Sol? SOL?!!
Hayden aimed at the top of the stairs.
“Shit… Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”
You can access the game, can’t you? Akoni said.
Sol stared at the gun. If Akoni’s body died, Sol had no idea what Hayden would do while he had to wait for Akoni to respawn. Access the game… access the game—take control of the code. If he could ever take control of the code, he would troll the hell out of other players and…
Hayden fired, dead aim right at Sol. The blast burned through the wall to his left. Hayden fired again, this time above Sol’s head. Hayden fried the wall all around Old Sol ’til he yelled and threw the gun. It hit Sol in the cheek. Hayden charged him, leapt at him, pinned him against the wall.
Hayden’s eyes were up so close to Sol’s, Sol could see through them. There was a person there, as much as anything desperate to live. But in Hayden’s eyes, there were brackets and slashes and numbers. Sol could touch them. Sol could have them if he wanted.
Sol butted his knee into Hayden’s chest. He dug his fingers into Hayden’s neck. The avi breathed heavy and hard on Sol’s face. But there was no heat or spit. Sol never saw this animation before. Didn’t know any of the avatars could be this lifelike. Or maybe it wasn’t an animation at all—just a connection of the survival instinct.
Sol pressed his hand against the wall and propelled them both forward. Hayden scraped at his arms, but Sol took his knee to Hayden’s neck.
“Wha’ you mean by distraction?”
But he didn’t give Hayden the right to respond.
“Wha’ you mean by distraction?!”
He pushed Hayden’s head into the floor. Pushed his thumbs and index fingers under Hayden’s eyes. They stared at each other for a moment, both wonderin’ if he could do it. Sol trembled in his chair. His fingers hovered above the keyboard.
Hayden’s hand flinched. Old Sol felt him reaching for something at his side. Sol dug in. He expected blood to spurt from Hayden’s eyes, but there was nothin’ but his fingers inside holes. He pressed down harder until his fingers disappeared. He moved around the brackets and the numbers. The words… They floated like water in Hayden’s head.
The door of the back entrance creaked open.
“You knew he’d attack,” Sol accused.
“Better for you to take him out for me. I didn’t need another AI like me out there, especially one mad I tried to kill him.”
Gladius joined Old Sol on the landing. “I can’t believe you fought him auto off.”
“Couldn’t make Akoni do this. I’m responsible for my own solar system.”
“Sure…” Gladius said. He kicked Hayden. “He’s not ever respawning, huh?”
The distraction…
“Talk later,” Old Sol said. He logged out of the game.
HE CHECKED HIS phone. No new text messages.
“Y’all home?” he called in the hallway. Anybody?
“What you need, Pops?” Planet 1 said from his room.
“Nothin’. You good.”
“Then why’re you yellin’?” Brie’s voice came from behind him. She gave him a playful slap to the back. He grabbed her in a hug a little too tight.
“If you wanna be useful, help me with dinner.”
Brie led him by the hand into the kitchen. An unsettling crackling greeted them. Sparks plumed from the dishwasher. A stream of flame washed the floor and the cabinets.
“Get the kids! Get the kids!”
“Call 911!” Brie screamed as she sprinted up the stairs.
Sol unlocked the phone to find a text waiting:
Brie ran downstairs with the kids. Old Sol followed them outta the brownstone with tears in his eyes. “Damn, brother,” he said over the phone, “what would I do without you?”
“I coulda caught Hayden. It woulda been easy to keep him outta the wiring.”
Sol shook his head. “’S’all good, hear me? We’re still figurin’ all this out.”
On the opposite sidewalk, Sol reached for Brie’s hand. “Firemen’re on their way.” He grabbed her and the kids into a giant hug. The kitchen window smoked up.
“Gonna be okay, Sol,” she said.
“No, my universe. Shoulda gotten it fixed when you told me.”
SOL SLIPPED OUT of the hotel room to take a call. Brie looked up from the bed of sleepin’ kids and gave him a small, sad smile.
“You gonna tell Chase you shared his nanotech?”
“He didn’t tell me for years, Gladius. I can keep secrets, too.”
“Damage wasn’t too bad?”
“My kitchen destroyed ‘too bad’?”
“Why don’t I slip a little extra into your account for the trouble? For once, you won’t have to do the stealing… Renovate the whole brownstone.”
They went quiet. Except for the bored attendant at the desk, the lobby was empty.
“You’re not the type who ever owes favors.”
“Okay, well, how about an agreement? We help each other out from time to time. Crieve Falls players and avis stay out of Out-Red’s businesses, and vice versa. We always protect each other’s secrets. Nobody needs to know about Chase’s new business, or that I have his technology. Nobody needs to know about your bank fraud and identity theft.”
Sol leaned back and sighed. “You cool with keepin’ all this from Otto?”
Gladius chuckled. “I’m the guild leader. Have been for a while. Otto decided that was best a long time ago. I made the man a lot of money. Don’t get me wrong—he still is in name.”
“No-choice partnership it is,” Sol said. “You screw me over, though—”
“Yeah, of course. And if you screw me…”
“Be honest with me, partner. What you need with nanotech? You can already do almost whatever you want outside the game.”
“I want a family, just like you.”
“You can’t buy one. You can’t win it.”
Sol felt the AI smirk. “Take care of that solar system.”
An AI wantin’ a family? Sol hunched over in the seat and shook his head. He put his phone on his thigh and felt a vibration against his leg. Akoni texted:
Sol messaged back:
Akoni texted:
The phone rang.
“We’re gonna prove your potential, brother.” Old Sol never realized how much Akoni sounded like him.
Old Sol sniffed. The lobby smelled a little rank. He looked up for an oil dispenser. Force of habit.
WINE, KNIFE, SWORD
• A TALE FROM THE EIGHT ISLANDS •
Lian Hearn
I HAD ONLY BEEN married a few months when my husband was murdered. A man called Okuda Tadaie held the sword that cut him down, but the man who gave the order was Saga Hideki, the Emperor’s general, lord of the Eight Islands. It was on the second day of a hunt arranged to honor Lord Okuda, our guest from the capital.
It was the punishment I brought on our family for refusing to take Lord Saga’s selection for my bridegroom. I had already chosen our neighbor’s son, my best friend and childhood companion.
I don’t suppose there is any other bliss that can compare to lying with the one you have loved and desired for so long, to giving yourself body and soul… I had it for a brief time. Now all that was left was to pray that my husband waited for me in that other world, where we would share the same lotus leaf throughout eternity.
But when I was not praying, I was dreaming of revenge.
Nothing alleviated my terrible grief except my determination to hunt down Okuda and kill him, and his master, Lord Saga, too. I did not want to be a widow who submitted to her senior retainers and allowed herself to be remarried, giving up the estates of Umaoka and Kuritani. I wanted to lay claim to those estates as my own, to fight Saga and punish Okuda. But everyone around me seemed disabled by grief and shock, and already, I sensed the feeling among my men that Saga could not be opposed. Now he had turned his attention towards us, there would be no escape. His will stretched all the way from Miy
ako and weakened everyone it touched. My senior retainers began to talk about Otori Shigeko, the Maruyama lady, who had married Saga himself to avoid further warfare. I knew, in their opinion, my sister and I should follow her example and submit.
I wished Lady Shigeko would take advantage of the intimacy of the marriage bed and stab her husband in the throat.
A MONTH AFTER the murder I rose at dawn and went to the forest behind the shrine on the hill. My monthly bleeding had been late, and I had been nursing a fierce hope that I had conceived a child the last time my husband and I had lain together. But in the night I had felt the familiar, dull pain, and by the time I reached the forest the blood was flowing. Even my phantom child had been taken away from me. I gazed out beyond the curved roof of the shrine to where the Kuritani Islands rose from a mist covered sea. I thought I had passed through the worst of the river of grief but there are always more depths waiting for you. There was no one to hear me, no maids, no men, no little sister to shield from my despair. I fell to my knees, clutching my aching belly, screaming and sobbing like a mad woman. My pain penetrated the earth itself, waking all that was dead, all that was lost.
When the flow of my tears finally lessened I sat up and wiped them from my face. I could feel the sticky blood between my legs, and when I moved I saw drops on the pine needles. Blood and tears had mingled. At that moment I wanted to end my life.
The only thing that prevented me was my sister. She was five years younger than me, twelve years to my seventeen, and I had always been like a mother to her. I could not leave her alone. Other people did not understand her. They were frightened of her sudden trances and her strange, abrupt way of speaking.
The sacred horses whinnied to me from their yard, which lay just below where I was sitting, between the forest and the shrine. The shrine was dedicated to the fire god, and the two horses had been chosen for their bright red color and their black hooves and legs, which made them look as if they had walked through embers and ash. The shrine was so small it was only used twice a year, in spring and autumn, so rather than let the horses stand around being bored, people borrowed them for various purposes, and fed them in return. They were used to humans.
On the first day of the hunt these horses had carried home the carcasses of the deer and boar. That evening my husband had said to me, “Imagine, Lord Okuda expressed a wish to take our red horses back to Miyako. What should I have done? Should I have offered them to him?”
“Certainly not!” I replied. “They belong to the shrine, to the red fire god.”
“That’s what I told him!”
And we laughed together at the man’s arrogance. The next day it was my husband’s body that the red horses carried home.
A hunting accident, I was told. His horse fell and threw him. But I saw the body and the wounds on it.
I went and petted the horses, my husband’s words echoing in my ears. “What should I do?” I said aloud. “Accept the marriage Lord Saga demands, persuade the men to rise up and fight back, or take my own life and my sister’s?”
I imagined myself cutting Rei’s throat and then my own. I did not think I would be able to do that. Then I thought we might hold hands and jump off the cliff together, but Rei was not capable of making that decision, so how could I make it for her? The horses blew through their nostrils at me and made no other reply.
Our coast is always windy. The pine trees rustle and sough, spray flies high from the waves below, buildings creak and sigh, but sometimes, around dawn, the wind drops, and the world suddenly becomes hushed. I realized the sacred trees looming over my head were completely still, and I could not hear the sea. The silence made me uneasy. I felt as if someone was watching me.
“Help me,” I whispered, maybe to the horses, maybe to whoever it was out there listening. “I will give you anything, I promise, if only you will help me. I swear it by my blood and tears.”
The pine needles shifted very slightly, as if under a footfall, and I felt a sudden shiver in the air, though there was still no wind. The straggling bushes beneath the trees moved as if someone passed between them.
“Come back!” I called. “Come back!” I thought it might be my husband’s spirit. I ran to the bushes only to be brought up by an impenetrable tangle of kudzu vine.
There was a faint smell of smoke, and then the wind sprang up again and blew it away.
When I went home my sister was awake. As soon as she saw me she said, “I’m not marrying anyone. You know I can’t.”
I knew she had been worrying about the matter most of the night. She was pale and trembling.
“You won’t have to get married,” I said. “And I will never marry again.”
“Let’s be nuns or shrine maidens,” Rei suggested. “We will live at the shrine with the horses.”
I thought, we might become nuns like Lady Tora in the tale of the Soga brothers. But I did not really wish to be like the women in the story. I would be like the brothers themselves, like Juro and Goro, and I would take revenge.
I looked at Rei. Her hair was matted, her face and feet dirty. I must have looked the same.
“Come,” I said. “Let’s go and bathe.”
A little way from our house there was a small hot spring that was only used by women. There were many springs in our domain and on the islands, steamy and sulfurous—some scalding, in which famous warriors of the past were said to have been healed of their wounds, and some, like this one, more temperate. Boiling or cool, it would not heal my wounds. As I followed Rei into the water I thought about the battle that is a woman’s life: the monthly skirmish with pain and blood, the invasion and occupation of the body in marriage, the life-threatening single combat of childbirth.
I washed Rei’s hair and then my own. I hoped the day would warm so we would dry quickly. When we returned to the house one of our maids, Nami, brought clean robes. After we were dressed she helped me comb out my hair while I combed Rei’s. We sat in the sun, our hair spread over our shoulders and down our backs. Nami fetched tea.
“It’s no more than twigs,” she said. “We have run out of leaves.”
Someone called from the garden. “Submit to Lord Saga, accept his offers and you’ll drink the finest tea every day for the rest of your lives.”
I could not see his face against the light, but I knew his voice. His name was Kitabatake, and he was one of my father’s senior retainers. His grandfather had submitted to our family, the Umaoka, after generations of rivalry, and the grandson seemed to retain some lingering resentment. My father had treated him with respect and wariness. I had always mistrusted him. Rei was nervous in his presence, and I could feel her growing tense now.
“It would be for the best,” the man said as he approached the verandah. He did not bow but let his gaze linger on me, as if I was still the child he had watched grow up and not an adult woman, the lady of Umaoka and the Kuritani Islands. It felt quite shameful that he should see us with our hair not yet dry, but I did not know how to reprimand him.
“Messages came yesterday from Lord Saga,” Kitabatake said. “He sent some very generous gifts too. Two of his sons are on their way by ship to Minatogura. They are to marry you two sisters and take over your father’s estates, as well as the islands that were your husband’s.”
Rei’s face had turned greenish-white, and she was trembling. I regretted washing her hair, and was afraid she would catch cold.
“I have no desire to marry again,” I said. “As for Rei, she is too young and… well, she is not able to marry.” It pained me to speak like this in front of her. She heard and understood everything though she often appeared not to.
Kitabatake studied her. He saw a girl on the threshold of womanhood. “She looks old enough to me,” he said. “And what is the alternative? If we refuse and prepare to fight we won’t hold out for long. We would be outnumbered. Umaoka is hardly even fortified; we don’t have the men to defend it. And frankly none of our neighbors is going to risk offending Saga by coming to your
aid.”
I could think of nothing to say.
“Make up your mind quickly, Lady Ren,” he said as he walked away.
His words left me feeling powerless and humiliated. My sister would not eat at midday. She was still pale and trembling and would not utter a word. I might have wished with all my heart she was like other girls, so I could discuss the situation with her, hear her opinion, even receive advice from her, but there was no point in such wishing. She was as she was, and I had to look after her.
I made a list in my head. One: accept Lord Saga’s command. Two: kill ourselves that night. Three: go to Miyako and kill Saga.
“Wine, knife or sword?” I said to Rei. She looked at me, puzzled.
“Choose one. Wine, knife, sword.” Wine for the marriage ceremony, knife to cut our throats, sword for revenge.
She turned her head away from me as if she had heard something behind her. She listened for a moment and then whispered, “Sword.”
I drew her close to me and ran my hands through her silky hair. I tied it back with a red cord and whispered in her ear.
“That means we run away tonight.”
Then I tied back my own hair in preparation.
I had never been to Minatogura, the great port of the eastern coast, let alone to Miyako, the capital of the Eight Islands. Apart from a little history and a few legends, I knew nothing about the country I was planning to cross. My husband had told me that the high roads to the west were protected by guard posts and barriers, but I still thought it might be easier to make our way by land rather than by sea. And we would go on foot; looking after horses on the way would be too hard.
I did not tell anyone of our plans, not even Nami. And because she hovered over us all the time, I did not make elaborate preparations. I put a spare pair of sandals for each of us in a carrying cloth, along with a string of copper coins. My father had shown me their hiding place beneath a floor board.
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