by D L Frizzell
“You mentioned a name we know, a man called Norio,” Daigre said to the prisoner. If the boy had any answers, this would be his only chance to get them.
Benac laughed and whispered conspiratorially in Cale’s ear. “Daigre here wants to find Norio, but is unwilling to use the aggressive methods that are necessary for the task.” Saliva dripped from his bifurcated lip and fell into the puddle at his feet. “So, it is up to me to do so. I am, however, getting bored with these unanswered questions. If you tell us nothing, I will stop asking.” He moved his blade closer to Cale's face. "And then I will make sure you cannot answer at all."
"He lives in the city!" Cale cried.
“Now you speak!" Benac exclaimed. "Tell me where this Silent Gardener of yours is,” he said in a new voice, a silky, soothing voice. "See? I put away my sword to show you can trust me. We will have no secrets between us, and we will be friends." He wiped his sword clean and put it back in its sheath.
Cale nodded frantically.
Daigre knew Benac's gesture meant nothing. He was just playing with the boy. But at that moment, Daigre realized something. Benac had made a mistake. It would cost him. He shoved the nobleguard as hard as he could. The fat man was unprepared for it and fell backwards into the water. He splashed clumsily as he righted himself. When he tried to stand, he found the tip of a sword pressed against his throat.
“You fool!” Benac shouted. He turned to the Jugs behind him. “Attack this man!” he ordered.
The Jugs stepped away and held their open palms toward Daigre. He nodded in response to them. They would not block his challenge against Benac's authority.
Daigre turned back and glared at Benac. “What other secrets have you kept from me?” he demanded.
Benac’s eyes flashed with hatred. “I decide what I should know and what you should not!” he yelled. “You are my slave!”
“I am pledged to serve The Guile!" Daigre shouted back. “You serve only yourself, so you betray him! You found information at the garden keeper's house, and you have not shared it with me.”
Cale gawked at the Jovian. It was not a branch tied to his hip after all. It was a sword. He watched Daigre exert increasing pressure on Benac's flabby neck, hoping it was sharp.
“Lie to me and die,” Daigre snarled at Benac.
Benac seethed and spit at Daigre. Without a lower lip, however, it dribbled out of his mouth and fell onto his neck. Seeing he was in a weakened position, he reached slowly into his armor and pulled out a small leather sack.
"Open it," Daigre ordered.
Benac glared at the Jugs as they made no move to assist him. They would suffer for betraying him. Until that opportunity presented itself, he would do as his traitorous slave demanded, and not a second longer. He untied the bag and pulled it open. The unmistakable odor of cave bat musk wafted out of the bag. He threw it at Daigre, who deftly sidestepped and let the bag land on the deck plating.
Daigre angled around Benac, keeping constant pressure against his neck without breaking the skin. "Time to get your hands dirty, Benac." Daigre smiled at the irony. Benac was normally quite skilled at getting others to do his dirty work, but Daigre was determined to change that. He looked back at the Jugs. "Prepare the horses and wait for me outside. I will be there soon." The Jugs nodded and left.
The badly-fitted armor made it difficult for Benac to stand, and he grunted noticeably when he pushed himself to his feet. His breastplate had been twisted to one side, so he adjusted it and limped toward the bag with one hand on his knee. As he stooped to pick up the bag, he covered his nose with one hand and shook the bag with the other. At first, the only thing to come out was charcoal dust. He shook it a few more times, and a scroll fell out. The vellum was crusted with charcoal.
Daigre moved the sword from Benac's neck to the gap where his armor did not come fully together, and prodded him to open the scroll. Benac seethed with hatred. He crumbled the charcoal until it broke away from the scroll. Once it was uncovered, he sniffed the scroll and nodded in satisfaction. "Clean enough," he pronounced, "even for a traitor like you." He threw the scroll at Daigre's face.
Daigre saw what Benac was attempting and reacted instinctively to avoid the scroll. The fat man had already tried that once as a spiteful gesture. What he didn’t realize was that the second time would be a distraction. As he ducked the way he had a moment earlier, he saw the handful of charcoal dust flying toward his eyes. He tried to shield himself but was too late; his eyes already burned from the nobleguard’s direct hit.
Daigre stumbled behind the operating room table where their prisoner was lashed and shook his head to clear his vision. He knew instinctively that Benac already had his sword in hand.
"Now you will pay for your treachery," Benac growled.
Daigre held his sword up, though the gesture was useless. He could see only indistinct blurs as his eyes filled with tears. He could not beat Benac like this. Recalling the layout of the room. He considered possible escape routes. There was a side exit his right where he could make his retreat. A nearby cabinet could also provide cover and buy some time to clear his sight.
Benac tossed a piece of junk across the room and watched Daigre turn reflexively in that direction. "How wonderful,” he said. “I was getting so impatient, waiting for a chance to kill you. And now I have it!" He picked up the scroll and unrolled it. "But first, I have a few questions for you, my blind friend.”
Daigre did not reply. He was too busy composing himself for the inevitable attack.
“How did you know I had the scroll?"
"You called Norio the 'Silent Gardener'," Daigre replied, hoping to buy time for his eyes to wash themselves clean. Benac would not be engaging in such casual conversation if he thought that was a concern, however. "That is the title The Guile gave him long ago. His name was stricken from all records after Norio betrayed him. No one calls him that anymore. Only he would still refer to himself that way.”
“But you knew the name,” Benac noted.
“Garden keepers know their own," Daigre said, "even if we do not talk of those who shamed us. Since you could not have learned it from us, or even The Guile himself, you could only have learned it from Norio.”
"You are more clever than you look, traitor." Benac mocked, and then focused on Cale briefly. He finger-painted a few circles in the blood running down the boy’s body, unconcerned that Daigre maneuvered to keep the table between them.
Benac moved into the stagnant water nearby to rinse the charcoal and blood off his hands. "Now I want to know what the scroll means."
"What does it say?" Daigre asked.
Benac looked behind Cale to see Daigre's face. It was still covered with black soot. He would recover his vision before long, but he wanted to savor the moment. He would still enjoy running Daigre through with his sword after he got what he wanted. "Very well, since The Guile will ask me when I return." He inserted his sword into the rolled scroll and pulled up on the edge. As it straightened out, he began to read out loud:
"In the garden, the Tree provides shade for the flowers, while the stream nourishes both. If the Tree falls, the stream will wash it away. The flowers will then provide shade for the acorn, while the stream nourishes both. This is what the Silent Gardener says."
“The Guile will certainly grant me an honorific title of my own when I deliver this,” Benac said. A rumble of thunder sounded through the spaceship’s hull in reply. He beamed triumphantly and held his arms up to welcome the storm’s affirmation.
"He is going to kill The Guile," Daigre said. "There is no other explanation. Norio is going to kill him and set himself up as the new leader of the Jovian Nation." Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a low thrumming sound. The deck plates began to vibrate in synch with it.
"Truly?" Benac asked.
"Yes." Daigre was not interested in lying about it. The Guile needed to know. Whether he brought the news himself, or Benac did, made little difference. If The Guile's life was in danger, someone had t
o tell him.
"Then I shall receive a great reward!" Benac said. "And I will not forget to tell him how you tried to prevent me from bringing this news to him. Have you heard, Daigre, what The Guile does to the families of those who displease him?"
Chapter Fifteen
Alex froze when footsteps passed by the room with the magnetic ring. A group of jugs lumbered by, grabbed their belongings from the lobby and left through one of the adjoining corridors. When he no longer heard their footsteps, the lump rose in his throat again. Alex imagined Cale's body strapped to the operating table, tortured to death while his best friend scrambled about helplessly for a plan.
The electro-magnetic device began to spin up again. Alex grabbed his best weapon, the mop, and moved towards the operating room. There couldn't be more than one or two jugs left with Cale. This would be his only chance.
Benac adjusted his armor one more time. "These plainsmen bleed so easily," he remarked. "Let's see how well your blood mixes with theirs, traitor." Benac ran his hand along the flat edge of his sword and imagined it piercing Daigre's neck.
As Benac's hand reached the midpoint of the blade, there was a strange snapping sound in the room. To his surprise, his hand clutched the blade tightly enough to draw blood. He frowned, certain he had not meant to do that to himself.
The room began shaking as it had during the previous magnetic shock waves. This time, blue arcs of electricity danced across the deck plating and enveloped Benac's armor. His face contorted from surprise to a grimace as every muscle in his body convulsed.
Daigre jumped back when Benac was illuminated by a web of blue energy. Whatever possessed the fool to wear metal armor inside a lightning storm, he did not know, but was happy to see the storm punish him for his arrogance.
Magnetic energy filled the operating room, causing even the air to resonate. Old light fixtures that had gone unused for centuries burst to life with a blinding intensity, then exploded. As he was showered with sparks, Daigre caught a glimpse of a figure holding a spear of some kind against Benac's armor.
The shockwave increased as the storm hit full force. The floor lurched and buckled. The walls twisted and sheared apart. Lightning danced across the trusses above Daigre's head and arced onto Benac's armor. Daigre could smell flesh cooking. The sound of the storm became so loud that he could no longer hear the prisoner screaming. The sunlight from above disappeared, and the strobing energy around him became his only source of light. His vision impaired by both the flickering light and the lingering charcoal in his eyes, Daigre ran for his exit as fast as he could. He tripped over the cabinet he had spied earlier, barely noticing that it had been tossed halfway across the room in the chaos. The entire wall of the operating room next to him fractured with a screech of ripping metal. A piece of flying debris hit Daigre in the hip and knocked him down. It hurt badly as he stood to run through the awaiting doorway.
Beyond the doorway, ceiling lights revealed a corridor before they exploded and went dark. He used their fading glow to navigate through the tunnel as quickly as he could. He counted his paces as he ran, though his stride was thrown off by the pain in his hip. The afterglow of the lights in his already-blurred vision disoriented him. Still, he managed to find a relatively undamaged room and stumbled inside.
After what seemed an eternity, the quake stopped, and along with it the droning sound that vibrated through every wall he touched. Everything had gone dark. Daigre realized he was still holding his sword in his right hand, not because of any conscious decision but because of his lifelong training to never let it go. He returned it to its wooden sheath, took the time to clean his face with a cloth from his pocket, and then waited for his tears to clean his eyes out naturally. They still stung, so he would still need to find some fresh water to rinse them with. In the meantime, he decided to wait quietly and hope nobody pursued him.
In the operating room, a few errant sparks flickered in the space where Benac had been standing. A cloud of acrid smoke floated above his body.
Cale gaped at the blackened skin on Benac's hands and his neck. His thoughts were too muddled to make sense of it, though. He couldn't understand how he hadn't been electrocuted along with the fat man.
He looked up, saw the haze dispersing, catching sight of a plastic bucket attached to the end of a mop. Wrapped around the bucket were lengths of copper wiring that ran across the floor into the hallway. Alex Vonn was holding the pole, his wide-eyed look of astonishment probably very similar to Cale’s.
Alex dropped his makeshift weapon and stepped away from Benac's motionless body.
“Are you okay?” Cale asked.
“I was only trying to stun him,” Alex replied shakily.
"I think you went way beyond stun, Alex," Cale said as he stared at the body.
“I didn’t know what the voltage would be.”
“I thought you were an A student,” Cale replied, finding a tenuous grip on his sense of humor.
“A minus in Electrical Theory,” was all Alex could think to say in response.
"Can you get me down, please?"
Alex composed himself and walked around Benac's body, checking the side exit to see if the other man was still there. Not seeing anyone, he released the straps holding Cale to the table and grabbed him as he fell.
"I don't know if there are going to be any more shock waves," Alex said. "But if they keep getting worse, we're going to end up like this guy."
"There were others here," Cale said. "I think they were Jugs. That other guy looked like Norio."
"Want me to carry you?"
Cale smiled gratefully. "No, I think I can walk. Can you find my pants?"
Alex found his clothes on the floor. After Cale got them on, Alex helped him with his shoes. They moved as quickly as they could out of the medical ward and made their way back to the plateau.
Cale wasn't able to move very fast but did his best. "How long was I in there?" he asked.
"All night, I think," Alex replied.
One more shock wave hit as they made their way to the exit, this one weaker than the others had been. When they finally reached the cargo door, there were two horses remaining. They were still spooked from the magnetic storm, so Alex helped Cale sit on a nearby rock while he ran to the edge of the plateau. To his relief, the Jugs were gone, their hoof prints showing they had departed in a direction other than the trail to Celestial City.
"Let's take one of these horses," Alex said. After picking the calmer horse, he helped Cale into the saddle. That’s when he noticed a familiar-looking object rolled up behind the saddle. The rough cloth was off-white, with aluminum barbs sewn into the edges. "Seneca will want to see this," he said. Once Cale was steady enough to ride, Alex walked him down the trail.
When they reached the base of the plateau, Alex could see a cloud of dust kicked up by the approaching militia. At the head of the platoon, Colonel Seneca held his horse’s reins in one hand, a pistol in the other. The other men rode in similar fashion, some with shotguns, others with rifles. They were riding at full gallop, ready for action.
“We have to warn Seneca about the Jugs,” Cale said, wincing in synchronization with the horse’s footsteps.
“You got that right,” Alex replied, “but let’s get you to the hospital first."
“Good idea,” Cale said. “Did you hear what they were talking about back there?” he asked Alex, gesturing to the Celeste.
“I only heard a little,” Alex admitted, “but I was pretty busy making a plan to save your hide.”
“The one with the hood wanted Norio,” Cale said. “The fat one, his name was Benac, thought we were making electronic weapons."
"I heard him say something about Norio, too,” Alex remembered. “Do you know what he meant?”
“He said Norio is a traitor, and that he doesn't have any honor,” Cale replied.
“Norio told me yesterday that his life was catching up with him," Alex said. "This must be what he meant."
"The hooded Jov
ian saved me from the one you electrocuted," Cale said. His voice wavered as he recalled the painful events. "I think he was still going to kill me in the end."
“I don’t know what’s going on, Cale,” Alex assured his friend, “but I’m going to find out."
Colonel Seneca slowed his horse to a walk as he approached the two students. He scanned the horizon for danger before looking at them. He walked his horse up to Cale and saw the blood oozing from his torso. "Medic, take a look at Mister Biedrik's wounds."
"Yes, sir," a reply came back from the platoon. A young soldier sidled his horse up to Cale and examined him where he sat. "No need to get off the horse," he told Cale.
"They were Jugs, Colonel," Alex said. "They're gone. There's a couple of Jovians still in there, though. One of them is dead. You can find his horse by a cargo door a few hundred meters from the edge of the plateau."
Seneca turned to another soldier behind him. "Sergeant, set up squads on both sides of the Celeste. Check for activity and report to me. Don't go in the ship until we have a secure perimeter."
"Yes, sir." The Sergeant signaled the rest of the platoon and spurred his horse up the trail. The rest of the soldiers followed him.
"You two are lucky to be alive," Seneca said. "You're not injured, Mister Vonn?"
“No,” Alex answered.
"How’s Keeva doing?" Cale asked.
"She's pretty scared," Seneca said, "but I'm sure she'll be relieved to see you're okay."
The sergeant came back down the trail on his horse and trotted up to Seneca. "First report, sir."
"Go ahead, sergeant," Seneca replied.
"The last horse is gone," the sergeant told him. "The tracks go off the southern edge of the plateau."
"That means he got away," Alex said.
Chapter Sixteen
A large picture window overlooked a flower garden in Cale’s hospital room. The side windows had been cranked open, and the fragrant smell of lavender drifted in. Like all other patient rooms in the hospital, it faced south to keep out the direct sunlight.