by Nisi Shawl
I pass a hand over the scan on my door then punch in the letters and numbers. The lock lights green, and immediately my son jumps up from the floor when I enter.
“Dehhh,” he whines, “Kujaku was mean to me.”
I shut and lock the door before the whole higher hears the complaint. The vis blinks in the shallow room, an old romantic prog that’s all I have in storage. Something Losa liked. The windows be tinted black like I always keep them, but the track lights are bright. They reflect on my son’s brown flat belly and his skinny legs. He keeps tugging at the waist of his too-big shorts. Little brown frog, all excited. He manages to hop over the toys and clothes on the floor and jumps into my arms.
“Kujaku’s been mean, ah?” I keep one hand around him while he hangs off my neck like a sling, legs dangling.
“Kujaku han’t been mean,” Kujaku says from the couch, where he sits sprawled and barefoot. “Kujaku be tired and wants Pup to go to bed.” He sacrificed a night of work for me because Jeriko called on me personal.
“Sorry,” I tell him, and sit on the couch. Tzak the Pup climbs over my lap and sits himself between me and Kujaku. I belong to him when I’m home; infiltrators beware. “Aszar was being an ass. It took Jeriko smack-talk to calm him down.”
“Moron Opike.” Kujaku tilts his blonde head back at me, sinking deeper into the faded cushions. “Least you be alive.”
“Deh,” Tzak says, loudly, to interrupt us. “Kujaku was going to pick me upside down and throw me in bed. That’s what he said.”
I’m wet and sitting on the couch, making damp everywhere. Tzak be damp too, now, but he don’t care.
“Kujaku won’t have to throw you, ’cause I will.” I stand and grab up my son, flip him upside down under my arm and cart him to the bedroom.
“Deh!”
I make small puddles as I go, all over the floor. It needs a clean anyway. Tzak wiggles ruthlessly. He has my doggedness and his mother’s defiance. I get bruised. I dump him on the bed and he bounces. The tiny bells in his hair make scattered music.
“Ouch, wild boy! You abuse your deh.”
He’s a tumble of free-flying hair, half a dozen thin black braids, bells, and baggy shorts.
“You’re all wet.” He bounces now out of his own volition. The bed can barely take it. Soon it will fall through the floor and the neighbor will kill.
“That’s because it’s raining.” I shake my hair and flick some droplets onto his face. He wrinkles his eyes and wipes at his nose, grinning. Such a little frog, easy in dry or wet. I struggle out of the heavy, soaked jacket. My shoulders sigh in relief. I hang up the jacket on the closet door handle where it will make a lake on the floor. Ah, I don’t care. “Come on, Kujaku be right, it’s way past your sleeptime. Get under the blanket.”
He crawls beneath like a spider. I squish across the floor and sit on the edge of the bed and tuck him in tight like a mental patient.
“Deh!” He squirms.
I laugh and untuck him a bit. He flops his arms over the blanket, wild noodles. His smoke blue eyes blink, getting heavy with sleep. I knew he would stay up until I came home. Kujaku always has it hard when I’m late.
“Go to sleep.” I use my father tone.
He holds out his arms. So I lean down and kiss him and let him hug my neck. I pat his hair and smooth it. The bells tinkle.
“Sleep.”
He rolls to his side and tucks in. I put his favorite bunny-soft in his arms and he holds onto it, eyes squeezed shut in obedience. It’s a rare thing and I don’t question it. I get up and take off my wet clothes, dump them in a corner and go to the bathroom to dry off. Then I pull on an old sweater and zipper turfs, take the gun from my jacket pocket and go out to the couch and Kujaku, who be dozing in front of the maudlin vis. He’s earned it. I slip the gun in the waist of my turfs and kick his bare feet before I step over them to the kitchen square.
“You want to stay here, Kujio? It’s still raining.”
“Eh,” he mutters, already half-asleep. He has nobody to go home to anyway.
I turn up the kitchen lights and call down the light over Kujaku. The vis screen flickers over him like glowing eyes. I put a package meal on the counter to flash, lean against the fridge and light a smoke. It dries the rest of the rain inside my skin as I pull on it. The smoke rises to the ceiling like a prayer, making me sleepy to watch it. Kujaku be my bandbrother all my life, before I met Losa and before she had Tzak. Losa be dead. Tzak be three years old already.
I feel more than seventeen.
THE LITTLE FROG wakes me up. He climbs onto my chest and pats my face with his small cold hands.
“Deh, I’m hungry.”
“Mmn, go to sleep.”
“I slept already!”
The sun beats at my eyelids and my son beats at my cheeks. I blink into light, grab him, and roll him into the pillow to tickle him like a tickle killer. He screams and kicks and laughs. It’s a mêlée of limbs and the sound of bells. One wild foot gets my knee.
“Ach! That needs revenge.” I chomp his bony elbow.
“Deh!” His fist flies. He has sharp aim and my ear be a stationary target.
I pin him in a truce hug, with my back to the window and the early sun. That window doesn’t tint for some reason anymore. Still, more time for sleep, just a minute or ten before Domani business. Tzak pats my face some more, pinches my nose, but I keep my eyes closed.
“Deh just wants a few more minutes, beba.”
He’s a warm squirmy thing, then he settles with his head under my chin. His hair smells like sleep and sunrays. I don’t know when, but the morning passes.
“DEH, SOMEONE’S AT the door.”
There’s a pounding outside of my head. Tzak shakes my shoulder. The sun has moved, or a cloud has walked up my alley of the sky. Tzak kneels on the bed beside me, little face wrinkled in worry. He doesn’t like visitors who don’t know the code. Kujaku is the only one besides me who knows the code.
“Someone’s at the door,” my son says again.
“Stay here.” I roll out and grab the gun off my bedstand. The air hits the skin on my arms and torso. I shut the bedroom door behind me and my feet get wet on the way to the front door. Overnight in’t long enough to dry the rain inside. Kujaku in’t on the couch or in the kitchen, but the windows are still dark.
I lean a shoulder on the front door. “Who is it?” My optic’s been broken for a week. I keep forgetting to fix it.
“Romko. Open up.”
Romko, Losa’s blood brother. Full blood Opike. I han’t seen him since she died.
I talk through the door. “What do you want?”
“It’s too gamey in the hall, Taiyo. Open up.”
My son be in the bedroom. I flip open my gun and unlock the door, aiming the weapon head-high.
“Whah, hold on!” Romko raises his beringed hands. His braids tinkle as he steps back. “I come to jaw, not scrum.”
“What do you want?”
“Will the whole higher hear it?”
I watch him. He has Losa’s exact eyes, inconstant blue. When he smiles it’s like Losa come back. I let him in but don’t safety the gun. I shut the door and lock it again. He stands in a little puddle from last night.
“Ach, Tai, han’t you housebroken Tzakri?”
“Third time asking, and my last.”
Romko folds his arms and spreads his feet, standing like a chief of an overturned apple cart.
“Street jaw say you lit Aszar’s cousin.”
Rumors travel like garbage to a gutter.
“Street jaw needs to be broke.” I go to the kitchen, but keep my edges on the Opike. Romko and the cousin were friends. Yascha. Stupid dead bastard. I won’t rain on my face for him.
“Aszar believes the street jaw,” Romko says, cutting off the ends of his words.
I put my glass under the dispenser, dribble some ice water into it and sip. “Aszar’s an idiot.”
Romko straightens. “Don’t say so, Tai.”
> “I’ve said it. I’ve always said it.”
“You know lies serve selfish wonders. He might avenge Yascha on your disrespect.”
“I sho’ve avenged Losa on Yascha’s incompetence.”
Romko looks away first, toward the couch. His gaze finds interest in the menial mess. “Aszar han’t forgotten your threats on his cousin.”
I shrug. “Let him remember. Jeriko don’t chain me like Aszar whips his band. I might prove a little more than slightly entertaining.”
“Don’t you think this gone on long enough?”
“What this?”
“All this fight. Yascha tried, Taiyo. I know you hate to hear it but he hated himself more than you can for Losa’s end.”
“I doubt that.”
“Tai, Losa be dead.”
I look at him and his earnest face. Face, that’s all it is. Maybe he’s here to warn me. He really in’t here to give revelation. “I wan’t sure she was,” I tell him. “Thanks.”
“Listen,” he says. “Your Losa wan’t so full of grace.”
I feel the gun in my hand. “What you say now?”
The thoughts rotate in his eyes like a siren. And he backs down. Of course. “Aszar wants the murderer. Opikei don’t like you and some jaw say your own band blames you for this ongoing. I got my balls in a bind to tell you this.”
“Good thing you don’t need ’em.”
“You stupid fool, Tzakri be my little bandbrother. I want him to be safe!”
“He has a father,” I say slowly. “And a band.”
“There an’t no good end in this world for him.”
I step close up to him, fast. “You threatening my son?”
His hands rise, weak defense. “All I say, Tai. The Nations an’t all there be in the world.”
I stare at him. Wonder for the first time if Losa’s dream found brotherly ears.
I see his thought flip over like a card. His tone hardens. “The Nations won’t back a thief forever.”
“Or a murderer.”
His gaze be crooked and we don’t meet. For all I know he started the street jaw. The set up can run deep. Opikei are notorious. No Domani turns a back on an Opike.
Then again, no Domani should bed an Opike either. Jeriko had warned me. Even Kujaku.
“Good luck,” I tell him. “There be a trail of tragedy following Opikei these days.”
His eyes get mottled.
“That be all?” I smile. “The day ages and so do you.”
Romko don’t smile. “They be your waking hours, for however long they last.” He goes to the door.
I follow. “I’ll relay that to Jeriko.”
He glances at me and steps out, maybe a bit fast. He’s not a coward but he’s got a mind. And eyes. He saw the gun in my hand.
“Deh, who was that?”
I lock the door again. “I told you to stay in the bedroom, Tzakri.”
“But I’m hungry.” He stands on the threshold, a shoulder against the jamb, one foot on top of the other. He needs a good scrub.
I tuck the gun into my turfs. “Go shower, beba. I’ll flash something.”
“Who was that, Deh?”
“Nobody, beba. When I say to stay in the bedroom, I mean it. You know?” I look at him hard. His eyes are larger than they need to be in such a small face. When he smiles it’s Losa come back.
It’s Romko.
I don’t smile and neither does he. His lip sticks out. “I know, Deh.”
That pout can move staunch mountains and a father’s heart.
I MEET KUJAKU on the crowded corner in front of my higher. I called him but didn’t tell him about Romko. Those aren’t things you say over a call. I hold Tzak’s hand and smoke with my other. Kujaku trots up from a daybar across the street, weaving through a slow pass of scuffed, gem-tone crawlers. It’s a cool day after a long night of rain. The sky be deep blue. The sounds of a blinking city seem to suction to the painted walls of the highers and other buildings.
Emidit be a big city. I only know the portions that belong to the Nations, which an’t as shiny as those of the Regierun. Friends of the polize, the Regierun. They put us here and they keep us here, among highers and shops and streets that bend and snap from lack of nutrition, like sickly kids or wrinkled old women.
Tzak leans away from me, anchored by my hand, a tilted tree in a breeze. He’s playing, but I don’t trust the mash of people—the drunks, the kneelers, and the palmers. They will all make my son older than he is and I’m in no great hurry to let him lose his youth. So I yank him back and he bumps my side.
“Ah,” he says, working up to a howl.
“Stay still, Tzakri.”
“Ah ah,” he says, jiggling.
“Here comes Kujaku. Look.”
But Tzak in’t interested in Kujaku. He steps on my foot.
“Enough.” I grab him up, one scoop into my arm. It’s what he wants anyway. His arms go immediately around my neck and suddenly he’s perfect.
This child be spoiled.
Kujaku stops under the dead lamp, where I stand, and pokes Tzak’s stomach.
“Hei Pup.”
“Don’t.” Tzak flies a foot at Kujaku.
“Last time,” I warn him. He turns his head to peer over my shoulder and ignore me. Every year he gets heavier. My arm earns it.
Kujaku thieves a cig from my pocket. “You heard the street jaw?”
I light it for him and we walk. Most of the people step aside without touching. In our territory they know the signs, the black collar that means Domani.
“Romko visited.”
Kujaku’s pale eyebrows lift. “This sunup? All the way from Opikei mudholes?”
“All the way.”
“Well technically we an’t at war.” Kujaku shrugs and puffs. Streeters watch him go, even though he’s clearly not on duty. He has a look that makes fugitive eyes: low-lidded blue stare, large flexible lips. Losa wandered his way once, but only with her gaze. Her feet knew better and walked to me.
“I think maybe I should stay off the street.” I’m only half-serious.
“Might be,” Kujaku agrees. “Aszar in’t known for his agile logic.”
“He won’t get far. All Domani can smell Opikei. They might do the deed but they won’t leave our territory alive.”
“Tai.” Kujaku flicks his ashes. “I know your ears an’t sweet on these words, but not all Domani like your Losa years.”
I look at him hard. Tzak dozes on my shoulder. It in’t a good thing to have to walk your own street with an eye to your wake. Or for your bandbrother to echo an Opike. “So they’d side with Opikei lighting me?”
Kujaku frowns. “No. Jeriko won’t, you know. But the Nine Nations might just call it even and part.”
“Jeriko and the Nations stood by my side with Tzak.”
“You already had stole him, Tai.”
“I didn’t steal my own son!”
Kujaku touches my arm. “It be only frank jaw. I in’t saying I agree.”
“There be a wrongness in the understanding of the Nine. Just ’cause Losa died and the Opikei braided Tzak, it don’t mean they should own him. He be my blood.”
“And theirs, they say.”
“He be more my blood than any but a corpse’s.” Romko may have tied that braid to his wrist when he be born, but I be in his veins. “Jeriko stands by it and it should be enough for the rest of the band.”
In truth, the rest of the band can go to mudfire if they think I should abandon Tzak to the Opikei.
“We stand by you, Tai,” Kujaku says. “All who count. I said only some Domani.”
“And the Nine?” Nine bands across Emidit. Each one of them with their own pride.
“The Nation be full of people like Aszar. There be no help for them but death by stupidity.”
“I’d marshal them along if they stood in my way.”
Kujaku glances up at me. He blows out a stream of smoke. “I know it, bandbrother. And sometimes it be a heavy thought.�
��
ROON TAKES TZAK from my arms. We stand in her doorway, in the narrow hall of her higher. A city of scented candles burns behind her in a gauze-shrouded room. A blue haze. She’s got flaky tastes but she’s Domani dependable. She coos over Tzak like a cresty fountain bird. I see the bulge by her waist; her gun. She’ll look out for Tzak. Tzak be half-asleep and the handover wakes him.
“Deh,” he moans.
“I have to go somewhere,” I tell him. “Roon will keep you today.”
“Dehhh.” He’s set up for a tantrum. Children and feral dogs, never wake them from a nap.
“Go on,” Roon says, holding firm while Tzak builds up for a bawl.
“Be good,” I tell my son, and rub his braided hair.
“Not with you as a deh,” Kujaku puts in.
“Shut up, kneeler.”
I wrinkle fingers at Tzak, trying to ignore his crumbling face, and walk down the bare hallway with my bandbrother. Tzak’s wail follows me like a polize siren, echoing among the gut pipes above.
It be a daily abandonment.
“SO HOW ARE we to find this murderer?” Kujaku yawns.
“We ask,” I say.
We move through the midday streets like nose-poking polize. But here, in daylight, we are the polize. The power and the Regierun of Domani territory. Polize know better than to scrum with us in view of witnesses. Streeters here may have little voice, but enough of them can out-boom a bomb. They have no near affection for the Regierun on the rich side of Emidit. No Domani and few Nation bands are stupid enough to scrum in broad daylight, anyway. So it’s our haven, here on the street, bold with our black collars.
Emidit stinks, like it always does with the heat of the sun to expose its lower skins. The tall dark buildings suck up tight weather and hold it in, but there’s still ample sky to rain down daggers of light. Clouds be rare in these summer months; last night was a fluke. In this clime, what isn’t swallowed by steel gets spat up by gray pavement and vomited in the sweat of sardine bodies. Even my short-sleeve shirt, open at the neck, is a layer too much.
