Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  Manteca Reach, California

  The crossroads of Yosemite and Murphy is where all three armies would meet.

  First to arrive were Lord Owens, General Townsend, and Warlord Meyer, all three on horseback just like Margaret and Badger.

  Eric Owens’ steed was a purebred, black as dirty motor oil and twice as glossy. Rippling with muscle and light ballistic weave, great eyes of liquid night watching Margaret and her smaller mustang, twitterpated, both afraid and aroused. Townsend was kitted up much like Badger, bicep and shoulder plate shrouded in ripstop and camouflage, face a mask of stone and granite. His moustache was waxed down and obscured his mouth so thoroughly that even a tooth-wide grin would have been shrouded. Meyer wore no uniform, his thick arms naked in misting wind, covered in degrees of faded ink, a colorful mottling of art slowly accumulated over decades. He was older, though not as elderly as the old Warlord who Margaret had met to parlay with months earlier.

  Reaching under the pistol strapped to her corset armor, Margaret withdrew folded fabric, old and tattered, a deep shade of dust, patterned in a complex weave of dark brown. She began to unfold her mother’s shemagh. It was difficult to tie at her neck with only one hand. The fabric knotted at the back of her neck, under ducktail of auburn hair, her fingers cold in the chill wind. Townsend watched her, unblinking, and she could feel a similar pool of calm behind his skull. In his heart a warm desert wind kissed Margaret’s cheeks, turning her lips rosy and her toes red.

  “Your brother approaches from the east. Lady Manticore from the north,” Townsend gestured down each road with a single hand, fingers held straight and thumb resting rigid.

  Meyer’s horse, annoyed, turned sideways, rotating on all four legs as he spoke, “On behalf of the Maul, Lady Mayhem, I want to thank you for this day.”

  Margaret glanced at Meyer. He didn’t wear a helmet like herself or Townsend, and his face was covered in ginger and salt stubble. His forehead seemed a little too big, and his nose had been broken directly between his eyes, “I’m thinking none of us will die today, Warlord.”

  “Ha!” Meyer barked, his neck easily as wide as his skull, “It doesn’t matter. We shall meet in no man’s land. This is a holy place, and the Lord of War smiles upon us.”

  Perhaps he does, Margaret thought.

  The air had fallen still in the crossroads, only smatterings of rain still hinted at the black skies overhead. Toward the 1st Army sat a series of large concrete warehouses, painted in vibrant murals, showing Manteca Reach farmers tilling and harvesting under blue skies. That seemed like a broken promise. Besides that, the ground was flat in every direction, only interrupted by road brim. She could see riders approaching, just as Townsend had promised, and she held her hand to the mustang to keep her fingers warm.

  The northern riders arrived first.

  Both were women. The first on a gray and white steed, unarmored, quick in the haunches and mean in spirit. Lady Manticore was more than a decade older than Margaret, with wide shoulders, hips, and an ample bosom under ballistic pauldrons and black corset, not all that dissimilar to Margaret’s. Her hair was mostly a puree of white and gray, braided at the sides of her skull, back to the edges of her shoulders, waxed and greasy with silver ribbons and a crown of bronze chain and onyx beads across her scalp.

  “Little Mayy, yuh’ filthy cunt, you ain’t died of syphilis yet?”

  Margaret twisted her horse away from Townsend and Meyer, her hand still resting on the mustang’s neck, keeping the animal calm. Two more witches in this proximity would make her jumpy. Meyer’s mount reared up once, then backed away while he hollered for his animal to calm. More accustomed to this kind of magic, Lord Owens and Townsend maintained better control of their mounts.

  “Fuckin’ come over here,” Margaret’s eyes welled up with salt and she drew her horse along Lady Manticore’s, leaning across the divide and wrapping her left arm around the bigger woman.

  Manticore came from the same school of magic as Maggi Lopez and Aubriana Harvester, with a strong embrace and arms that clutched like binds of rebar. Barriers spun in Margaret’s mind to be so close, gusts no one else could feel crawled up and under her skin, tugging away from her bones and marrow.

  “Yuh’ got one arm, kid. How in the fuck, yuh’ only got one arm? Who’ina fuck did that to yuh’, little Mayy?” Lady Manticore’s eyes bulged, as she backed out of the embrace, waving her hands as she spoke, the conductor of a symphony only she could hear.

  “Alex’s kid, Amy. I shot her in the chest for it, but I guess she’s back,” Margaret was intensely comfortable with the older woman, and it showed as her voice relaxed.

  “Long time no see, Mayy,” the second witch rode up on Manticore’s right, dressed in white linen and black leather around her shoulders and sleeves. She was a little younger than her cousin, Geraldine Bianchi, and wore narrow spectacles of smoked glass, spherical and bound in golden wire. Valerie Fazio, better known as Lady Cuir de Cordoue, had been blind since birth. “You still look blood-red to me.”

  “Val,” Geraldine faced away, “the girl is missing an arm. Her fuckin’ arm is gone.”

  “Have you seen Amy Lopez since the 2nd Army arrived?” Margaret asked, intently.

  Geraldine turned back to Margaret, gesturing to the eastern road with one hand, her eyes still wide, “I saw her. Bitch ain’t right. White eyes, chalky skin, yuh’ wouldn’t believe it. Bitch feels like a fuckin’ cemetery in winter. Like, when yuh go to bed with a fuckin’ sore throat. Val and I want nothin’ to do with that shit circus.”

  Looking over Geraldine’s broad shoulders, Valerie spoke to the dirt with a soft tone, brown hair dropping past freckles, “Her skin and bones, they’re not part of the world anymore. They’re connected to something else, something old.”

  “When yuh’ brother shows, I’m tellin’ him. We’ya out. Yuh’ know that, right? We’ya not fightin’ here today for you, or him, or the Antecedency.” Geraldine’s accent stayed as broad as her chest, but her voice fell low as she looked over a shoulder at the three commanders with Margaret. She was reading them, glancing through their minds, figuring them out.

  “Ramona told me,” Margaret answered, “you’re taking the southwest for yourself.”

  Geraldine barked a laugh and held up both her hands, palms facing each other, as if she was holding a loaf of bread, “I’ll call it Angelise! Get it? ‘Cause Los Angeles! ‘Cept that name is stupid. Gonna’ rename that whole shiteating city, build me a palace onna’ fuckin’ water where it's warm.”

  Margaret reached for Geraldine’s hand, wrapped up in faded mint leather, “If anyone says I turned on Alexander, just know I didn’t. I was pushed to this. I want you to know that, at least.”

  Something in Geraldine’s gray eyes, or at the corners of her lips, would always be matronly for Margaret’s senses. It was the same glimmer that had kept her so close to Aurora Owens and had commanded her to chase Maggi’s love like a starving mongrel.

  “Yuh’ didn’t need to tell me, little Mayy. I know whatcha’ woulda’ done. I’m fuckin’ thrilled that yuh’ didn’t make me hafta’ kill yuh.’”

  Nothing in Geraldine's tone suggested she was kidding.

  “Geri,” Margaret lifted her head, tilting like a child who was about to ask for a second helping of dessert, “I need a favor before you leave.”

  “Whatcha’ need kiddo?” Geraldine laughed.

  “Alexander is almost here,” Townsend shouted from behind Margaret, and she was thankful for the warning. She wasn’t paying attention to much past Lady Manticore.

  “I need that whip you always carry. I need to pay off one of Maggi’s debts, and I think an old spirit demanded it.”

  Hanging off Geraldine’s saddle was the very whip Margaret needed.

  It was buttoned on with a narrow leather strap, just left of the pommel. It didn’t seem like much. It was thick with a hammered steel hilt and notches carved and cut through leather rope. Age had polished the black edges, and barbs wound in
to the weapon with narrow cuffs of battered steel. It had been carved in such a way that when Geraldine cracked it, air would dart in and out of the notches, making a howling sound.

  “Screamer?” Geraldine looked honestly shocked, “Whatdya’ need Screamer for? Can’t yuh’ fuckin’ negotiate a new fuckin’ bargain for Maggi’s debt?”

  Margaret shook her head, “This is the new bargain,” without thinking about it, Margaret lifted her left hand to sternum, exactly where the Eye of Shahr-i-Sokhta was resting against her skin.

  “Fuck!” Geraldine shouted, looking away, up and to the sky around her, wind turning up fast, a violent bellow that died as quickly as it started.

  “I’ll owe you.” Margaret said, ghosts of whispers at the edges of a gust tugging her shemagh and unsettling the horses.

  “Fuckin’ right, yuh’ll owe me,” Geraldine was watching past Margaret and ice tumbled down her spine. She couldn’t precisely feel her brother, but she could see him in the face of Lady Manticore. A moment of respect for what was about to happen skittered across her face. “They say yuh’ the new Owens’ mistress. Yuh’ better fuckin’ believe I’ll come to fuckin’ claim yuh’ debt to me.”

  With her left hand, Geraldine unsnapped the whip, Screamer, handing it over to Margaret in something closer to a toss. The weapon felt like water under Margaret’s fingers, cool across her skin, turning warm quickly. There were memories embedded in the ragged leather. The sky was growing darker by the minute and the rumble of distant thunder strode across Manteca Reach, a giant immune to the hopes and nightmares of mere mortals.

  “They’re here, aren’t they?” Margaret didn’t look at Geraldine; instead her eyes were fixed on the plumes of diesel smoke climbing off 2nd Army’s lines, perhaps a mile distant.

  “Yup,” Geraldine said, “we doin’ this or what, little Mayy?”

  Margaret laid the coiled whip to rest at her pommel and urged her mustang to turn and face both her brother and Amy Lopez.

  It was starting to rain now in earnest.

  1:04pm April 15th, 39 Veilfall

  Manteca Reach, California

  While Margaret still looked ten years her junior, she’d have guessed that Alexander had aged a decade prematurely.

  The weight of command burdened his brow, chipping away and cutting deep lines across his face. He was squinting, eyes against a flurry of rain that sometimes whipped across his face or shifted to spatter the back of his coat. He didn’t wear the chrome plated armor of previous years. Useless, it simply cast him as a larger than life figure, reflecting the very sun on earth, polished and pristine in a messy and cruel world.

  Instead, he wore black wool and heavily pocketed slacks, boots easy at his stirrups, a half-hearted endeavor to lace them. His coat had a wide hood that started at the shoulders and was stitched under two gunmetal epaulettes, falling at his neck. He had a dimpled chin and a face full of scruff that would swell to become a thick beard if left unchecked.

  For possibly the first time in his adult life, Alexander wasn’t radiating a supreme confidence. Against Margaret’s mind he felt steadfast, consistent, but his throat was full of humility and his shoulders tensed with trepidation and worry.

  Margaret tensed her own jaw in reaction to his coiled emotions. It was a seed of doubt that bumbled around her chest. Seconds at a time, she wondered if this was right, if committing murder in no man’s land was the only solution. There was a wave of numb that crossed her fingers, buzzed at her lips, and the tops of her ears.

  As Margaret approached, she lifted her hand to the Owens commanders, cautioning them to approach no further. This conversation was not for them, it was a private moment that would not be etched into history books, subject of conjecture for a century to come.

  Alexander Lopez did not speak first, instead his daughter cast the line.

  “Mayy, I’m so sorry.”

  Her voice was a rattle. It sounded like a cicada caught in her throat. Amy’s lips didn’t move quite right, as if someone else’s voice was filling in for her own. Her flesh was sallow, gray, burdened with veins of blue, and eyes that wouldn’t focus directly on Margaret, instead falling somewhere to her left knee. Amy’s hands were shaking at the wrist, palsy and frail, fingernails peeling and broken. The tattoo ink that crossed her face even seemed less crisp, fading at the edges and blending into her dull skin.

  Margaret’s lips curled up, and she let the weight of her helmet tip her head sideways as she spoke, “Shut up, Amy. I didn’t come here to parlay with a ghost.”

  Although Margaret’s bitter disgust was real, she was actively hiding a gnawing sensation at the back of her skull. It felt as if rats had burrowed past her hair and skin, scraping their teeth against bone and spine. Amihan was not the woman she’d been at Stormair, she wasn’t even the pitiful creature begging for mercy under Margaret’s nightmares. The thing that rode on an auburn horse next to her father was a husk. A toy that didn’t work right. There was no flash or spark, no burning cinders at Amy’s lips, no bite under her skin. None of the fire that flickered so deep inside Aurora Owens or Maggi Lopez.

  She was cold. Cold like a winter morning in Crafton, just after snowfall, before the shops and merchants opened for business. Plague Dog was easy to hate. This thing was hard to pity.

  “Amy told me everything,” Alexander spoke with a deep tone, free of his mother’s clipped accent, still as a stone, “She told me about Ramona, and what she did to you.”

  Margaret moved up closer to Alexander’s horse, facing his left side, still far enough away that when he spoke, he was raising his voice over the den of rainfall. It was heavy enough now that Margaret could feel the cool seeping through joints and chinks in her armor, under molle and straps, down her chest and singing at Tilapia flesh. The helmet’s brim shaded her eyes against the wet unless the wind shifted, then it spit directly in her face.

  Lifting her left hand up, Margaret groped her right shoulder, “Ramona didn’t light me on fire. Ramona didn’t take my arm, or scar my face. Ramona didn’t command the Antecedent forces who fought my 3rd Army,” without shifting her eyes from Alexander, Margaret’s left hand fell away and lifted lazily to favor Amy with a stiff and angry index finger, “That’s on Amy.”

  Margaret was joined on the right by Geraldine and her cousin.

  Lady Manticore leaned over her horse’s neck, wrists crossed on reigns, and shoulders hunched down. She was sneering when she spoke.

  “Yuh’ve lost control, Alex. I know it. Little Mayy here, she knows. Yuh’ kids kicked all’yuh china over. Ain’t no kinda’ glue fixes this shit circus, Alex. No kinda’ glue.”

  He has no idea, Margaret thought, reading her brother as well as any book. He honestly believed that he’d fix everything with a rousing speech, an embattled sales pitch.

  “Geri, we can fix this. Ramona Lopez has turned on the Empire, turned on all that we built. All that we built,” Alexander’s words were just as strong as a shot of gasoline to the throat. His fist was clenched so tight that the knuckles turned white, “She lied to all of us. We can hold Stockton here today. The 1st and 2nd Armies will force House Owens to surrender, and then we’ll turn east. We will chase down my daughter like a dog, for the Empire.”

  Alexander summoned his own kind of strange magic. His ability to connect with others. Margaret could hear Maggi’s voice whispering at the back of his words, a cloying righteousness that had seduced Margaret since she was a child. It was the illusion of morality, the suggestion that what he wanted to do was right for the sole purpose that he wished to do it.

  He even dared to smile, and that shook Margaret to her core.

  He’s talking about killing his daughter. How can he summon that much conviction?

  He was wholly avoiding those emotions, to such an extent that only the familiarity of his mind made Margaret smell the sorrow that was leaking from wrapped pipes in his soul.

  “Yuh’ already heard? Reno seceded. Reno and Omaha. How many others, Alex? How many others we ain�
�t heard? Bitches that didn’t send a dear-john? How many, Alex?” Geraldine lifted her hands up, gesturing east, past where Margaret sat, “Yuh’ Empire is dead Alex. Go home. Go back to Crafton. It's ov’ah.”

  With his right ankle, Alexander spurred his horse closer, between Margaret and Geraldine, his chin lifted, his chest tightening to unleash another sustained volley of direct inspiration, “The Empire is not dead. You served my mother, now you serve me. We can take back everything Ramona stole, we’ll cement our foundations. We can do this!”

  Margaret looked away from her brother, eyes skittering across Amy’s quivering body, across the road and into the brown puddles that bounced under rainfall. No one was likely to notice that she was crying. There was something inherently cruel in all this. Allowing Alexander to believe he could win here today, that he could simply talk his dream back to life.

  That’s the problem, Margaret grimaced, we all shared the dream until Saint Louis. We should have just turned around, we should have called it done.

  “We can’t,” Margaret heard Geraldine say, “because we don’t wanna.”

  “What are you saying?” Alexander answered, his voice prying into the cold snap, his mind a wall, pushing and pushing, just like it had always done, even when he stood only as high as Margaret’s hip.

  Margaret couldn’t watch, and she didn’t. She only listened.

  “Alex, the 2nd Ahmy form’lly says fuck off. I’m takin’ the Southwest, too. Los Angeles, an’ Phoenix, all of it. Yuh’ ain’t no Emperor there. Unless yuh’ march an ahmy.”

  A dish fell somewhere in Alexander’s mind. Margaret heard it. Old bone china, hand painted, a relic of his mother’s time. It was something he’d taken for granted, even ignored, long since retired from the kitchen. It now sat somewhere on a shelf, displayed for his tender graces on the occasion that he was bored.

  “Does she speak for you, Valerie?” Margaret could hear him ask Lady Cuir de Cordoue. The quiet told Margaret that Val had simply nodded, and every nerve in Alexander’s body turned chill and prickly.