by R. T. Kaelin
He wants to kill you!
Hiro lifted the blade to the captain’s neck. He saw the slow pulse building in the big vein alongside the bulge of the captain’s throat. He thought of the blood that would come.
He wants to kill you.
Hiro had seen pigs slaughtered. He had seen the blood spurt when old Gajo sliced with his thin knife. A lot of blood. And the broken squealing as the sows went down on buckled legs.
He wants…
His mouth went dry.
…to kill you.
Hiro hammered the shoto’s hilt into the captain’s temple, just where the helm cut away from his face. The captain started to fall.
Hiro ran the length of the street and turned the corner before the soldier hit the ground.
In the broad and empty streets leading down from the Holy City into Old City, Hiro came to a halt. His fear caught up with him before he could catch his breath.
I hit a captain of the guard!
Hiro looked at his hands and realized that he still held the shoto. He started to secure the blade at his belt. An image came to him, a vision of chopped hands, sliced away like fish heads beneath Mamoso’s cleaver. With a convulsion, he threw the sword away, clattering into a shadowed alley. A shaking took him, the cold and fear combined.
She put a spell on me.
Hiro thought of Madam Jimla’s dark looks and blue lanterns. The captain hadn’t been able to touch him. The moments had crawled by. He shook his head. He had always been quick, too quick for his own good most times. But not like that…
Almost like that. The fear just sharpened me. I found my focus.
Hiro looked at his hands again. They trembled now. The shaking had left him. He stared at them. Harder. Trying to see what secret they held.
Empty …
The eggs! Oh gods, the eggs!
He slapped his forehead. Somewhere back there half a dozen imperial soldiers had trampled their way over a scattered basket of blue-dyed quails eggs.
Returning to the Golden Temple empty handed would raise too many questions. If soldiers came searching they would be interested in the boy who came back empty handed.
Hiro huddled in the cold. He wanted nothing but to lie in the dry warmth of the stock room and to dream of Kenmia. The rain fell harder. It ran down his neck. He had to go.
Hiro hunched into his tunic and turned back. He took the side streets, taking the longer route through the cloth mills. He went slowly, jogging, watching the road ahead.
“You there!”
The men came from both sides of the street. A score of them, warriors all, in the yellows and reds of the Watto clan.
“You, boy!” The man who called him wore a silver mask sculpted to the bones of his face. A champion’s mask.
“Honored Sir?” Hiro made a bow. He backed away from the men, glancing behind him to see others emerging from a house on the left.
“Is this the one?” the champion asked.
Several of the warriors raised their lanterns.
A small man in black answered from behind him. “Hard to tell. He looks similar, but I had a poor view from my window.”
“Let us find out,” the champion said.
Two clansmen stepped forward, their black hair scraped back into tight ponytails and secured with bone combs. Each held a long hornwood bow, the arrows strung to them striped with red and yellow so all would know who made the kill.
The bows creaked as they were drawn. Both pointed at Hiro.
Oh hells!
They let fly together.
Hiro saw the shafts leave the bows. He saw them buck like plucked strings, and then start to turn as the flights caught the air. He watched them converge on his chest. And he took them from the air, one in each hand.
“Incredible!” The champion clashed his sword across the lacquered leather of his breastplate.
The other clansmen stamped their appreciation, and Hiro stood amazed, with the arrows pointed at his heart and the blood from torn skin leaking between his fingers.
“This is the boy who put Ghozo down. No doubt about that.” The champion pushed his mask up to reveal a lean, expectant face. He looked younger than Hiro had expected.
“Ghozo?” Hiro asked. “It was a guard captain…” He bit his lip to shut himself up.
The clansmen laughed around him. Ice ran down Hiro’s spine. The searing pain from his hands grew faint. Ghozo wasn’t a guard captain, he was the guard captain. The captain of the emperor’s guard, the emperor’s personal champion.
“He found Ghozo at the head of a column two hundred strong,” said man in black. “And he knocked him down. Twice.” He shook his head. “He looks like a kitchen boy!”
The Watto champion advanced on Hiro. The man’s face hadn’t been made for fear, but his mouth made a hard line as he came close, his eyes repeatedly returning to the arrows.
“You have shamed the emperor’s champion. What is your name, warrior?”
“Hiro.” He managed not to stutter his own name, and let the arrows fall, wincing at the fresh agony.
“Hiro, I have five hundred men of the Watto clan in these streets. A thousand more beyond the city walls. The old princes have a small army of samurai close by. Ronin, paid by the Axa merchants, roam in the Kenio forest. The people are ready for change. Give the right call and they will rise in a heartbeat.”
“Why do you tell me this, Sir?” Hiro could feel the ground shift beneath his feet, as if he balanced on a pinnacle of chance and improbable accident, stacked to perilous heights beyond all expectation.
The champion returned his sword to its scabbard. The sudden click as it slid home made Hiro flinch.
“The people of the Old City have no love for the Watto clan. My fellow clansmen do not trust the ambitions of the northern princes, and the wood-merchants of Axa hold neither the clan nor the princes any higher than they hold this new emperor.”
“Even so…” Hiro could see the pieces the champion laid out before him. The separate elements, each lacking in some regard, but ready to be brought together, like ingredients for soup, ready for the pot, ready to be more than the sum of their parts.
“What clan are you, Hiro?”
“Sanso,” Hiro said.
“A city clan! That makes you a man of the people, the people’s champion who felled Ghozo before a legion of imperial troops.”
“I couldn’t see them all,” Hiro said. “It was dark and raining…”
The champion’s laughter rolled over him.
* *** *
And so it was that Hiro came to walk at the head of a column hundreds strong, thousands maybe, samurai and ronin, clansman and citizen, torch-lit, a serpent of discontent winding up towards the Imperial Gate. The rain fell and the wind blew, and Hiro walked, his soaked tunic flapping around thin legs, and the Watto champion at his shoulder behind a silver mask.
Hiro walked and the night parted before him. He thought of the fallen noodles, of the dropped eggs, of Madam Jimla and the hundred years upon her face.
Blood would be spilled. Men would scream. Hands would be sliced from wrists.
“Everyone wants something more, boy,” Madam Jimla had said.
He thought of Kenmia and her dark hair, of the emperor beneath his golden roof, and the pile of accidents he must have climbed to get there.
Something at the corner of vision caught Hiro’s eye. There in the gutter, the handle of a wicker basket, and in the torchlight the gleam of something blue.
“Everyone wants something more, boy. The question is, are you quick enough to take it?”
Hiro snatched the basket of eggs from the gutter, the basket he had dropped when he first met Ghozo. And he ran. He ran faster than an arrow flies.
* *** *
“Noodles for table seven.”
Hiro took the bowl from Olmato. He wove a path to table seven, quick and sure. Mamoso watched him, nodding his approval.
Hiro set the noodles before the Owner. “Your food, Honored Sir.”
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He bowed, and then again to Kenmia, seated beside her father.
He turned to go, but the Owner spoke.
“How long have you been with us…?” He trailed off, expecting a name.
“Hiro, Sir,” Hiro said. “Two years.”
“We should have some opportunity for a lad like you,” the Owner said. “You look like you know what you’re doing, and Mamoso speaks well of you.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Hiro bowed again. At the Owner’s side, Kenmia smiled.
“Keep your wits about you, lad,” the Owner said. “And a position will come your way soon. Be sure you’re quick enough to take it.”
Hiro bowed.
He went to the stock room and he lay on the flour sacks and he thought of Kenmia and her dark hair, and all was well with him.
*
When You’re Dead…
by Michael A. Stackpole
I felt dead, and it was all Lancaster Dean’s fault.
Pain pulsed through my skull. I was pretty sure it was cracked, but at least it wasn’t crushed like the hard-hat that had protected it for a short while anyway. I saw the remains of it flattened beneath a broken concrete beam, with a twisted piece of rebar stabbed straight down through it. Something about that prompted me to smile and I felt the blood coating the right side of my face crack.
Despite having my brains feel like someone had used an in-the-egg-scrambler on them, the cracking of the blood registered and sent a jolt through me. I’d been out long enough for the blood to clot and dry. That wasn’t good, because I didn’t hear any sounds of digging. And if they aren’t digging…
I did a quick inventory of body parts and found all of them still attached—many things bruised, but nothing busted. I snorted once, blowing out a bubble of bloody mucous that I cleared away with a hand, then, for lack of anything better, I wiped it on a pants leg. If I was going to get out of here, neatness points wouldn’t count for much. Then I laughed, knowing my mom would be happy to know I had clean underwear on for when they took me to the hospital later.
One solid knock on your head, and your thinking takes on a distinctly non-linear nature.
I forced myself to think past the fog of pain, and began a search for my cell phone. The only light I had came from a few of those battery powered emergency lights, and the other ones that Lancaster Dean—”the Elusive Dean of Magic”—had placed around for his TV special. As near as I could tell that was the only favor he’d done me; and it wasn’t close to enough as far as I was concerned.
For a half second I considered that it might not all be his fault. The Scottsdale Galleria was this pink monstrosity of a building that had been erected in downtown Scottsdale as an upscale mall. It had failed miserably in that job, being more of a ghost town than a commercial center. It went bust, then got used as a set in a couple of movies. Tank Girl was the most notable of these, giving you an idea of how bad things were. Then it housed a traveling Smithsonian display for a bit, but only after it failed to become a sports bar complex and, after that, failed to become a corporate center.
The building was so snakebit, I don’t think they could have made it work as a homeless shelter.
Some genius at City Hall decided it had to go, and what better way to attract attention to Scottsdale than to have the building blown up on a magician’s made-for-TV special? Lance Burton and David Copperfield passed on the project—they’re just too classy. I guess it’s good Siegfried and Roy also passed or I’d have been trapped with big cats who were pissed off. I’m sure other modern Houdinis turned the city down, then they got to Lancaster Dean.
I don’t know magicians from a hole in the ground—just those I see billed on signs in Vegas—but folks made a big deal about getting Dean. The usual press kiss-up went on, so all the local news outlets told of his background. You know local TV—all press releases, all the time.
According to the legend he died when he was eight—a cub scout pal of his still swears he had no pulse after a fall—and he said he escaped from death and came back. Having accomplished that greatest escape, he launched a career as an escape artist. None of the newsies described his career as “modest” but they used all the words they use when they wished they could say modest.
All I know is that for me, he was a pain in the ass. I’d gone into the Galleria to make the final check on the explosives, just to make sure things were wired up perfectly, that the right pillars would be blown, so the building would come down folding in on itself, and not take out the other buildings nearby. Controlled implosion it’s called, and we’d set up to do it right. Dean made the inspection a pain by having his set dressing scattered around and insisting he’d do a final inspection after mine, ‘just to make sure things were all set.’
If everything that clown knew about explosives was C-4, it wouldn’t have been enough to blow his toupee an inch off his scalp.
And certainly all the C-4 we had in the Galleria couldn’t have cracked his ego.
I only found pieces of the cell phone. My Walkman survived fine, stayed clipped to my belt and everything. I’d not been listening to it while making my inspection. I’d just taken to wearing it when having to deal with Dean, putting it on and cranking up tunes when I couldn’t stand listening to him tell me how to do my job anymore.
I tuned it into the local talk station and got confirmation of what I already knew. “Welcome back to 620 Talk Radio. We have with us Lancaster Dean. Mr. Dean, just to recap…”
I could see Dean preening as he spoke—not caring that it was radio—and it set my teeth on edge. “We have one man down in there. A very brave man, very brave. He was doing an inspection of the explosives and… I should have been in there with him, but he’s a trained professional.”
“Now, pending notification of next of kin, they’ve not released his name, but we know he’s 35, a demolitions engineer…”
“Right and, well, Tom, if by some miracle you can hear my voice, you have to know we’re coming for you. I swear to you, Pat, and all your listeners, that I’m not going to let Tom die down in there. I’ve been talking with the rescue team and when we go in…”
“Did you say ‘we?’”
“He’s in there because of me. How could I not…?” Dean’s voice broke, then returned thick with emotion and subdued. “The team is working on some initial problems, but I’m in constant consultation with them, and I’m sure we’ll be moving fast.”
I turned the Walkman off and hugged my knees to my chest. The reason there was no digging, and no rescue team coming in yet was the same reason I’d survived. Something had set off some of the charges, not all of them. Static electricity could have, but that was unlikely. Thunderstorms blow up quickly in the desert, but it wasn’t the season and I’d have been called if that looked possible. Could have been some idiot ran a truck into a power pole or substation and caused a huge arc; but whatever it was, it blew some of the charges, leaving an unstable building sown with explosives for the rescue crew to try to figure out.
This building was a danger for them and that meant it was a tomb for me.
“There you are. C’mon, let’s go. You don’t have much time.”
I whipped my head around, which was not the thing to do with a concussion. The world kind of sizzled, as if a sparkler had been pressed up close to each eyeball, then things came back into focus. I saw this little guy, little ball of muscles, wearing a white shirt and tuxedo pants standing there. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and his dark eyes half-glowed. Grim determination settled over his face, and he impatiently waved me onward.
I got up to follow, with about a billion questions lining up in my brain, but the world began to defocus again, scattering them. I reached up and touched a low ceiling, steadying myself. “How did you…?”
He glanced back at me from within a narrow crack in a wall. “We’ve got to get out of here. It’s not going to be easy, but given what it took to get this far, the rest will not be that hard.”
I shook my hea
d, which is also not recommended with a concussion. “Can’t get out.” I tapped the earphones. “Radio says the building is unstable.”
“Radio? Where?”
I shifted to show him the unit on my hip. “It made it through better than I did. We’re stuck.”
“So that’s it, you’re just going to give up?”
“Don’t have a choice, do I?” I slowly lowered myself to my knees. “They’ll think of a way to get us out.”
“The only person getting you out is you.” He came back into the small chamber where I knelt and towered over me. “Let me tell you something, son. Life is a grand adventure, and you don’t live it by waiting. If you’re right, that you’re dead and you do nothing, then you’ll stay here, faint from thirst, and die. Or, even if you are right, you can be out of this place. You can be further along, working your way out. You might still die, but they’ll see you didn’t lie down and die. You kept fighting to the end. It might be that you’re going to be remembered as the guy who died here, but better to be remembered as the guy who died trying to get out, not trapped.”
Then he winked at me. “And, if I’m right, this will be the greatest escape this town has ever seen.”
It wasn’t like he hypnotized me or anything, but something in his words just thundered through me. I struggled to my feet, and he made no attempt to help me. He let me do it on my own, reinforcing what he’d said. I smiled—cracking blood be damned—and followed him as he melted through the hole in the wall.
Being a bit bigger than he was, I got a little scraped up going through. I had to shift my butt around and tore a pocket on my jeans. I reached out with my right hand, hoping he’d take it, but found a good piece of rebar and pulled myself along. I slipped free and leaned against a half-collapsed slab to catch my breath.
My partner stood there, arms crossed over his chest. “That’s the first step, let’s go.”