Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  “Zip your bitching. You’ll be glad I made you wear it when we get to San Francisco.”

  “What’s your rank?” Erin Abid asked, sitting next to Margaret, “Should I salute you?”

  Badger pulled his hand away from the shirt collar, “I tell ya what, you’se probably should. Gamblers gota’ special sorta’ salute you’se kids gotta have an observance for.”

  Turning away from Badger, Margaret lifted the back of her left hand over her lips so Erin wouldn’t see her smiling. It was hard to stifle the laughter that threatened to choke her.

  Corporal Erin Abid leaned in, “Of course,” sincere as the day she was born.

  “All right. You salute my dick with your face.” Badger, sitting across from the two, punched himself in the crotch, and Erin nearly jumped out of her skin, sliding away from Margaret on the lacquered wooden benches.

  The southbound locomotive had departed Stockton at a little after noon-thirty and was hauling a half-dozen passenger cars, along with postal cargo and cattle freight. The coach cars themselves were made from wood and creaked like waves at a beach as they jarred rhythmically over miles of rail.

  “Badger’s truncheon and balls got shot off in Denver,” Margaret gestured at Badger’s crotch, “but he’s never let it slow him down.”

  “Gods be fucked, Mayy,” Badger rolled his eyes, “Don’t tell everyone. I get up behind her tonight, do a little cunt dance with my right hand and she’d never be the wiser!”

  Margaret’s upper chest shuddered with laughter, then she looked over at Erin.

  “Are you blushing?”

  Erin answered fast, biting at the air, “No. I just, I just, don’t know how to answer that. I thought I needed to salute him.”

  “Forget this saluting shit,” Margaret shook her head. For a moment she thought she was holding both hands up, palms out, but only one hand raised, “All you do is tell the enemy who to shoot.”

  “Boss is right,” Badger nodded fiercely, “I ain’t got no formal rank neither. I’m the Gambler fireteam leader, and that’s that. I don’t answer to anyone but our Lady here.”

  “Erin,” Margaret lowered her hand, neck bobbing with the rails, a rolling current, “I’m your boss, but if Badger tells you to do something, you do it. He’s been Antecedent special forces for as long as I’ve been a battlewitch.”

  Badger wrinkled up what remained of his upper nose, it twisted the scars away from beneath his eyes, showing off what teeth he still had under his cheeks. “She lemme fuck ‘er once, and now she can’t be rid of me. I’m like a puppy. I followed her home.”

  “He’s not entirely full of shit,” Margaret’s tone turned more vulgar around the small man with a ruined face. Badger was roughly Margaret’s age, also a Collapse baby; he’d never grown too tall, and he’d never been too healthy.

  “Little babs here,” Badger gestured at Erin, “You’se had your first period yet?”

  Margaret could feel her younger escort starting to respond, sincerely, to the provocation. As she leaned in and her mind snapped back on the words, reality of the jest now clear.

  “I don’t know. Did your mom have her first period yet?” Erin replied.

  Badger, in response, turned his head and reviewed Erin with an uncommon expression of disbelief. Margaret couldn’t help but laugh again.

  As the coach car swayed side to side, Margaret could hear a boy on a fiddle, a few rows up, toward the engine. She couldn’t see him, but she knew his age, as she perched herself at the edge of his mind. He was playing a few classic jigs, but as he skipped away from familiar melodies, he began to improvise. He was paying close attention to his fingers, twitching along the fiddle neck, feeling the instrument vibrate against his collarbone, whittling away with his right hand.

  As her companions continued to banter, Margaret simply stopped listening. Her eyes focused on horizons that didn’t exist, part of her drifting into the boy. He had no clue she was there, but as his right arm worked a bow, so too did she imagine her own in his place. She could play some on a fiddle. Soldiers had taught her over the years, at bonfire’s ledge, as she grew weary of dance. Swallowtail Jig had been one of her favorites, and she began to tap her left hand in time to the tune in her head.

  The boy began to fiddle Swallowtail Jig.

  “Don’t mind the boss. It's what she does,” Badger said, hushed now, as several other passengers softly tapped their fingers to palm, in tune with the boy. Erin realized that this wasn’t an accident. She could either sense or see the tendrils of Margaret’s mind.

  The melody did not change or alternate as Margaret reached into a small satchel of leather, to withdraw a tin. She popped it open with one hand, and pulled a twig free, freshly rolled in brown paper, sticky with mint oil.

  As she lifted the cigarette to her lips, Badger leaned into Margaret and lit her cigarette with an old lighter of scuffed silver.

  “I’ve never seen you smoke,” Erin said, her voice hushed, as if she was afraid to disrupt the fiddle tempo, or wake the mind that Margaret was controlling.

  “You’ve never seen me do a great many things.” Margaret shrugged, exhaling from her nose, much the same way that Townsend smoked, “You never saw me execute someone until I killed Amy Lopez.”

  Badger nodded to Swallowtail Jig as he leaned back in his seat, his tone a little more serious, “Boss’ll always surprise, kid. She can be sweeter’n sugar, or nastier than steel in you’se kidney.”

  Margaret pressed her right side onto the coach’s wall. The glass next to her shoulder looked like clear water caught in a breeze, curves warbling up the window, comfortable under the rail sway. She was investing only the slightest inspiration to the passengers of this car and had plenty of focus left to weigh heavy on Erin’s mind, prodding her for an answer.

  “Did you see me do it? Did you see me put two rounds in her chest?” The young Corporal blinked, her gifts telling her this was a test. She was right, but just as Erin was about to answer, Margaret stopped her. “Don’t lie to me.”

  Slumped over with chin in the folds of his woolen coat, Badger watched in silence. Margaret could hear Erin’s chattered thoughts in the back of her skull.

  She was begging her to stop. Why did she do this to her?

  Margaret inhaled her cigarette again, gently this time, almost smiling, “How did that make you feel, Corporal?”

  Eyes lost on the same window Margaret had watched, Badger leaned in and held his fingers out to borrow the cigarette. Margaret released the twig, listening to Erin.

  It made me sick.

  “What did you do to her? With the ink?”

  There was no loyalty for the dead Lopez, only an empty regret, oozing empathy. It made perfect sense, Margaret knew. They were about the same age, children of a new world. It was hardly a stretch to smell the hints of fear that stuck behind her ears like soap from a hurried bath.

  “I showed her real terror. Nothing more,” Margaret answered, quietly, taking back her twig as Badger exhaled tobacco.

  Nothing less.

  Erin’s anxiety abated enough that she could speak, though she continued to tweak and tug on her fingers, harder and harder for each word spoken, “Why do that? Why torture her that way? Why not just kill her and be done with it?”

  Margaret didn’t reply, rather she took her own drag. The cherry tip had now eaten halfway down the sticky paper, waiting for a particularly violent jostle to toss it asunder.

  “May I, boss?” Badger’s voice sounded like a rusted shovel cutting into a pile of wet gravel. Margaret nodded to him, once, still not speaking.

  “Boss is a Collapse baby. You’se kids gotta know that’s ugly times. Her parents got barbecued, ‘front of her, when she’s a kid. You’se like to take a guess how she reacted? What with getting burned up by Plague Dog?”

  Erin didn’t hesitate, “Oh,”

  “I knew that shit’d be bad for the Lopez kid. I knew it.”

  Badger was one of the few people who knew about Margaret’s pa
rents. Only Maggi and the Antecedents present the day Margaret escaped, guessed how much worse it had been.

  Margaret spoke for Badger, “It wasn’t vengeance or torture. I just wanted to Amy to know what it was she did to me. I wanted her to really know.”

  None of this seemed to comfort Erin. She was still nervously working her fingers, only now she fidgeted in time to the boy’s fiddle.

  “If I killed my brother’s daughter, what's to stop me from killing a no-name Corporal?”

  Erin nodded without replying or making eye contact.

  Exhaling tobacco, Margaret closed her eyes and the rhythm of the coach car fell silent, along with the boy and his fiddle. She didn’t will them quiet, but even the uninclined could pick up on the moods of a room.

  When Margaret opened her eyes again, she spoke, “I was a poor aunt to Amihan. She reminded me of my mother’s worst traits. I spent years treating her the way I wanted to treat someone who was dead. This doesn’t give her a free pass,” Nor does the fact she was lied to, Margaret didn’t mention. “I’ll mourn her until the day I die. But the moment she turned on me, called me a traitor, and declared me her enemy? That was the moment she forfeited her life.”

  The moment she lit me on fire, Margaret’s face turned from sad to sour.

  It took Corporal Erin Abid a long time to answer, “I guess it's the same with Deck.” Her lips spoke, but her mind didn’t quite agree.

  Deck was holding a gun to your head.

  The odor of fear didn’t vanish, and Margaret finished the oiled cigarette. Her eyes narrowed on the pretty girl with short hair, “Never betray me. I can be sweeter’n sugar for those who give me love.” Margaret borrowed Badger’s jargon and gave him a sidelong wink. “You still love me. Don’t you Badger?”

  Badger crossed his arms, lifting his shoulders up high and creasing the shirt at his biceps, “Margaret done right by me, all these years in. I been recompens-erated good. I got no regrets. ‘Cept maybe getting my cock shot off. That was shit.”

  Erin seemed to relax a little. Margaret suspected she was listening behind words, reaching as far into his mind as she dared taste. Whatever affection he offered to Margaret proved itself genuine.

  Closing her eyes, Margaret reached for her shoulder stump and tugged it back so her hips could twist into the corner seat, “You should try and nap. It’ll be long hours before we reach San Francisco, and tonight will run late.”

  8:03pm March 25th, 39 Veilfall

  San Francisco, California

  Having grown up on the east coast, Margaret could confidently say that the wind which gusted off San Francisco Bay was one of the coldest experiences of her life. When it came up off the water, it cut through her skirt and gnawed past her corset and short-heel boots of leather. It was a pinch at first, before the flesh began to smart, unrelenting as any cut or bruise. This wind simply had no boundaries, no sense of privacy, she may as well have been naked astride the Wave Organ.

  This narrow peninsula had been manufactured from old world gravestones. A keenly morbid relic of pre-Collapse antiquity. Storm and rain had eaten away at the sandbanks, revealing carved granite and marble, where they’d been lain. The Organ itself was just a collection of softly abraded stones, roughly cast seats and stairs, which worked hard to swallow the long pipes built into the odd cathedral. As the bay spat up at the Organ, seawater whipped around those pipes, creating an echoing hymn, a gush and gurgle of waves, spun into long, haunting notes. This was a musical instrument that the very ocean herself plucked absently, as if bored by sluggish eons. It didn’t fill Margaret with comfort, or charming memories of lifted skirts and jigs. Rather, it set her on edge, teeth grinding, left to wonder why the old world had built this thing of aberrant beauty.

  “Aubriana, I don’t know where else to find you. I seek your company.”

  Margaret spoke so softly that her voice was carried up by ice clad wind, threaded through the Organ, and spat back as whines. Left shoulder shifting, she was hefting the weight of a brass lantern, an octagonal cage of burnt mirror and glass, kicking away hues of firelight, infected with sickly rainbows, as motor oil spilled to pristine pond.

  Margaret heard a soft hum first, followed by down tempo song.

  “She died of a fever,

  And no one could save her,

  And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.

  But her ghost wheels her barrow,

  Through streets broad and narrow,

  Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’”

  A hard gust knocked into Margaret’s lantern, rocking it to one side on a ring of leather, creaking. When the light swung back it illuminated henna and auburn tones of the woman they had once called Dread Harvester.

  Harvester wore a thick leather bustier, pulled up and over her shoulders with braids of rusted steel cable. Without her grim mask of broken blades and rusted knives, thick sepia lips smiled back at Margaret. She was opaque, when sea spray scrolled up it scattered through her.

  “Do you still speak with who you please?” Harvester asked. Her voice harmonized with the Organ, almost singing. Her visage blurred and froze for a moment, before she tipped her head to the side.

  “I do,” Margaret smiled, standing before the Bay’s great, chilling hatred.

  The ghost of Aubriana was unmoving, “You know, this is where I stood, before your mother and I fought. I was sick. Twenty years in a state of slow decay. Do you know what it's like to eat without a jaw? It’s disgusting.”

  Margaret knew very well where they were standing. She’d heard those stories for years.

  “I’m here to parlay. I can’t trust the living tonight.”

  Aubriana smirked, and her eyes grew dark, windows of night, “The daughter of Maggi Lopez summons up the ghost of Dread Harvester to explain how untrustworthy the living might be. You should retire as a witch. Be a stand-up comic.”

  What’s a stand-up comic?

  Aubriana began to slowly pace around Margaret. She’d vanish behind her, out of view, and the hairs at her neck would stand at attention, before Aubriana materialized again.

  “You’re exiled here. Aren’t you?”

  “No one outruns death forever,” Against the salty bite of ocean air, Margaret could smell wormwood, orchid, and ginger every now and again as Aubriana moved, “I broke my bargain with a god, to save a young girl. My fledgling. That girl was named Aniceta, and if allowed to live, her children would change the world that Maggi Lopez built. A fire god told me this on the streets of San Jose, wearing the skin of a dying man.”

  Now I know the score, Margaret rolled her eyes, sucking salty air in through her teeth.

  Aubriana paused in front of Margaret, twisting her neck and examining the woman whose hair was soused and shaded black. “No, I didn’t hear your mind. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I can’t read another woman’s face.”

  Margaret peered up. Even with blocky two-inch heels, Aubriana had stood taller than her in life, and still did in death.

  “Your fire god’s prophecy was true. Aniceta had twin daughters, one of them named Ramona Lopez. You met her at my side, on The Beast. She set into motion a sequence of events that will destroy the Antecedent Empire.”

  Eyes of dull sepia began to shift into shades of ivory and deep beryl, just as last time. No ghost Margaret knew had eyes so beautiful. “You’re going to kill Alexander. Aren’t you?”

  Margaret considered lying, then cast off that thought, “I will, yes.”

  “I held that baby in my arms, you know.” Aubriana’s eyes shifted back to faded chestnut, her lids unblinking as she paused, “But, we all die someday.”

  Another great wave assaulted the Organ. Without a right hand to wipe her face Margaret could only blink hard, several times, “Before that happens, I need to kill a very dangerous witch. I need the help only a ghost can offer. Maybe, only Dread Harvester can offer.”

  Aubriana took a step back, leaning down to study Margaret. Her lips didn’t move, nor di
d her face offer expression. She simply blurred and sharpened around the diseased flames, waiting. Even for Margaret, it was unsettling.

  “I need you to move undetected, unseen by the inclined. I’m going to give you a body tonight, and loan you something of great power. In return, you may keep the body.”

  Aubriana reached up to her face with both hands, fingers running down her jaw, and she answered with a smile, “Ghosts can only control a living body if the person consents. Or if their mind has been rendered feeble. A witch, even a feeble witch, would never allow it.”

  The storm that had merely plied at Margaret’s comforts was now commanding more power, and waves grew angrier by the minute. “I’ll take care of the mind. Are you familiar with Aurora Cuttersark?”

  While Margaret shivered like a baby bird, Aubriana’s apparition only came into sharper focus. Her voice was visible in the physical air around Margaret, creating slender, salton strands that evaporated after only a second.

  “I know her. Aurora Owens’ child. She’s czarina of Modus Vivendi.”

  Margaret’s brows furrowed, “I’m giving you her body tonight. Her brother wants her dead and imagines me as Magnate of that order. An order of witches whose loyalty she’s cultivated for years.”

  Aubriana answered with a mean and toothless grin, “He wants you stabbed in the back. With clean hands. Disgusting.”

  Margaret nodded fast, her toes numb, “I kill his sister, give him the power of Vivendi witches, and his sister’s followers kill me. Easy. But that’s not how I plan to die. If I give you Cuttersark’s body, you will keep them in check. I’ll be Magnate in name only. You’ll be the boss of that cult until the day Cuttersark’s body dies.”

  “I’ll amuse myself, somehow,” Aubriana answered, a noise that seemed to vibrate the very stone under Margaret’s feet. There was a deep echo in those words, something living inside the storm, something in the waves that even Margaret couldn’t understand.