New Suns

by Nisi Shawl

  “Who’re we going to ask?” Normally Kujaku’s in his doorway at this hour, scoping hopefuls. This morning he scopes with me. Jeriko ordered an unrolling, so all of us pull.

  We pass the gaping mouth of the Hank Street subterrain and hear the rumbling anger of its passing beneath our feet.

  “Let’s catch it to the house.” I motion to the stairs leading down.

  “Can we eat first?” Kujaku elbows me toward a pockmarked vendor box, strategically placed beside a guaranteed flow of flesh traffic from the sub. “You pay, of course.”

  “Me of course? You make more living than I do by theft.”

  “You be in the wrong thieving biz,” he says, with a kneeler’s grin. He’s the kind of pretty that rubs elbows with repulsive.

  “I prefer to stay on my feet.” I punch in our unhealthy orders on the console and scan my ring. Mysterious workings rattle in the wide silver interior of the anchored vendor, then our spiced meat buns pop out of the gap at the top of the cart, steaming. I hand Kujaku his, with a nice swat upside the head, no extra charge, then take my own and head toward the subterrain.

  Our rocking ride makes unsteady digestion, but it’s a short stint, only ten blocks. At least it be steely cool and we have our pick of seats from streeters with smarts. Rush hour tends to have little effect on a Domani. Up on the corner of Backbone and Dye we take the murderer’s alleged route to the scene of the offense, a high-end stylehouse with a long reputation. Pagoda. It looks like one, all bright blues and reds and golds, a peacock building. It be Opikei protected and routinely patronized. But not Opikei run. Regierungi living greases the palms of this place.

  “Now this here be an opportunity,” Kujaku says.

  “We’re on the roll for Jeriko,” I remind him. “Keep your soles flat.”

  “Eyes can scope.”

  There’s no reforming him.

  I glance up and down the sidewalk, mindful of Romko’s words, but no Opikei gunmen spring from the crowd. It be one thing to talk of war, another to do it. So we said when Losa died.

  I go in the stylehouse first, and my feet sink. There be carpet all over the interior; even the walls be thin engraved velvet, blood red. Gold-tasseled couches and glass partitions broadly divide the space. Everywhere be hollow rich. The bar be stacked with colored glass bottles and private lacquer drawers. A tall smooth woman attends to them all with a swan-necked scanner in her hand.

  I step down into the social pit, through expensive cool air and the faint scent of previous nightly decadence, straight to a man in a white shirt. He be seated at the bar with an activated slate set on top. His pink, smooth fingers tap the screen expertly.

  The woman looks up first. Her face be holo perfect, but it be plastic flesh. She in’t surprised. Somewhere in one of the back rooms, through the curtained doors at the edges of my sight, guards watch me and Kujaku, probably right down to the pores on our skin.

  “Mr. Ong,” she says.

  The man looks up and he in’t surprised either. He has an emotionless powdered face and small black eyes. They find our black collars and linger.

  “What can I do for you?” A rounded Regierungi accent.

  “An Opike man was shot here recently,” I say. “What do you know about it?”

  He looks back at his slate, but it’s blank now. Protected. “I told the Opikei everything I saw. You can ask them.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  Kujaku walks around, grazing a hand on the ornate workmanship of the glass separators. The designs be all curlicues and vague entwined bodies.

  “I have no association with the Domani.” The mole above his left eyebrow twitches. “But I do with the Opikei. So ask them.”

  I can be patient. “The Opikei claim it was a Domani who did the deed. So you see we have a right to ask.”

  These things sometimes take plateaus to reach. If he pushes me to the next flat then I will go there.

  The woman’s eyes follow Kujaku like a trigger finger.

  “I know your face,” Mr. Ong says. “They say you’re the one who killed the Opike. You’re the one who stole their child.”

  Kujaku stops in my periphery with a hand on the velvet wall.

  Maybe Mr. Ong knows how thin his life is. “Who says I lit Yascha?”

  Mr. Ong doesn’t answer. He’s an uncreased Regierungi.

  The sight of my gun wrinkles him slightly.

  “You see how this can be, Mr. Ong.”

  “Everyone knows you stole their child.”

  “Who says I lit Yascha?”

  He shrugs. “Everybody. Words,” he waves a hand, “they travel through the air like dust.”

  I can kill a Regierungi every day and still not be filled. I take one stride and push my gun against Mr. Ong’s right nostril.

  “Someone want to start a war?” I ask.

  “Tai,” Kujaku says.

  People have materialized from the walls. Tall men and women with hidden hands. Mr. Ong holds up his palm.

  “The friend shouted Domani,” he says. “But in truth the killer was hooded.”

  “Friend? Of Yascha’s?”

  “The same.”

  I ease back the gun a little, but not enough that he can’t still smell the steel. “Romko said it be Domani. Specifically me?”

  Mr. Ong shrugs. “Aszar was in the back, playing and having some poke. The cousin and his friend were in the pit with some drink. A hooded man shot one of my guards and stormed in. He knew just where to look and where to shoot. He was good.” The black eyes look down the silver of my weapon, then flick back to my face. “The cousin died. Romko said he saw a black collar beneath the overshirt before it fled. He said it was Domani. Aszar drew his own conclusions.”

  “This be how it fell out? A Regierungi rolls the truth?”

  “A Regierungi with a gun up his nose will roll his tongue like a kneeler.”

  The man be a survivor. I lower the gun. The room breathes slightly.

  This information was too easy to come by.

  I look at Kujaku and head to the door. He treads in my wake, backward to watch the room. Not one of them moves. We hit the sidewalk and street stink, hot from the cool indoors.

  “What do you make of that?” I ask Kujaku.

  He spits on the pavement. “They twisty their words like intestines. But they be gutless.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Romko. He ups and sees me for the first in three years? To warn me Aszar wants my blood? This in’t revelation.”

  “Romko be no gymnastic mind.”

  I nod. “True. He’s always been someone’s pawn.”

  Kujaku says, “His king be dead. Who directs him now?”

  So sits the question. But we can’t sit here.

  “Let’s get out of this Opikei shade.”

  Kujaku follows me to the subterrain. “The goods an’t so hot here anyway.”

  WE CALL A report to Jeriko of what we unrolled from Mr. Ong, but she don’t believe it either, at least not the surface. “Dig deeper. Romko might plant the seed but someone else laid the dirt.”

  And dirt stinks worse in the hot temperature of an Opikei agenda.

  It’s back to Roon to check on Tzak, though. Except when we get there the door be blasted open and inside all the candles be upended, the blue gauze torn down, everything shredded. I run through the flat but no Tzak, and Kujaku hollers at me from the kitchen. When I join him, there be Roon face down on the tile, paralyzed. Her hand clutches her gun. It still buzzes live.

  Silent, Kujaku leans down to flick it off.

  “I found these.” I hold out my hand. Beads and bells in my palm. From my son’s braids. “They took Tzakri.”

  JERIKO SAYS NOT to do anything but Kujaku and me both know we’re going to ignore. End the call. Who else would take my son but a wide-armed Opike? Specifically Romko. Romko and his generous warning that Aszar wants me dead. Before Aszar wanted me dead, Romko had me marked. Before even Losa died, Romko wanted me dead just for walking my feet to his siste
r. It goes back that far and further still if you count all the years in the Nation when Domani outsmarted Opikei and won the Council’s favor.

  There be only one place Tzak can be—in Opike territory.

  Kujaku and me hop back on the subterrain. But half-way through our ride, four black collars come up on us. Our bandbrothers. Pomjo and three novii, younger than me with their yellow training collars. But they all be loaded up.

  I stare up at Pomjo from my seat. “You light me if I don’t?”

  “Jeriko’s orders. Don’t make this tough.” He almost looks apologetic.

  “Roon be shot,” Kujaku says. “Not dead, but someone got at her to get the boy.”

  The air around Pomjo sinks. “You still gotta come.”

  Jeriko’s dog. So at the next stop, me and Kujaku unboard with our bandbrothers. They walk us like prisoners back through the streets, back to Domani territory, full on every side. No borders but Domani. I don’t see the familiar streets, just Romko’s face and his lying mouth. All I feel is an itch to pummel it into the ground. To get Tzakri back.

  We go to the Domani clubhouse, empty at this hour. There be Jeriko sitting at her usual shimmer blue table, arms wide as the white leather. White liquor sits in front of her in two tall bottles.

  To me: “Sit.” And to Kujaku: “Get.”

  So the game sets and everybody takes up their places. Pomjo in’t far, bulldog staunch.

  Jeriko pulls a sip of her drink. “You an’t going to Opike territory.”

  “You going to get my son back?”

  Her hand lands on the back of my neck. Squeezes hard. “Taiyo. We an’t starting a war over your little belled bastard.”

  I jerk my head but she holds on.

  “Your ears be open, Tai?”

  I say nothing.

  Out the corners of my eyes, more bodies come through the door. Closer and they be three band leaders. From Gim, Sashasa, and Moj. Collars all flashing their colors, two sisters and a brother.

  I count their meaning. Territories all closest to Opike.

  “You an’t going to get your son,” Jeriko reiterates. “An’t nobody here be letting you cross. Their band be ordered to shoot you on sight. Your ears be open now?” She shakes me. “I need to hear it!”

  I press my jaw together. “Ya.”

  She lets me go. “Good. Now make peace in your heart and maybe one day the Opikei will let you visit your boy.”

  I gather Kujaku with a glance and we exit the clubhouse. Sun hits my eyes hard, but I don’t rain on my face. I let it burn.

  “NOW WHAT?”

  He gives me a smoke and I spark it. “Gutless Jeriko think she can chain me? That an act of war to take what’s mine!”

  “The point be it was always disputed he be yours, Taiyo. Family outrank where any of us put our pokers.”

  I be sick and tired of everyone telling me what’s so. Like band rules sound better than what’s in the blood of my heart.

  “What you be thinking?” Kujaku asks with some hesitance.

  I walk and smoke.

  “Tai.”

  I tell him nothing. These days who knows who be listening on the open street. Instead I take Kujaku back to my higher. Everybody expects me to go there, so I go.

  There be my weapons anyway.

  BROWN PAPER ON the floor, the kind they use to wrap fish. Who uses paper these days but for stink purposes? I wait until Kujaku shuts the door before I unfold it. It smells like something mud dwelling beneath a bog.

  Five words scrawled by hand: Losa’s den. Take the roofs.

  “WHO ELSE IT be but Romko? What else but a trap?”

  Kujaku doesn’t answer. It be not a question that needs jaw. Of course we go. We walk the roofs like birds at seed, peck and follow, from rim to edge and flat and back to rim again. Frog-hop high and light, swing from iron and jump to black gravel. I know this route, it be how I got to Losa back when we were kids and this journey felt like both romance and rebellion. Far below us, Emidit squeals life and rumbles threat, some animal storm resisting to be tamed. The sun be arching low, spreading blood light over all the jammed highers.

  Losa’s den be half-abandoned now, it was on its way when alive she be. Roof door bent enough to sport a broken latch and me and Kujaku squirrel down steps from floor to floor, where there be no light but what ekes through broken down sliver windows. The steps be slick and smell of piss and rain.

  To the fifth floor, barely lit. Echoes bounce along the puddles like skip stones and I stop before number 555. We used to think the triple 5s be luck, Losa and me. We’d shut this door and pretend all the world was some other planet, something from fairy jaw and cast aside tech. Three years beyond those times, more from when we saw each other on the street as children and latched like parasites to the thought of each other, and it feels more like dream than any outlandish jaw so far flung it makes fantasy out of history.

  She said once, “This can’t always be.”

  I used to laugh her silent. Asked her why she be ruining what we got. Not what we got in Emidit, since that was next to nothing, but what we got in our dreams.

  I try to put some dreams in Tzakri but they don’t last the night.

  “We go in?” Kujaku with his hand on my back.

  I hold my gun at my side and shove the door in. It be broken like all else.

  I expect Romko and my boy. That thieving bastard.

  What I see be Yascha.

  “PUT THE GUN down, Taiyo,” he says, all calm like he han’t be dead.

  I want to shoot. But Kujaku spout behind me: “Where you come from?” He wants to hear this.

  So do I. And there an’t a corpse in this world who speaks.

  I lower the gun. I walk a circuit around the room, walls all peeling like dry skin, pockmarked like disease. The bloody bed be gone. There be just Yascha and he wears no Opike collar. I pace back and forth.

  “We needed some way to get out,” the liar says.

  The second part of that we comes through the door behind Kujaku. Romko and my boy.

  “Deh!”

  Good thing no Opikei blocks my son from running to my arms. I pick him up and hug him until his tears squeeze out. Until mine nearly do.

  “So you blame me?” I turn so my back be to the corner and both Opikei in my sights. Kujaku steps outside of Romko’s periphery. His gun be out too.

  “You were the one that would make sense,” says Yascha. “And we knew you’d come for Tzak.”

  “I come for you too.” Not to collect except in blood debt.

  “Open your eyes!” Romko moves to stand by Yascha. Aszar’s cousin and here they be, doing something diagonal of their band?

  “What game?” I look from face to face. Romko be earnest as usual. Yascha gray-eyed like his cousin but there be a stillness in him, no hands moving. “You leave the Nations?”

  “Ya.” He don’t even blink. “Once Losa died, once Tzakri be born, we be planning it. But you had the boy and there would be war. We knew you wouldn’t come by any other means than a theft. Losa used to tell me how you talked of going, but you never did. Me and her, we planned it for that night. You weren’t supposed to be there.”

  But I had gone when she didn’t answer my call. So many words and so little sense. My boy be wrapped around me, his face pushed in my neck. I feel him breathing. The bells be broken from his hair, no chiming when I touch the back of his head.

  “Tzakri be my son by blood, Taiyo,” Yascha says.

  I feel my head shaking but no words fall out. Maybe it be my world instead.

  Shaking and falling.

  “I be not what you think I am, and neither was she. But you be the only father Tzakri knows so we want you to come with us. For him.”

  “This was her dream,” Romko puts in. “And the bands won’t war if they think you ran.”

  If they think I did it. Just like I ran diagonal of all Domani when I bed an Opike girl. Got a boy from her.

  I got a boy from her. A boy with smoke blue
eyes and his uncle’s smile.

  I stare into Yascha’s eyes. He be so quiet and still, like no Opike I ever known. No bells, just blood.

  This be where it started. How my world changed when the boy in my arms came screaming into the world. At the same time his mother left it.

  Yascha could have taken Tzak and disappeared. Pin me with the murder. Watch our Nations stand in the rain and unfurl every weapon in anger. Become a muddy rage of revenge. This be all of what I think of him, like I think myself Tzakri’s father.

  This falling down room have a habit of changing lives.

  I still be Tzakri’s father. It in’t all because of blood.

  I think of my higher but it be just a place.

  I think of the boy so solid in my arms.

  I hand Kujaku my gun. In one look he says he be with me, like always.

  What else do I need?

  “There be a lot to unroll,” I say to the Opikei. Though they wear no collars and no bells. For some reason I just notice the lack of music in this room. No chime from the past come to haunt us here. There be no Opikei in Losa’s dying place.

  No Domani either.

  “We have to move,” Yascha says. “Out of the Nine Nations.”

  Kujaku says, “Where we go?”

  Imagine the green. I can hear Losa. I almost see her too. I see her in her brother’s face, three years come back like that. So much blood and electricity.

  “We go anywhere,” I tell them. Chained to nobody, no leader, and no Nation. Tzakri’s body clings to mine. Imagine the sun. “We be free.”

  Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister

  Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  IT’S UNDER HER skin. It’s an electrical current, an itch, a malaise that does not cease. At nights she rubs her hands against her arms and it is there, like pressing your hands on a vein and feeling its gentle thump. A river of emotion surges through her body; an old river.

  Some ghosts are woven into walls and others are woven into skin with an unbreakable, invisible thread. You inherit the color of your eyes, but also this thread which chokes you and bites into your heart. If you look back into any family tree you find paupers and merchants and poets and soldiers, and sometimes you find monsters.