by Jenn Lyons
**Black Flag. Black Flag. Black Flag detected. Retinal and fingerprint identification confirmed. Ara-MacLain Mallory. Wanted for High Crimes. Call Ministry of Justice for immediate disposition. Armed, dangerous. One set magneto-web gloves. One set microwave bracers. Three ceramic stilettos. Five unidentified technological items. One package tobacco cigarettes.**
Doors clanged shut. I could hear the whirring build-up of powered defenses. The irony of being gunned down by the automated weapons array of a stupid five-star restaurant after the war was all but officially over wrapped itself around my gut and squeezed.
“Deuce—?” I tried not to squeak.
“Working on it—”
“Work faster.”
The red whirling lights shut off, the guns powered down. Doors opened. I remembered how to breathe.
A charming young man with a service caste mark appeared on the other side of the security airlock. He smiled warmly at me. “Welcome to the Farthest Shore. It is my sad duty to inform you our restaurant is designated exclusively for high-castes.”
I scoffed and continued walking.
“Ara? Ara!”
“Medusa, get the phantom tweak out of my hair.”
“Transferring.”
The restaurant host appeared in front of me. “Ara, my apologies, but we cannot allow any lower-castes inside the Farthest Shore Restaurant.”
“Nuts.” I walked forward, right into the man—and through him. The hologram flickered behind me as I disbursed the light.
“Ara, my apologies, but we cannot allow any—” the image flickered as Medusa’s security clearances breached the second fire wall. “Our apologies, Lieutenant. Please be welcome.”
I smiled with grim pleasure and fought down the urge to ask Medusa if she could put my bill on the house. Instead, I looked over the restaurant proper for any sign of Paul.
The restaurant hummed with activity, too busy with people carrying on their own equivalents of celebratory parties. No sign of any Sarcodinay, but I hadn’t expected any. The Sarcodinay who were still in town were either keeping a low profile now that the barbarians had been let in the gates or tied up with transferring control of essential services. I wouldn’t have bet that all of the people here were Urbans though; some would be with the League, trying out a taste of the high life.
If the people who ran this restaurant had any sense at all, their bills were on the house, too.
I found him. Paul was sitting against the back wall, up on a tiered balcony with a privileged view of the restaurant, lounging on an l-shaped red velvet curoquo back lit by luminescent marble. A center holo screen stood nearby where he could watch the latest gladfights with pretend indifference.
He looked good.
I’m not sure why I’d expected otherwise. We worked in the same arm of the League, Intelligence Operations, but I almost never saw him. We were both too busy fighting the good fight. In my case that might mean anything from search and rescue to stealing military plans, but Paul was a deep cover man, so rarely in contact his code name was ‘Hermit.’ He spent long stretches in megacities, a wolf dressed in skald clothing. Looking good was part of the job requirement. I guess a part of me was arrogant enough to wish that he’d gained weight, suffered under the preponderance of years: that he’d been lost without me.
The reverse was closer to the truth.
I smiled when I saw he was wearing all black. He wasn’t disguised as a skald tonight. He’d been born in the Wilds, in one of the Quarantine Zones, and even if he wore a scholar caste mark and scholar manners, a part of him would always be a Wilder. No purple hair, glow-in-the-dark Mohawks, luminescent moving tattoos for him. He stood out in this crowd of over-preened cockscombs. He was beautiful without being vain.
He saw me as I walked up the stairs, took in my outfit and mimed howling at the moon. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to kiss him or hit him, so I smiled instead.
“Hey Paul,” I said. “Sorry I’m late.”
He stood up, kissed me on the cheek and showed me the patch of couch he’d saved for me. “No worries, Mallory. I hope you don’t mind my choice of restaurants.”
“How could I say no to the most exclusive restaurant on the planet? I’ve never eaten here. Never dared.” I swept my gaze over the room. “I almost didn’t make it. Damn automated defenses.”
He laughed. “It’s been its own kind of entertainment, listening to them goes off every fifteen minutes.”
“So just how did you get in?”
Paul grinned like the proverbial imp. “The security measures are still in place, but those weapons will never fire. They’re turned off at the main panel. Just makes you jump and age five years.”
“Humph.”
“Besides,” he added. “I’m not a Black Flag breaking six different laws walking down the street. Gold and white too. You always had such a gift for scandal. But where are you hiding the rest of your tattoos?” His eyes widened. “Tell me you didn’t have them removed.”
I shrugged. “Vanessa asked me to cover them for her party. She didn’t want me scaring the locals when they realized mine were the real thing. I ended up scaring them anyway.”
“Ol’ Vanessa missed an opportunity, bless her sweet ringlets. I’d have put you in a bikini with all that pretty washed ink showing to give the local boys a thrill. Most of them would give up season tickets to the gladfights to talk to an honest-to-Keepers striketeam member.”
I thought about Gala-Patel Randolph. “Don’t be so sure. Besides, I’m not a striker.”
“You used to be. They don’t know the difference.”
“I do.”
His eyes held a cynical, thoughtful glitter. “The Urbans who aren’t hiding because the sky is falling are already looking for any way they can to prove to the League they’ll be loyal, as loyal to us as they were to the Sarcs. They’d fall all over themselves to kiss your ass—if you don’t push them too far.”
I stared at him. “Vanessa called you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Vanessa called me,” he agreed. “Right after you left.” Paul studied his cup of spiced juice before he looked me in the eyes. “This can’t be easy for you. I know how much you hate the Sarcodinay, but you’ve got to get a grip on yourself.”
“You have more reason to hate them than I.”
“The Sarcodinay, sure, but most of the time Urbs didn’t have too much choice about their fate in life. You should try to stop viewing these people as the enemy. You are one of them, after all.”
I rocked back, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. “I’m not. I’m absolutely not.”
“Really? You’re still, what, a lieutenant? After ten years in the League and enough medals to decorate a general’s funeral khani? Hell, you’d still be a corporal if they didn’t have to make you an officer to put you in Intelligence Operations. Use your skills? Absolutely. Put you in charge of anything? Not a chance. No one born in a megacity is going to be in any position of power in six months. It’s all going to be Colony people or Wilders.”
“You know I have virtually nothing in common with these people. Hell, I have more in common with the Sarcodinay—as do you, come to think of it.”
That stung him, more than I meant it to. The pain flashed through him, a quick acid burn that he pushed aside so he could make his point: “The difference, my dearest, is that I’m not from a megacity. I’m a Wilder, and so I’m hip and fashionable and you are not.”
“You know I’ve never cared about any of that. I’m not interested in making captain or being promoted through the ranks or whatever it is that officers are supposed to want. I didn’t fight the Sarcodinay all these years because I wanted a terrific career. I fought the Sarcodinay because I hate the Sarcodinay.”
“And that was great when we in the middle of the never-ending war, but the impossible happened last week and the war is finished. What do you want now, oh partner mine?”
I closed my mouth and stared off to the side. I had no intention of answering that
question. All of my wants could be answered with a single, soul-wrenching word: impossible. It took effort and force of will to keep myself from going over the list of impossibles in my mind: Mom, Dad, Penny, Duncan, Zach, Nicholas, Paul...
I wrenched my mind back to the present, where Paul was still winding up the pitch. He gestured to the restaurant at large. “They all know the sword is about to fall, as soon as the takeover is signed and inked. Ministry of Justice is soiling themselves at the thought of what’s going to happen to them once the Colonists are in charge, and they’re being brought up on war crimes.”
“That’s not going to happen. The Council’s said they’re offering amnesty.”
“For someone so worldly and cynical, you are so naive. Even if the Council is sincere, which is questionable, do you honestly think the Urbans believe them? All these people have ever known have been the Sarcodinay and the Sarcodinay’s thugs over at Ministry of Justice; people who would pat a man on the head and say he wouldn’t be punished then send his family off to the Mines. Anyone who has so much as a second cousin who partied at a bootleg drinking den is suddenly claiming they helped support the League. You wouldn’t believe the black market for pre-Plague goods that’s sprung up in a week. They’re not even bothering to hide it. The smart ones are buying silk outfits like that lovely bit of fluff you’re wearing and swearing on their mother’s ashes that it was something passed down through the family since before the Plague. This is, by the way, what I