s still alive? That’s bullshit.”

  “Donael, watch your damn mouth. This is my house and you don’t speak like that.” My words come out brittle, my worst fears crashing down on me. If I tell him I’m his father, I shatter his world. If I tell him Henraek’s his father, he’ll hate me for the rest of his life for keeping them apart. If I lie to him, I’ll hate myself but keep my son. “I saw his body, OK? It wasn’t something I could ever forget. You want me to tell you about it? How the bomb tore off half his face? What all that bone looked like? All that skin hanging off and the way his eyes dripped down out of the socket? Trust me. You can’t unsee that stuff. You’re misremembering.”

  “I look at pictures of him and Mom every night before I sleep. I know what he looks like.” He’s almost screaming, his jaw tight. He’s not Henraek’s kid but goddamned if he doesn’t look like him. Then in a flash he calms. No, not calms: he regroups. Recalculates. “The man said he shot them.”

  “No, I didn’t – he didn’t,” I sputter, realizing I’ve just committed the worst mistake of my entire life. “I don’t – they were talking about bombs. Who knows what he did to them? It doesn’t matter how it happened. After we ran…” My mouth continues to flap but nothing comes out except a hollow click, and it takes a minute before I realize that clicking is Cobb.

  The newscaster drones on about public reaction to the death and the bombing while a video clip plays and the room narrows to a pinpoint.

  A lamppost divides the screen in half. Swarms of citizens move on the street, a river of people. Some hold signs, some have torches. On the left si
de of the lamppost hangs the effigy of a short man with a pinstriped suit, a giant boar’s head on his shoulders and a sash across his chest. They misspelled his name but I’d know Macuil Morrigan anywhere.

  “Why the hell am I here?” Donael screams, tears streaming down his face.

  But the swollen effigy on the right, it wears a white suit and has no hair.

  He beats on my chest but I barely feel it, barely hear his voice. There’s nothing but a hiss and white numbness pouring down a hole. “Why did you lie to me?”

  The citizens hold the torches to the bottom of the effigies, setting them on fire. A wave of cheering washes over the street as my symbolic body burns. The newscaster comments on what a senseless display of destruction it is and how this unruly population should be dealt with swiftly and harshly.

  “Where is my dad? I want to see my dad.”

  Donael collapses before me, his fists still pounding my legs, my feet. The clip ends, begins again. I die and I die and I die.

  27

  Henraek

  The chainsaw roaring through my skull this morning is not nearly as loud as I’d expected. All of the singing and shouting yesterday left my throat raw and my ears ringing, and my shoulder still throbs when I push myself upright, but all things considered I don’t feel like the walking incarnation of slow death that I’d expected as we stumbled home from whatever bars we took over last night.

  Emeríann lies with her arms flung over her face, her legs spread in a V. Silas is nestled between them, probably imagining he’s a cat. I nudge him and shoo him away before he imagines his way into the oven.

  The positive side of being a lightweight is that I can still somewhat move, though the floor does shift beneath my feet on my way to the bathroom. Given the architecture of this building, it might not be the alcohol.

  Silas follows me into the kitchen to snack on crumbs then slips through the bars to rejoin his flock. I turn on the faucet to get water and decontaminate my body, but there’s nothing. Right. Water.