by Nik Korpon
I flop on a chair and watch the bushes for what feels like hours but is probably only twenty minutes. Rehash the Daghda situation, reinforce why she needs my expertise and connections, throw in a little woe is me about how I’d been tricked by my best friend into thinking he’d given up his rebel ways. Express my regret that I haven’t been able to track down Belousz yet, but, you know, there’s a goddamned riot going on. Then try to figure out how to extend that lie, maybe forge a report of death by one of the rioters. After another ten minutes, I have to get up and walk because my heart won’t stop pounding against my ribs. Maybe this is it. My diet of meat and bourbon is finally coming back. The secretary is going to come into the room and find me sprawled over the carpet, piss over my pants and foam in my mouth. Or whatever happens when you have a heart attack.
The door opens. Relief floods through me like a drug. I put on my smile, not too broad to seem overconfident but big enough she knows I’m not cowering, and spin around to see a maintenance droid, emptying a garbage can that didn’t have any trash in it.
By instinct, I look for a liquor cabinet to shush my blood.
I pace more, open the drawers of Morrigan’s desk between glances at the door, flip through pages of books lining the end-table as if a death notice with my face on it will fall out like some forgotten love note. Then pace, and pace. Repeat: Daghda, death, Daghda, you need me.
After I’ve been waiting for almost two hours, the door opens. The secretary again.
“I’m sorry, Protectorate Blaí, but Lady Morrigan won’t be able to meet with you today. We have a car waiting.” She gives a little nod then turns and moves her pencil legs toward the door.
“Hold on a second.” My voice is more vicious than I’d expected. “She brought me all the way down here, through all those people who want to kill me, to sit around for two hours with my dick in my hand and then tell me she’s not coming?”
She stares at me, her lips twitching like a little mouse sniffing out food. “I’m sorry, sir, but she won’t be able to meet with you today.”
“When did she call?”
She blinks.
“When did she call?” I push the words through my teeth.
“I’m sorry, sir.” She gives a tight smile then leaves.
It’s happening. I did it. I’m greenlit.
Grab the boys. Grab their stuff. Head straight to the farm and hope to hell it’s still there.
I hurry back to the entrance, toward my ride home. Out in the courtyard, there’s laughing like a gaggle of geese. On the other side of the fountain are three Tathadann men – high-ranking ones, judging by their pins – with Greig standing in the middle of them. He says something and they all laugh again, one of them slapping his arm.
“Thanks again for these,” he says, motioning with a folder. “I owe you one.”
They pass by me without a glance.
I stand in his path. “What did you say?”
“Nothing of any concern to you.” He adjusts his shirt to let the new pin on his shoulder shimmer. None of its luster does anything to hide the fact that his face is marked with cuts and stitches across gashes that will never heal right. Every time this shitbird looks in the mirror or has to shave carefully so he doesn’t open a scar, he will think of me. “If it was, you think I’d tell you a thing after that scheme you tried to drown me with?”
“What did you say to Morrigan?” I ask.
“You mean after I provided documentation verified by Lady Morrigan’s observer that exonerated me from any suspicion you might’ve inferred? Or after I provided the reports that link Henraek – who was under your supervision – with the imminent arrival of Daghda?”
“Henraek doesn’t even know Daghda.”
“And I don’t know how to blow up a goddamn building. But you taught me a lot. I wasn’t lying when I said that.” He shrugs then taps my chest with the folder, hands it to me. “I told you someone would get hurt. I warned you.”
I open the folder and see a photo of Donael holding his airplane, Cobb beside him holding the remote control.
“I think you know who else has this.” He gives a thin smile. “I’d say I’ll see you,” he says, “but I know I won’t.”
I grab his wrist. The photo falls from my grip and flutters to the ground. He tries to spin around, dislodge my hand and say what the hell? but I slam my knee into the back of his, knocking him to the ground. For all the planning and conniving he has done, this boy has spent no time in the field. He lets the official Tathadann words pass by his lips but he’s never grappled with another man, both of you struggling to kill the other before he can kill you.
He scrabbles at the ground but can’t grab hold. His head between my hands, I bash his face against a stone. A tooth pops out and hits my cheek. His pants are wet with urine.
When I spin him around, his eyes are wide with fear, mouth moving but broken teeth cutting the words. I wrap my hands around his neck until his face flushes. The cuts on his face weep blood, thin lines dripping down his cheeks. When his skin takes on a purple hue, I let go and he ferociously drinks air.
Then I choke him again, letting his skin turn purple once more before grabbing him by the jaw and dragging him through the ferns. The fronds whip against my face, the fountain gurgling beyond them.
At the edge of the fountain, I bend him backward and shove his head beneath the water, trying to trap his frantic legs with my knee. Ditches form in the ground as his feet kick at the dirt. Threads of blood spread across the water. Bubbles course from his mouth and in some weird way I swear I can hear what he’s saying, like my hands have learned to translate the vibrations of vocal cords over the years.
Whatever he’s trying to say, and whether I can hear it or not, I don’t really give a shit.
I tighten my grip and try to touch my fingers around the back of his neck then push him farther down and after less than a minute he’s no longer fighting. I hold him under for a thirty-count to be sure, though a boy like him doesn’t have much fight inside him anyway.
After I pull him out and dump him on the ground beside the fountain, I cup some water and splash it on my face, sifting another handful to clean it of blood before sipping it. My suit is already bloody and wrinkled and now half of it is wet and speckled with dirt. I wipe my hands on it. I’m going to leave it behind anyway. I duck back through the ferns and hurry to meet the car.
33
Henraek
The thin wail of sirens careening off buildings, around shouts of protest, through the static hissing out of Tathadann bullhorns.
We’re going to bomb the Tathadann.
Stay behind the barricade or we will be forced to shoot.
With my broken hands I’ll tear down Morrigan.
This is your final warning. Do not breach the line.
Then the clap of gunshots, screaming and singing and more warnings. Block after block after block. The barriers that striate the streets are as much to keep people in certain neighborhoods – like Amergin and Findchoem – as they are to keep people out of others. It takes me forty minutes to get where I would have been in ten last week, as much from all of the barricades creating labyrinthine city blocks as from keeping to the less populated streets, my face tilted down. Though many of the men I fought with understood my situation with the Tathadann, most newcomers don’t. Not to mention the number of Tathadann soldiers who might or might not be looking for me with orders from Morrigan to shoot on sight. With all the chaos mainlining people with adrenaline, loyalties and alliances can become very flexible very quickly. Still, block by agonizing block, I’m coming closer to my goal.
Of killing my best friend.
The thought stops me in the middle of the sidewalk. People hustle by, some as if it’s any normal day, others with canvas bags full of projectiles. A Tathadann soldier patrols the street on horseback.
I will kill him because he took my son from me. He lied to me, repeatedly, and that cannot be forgiven. But he also saved me numerous times, f
rom attacks, from ambushes, from myself. But he stole my boy.
A man with an official-looking haircut sprints past me, wagering a quick glance back. A group of teenagers with pipes and boards follows close behind. One of them stumbles and hits the sidewalk. I jump backward to avoid a board in the foot. He pulls himself to his feet then looks up at me.
“Oh my god,” he says, already looking for his friends. “It’s you.”
I start to say he’s mistaken me for someone else, but he’s already yelling for his friends, saying, “It’s him, it’s the traitor. Get him.”
I’m gone before he can finish his sentence, head down and sprinting, dodging and weaving through the crowds on the sidewalk, box thrown aside. Because there are a lot of people out, it’s hard for them to see me, but they can still see where I’m heading in the wake of the crowd.
At Minidae Avenue, I bolt left, letting my legs extend in the mostly deserted street. Their footsteps fall heavy behind me. I glance back and see they’ve picked up another kid. If I could stop and talk to them, I might find that I knew their parents, maybe fought with them, but I wouldn’t be able to get the words out before their boards met my forehead. I knock over trashcans, trying to create a few obstacles, and as quickly as they fall back, they regroup. My lungs burn and feet throb. Maybe it’s time to reconsider running in boots, or scale back my bourbon consumption.
Two blocks down, I push it hard, stretching my stride as far as it will go, driving my legs into the concrete with all the strength I have. A pho house sits on the corner. There should be an access road past it. I barrel down and put as much distance between the pack and me as I can, then throw myself into the access road at the last moment and run.
A dumpster on the right. A few shipping pallets piled against the wall on the left. A man sitting cross-legged on the concrete halfway down the road. That is not a road, but an alley, dead-ending at a brick tenement that looks like a lagonael den.
Wrong pho house.
It’s too late to get out of the alley. They’re too close. They’ll catch me before I clear the edge.
I hurry to the end, put my back to the wall so at least they can’t surround me. An acrid stench fills the alley, gasoline and exhaust and old food. The man looks up, his eyes far away.
“Hey, it’s you,” he says. I start to tell him he’s got the wrong guy then realize it’s the lagon from Johnstone’s. The campfire man. And he’s sitting in a puddle of his own piss.
“Oh, give me a damn break,” I yell, right as the pack rounds the corner, bearing down on me.
I feel the gun against my back. If I get a first-time headshot on each kid, or at least enough to put them down, I could get out. But I would have no bullets for Walleus. I leave the pistol in my waistband and square up, scanning the alley for anything to use as a weapon.
“I’m never going to know,” he says, oblivious to the pubescent psychopaths bearing down on me.
I find a chunk of brick on a pile of papers and snatch it. This is what your life has come to. Beating a bunch of kids to death with a brick in an alleyway or getting beat to death by a bunch of kids who are barely old enough to remember the Struggle.
“My boy ran – told him he had no direction – joined the fight. You might’ve known him.” The lagon slots a cigarette between his lips. “They burned him – the stake.”
The kids are thirty feet away. They slow as they approach, cockiness or sadism filling their steps. One pulls out a butterfly knife and flips it around, the metal glinting.
“Never found – peace with death,” he says. “Drove away – mother looking.”
“You kids really have no idea what you’re doing,” I say to them. From the menace in their eyes, I don’t think negotiation or reason will hold any sway with them. I switch tacks. “Are you sure you know who I am?”
“My dad knew Forgall Tobeigh,” says the one who holds a crooked piece of pipe. “I heard all about you.”
“I wanted – understand what he felt – let me finally sleep.” The lagon continues to talk as if there’s not a horde of sociopaths with patchy mustaches about to get hurt really bad. “But those memories – the past is static. A barrier – you and the experience.”
“So you know who I am.” I stand tall, let the brick hang beside my hip, let them see the picture of composure, the calm before the storm. I catch a strong smell of gas. “Then you should know what I’m going to do to you if you come any closer.”
Three of the kids exchange glances. The ones with the pipe and the butterfly knife advance, weapons extended. There’s a small chinking sound.
This is it, Henraek. You’re going to kill two kids who could easily be Donael’s classmates.
I raise the brick, ready to defend myself, when a fist of heat strikes me, flames devouring the lagon’s body. The kid with the knife jumps back but the one with the pipe unleashes a scream and falls to the ground. Tongues of fire lick his back. The lagon simply sits there. I cannot move.
The knife kid smacks his friend’s back as the three timid ones bolt out of the alley, the other two following behind thirty seconds later when the boy is no longer on fire. I can see scorched flesh through the holes in his shirt as they run away.
I should be looking for a blanket for the man, or screaming for a hose. At the very least smacking the fire down with my shirt. But he sits there, legs crossed and peaceful, as if he’s tapped into some long-forgotten part of our collective conscious, and I fear that doing anything to tamp the flames would disturb him.
I watch him burn, listening to the flames crackle, his skin bubble, his hair singe. I feel the tension in my body dissipate, and somewhere inside there I imagine I can hear him inhale on his cigarette.
He’s found his peace. But I will never find mine until I know.
I drop the brick and exit the alleyway.
Walleus.
* * *
The man in the gatehouse is the same one who called me Tyrell and I should not have expected anything different. I pull the hat down farther on my head, mostly covering my eyes, and walk at an efficient pace, like I have more deliveries to make and no time for small talk.
“Afternoon,” I say, motioning with the long shipping tube I found on my way over after I dropped the box during the chase.
“Can’t believe you left the house without an umbrella,” the man says.
“Oh, yeah, I know.” He obviously has no idea who I am and for a brief second I wonder if he’s actually an automaton. “I won’t have to take a shower then, I guess.”
The man gives a laugh and taps his temple. “Work smart, not hard, right?”
“Exactly,” I say. “Got a delivery for Mister Blaí in Unit 138.”
“You missed him.”
Of all the places I don’t want to stand around waiting for endless hours, this is number one. There’s an obscene amount of foliage but too many cameras and it’ll be hard enough getting to his house without getting flagged as it is.
“Hold on a minute. I’ll ring one of the boys to pick it up.” The man picks up the phone.
“It’s OK,” I say, a little too eagerly. “It’s a surprise, looks like.”
“Surprise?” He holds his finger on the hang-up button.
“For his son,” I blurt. “Donael. It says hand deliver. It’s fragile.”
He shakes his head and sets the handpiece back on the base. “That man does spoil those kids rotten. Love to see a father take such an interest in the kids, you know? Never happens these days.”
“Yeah.” I can hear my teeth squeak from grinding them so hard. “I hear that.”
“Let me guess.” He scratches his chin, stubbled with white hairs. “New soccer kit? No, not with that box. One them holograms of Canchie Lit?”
“It’s Concho Louth.” Shut your mouth, old man.
“Nah, that can’t be it. Oh, I know. Telescope.” He wags his finger in an assured manner. “Yeah, that’s it. He’d talked about that a few months ago. Donael’s been banging on about a
telescope for years.”
The shipping tube creases beneath my fingers. My breath claws through my chest. I want to bludgeon this man for destroying my heart.
“I can’t see inside things,” I tell him, “so I never know what I’m delivering.”
“Ah, right, right.” He pushes a button and the gate opens. “Tell Donael I want to see his surprise later.”
I give him a short wave then walk toward Unit 138 to murder my best friend.
34
Walleus
The car weaves through Eitan City, rerouting around the soldiers who patrol the barricades and road closures with rifles propped against their shoulders. With every turn, I yell at it to speed up. Which is hard, given that every other block is overflowing with larger and larger gatherings of protestors, their faces covered by bandanas or green and white scarves.
I tell the escort to direct it down certain streets, ones the car’s system would have sidestepped because we used to plant bombs there, because avoiding them will add another thirty minutes to the trip. With every block that passes, my heart smacks harder against my chest.
As we swing around a blockade, the car makes to turn left and brakes hard.
“What are you doing?” I yell.
“Sir,” the escort says, pointing out the window at the procession.
“So run them over. They’ll move. Trust me.”
But they won’t. The line runs twenty people deep. Given the mood, they’ll flip the car and set it on fire as likely as pause.
I duck down and pull a newspaper over my face. They march past us, singing songs that make my skin burn with nostalgia and anxiety because I remember that electric charge of leading four hundred people down a street. Some carry quickly painted signs, some with poles that hold effigies in nooses. In quick glances, I see only one that resembles me, which is sort of comforting. I crane my head around the front headrest to look for a break in the crowd and a man stops beside the window. Recognition and venom spread across his face. Doing my best to act naturally, I pull the paper back up to my face but he’s already grabbing his friend.
