Kzine Issue 20

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  The silence had felt like an agreement. We were just another family, each of us quietly struggling with our issues, together.

  But standing by the canal in Commonwealth Park, we might have been on different continents, living different races. Afraid, not wanting my fears to be true, I told myself I didn’t know anything. Not really. Maybe Drexler had simply discovered an unknown reserve within herself, or maybe her performance was a fluke, born of chaos and competition—the rest of the field struggling for myriad reasons, while our daughter plunged on, inexplicably unimpeded.

  Unless I asked, or Sarah told me otherwise, there was no way to know.

  My heart was pounding. Drexler was flying. The closer she came, the more clearly I could see her face. Beaded with spray and perspiration under the brim of her visor, her lead had grown to an improbable ten lengths. She slowed her rhythm to prepare for the port side turn as I yelled out incoherent encouragement, bile rising in my throat.

  The world shrank to a muted point, the screen of my phone, our daughter’s face. I stared, searching for joy, satisfaction, desperation, anything that might suggest her mind.

  The drone swarm shifted above us to capture the oncoming Olympic captain and the pack behind her. Rather than slowing like Drexler, Kwik poured it on, mouth open, teeth bared.

  By the time our daughter had finished the Commonwealth turn, Kwik had shortened the lead to five lengths, her paddle slicing through the air like a propeller. I could hear Sarah cursing to herself over the cheering crowd.

  But Kwik’s burst forced her into a hard swerve that killed most of her momentum. By the time she’d finished and got the hammer back down, two other racers had climbed into her wash. Meanwhile, Drexler was cruising away toward Kenmore with inspiring, disconcerting ease.

  “Come on.” Sarah grabbed me by the shoulder. “Let’s get over to the Storrow Canal before she beats us there!”

  Sarah weaved through the crowd while I followed, one eye still on my phone. Drexler reached the Hereford junction; we found ourselves in a crush at the Beacon crosswalk. I turned my sweaty face back toward the Hancock Tower, gleaming under the scathing sun, and wiped my forehead with a shirtsleeve.

  “Forget Storrow. Let’s try for the finish line.” Sarah yanked me again. Tired and annoyed, I turned to see her relaxed, smiling, almost glowing. It had been a long time, years, since I had seen her like that. “If we run I think we can make it. She’s going to win!”

  “You really want to run from here to the Duck Pond? You know Drexler hates it when we mob her after a race.”

  Her joy dimmed a little before she shook her head. “Come on, Thomas. How many times are we going to get to watch our daughter set a new record?”

  That was the moment. The moment when I almost asked. But there was nothing I could do to set things right that wouldn’t destroy our little family. And watching Drexler, I kept thinking of Sarah’s argument, that humanity was evolving, and her work was part of that evolution. I pulled out my phone—the drone feed was zoomed in on our amazing daughter, smiling as the field fell further behind.

  I looked down at my loafers and decided. I couldn’t control the past, or the future, but I could embrace the moment. “Okay. Let’s go meet our girl.”

  Sarah let out a surprising, excited whoop and a few people turned to smile. Then the light changed and we were off, jogging toward the Public Garden Ingress.

  We made it to the corner of Beacon and Arlington just in time to watch Drexler hit the home stretch and break the finish line on our screens. Sarah shot me a smile before running into the street through a narrow break in the traffic, barely giving me a second to decide whether to follow.

  When I did a moment later I nearly got myself killed by a Smarttaxi, and had to dive back to the sidewalk. Getting up off the blistering concrete, palms skinned and pants ruined, I saw Sarah on the other side. She was still smiling, but something about her expression had changed, gone wistful.

  She waved before running for the pond, leaving me to wait for the signal change. I stood there and watched our daughter pump her paddle over her head, looking joyous and confused. The signal finally changed as Kwik crossed the line, and I hobbled for it, hoping to catch up.

  __________________________________________________________________

  The Commonwealth Turn is soon to be released in audio form as a podcast produced by The Centropic Oracle

  SLAVES TO ENTERTAINMENT

  by Matencera Wolf

  I closed my eyes and sat with my back to the cage. Night had fallen, and the shadowed landscape that trundled past offered less entertainment than the chattering of the driver and guard.

  “Move it, you lazy nag!” the driver said, cracking his reigns. “Bruno wants to be in Plateau before the sun comes up.”

  The guard roared with laughter. “He’s got a better chance winning this year’s Bloodbath after losing Golax.”

  “Quiet, Duke,” the driver warned. “Don’t go letting Bruno hear you say that.”

  Duke smirked. “What’s he gonna do? Kill me?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. Bruno was a gladiator back in his own day, until he won his freedom and started his own stable. You know how good a flesh worker has to be to do that?”

  Duke chuckled nervously and glanced over his shoulder to where Bruno’s caravan brought up the rear of our modest convoy.

  “Even so, he’s not gonna throw away his own shield on the road.”

  “No,” I said. “But what he will do is wait this trip out with a smile, frame you for stealing from him once we’re in Plateau, then buy you as a slave and put you in a cage right next to me.”

  Duke turned back and slapped the wooden bars with his club. “Shut up, Gambler!” he said.

  I jammed my fingers in my ears. “Have it your way then, forget my warning,” I shouted over the echo. “Gods know that I could use the company. Th’Linea doesn’t talk too much, and I can’t afford the pleasure of Asuka’s attention.”

  “I will speak to you when I have an order to give, man,” Th’Linea said from her corner of our lovely home. Her black hair was tied back in a ponytail that fell over one bronze shoulder. She was running her hand through the fur of the large feline lounging beside her, which was the form that she always paid Asuka to take.

  Duke slapped the cage again, but this time, my fingers were already plugging my ears.

  “I said shut up, slave!”

  “Technically, I’m a gladiator,’ I said.

  “Like there’s a difference.”

  “A slave is a slave for life,” Bruno said. “A gladiator, on the other hand, can battle against his slavery, and if he comes out on top, earn his freedom.”

  Duke almost fell off of his horse. Bruno had somehow left his caravan and taken a seat beside the driver without anyone noticing, but I wasn’t surprised. After ten years with Bruno, I had started to expect him to be where I least expected.

  “What in the wild barrens is that!” the driver shouted, reining in his horse.

  I mashed my face into the bars, trying to catch a glimpse of what had caught the driver’s attention, but all I could see was his back and the darkness beyond. Duke eagerly kicked his horse forward and returned a minute later.

  “A pack of rikalists have found some fresh meat wandering the road. We should hurry on pass now before they finish eating.”

  “Sure, anything to stop you from having to earn your wage,” the driver said. He kicked his horse into a trot before Duke could retort.

  I scurried around the cage, trying to find a position in which I could see more than the driver’s fat ass. I stepped close to Th’Linea and she punched me in the leg. The limb went numb, and I dropped to my knee. I forced a pleasant smile to my lips, knowing that she would hate it.

  “What was that for, Princess?” I asked, baiting her into a fight. She had made the mistake of telling me that she hated that pet name once, and it had stuck ever since.

  Th’Linea only glared, and Asuka let out a low growl,
playing the role of beloved pet to perfection.

  I opened my mouth to start an argument, but something far more entertaining presented itself. I lunged to the front of the cage with my one good leg. From over the driver’s shoulder, I could see that Duke had been wrong. The rikalists had not found fresh meat.

  A pale mountain of muscle battled toe to toe with the alpha rikalist while the corpses of two smaller rikalists lay motionless in the grass. The tendons in his neck bulged as he held the clawed wild demon by its wrists, trapping the scythe-like hands.

  The driver and Duke reined in their horses to watch.

  “Damn, look at the horn on that one! What kind of wild demon is that?” the driver asked.

  “Not a demon, a draquinus,” Duke replied. “All their males have horns growing out of their heads. Fetch a fair bit of bronze on the market.”

  The driver chuckled. “Good luck getting this one to hold still long enough to cut it off! Twenty tin disks say that he kills the rikalisk.”

  “You’re on,” I called over his shoulder.

  “You’re on,” Duke said, ignoring me. “He’s holding his own now, but without a weapon, he’s nothing but meat.”

  The draquinus lifted the rikalist over his head and threw it against a tree. A crack echoed through the night, and I thought that the fight was over, but the rikalist rolled on its back and jumped to its feet. The tree behind it sported a new scar running down its trunk.

  “You could give him your club,” the driver said.

  “And lose my disks?”

  The alpha rikalist stalked a slow circle around the draquinus, showing the respect reserved not for prey, but for fellow predator.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Bruno said. “See how he mirrors the rikalist, calm and collected. How he doesn’t rush into an attack out of fear, or back away. You could learn a thing from him, Santiago.”

  “How about you let me out of the cage so I can get a better view, then?” I asked, but I was already being ignored.

  Bruno unhooked a steel collar from his belt. “We’ll take him once the fight’s over,” he said to the guard.

  The rikalist lashed out with its tail. The draquinus managed to block it with an arm but then fell to one knee.

  “No!” Bruno shouted, his calm façade dropping away. “Get in there, damn you!”

  He jumped to the ground, slapped Duke’s horse on the rump with the flat of his sword, and charged forward. They hadn’t covered half the distance before the rikalist leapt atop the draquinus and the battle was over.

  Bruno flung aside the rikalist’s body and let out a relieved chuckle. The draquinus’ cropped hair was dyed red and gore run down his face.

  “I see that I needn’t have worried. Using the creatures own weight to drive your horn through its heart was clever. What’s your name, warrior?” Bruno asked.

  “Bastion,” the draquinus said, lifting himself from the ground.

  I looked away. I knew what was coming.

  “So happy to meet you, Bastion!”

  There was a sickening thump, followed by three more in quick succession. Apparently, Bastion had a hard head.

  “Put him in the cage with the others,” Bruno said.

  “Of course, boss. Want me to put the rikalists’ bodies in the cage, too? There’s always a hopeful fool willing to eat wild demon flesh to see what happens. They go for a pretty penny on the market.”

  “Their flesh is poison to the mind, guard. Put it near my gladiators, and I’ll force it down your throat until you puke, then put you in an arena as a mad malificia for the rest of your short days,” Bruno said.

  With great difficulty, Duke hurried to comply, dragging the unconscious mountain along the ground. Bruno was walking back towards his own caravan when he tripped over something in the grass. He kept his feet but looked around to make sure that no one had seen. Of course, we all saw, but no one made the slightest mention of it; not even I was that bored.

  The object that Bruno had tripped over was hard to make out in the gloom, but it seemed to be an axe of some kind. Bruno was a big boy, still robust in his fifties, but even he struggled with the weight as he heaved it from the ground and lugged it to his caravan.

  The cage’s door swung open, and Duke struggled to lift Bastion’s dead weight through the gap.

  “Grab his arms an’ pull!” Duke said.

  I complied, more out of curiosity to meet my new friend than anything else. As Bastion’s massive torso penetrated the cage, Th’Linea added her support and kicked his body away from her.

  “Cut it out, Princess,” I said.

  I gripped Bastion under the shoulders and dragged him to my side of our lovely home. It was only two steps away, but it may as well have been a mile. I was almost ready for bed by the time I propped him against the wall.

  Up close I could see the mural of scars that painted his white flesh. The parts of his skin that weren’t covered in blood were the same shade as the horn that rose from his silver hair, giving the illusion that he had been carved from a great block of ivory. I looked forward to waking him up. He was bound to be worth some entertainment.

  * * *

  We were safely locked away in our cell under the Plateau Arena when Bastion finally groaned. The air was rank, thick with the stench of dung fires and sweat. If the smell hadn’t woken him, then it would have been safe to assume that Lady Death had claimed him as her dancing partner.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” I said. “Well, technically, not the land of the living. We’re gladiators, so we always have one foot in the grave, ready to be buried and hopefully forgotten.”

  I stood and bowed, more because of the cage’s low roof than out of politeness.

  “I am Santiago, otherwise known as the Gambler around these parts.”

  I pointed to the other corner where Th’Linea sat stroking Asuka.

  “That’s Th’Linea, the Wild Woman of the Mountains. Don’t let the appearance of her pet fool you either, Asuka is actually a maleficia with some changer’s blood. It never shows its true form, but pay it some of your winnings, and it’ll show you whatever you want.”

  I waited for the draquinus to say something. He silently checked his body for injuries, running his finger over the lacerations along his chest that I had sewn shut.

  “Sewed you up myself,” I said. “I did a run in a hospice once upon a time.”

  Three seconds of silence. Nothing. He discovered the metal collar that weighted his neck and tried to force a finger between the metal and his skin. It retracted.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I was you. The harder you pull on it, the tighter it gets, and if you pull hard enough…” I made a popping sound with my mouth.

  His fingers fell away, and I waited to bask in his gratitude. Ten silent seconds passed, and I pointed to the spherical scar on his chest.

  “That scar got a story?” I asked.

  “I will trade information for information.”

  His voice was monotonous, without anger or even curiosity. To me, it was entertainment.

  “Finally! Someone who can hold a conversation!” I threw my hands in the air, and they smashed against the wooden bars. “What do you want to know?” I asked, rubbing the pain from them.

  “Where am I and where am I going?”

  “You, my philosophical horned friend, are the newest member of our motley crew of gladiators. As for where you’re going, you’re on your way to fight and probably die in the Bloodbath at Plateau with the rest of us.”

  The draquinus nodded his huge, horned head.

  “Is there any avenue of escape from our predicament?”

  “Of course!” I said. “All you have to do is catch the attention of a hero willing to battle his way through the guards, slavers and the collared slaves themselves, convince the master to remove your collar using the key that only he possesses, and then carry you off into the sunset.”

  “What is the best way to attract the attention of such a hero?” he asked
, continuing to nod.

  I fell over in laughter, slapping my knees, but Bastion’s face remained solemn. I hoped that he had always been so gullible. Otherwise, Bruno had hit him too hard.

  “Good one, friend. Alas, the only avenues of escape as you so put it, are winning the Bloodbath, or a long term relationship with Lady Death.” I bit my lip. “Well, you don’t technically get freed for winning, but each surviving gladiator on the winning team receives a hundred pounds of steel, a princely sum that can buy the freedom of all but the most indebted.”

  I left unsaid that I was one so impoverished. “Now, as much as I do enjoy hearing the sound of my own voice, I do believe that it is your turn to answer a question of mine. What’s the story behind your scars?” I pointed to the sphere. “That one in particular.”

  Bastion’s fingers traced the raised ridges of his white skin.

  “It is the remnant of when my anima was stolen from me as a child,” he said. “Our accounts are now balanced.”

  Closing his eyes, he pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. I continued trying to spark conversation deep into the night, but unlike me, he embraced his boredom.

  * * *

  The arena was filled with training gladiators. They were only using wooden weapons, but they still left cuts and bruises where they connected too sharply. Nobody took any notice of their wounds, though. They got up when knocked down, fighting on and pausing only to wipe blood away when it became annoying.

  Bastion was leaning against a wall of the arena, observing as I schooled Th’Linea. We had been in Plateau for two days now, and he was still refusing to join in our training.

  “Come on, Princess. You’ll have to be faster than that,” I said.

  I slapped her ass with both of my wooden practice daggers to emphasise the point.

  “I’ll teach you the place of a man!”

  She swung her staff at my head, and I ducked under the wild blow.

  “Calm down,” I said.

  I jumped over a blow aimed for my knees and slapped her again.

  “You’re too easily provoked. If we were fighting for real right now, I’d be able to cultivate a garden with your blood.”