by Andrew Post
“Good story, but I still don’t believe it.”
Mann sat forward, his face harshly underlit by the flames. “Because you’re familiar with the other story. That’s all. But this is what’s between the lines, girlie. The facts. And Lyle, he needs people like us. Fighters. The wheel needs to keep on turning. You want a good life for those back home? Your family? Any other friends than the handful you got here? They’ll mark you as dead and from then on, you can be who you want to be. You didn’t get into this line without a desire to hurt. What do your parents do?”
“They’re bakers.”
“And taking a knife to a loaf of bread instead of someone’s neck . . . that didn’t tickle you in your britches?”
“It was never about that. It was about duty; it was about—”
“Did you ever, when you knew you wouldn’t get caught, find a stray dog or a rat or something, get it cornered, in a bucket maybe, and see how much you could put it through? Maybe you started smaller? Pulled the legs off a cricket, one by one, to see if you could make them sing by rubbing them together yourself?”
“No.” Yes.
“It’s fine to lie. There’s a lot of us here in this room. It’s hard to admit. Not a topic for polite society, and we’re all expected to maintain our guises that we’re . . . you know, untroubled. You got your old friends here, who probably are very familiar with the you you’ve been presenting. And isn’t it exhausting? I’m presenting an opportunity to be what you are, what you’ve always been. This can be your truth. You can be honest with yourself, about yourself. Doesn’t it sound beautiful? Join the show.”
“I will not go against Rammelstaad.”
“Man alive. And here I thought that was surely gonna do it. How about this?” Mann said. “Whoever they slap the bull’s-eye on next, down the road, they may not even make books about it—if this moving pictures thing takes off. They’ll be able to re-create, for the camera, the stories. With actors in costume, standing right in the very same godsdamn spot the heroism took place. Put the reader—now viewer—right there in the action, over the champion’s shoulder as he sends the tyranny-killing bullet over the set-dressed battlefield. Realer than real! After that, the little boys and the little girls won’t have to imagine nothing. They’ll see it, right before their impressionable peepers, and tug on their mamas’ sleeves and say, ‘I wanna be like them, Ma! A true-blue hero!’ Sadly, it’ll put our lot out of work,” Mann said, nodding acknowledgment to Ruprecht, who still stared up at the smoke escaping through the ceiling. “But the story’s gotta go on. It’s all for the Ma’am. It will always be for the Ma’am, no matter if you’re here, doing the stage work with us, holding the camera, or handing the clipboard with the enlistment papers to the young man so full of pride in his realm and ready to serve.”
Kylie-Nae’s fingernails threatened to pierce her pant leg.
Anoushka put her hand atop Kylie-Nae’s, held it there, and said to Mann, “I won’t side with you, Lyle, or anyone.”
Mann drew but rested the flintlock on his knee, angled over the fire at her. “You say those words again and I’ll kill one of those to either side of you. Not the bard, because I know he’s not dear to you. Though I love looking at her, I’ll blow Blondie’s oh-so-kissable kisser clean off if I have to. Or draw and quarter the dusky one. We don’t need you all. Only your wondrous death machine and you who make it go.”
Join the lie. Or die and the truth would go with her wherever Mann buried her. Almost too brief to even recognize it as ever happening, as a thought. She considered his proposition. What it could be like, allowed to be terrible and without the threat of the label as such? It could be freedom. Real freedom.
But she pushed it away. The peeks she got earlier of herself—with Ruprecht, then Russell, and Erik, albeit in a different way—would have to be all the further she’d ever pull back the cover over herself. Deep indoctrination, perhaps it was, self-inflicted, or merely an unwillingness to go against what was trusted—the same as she was uncomfortable about magick breaking the rules of the expected, comfortable normal.
Her desire to trust and hold fast to what was understood won out. She kept her lips pressed together. Her thoughts were her own; no one would know how tempting that invitation truly was.
“If I’m to fight with you, I’ll need to be armed.” She motioned to the crate. “I don’t want a six-gun. I want something else, something bigger.”
Mann brightened. “The lady likes her bangs loud, eh? Well, I’ve got any kind of barker you’d ever want.” He threw back the lid and began clunking things around inside, up to his shoulders in the crate’s contents. “We have a six-gun from the Eighth Age—good, sturdy antique. A single-shot with an ironwood stock, a true beaut . . .”
The Blaggards watched eagerly as their leader dug through. They looked hungry for the weapons, the new and well-oiled and never-been-used break-action coach guns, revolvers of every size, rifles, both lever action and bolt action. And all those bullets, loose, rattling about.
Mann lifted a handful of bullets in the air and let them rain through his fingers. “Look at it all.”
Anoushka gave Kylie-Nae’s hand one squeeze. A second squeeze. And on the third squeeze, she thrust her boot out, kicking the crate over so the lid swung down and banged Mann on the head. The box toppled, knocking Mann over, the crate expelling its clattering load of guns and loose bullets—into the fire. Anoushka pushed Kylie-Nae and Zuther aside. Taking Ruprecht by the scruff of his tunic, pulled him behind her. The first bullet succumbed to the heat and discharged—splitting a Blaggard’s head as he was trying to pull Mann from the clinging flames.
First through the glass wall, Anoushka shielded herself with her arms. Kylie-Nae and Zuther tumbled out behind. Ruprecht, screaming, fell in. They bolted across the gardens. Behind them came one crack after another as the loose bullets fired off. The greenhouse’s walls and roof crashed down, the wild shots whizzing past and puffing the snow into white geysers.
The Blaggards screamed and fumbled. One crashed through a section of green-tinted glass, trying to roll out the flames on his back. Seeing it was Mann, one eyebrow gone and half his rust-colored beard burned away, Anoushka charged in. The greenhouse panels fell in, smashed, bullets streaking ahead of her, past her. She felt their heat on her cheek and chin.
Before Mann could get to his feet, she leaped atop him and took his wrist as he reached to his holster. He wasn’t reaching for a six-gun but another one of the orcs’ flare guns.
“Could kick off the entire thing with one trigger pull,” he said. He lay looking up at her—skin shiny and blistered. In her grasp, his arm went still. He let his head drop back, cratering the sparking glass-strewn snow. His breastplate, paint black, had been pierced many times over. The Blackiron Blaggards would’ve more accurately named themselves the Blacktin Blaggards. Blood dribbled out of a hole in his armor—and heart. “One flare. One red comet, and an entire war thrown back into motion. What power in that.”
She slid the flare gun’s barrel between her belt loops.
“They still talk about you,” he said. “That pit you made them dig. And how you skinned each one and made them climb out. You and your crew betting on who’d climb out first,” he croaked. “But you were the only one laughing.”
His eyes remained open but unfocused. They watched the spot where she’d been hunched over him, now eyeing the sky as she stepped off him.
Now the rest.
“Annie,” Zuther and Kylie-Nae called as Anoushka stepped through the broken glass, into the choking gun smoke of the greenhouse. The Blaggards lay in a ring around the fire, chewed by bullets. None had survived but one. Burned to the point his skin was cracking like a rain-starved lake bed, he tried coughing a plea. A bullet between his bubbling eyes silenced him.
A Blaggard lay facedown in the far corner. He’d nearly made it out the door. She took aim at the back of his head. The radio, though its wicker grille had been pierced, continued to sing. The demon ditty
went to fuzz, restored, fuzzed again. The hands of the Blaggard, palms pressing the cement floor, stretched, getting their feel like one trying on new gloves.
“You’re going to finish it?” Since it’d been shot so many times, Lyle couldn’t make the Blaggard’s corpse stand, much less roll over all the way.
“I am,” Anoushka said. “Is it true, what Mann said? They paid you?”
“Handsomely.”
“Well, I hope you got to spend some of it.”
“I hope you’re aware going through with this simply rounds the whole charade out. It’s what the Committee wants. What the Ma’am wants. What Rammelstaad wants.”
“Are you at the Error, at the radio tower?”
“Yes.”
“Will you run?” Anoushka said.
“No. I will wait.” He made the Blaggard’s head lift a little. Stolen eyes moved in the ashen face, to gaze out through the empty frames of the broken greenhouse walls toward Ruprecht, who waited outside with Kylie-Nae and Zuther. “The bard needs his story. And what about you? Will you take the next they assign after me? Or the one after? You’ll have an entire library with books with your name on them by the end, if that’s what you choose.”
Anoushka, with a trigger pull, expelled the Baron of Decay from his temporary vessel.
Turning away, she spotted among the broken glass and bodies the crate lid half in the fire. She pulled it out and found a few revolvers at the far end of the box hadn’t been ruined. After removing enough for everyone, she noticed some of the Committee insignia on the crate’s lid was burned away—only a crescent of the ring of chains and locks remained, a portion of the crown eaten to ash. Bumping it with her boot heel, she pushed the box, the evidence, into the fire.
Stepping back out, Anoushka approached the others in the garden’s clearing. Kylie-Nae leaned on a wrought-iron fence, face in her hands. Zuther held her, kneeling beside her, his whispered comforts going ignored. Ruprecht was off to the side, gushing his steaming sick upon the downy white ground.
Zuther said, “Where’s Russ?”
As much as Anoushka was willing to tell good lies to herself for this, with Zuther’s wet brown eyes looking at her, begging for an answer, she could summon nothing. “He’s . . .”
“Is he . . . ?” Zuther’s voice cracked. “Is he dead?”
Anoushka glanced Ruprecht’s way. The bard wiped the bile from his chin with his sleeve and broke eye contact first.
“Yes,” Anoushka said. “I’m sorry, Zee.” She passed the six-guns to everyone.
Zuther accepted his. “I want to see him.”
“After we get Lyle.”
“No, now. I want to see him. He was my best friend.”
“I know he was, Zee, but we need to find Peter and start across the ice. We have Lyle. He’s at the Error. We can bury Russ after. This is all on us.”
Kylie-Nae still held her steaming gun in both hands—not checking it or inspecting it as Anoushka would expect Cherry Bomb would. Her brow remained creased. “What do you mean this is all on us?”
“I mean it’s all on us,” Anoushka said. “Here,” she said, shoving the last six-gun at Ruprecht.
“Isn’t the Committee going to send someone else?” Zuther covered his mouth, eyes wide. “What if when Sir Gunnar doesn’t check in . . .? I mean, right? They might not care about us, but one of their knights? They gotta.”
“Maybe a few years after the dust has settled, they’ll print something about what happened here. Just so Rammelstaad sees what ‘true champions’ do. If we try to go back—let alone try to tell the truth—they’ll hunt us down. Of this, there’ll be nothing but what’s printed. By them. And from there, well . . .”
“If what Mann said was true, we’ll get our immigration passes and move to Embaclawe, to godsdamn Geyser if we have to,” Ruprecht declared. “I will never be involved in making anyone want to fight for Ursula Stellen-Austenhoff’s Rammelstaad and propagate this lie ever again. I will print the truth!”
Kylie-Nae said, “What really happened to Russ?”
“He got shot. He’s dead. Get your stuff.” Anoushka turned and began across the garden. Not entirely a lie. He did get shot. He is dead. She didn’t hear anyone following. “Let’s go. I know where Lyle is.” She pointed at Ruprecht. “You’re our new pedaler.”
Perhaps it was at this particular moment that Kylie-Nae considered that they were truly cut off from ever going back. She holstered, a sputter escaping her lips, a sob that’d sprung free, shocking her. “What about . . . ? I’ll never see Molly again.”
“We’re doing this for her too,” Anoushka said. “Maybe one day she’ll find out what really happened and take up the fight—the real fight—when she’s grown. But for there to be a realm still standing, we need to play nice. We can still do something. We signed on to—”
“Fuck what we signed on to do! No, we have to be able to go back. I’m her mother. I won’t let you decide whether I get see her again.”
“I didn’t make that decision,” Anoushka said. “The Committee did.”
“Have some fucking heart,” Zuther said. He tried putting his arm around Kylie-Nae, but she thrust him back.
“Stop. All of you, you’re all in this for yourselves. You are deeply, seriously fucked up. I probably knew it, even back when we were little . . . but you’re the only one who didn’t treat me like shit because—”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Anoushka said. “You were adopted, but at least you had others like you at school. I was the only elf at that godsdamn place. Ever think about how I felt? And what the fuck are we even talking about this for? Quit your crying, pick up your shit, and let’s go—we have him cornered.”
“Mann said they still talk about us,” Kylie-Nae said. “What we did to those orcs. Shooting them was one thing, but . . . I still can’t believe I let you do that to them.”
Again, Anoushka turned away. And this time, she did hear footsteps following. But they came up fast, and close, and the wind was knocked out of her as Kylie-Nae threw them both to the ground. Both Zuther and Ruprecht tried to pull Kylie-Nae off but not before she’d reddened Anoushka’s cheek and darkened one eye.
Anoushka did nothing to shield herself from the blows; only watched Kylie-Nae, atop her, the night sky behind her obscured again and again as the fists rained, left, right, left. Kylie-Nae was never one to pull a punch. And they hurt. Knowing they were deserved, Anoushka accepted each one. Kylie-Nae screamed and struggled. Ruprecht, taking one arm, and Zuther, the other, dragged her off Anoushka, but she continued kicking dirty snow, cursing and screaming.
“You’re worse than he is. Worse.” Face redder than Anoushka had ever seen it, Kylie-Nae bellowed, her voice echoing in the dead city. “You don’t even care. You never cared. Not about any of us—nobody but yourself. You only wanted to put as many in the ground as you could, not because it was any serve-your-realm bullshit but because you . . . you just wanted to.”
“You’re right.”
Anoushka always had a problem with eye contact. Not with keeping it but with keeping it too well. She made herself blink and occasionally glanced away in casual conversation. She didn’t do that now. Gazing at each of them, making each of them look away first, she tried understanding what each was probably making of her in that moment. What each was thinking and feeling. And, if those things could be ascertained, she couldn’t decide if she actually cared.
“You have a few hours to try to make it back over to the mainland,” she said. “But the orcs have countless waiting in ships a few miles east. When they don’t get the flare as a signal to come over come nightfall, they will—all of them. And even if you survive them, the Committee still won’t be too far behind, to tie up loose ends.”
“So we’re fucked either way,” Zuther said.
“No,” Anoushka said. “Options are . . . we can finish what we started or die sitting here waiting, knowing we didn’t finish what we each signed our name, promising, to the best of our
ability, to accomplish.”
No one moved. No one spoke.
The wind blew. The tree’s bare branches creaked and rattled.
“Fine.” Anoushka looked at Zuther. “Got a good-bye for me?”
“Been good serving under you, Cap’n,” he grunted. He took Kylie-Nae’s hand. She didn’t push him away this time.
Ruprecht, next. “Any well-worded smart-ass parting phrases?” she said.
“No, Miss Demaine.”
Anoushka wanted Kylie-Nae to see her daughter again. She wanted Zuther to have more time to tell Kylie-Nae, with a better choice of words, how he felt. And Anoushka even wanted Ruprecht to write whatever he desired, whether it was loaded with exaggerations of his choosing or the genuine truth. But she didn’t know if she really wanted those things or only wanted to think she wanted those things for them. She felt better once she’d turned around again. She walked away, listened waiting for Kylie-Nae and Zuther, and maybe even Ruprecht, to call her name. None did. She passed through the garden’s gates and back onto the ice-slicked street. Alone.
* * *
“Erik?”
He’d taken off his armor and returned to the comfort of the cushions in a corner booth. His head was back, his mouth open a little, eyes closed. The mammoth-killer she’d left him with was on the table, his hand resting on it. Anoushka sat across from him. The shutters weren’t cutting the light into harsh blue bars anymore—but instead, a soft redness dappled across him now, evenly. His skin caught it beautifully, and it shone in his hair that had since dried. Rising to cough, Erik’s eyes fluttered wide in surprise seeing her there.
