by Nik Korpon
Echoing through the alleyway are rebel chants, as if we fell asleep and woke up ten years in the past. I’m leaning against the iron bars, listening, when Emeríann comes up behind me and wraps her hands around my stomach.
“I think I’m dying,” she says.
“Look who’s feeling sensitive now.”
She breathes a small laugh and pats my chest. “Do you remember puking three times on the way home last night?”
I don’t, but after feeling the acidic residue on my teeth, I can see how that would have happened. “I was shedding weight,” I say. “Less to carry.”
The phone rings and we both groan, Emeríann pressing her forehead into my back. When it stops, she retrieves some medicine she bought from a brigu woman who comes into Johnstone’s. She asks for water and I can finally raise my eyebrow, give her that look. She closes her eyes and hangs her head a moment. We suck down the powder, follow it with a little hair of the dog. Praise be Nahoeg, it kicks in quickly and the urge to throw myself out the window to make the pain stop begins to subside.
Until the phone rings again.
I squint as I make my way over to it. “For the love of all that’s holy, what?” I say.
Emeríann turns on the archaic television, letting it warm up.
“Oh good god, Henraek,” a man says.
“Who is this?”
“Nael,” he says. “Have you seen it?”
“Seen what?”
“What I wanted to show you yesterday,” he says. “Turn on the news. See what you and Emeríann inspired.”
Emeríann messes with the wires on the back of the ancient box, and when the picture finally tunes in, I see what used to be the Gallery lying in a pile of rubble. The word replay is in the top-left corner, and the newscaster says there are now twelve reported dead in Fomora as a result of the water plant bombing and authorities are evacuating certain buildings in order to demolish them in the hopes of stopping the spreading fire. I knew that would happen. I told her.
“Holy hell. You did that to the Gallery?”
“I had a little help,” he says, that pride I remember from years ago edging into his voice. “But yeah, mostly me.”
“Subtle as ever.” The video switches to a collage of photos, one of Emeríann and me carrying furniture across the street. The newscaster says something about connections to a planned bombing. All I can do is shake my head.
“I called a couple times this morning. Wasn’t sure if you two made it.”
Emeríann sits in front of the television, almost touching the screen like a child, wanting to transport herself into the scene of the burning Gallery. “A little combat fatigue,” I say, “but after some bland food we’ll be ready.”
“We found them,” he says.
“Found who?”
“The guys who got Forgall.”
No, you didn’t. I did. Still, the best Tathadann is no Tathadann. “How do you know?”
“We took a couple guys aside during all the shenanigans and asked some questions.” I can hear the euphemism in his voice. Nael and his men probably beat them to a bloody pulp. “We got a little carried away with creating a distraction for you two. One thing led to another. Then, well, you saw the rest on TV.”
The screen broadcasts waves of people in the street, burning cars and effigies on the lampposts as Tathadann soldiers in riot gear line up in containment formation. One effigy looks strikingly like Walleus, which really makes me hope that he went home after the funeral. Then the video shifts to another effigy, this one dressed in fatigues and boots, and it takes a slow moment for me to realize that some of those aren’t effigies, but actual bodies, hung from the posts and set ablaze. This is not the same revolution.
“Are you positive they are the ones who killed him?” Outside my window, the chanting has turned to singing. Down near the river where our brothers bled. Sirens wail in the background.
“The architect is still in the wind, but we’re tracking him. Two of them were with him when it blew and the other five are garden variety Tathadann pricks.”
They zoom in on the burning body, black globs of flame dripping from the man’s fingers. They tarred him, then set him on fire, then hung him for all Eitan to see.
We didn’t give the rebellion CPR, we jabbed a gigantic shot of adrenaline into its heart then rewired it with metal cylinders and violence. This rebellion already lacks the compassion and goodwill of the people’s revolt at the dawn of the Struggle. There is no call for winning the hearts of the general citizenry, no admonitions against obtaining loyalty by force and coercion, which would mean we had sunk to their level. There is only the spilled blood of all who fought before us coming to a boil, mixing with the lessons of the past and a lack of concern for the future. There will be no one able to stop us, because this is not the old rebellion: this one can actually succeed.
“What do you need from me?” I say.
“We’re waiting on your word,” he says. “What should we do with them?”
Seven men who likely did nothing but wear the wrong uniform, sign their names on the wrong line. I look over at Emeríann, ragged as a raw nerve but vibrating with an energy I’ve never seen. There’s no going back after this. I drew my lot when I told Emeríann I’d help her.
“Take them all,” I say. “Put them up against the wall and shoot them.”
“Roger, lieutenant.” His smile is audible. “Good to have you back.”
I hang up.
“Get your boots,” I say to Emeríann, pulling her in for a kiss. I can taste the damp wheat of last night’s beer, the hotness of her breath. “This is it.”
28
Walleus
The phone startles me as I’m flipping a pancake and it lands on the ridge of the pan, half in and half out. Batter drips down the edge and burns in the gas flame. Cobb sits at the breakfast bar, idly drawing patterns in the pool of syrup on his plate. I don’t know if he understood everything that happened last night, but he knows it’s not good.
I don’t even bother asking Donael to get me the phone. After I stonewalled him by watching the protestors burn my body over and over, he stormed off to his room, leaving a trail of holes punched in the wall and two broken glasses in his wake. At least he didn’t knock over the liquor cabinet. I haven’t seen him since and am trying to give him some space. Sure, he threatened to run away, but he’s eleven. Where’s he going to go?
I swallow twice before answering, smiling like an amadan with his first boner so they can hear it in my voice.
“She wants to see you,” a woman says. I can’t tell who’s on the other end but I’m not sure it matters anyway. One is the same as all the rest.
“I’m caught up at the moment,” I say, still smiling, “but I’ll be over shortly.”
“There will be a car to take you in twenty minutes.”
“You don’t need to do all that again. I can drive myself.” And have my own method of escape.
“Have you been outside?” she says, then leaves me with dead air.
I drop the phone and, like it was a cue, the smoke alarm goes off. Cobb clicks like a broken bicycle wheel and runs in circles around the kitchen. I hurry to the range and throw a cover on the pan then wave a towel at the smoke to get it away from the alarm.
Cobb sits in the middle of the floor with his palms pressed so hard against his ears I can see the veins stand up on his forehead. I kneel down and scoop him up in my arms, repeating it’s OK, it’s OK, though he can’t hear me through his hands.
I carry him into the bedroom and set him on the bed while I dress. With my back toward him I unclasp my father’s necklace that my mother gave me when Henraek and I left Westhell County, pull off the gold rings Liella bought me for our first anniversary and the founding of the Struggle, then take all the money out of my pockets and tuck everything beneath my socks in the top dresser drawer. I rifle my closet for the cleanest white suit I can find. On the far right, shoved behind all my other suits in increasing order of st
atus, is the first suit I wore. It was so white I was almost glowing. I pull it out, shake off the dust. Feel the current of all the talk I had when coming over pulse through the fabric, the way Morrigan and the Promhael hung on my words, the words I need to find to maneuver around her again.
I have to readjust tack. Turning things around on Greig won’t work twice. Admitting that the memory could have been manufactured is admitting I’ve been duped – on top of this bombing that pretty much signs my name on a stochae since I vouched for Henraek. But I’m not going to beg her for anything. So maybe the trick is to not admit anything, to not kowtow. Come out with my balls swinging. Greig wants Daghda to be alive to show what a great scout he is and secure his place? Sure, Daghda’s alive then, and he’s coming to help facilitate a coup within the Tathadann. I don’t particularly want to play that card yet, but my hand’s getting forced. Greig sure as hell won’t keep him away. Neither will the old woman. But Walleus will, like he’s done for the last six years. And that shriveled bag is sure as hell going to know that.
There’s a faint ripping sound. I bend my arm and examine the split seam up the forearm. This suit, lovely as it is, was made for me several years ago, when I had a different body. I peel it off like a used condom, throw it on the floor, and grab the closest suit that fits.
When I’m decent enough to meet the Old Woman, I bring Cobb to Donael’s door. It’s unlocked, probably from him going to the bathroom and forgetting to lock it. I knock once then open it without waiting for his response. Cobb scuttles over to his bed and climbs up next to Donael, who startles at our entrance, then pretends to look at a football magazine.
“I have to go out,” I say. “If it takes a little while for me to get back, there’s money in my top drawer.”
He turns a page and it rips.
“Donael, listen to me.” I lay my hand on his knee and am surprised he doesn’t slap it. “If you need food or anything else and I’m not here, look in my top drawer. Underneath my socks. Right side. Cobb won’t be able to get anything by himself. He needs you with him.”
He continues to stare at the magazine.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
Still no response.
I suck in my lips. “I know you’re upset. You’re angry. You’re heartbroken. I get that. But you need to understand something.” I kneel beside his bed. He won’t meet my eyes but doesn’t turn away. “I love you. And no matter who it hurt, or how bad it hurt, I would do anything for you. For both of you.”
In what seems to take a month of full moons, he raises his head to look at me.
“Fuck you,” he says.
I close my eyes and nod, try to absorb everything positive about the room in case I don’t make it back from the meeting.
“I love you boys.”
29
Henraek
As we go to leave for our meet-up with Nael, I find an envelope sitting on the floor inside the door. It is pristine white with no name on it, two light fingerprints in dirt. Must have come when we were passed out because I didn’t hear anything. I bend down to grab it and see the vials I took from Belousz on the ground near the couch. I remember leaving them in the bedroom, but the viewer is on its crate, so I assume I tried to watch these and passed out first. Only an inordinate amount of luck kept our drunken asses from crushing these. Or maybe it was the hand of Providence. If anyone knows who to murder in order to take down the Tathadann, it would be this asshole.
I cup the vials in my hand, not sure of how to turn.
“Who are they?” she says.
I taste metal, sawdust.
“It has to do with Aífe.” She doesn’t need to ask it. She already knows.
“The guy who made sure it was done.” I go to set them down on the table but Emeríann grabs my arm.
“You’re home,” she says, “so I’m here. I want to watch it with you.”
“I can do this later.”
“We need to go and you’re wasting time.”
She takes the vial and inserts it. I turn over the envelope in my hands.
“Who’s that from?” she says.
“Don’t know. No markings, no postal information.” The paper itself is silken, almost iridescent in quality. “I don’t see many pieces of paper like this outside of Clodhna.”
I slip my finger inside to tear open the top, but stop when I see Aífe’s face in the memory viewer’s steam. A fist forms in my throat. Emeríann takes the envelope from me.
Seeing Aífe this close is seeing her again for the first time. The gauntness of her cheeks. The wild river of veins that branches through her eyes. The dark circles beneath them. I don’t remember her looking this exhausted since the months after Donael was born, but there is something else about her, a cornered-animal look, the sort of desperation I rarely saw outside of a battlefield. I listen to my breathing for as long as I can stand myself then hit play.
She stands before Mebeth, hip cocked, pointing her finger. Belousz sighs. “Not one more word from me until then.”
“And how exactly do you plan to force my hand? Coercion? Blackmail?” Mebeth looks at Belousz and Toman and snorts a laugh. “You are in over your head, dear. This is not your battle. You do not belong here.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” She stalks closer to him, her voice dropping in the manner that always preceded an explosion. I find myself leaning forward and consciously straighten my spine, and though I’m curious as to her expression, I avoid looking over at Emeríann. This is old, Henraek. This is an immutable and irreversible past. Moving on with your life is not the same as erasing your history. “So end it.”
“This is something bigger than you and I, Aífe. You should know this. You have lived it for years. It is in your food and your clothes. You carry its burden in your eyes, in your heart. Every bit you confess unburdens your mind, allows you to relax, to become present and stop worrying. You relieve the heaviness in your soul, in the soul of your boys, in–”
“You don’t know what’s inside me,” she screams, slamming the chair down, and the mention of me in this context sets my skin on fire. Belousz adjusts the newspaper on the table as if he’s impatient.
Mebeth remains impassive, waiting for her to finish. When she does, he says, “Then you must tell me. Dates, times, locations.”
This sends her into another fit, something between crying and screaming. I have to turn down the viewer because the sound distorts.
“What is he talking about?” Emeríann says. “Dates, times?”
“Appointments, maybe? He was our doctor. She was seeing him at one point,” I gesture absently, “in a psychiatric facility.”
“Appointments?” The look she gives could scald the hair off a rat. “You really don’t understand women at all, do you?”
“Well, what else could it be?” I turn up the volume before she can answer, a tingling, sinking feeling snaking through my body. Aífe jabs her finger at Mebeth, but seems incredibly aware that she cannot touch him. Watching her face contort like this, skin flushed with anger, makes me as nostalgic as it does disgusted. Before Emeríann implied Aífe might be no better than Walleus – might be worse than Walleus – I had never once entertained the thought. And now, watching her yell and scream and argue with him about the nineteenth of September, the place beyond Fomora, ten men or less, I cannot see anything but Emeríann’s insinuations here.
But it could not be true, because she would never do that. We would argue and slam doors and once, in a dark period when the tactics the Tathadann used against us turned especially horrific and I slunk about for a depraved few months, she came after me with a kitchen knife while Donael was upstairs napping. One of my men had pitched the idea of bombing the nursery where a number of Tathadann officials sent their children and I didn’t shut him down immediately, even going so far as to ask Aífe what she thought of the idea. The knife was meant to get me out of my own head, and the thin cut on my neck was my fault because I kept stepping forward into the blade, t
rying to bring her down to my level.
And then she says, “Because your men would have been slaughtered at the power plant if I hadn’t told you,” and thousands of hot needles poke into my temples, a band of razor wire tightening around my head.
I hit pause. I do not rewind though I need to hear it to confirm it, but I’m positive what she said. Emeríann breathes heavily beside me. I can hear the contractions of the muscles in her throat when she swallows. Outside the window, thousands of miles away, crowds sing and chant. Inside my chest, thousands of fathoms beneath the darkness, something snaps.
Emeríann’s hand trembles as she extends it. She does not look to me for an OK, for consent, though still she pauses a few seconds before hitting play.
A fissure develops in Aífe’s wall of fury. It’s a fleeting moment, but there if you know where to look.
She sniffs hard, only once. Then her composure returns to granite. “You end this and bring my husband back home,” she says, “and I will tell you everything you want to know.”
Emeríann doesn’t bother to hit stop this time before she stands and walks into the bedroom. The room around me vibrates with emptiness. My dead wife is the rat. Not Walleus. But he had to know. That’s why he’d never answer me when I asked about when he turned. How did he know? Did Mebeth tell him? Aífe?
“I just want Henraek back,” Aífe says. “I need my husband. Donael needs his dad. Four months ago, you swore to me that he’d be back.”
“Well, maybe you should not have trusted me,” Mebeth says, offering a vague smile before standing to go inside the café. Belousz nods to Toman then follows behind. They wind through the lightly populated tables, and even having seen all that I have seen in the last fifteen years I still cannot believe that twelve people watched a woman get shot at point-blank range and did nothing. They didn’t even pause to wipe their mouths.
