by Richard Fox
“They have Clay? Where?” Hower asked.
Zike stared at him.
“The secret police are…quite competent. They’d likely separate Clay from the others to discourage him from escaping,” Hower said.
“Unfortunate; that keeps other variables in play.” Zike tilted his head slightly. “Hulegu, your strike is authorized. Eliminate him, but I want confirmation, no saturation bombing.”
Zike motioned for Argent to follow him to the front of the shuttle where a small holo tank was active.
Hower stood there for a moment, then tossed the tardash jar into the crate, not caring when the glass cracked. He went back to the bench on the wall and sat down, a heaviness in his heart.
Chapter 35
Pyth came home through his kitchen door to find two pots boiling on a heavy iron stove and a radio crackling on a windowsill. As he unbuttoned his constable’s tunic, his hand fumbled absentmindedly over his sash as he tried to get at a covered button. He stopped and looked down at his hands. Lines of ash were embedded in the creases of his skin and his sleeve had a fine coating of dust—the remains of the Clays’ home.
“The fighter sees every mistake.” He muttered an old curse of his caste and rushed to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. He opened the tap then twisted a bar of soap in his hands before letting it fall into the basin. He smacked suds against his face, scrubbing hard.
“Darling,” said his wife Teya as she entered the kitchen carrying a tray of dried iptha cut into wedges; the white flesh of the starchy iptha had dark speckles. “I didn’t hear you—ah!”
The tray went flying as Teya’s hands went to her mouth.
“What? What?” Pyth drew his pistol, which slid out of his soapy hand and whacked against a small table already set for dinner. Pyth went for his truncheon and managed to keep hold of that.
“What happened to your face?” Teya asked.
“Huh?” Pyth looked in the window over the sink. A fine layer of ash clouded his caste markings, but where he’d scrubbed was clean, giving him the guise of a completely new caste of Tyr. “Fire…there was a fire…is all.”
“Are you all right?” She hiked up her housedress and squatted down to pick up the fallen iptha. “Anyone hurt?”
“Hurt? No…no one, actually. Huh…” Pyth shrugged off his sash and tossed it onto the back of his seat.
“Your sidearm.” She pointed beneath the table where his pistol lay. She was of the Speaker caste, and even though she wasn’t under the vows of any order, her kind did not touch weapons out of tradition.
“Sloppy. I should know better.” He undid another button on his tunic, and when he bent down to pick it up, the slate he’d taken from the Clays’ house almost slid out of his top.
“What was that?” Teya asked.
“N-nothing.” He re-holstered his pistol then hung the belt up on a hook near the door. “What’s for dinner?” He sat down, touching the slate still inside his tunic.
“Moonrise stew and my grandmother’s tea blend…for Lussea.” His wife set the tray of iptha aside. She got a bottle of ambary beer from the refrigerator and popped the cap for her husband, setting it in front of him.
“Rise stew and that gods awful…oh no…” Pyth took a swig from his beer.
“Yes,” Teya said, sitting down next to him. “She’s getting more color in her cheeks. She’ll be in full season soon.”
“I’m…I don’t know if I can handle this right now.” Pyth leaned back slightly.
“She’s been your daughter since the moment she was born. You know what happens when girls get to a certain age. Just because it’s our Lussea doesn’t mean she won’t have fertile seasons or—”
Pyth tipped the bottle up and drank deeply. “We have more?” he asked, belching slightly.
“I’ve been getting inquiries from several brotherhoods,” she said. “That she’s your daughter puts her a few rungs up in social standing.”
“No. No, if she—I’m not going to say it—her first season, then the pressure for her to be a matron will be enormous and—”
“You don’t want grandchildren?”
“Things…are a little weird right now. And…wait, where is she?”
Teya sighed. “Upstairs, counting the number of canned fish she picked up from the market today. You know, they won’t let her buy toilet paper anymore. The Toilers running the shops think she’s a straw buyer trying to drive up prices,” she said.
“Could you bring her down?” Pyth touched the slate through his tunic.
“Are we going to speak to her about offers? Something to get her mind off that Clay boy? People think we’re in some sort of new age after the Just War, but we are absolutely not. The ladies at my temple barely tolerate me for marrying a Blooded. But a Blooded and a Linker? Never.”
“Get her. Please.”
“Of course, dear.” She gave his shoulders a squeeze and left the room.
Pyth slowly removed the slate and examined it under the lights of his kitchen. The case was a beige plastic with tiny grooves worked into the edges that caught on his fingertips, stopping it from slipping away. Buttons flush on the sides changed texture when he ran his touch along the edge. Holding it up to eye level, he noted it wasn’t even as thick as a pencil.
He rapped a corner against the table, then against his mostly empty beer bottle. He frowned, then pressed the edge down hard, trying to crack the blank glass pane that took up most of one side. No success.
“Father!” Lussea hopped down the stairs. “So glad you’re back. Does your precinct have survival rations—not that garbage you ate in the army, but the tins of fortified bread that—what is that?”
She tilted her head to one side as she entered, the same inquisitive gesture she’d had since she was a toddler bounding down the same steps.
“I was hoping you’d know.” Pyth pushed it across the table to her as she took a seat, moving hair off her face. He noticed the slight amber hue on her cheeks and the tip of her chin, and his heart ached for a moment. He wasn’t ready for his daughter to be this grown up.
“Is it some sort of Islander trick picture frame? It feels like it’s made of glass, but it’s so smooth.” She frowned at the slate and marveled at how thin it was.
“So you’ve never seen it before?”
“No, why would you think that I…did you get this from Michael? The Clays? I heard there was some kind of a fire or something in their neighborhood and—”
“It came from the Clays’ house,” Pyth said, nodding slowly.
“Did you serve a warrant? Daddy, the Clays have done nothing wrong! Why are you bothering them so much?” she asked, slamming her palms against the table.
Teya, standing in the kitchen doorway, cleared her throat.
“It wasn’t me, Lussea. It’s the King’s Shadow. The Clays are…were…up to something. Something peculiar.”
“Oh, you’re sure of that?” Lussea asked with a mocking tone. “Pe-cul-iar.”
“Watch yourself,” Teya said.
Pyth took a deep breath, then explained what he experienced when the Clay home disintegrated. Both his wife and daughter were sitting at the table with him by the time he finished.
“Oh…” Lussea gently gnawed on the inside of her bottom lip. “I guess…that is peculiar.”
“Let me get you another beer. And one for me.” Teya reached across the table and accidentally knocked over the beer, spilling some onto the slate.
“Thanks.” Pyth swiped the liquid off, then touched the side and worked some moisture into the button recess.
The screen snapped alive with color and Pyth dropped it like a hot iron. It landed facedown, playing a tune.
“By the Far Darkness,” Lussea whispered, gently lifting the slate up by one side as it twittered with sounds of battle. She snapped her hand back and the three Tyr leaned a little closer.
“It’s like a TV,” Teya said, “but it’s not plugged into the wall and there’s no antenna…”
&nbs
p; “I found it in their house,” Pyth said. “Maybe it can only work in a kitchen?” He looked up at the lights, then back at the slate.
“Hold on.” Lussea rushed to a drawer, pulled out a knife and used it to flip the slate over, revealing a deep 3D depiction of armored warriors battling spindly reptiles clad in glowing armor. The words REPTILIAN ASSAULT pulsed at the top of the screen, though none of them could read that text. Icons to start the game appeared at the bottom of the screen.
“Those look like dire claws from the Slaver lands…but they’re walking?” Pyth pointed at a Reptilian. “And we never had weapons that shoot light or…” He touched a button and the screen switched to a first-person view of a battlefield set in crashed starships on a dusty alien world.
Pyth moved his hand slightly and the muzzle of the plasma gun on the screen shifted. He moved his hand the other way and the game followed.
“How is this possible?” He closed his fingers slightly and the gun fired, sending a sizzling bolt into the side of a damaged hull.
“Oh!” Teya pulled back. “Lussea, don’t get to close to it—”
Pyth wiped his face and the screen switched from the game to a picture of Lussea and Michael on a riverbank, she in a bikini and Michael in trunks. Lussea gasped.
Her parents both looked at her.
“That…that was a few months ago,” Lussea said. “A trip with the Unity Club from school.”
“You said you were at the Blooded Daughters retreat,” Teya said, narrowing her eyes.
“He didn’t have this—that—thing with him.” Lussea touched the screen and the picture slid slightly, revealing another beneath. “It was a normal camera and…” She swiped over to another picture of a group of several different castes, all in their teens.
“The Unity Club is a front for the heretics to the south,” Pyth said. “But I can let that slide for now while we…do that again. Flip through the pictures with your fingers.”
Lussea swiped again and a picture of Michael’s bedroom appeared—a shot of the door and pictures on the wall—taken from where he’d lay in his bed. His feet were covered by a blanket and there was a mirror to the side of the picture.
“Wait, what is that?” Teya scrunched her nose and looked closer. In the mirror was Michael without his synth layer, his normal human-looking arm holding the slate up, partially obscuring his face.
“What’s wrong with his skin?” Pyth asked. “It’s pale…”
“No caste markings either,” Teya said, looking at her daughter.
“It might be Michael.” Lussea frowned. “But he’s a Linker and…”
“It might be time to accept that his caste is all wrong,” Pyth said.
Teya gasped. “What if he’s really one of those lizard people from the war video? Could he shed his skin and—”
“Michael is not a lizard person!” Lussea began sputtering. “I mean—if that’s him in bed there, then he can’t be a lizard. Why be a lizard under that…pink? And then be a Tyr too? Way too complicated.”
“OK, maybe he isn’t a lizard thing. Then what is he?”
A hard knock sounded at the kitchen door, startling the entire family. “King’s Shadow for Constable Pyth,” came through the door.
“What do we do?” Lussea looked around frantically.
“Say nothing. Act normal.” Pyth scooped up the slate and shook it hard. He pressed the buttons on the side, and when the screen went blank, he slipped it back into his tunic and went to the door.
Pyth cracked it open slightly and a trio of Royals wearing identical suits stood on his back porch. One raised a badge.
“I’m off the clock,” Pyth said.
“Constable, I’m Suumsar. Need to speak to you about the incident earlier today,” the lead Shadow said.
Pyth glanced at his pistol belt hanging near him on the hook, then turned back to look at his wife and daughter. These were Shadows, and they acted as the King’s authority in everything they did. If he tried to keep the magic plate hidden from them…it might protect the Clays, but he’d risk his own family’s well-being in the process. Tyr who crossed the Shadows had a way of disappearing, or being suddenly exiled by their castes. Giving up the plate would upset Lussea…but Pyth had his duty. She was a Blooded; she’d understand someday.
He stepped outside.
Chapter 36
As far as Yenin could tell, the storm had been raging for hours. The hurricane winds had blasted the jungle, sending her searching for cover not long after she’d seen Cisneros burnt to death. The indigs knew their storms well enough to time when the eye would pass over; she had to admire that.
A wide leaf over Yenin’s head dipped and dumped rainwater all over her. She didn’t react. She was so thoroughly soaked that a little more moisture didn’t make much of a difference.
The pitter-pat of raindrops against the leaves slackened, and Yenin looked up to purple clouds as morning began just as the storm was relenting.
“Oh…now I’m in trouble.” She stood up and shook mud off her gloves and boots. Her stomach rumbled and she looked around the jungle. Small bunches of leathery fruit hung from branches, but tiny black insects crawled on the skins, no matter how much it had been raining.
Even if the bugs were gone, she had no idea what was edible around here.
She looked down at the laser pistol in her hand. No one was coming to rescue her. The indigs would burn her like they did Greg. She put the muzzle to her forehead and remembered the old stories about pirates being intentionally marooned on desert islands and given a pistol with a single shot in it. The story was never more apropos as she tried to squeeze the trigger.
“Goddamn it,” she said and lowered the pistol. She was too scared to go on, but not scared enough to end the journey. “Maybe…maybe the ones that burned Greg were just having a bad day and the ones in the next town over—I am so going to burn.”
Yenin jogged down a dirt road, the lower layers of packed rocks exposed by the washout from the storm rains. She came around a corner and found an abandoned car canted to one side in a ditch, the front wheels buried in mud, the trunk slightly ajar.
She whacked the trunk and it popped open, revealing several plastic bags full of what looked like pine branches and two suitcases. The bags smelled bitter and she tossed them aside, getting an oily substance on her hands in the process.
Inside the first suitcase were flower-print fabrics.
“I’ll just disguise myself as a happy spring mummy. That won’t attract attention while I’m…waiting for rescue? There’s Jacobs on second shift—he’s always seemed interested in me. Who cares if he’s got bad teeth and smells like socks? Maybe if I send him some suggestive photos and a grid on the planet, he’ll find a way around Corporate policies…jackpot!”
She flipped open the second suitcase and took out a rectangular green cloth with an opening for her head. Hoods and scarves of the same type of fabric were also inside, along with sandals far too small for her feet.
“A muumuu and a ninja mask? Maybe that’s the fashion around here. They dress for comfort just like babushka. Do they have lepers? They could have lepers…or people with halitosis. But this might be enough to keep me from standing out like a sore thumb. Progress!”
An engine rumbled in the distance, so she slammed the case shut and ran into the jungle.
A ramshackle truck arrived a few minutes later, and a group of Tyr hopped out of the back. The males were topless and wore pants that came down to just below their knees. Most had dark spots surrounding their eyes, others had wide blotches over their torsos and face, and one had circular speckles all over.
A female—Yenin thought, by the pitch of her voice—got out of the cab and shouted at the others. She was covered in the same type of muumuu Yenin had discovered; her hair was covered by a hood, her face by a sheer cloth. Yenin tried to memorize the details of her dress as they recovered everything from the car crash and threw the bags and one case into the truck.
The fema
le kept shouting and the cowed males took shovels out of the truck bed and started digging the car out. The truck drove off, leaving the males behind.
“Was she the big boss or just kind of a bitch? Whatever…it’s progress.” Yenin slunk deeper into the jungle then moved east, handrailing the road in case the workers got the car back up and moving.
A half hour later, she came upon a town along a riverbed where motorized boats sailed into a bay and a glistening ocean.
“Postcard,” she said, opening the suitcase and putting on the clothes, tugging the hood over her brow and covering up her face as best she could. “So stupid to do this, but I’m hungry. And thirsty. I’ll grab just enough to lay low for a few days until I can ping somebody from the Leopold. There we go, easy immediate target.”
She wrapped more clothes around her torso, left the suitcase behind, and got onto the road.
On the way into the town, she recalled in stark relief every time she opted out of the company’s voluntary survival training. In her defense, which she thought was pretty weak at the moment, the training was offered during crew rest rotations, and if she’d taken them, she would’ve missed out on shifts and pay. Skipping the brief indigenous Tyr cultural education module also struck her now as a poor decision.
But the Corp was going to wipe them all out, so what did she need to know?
“Ha ha…haaaa,” Yenin laughed at herself. “Just get food and water, woman. Maybe the Corp will license your survival story. There’s an idea.”
A car rumbled up the road from the city and passed her without incident. She felt a bit more confident as she stepped onto a sidewalk that was broken apart where it met the jungle. She took shorter steps, careful not to flash her boots from under the hem of her dress.
Tyr women wearing the same type of robe as she led children through the streets. Males picked up fallen branches and repaired storm damage. All chattered to each other in a language that reminded her of someone flapping an index finger over their lips while trying to speak German. No one gave her a second glance.