by C K Gold
Some of Red Hand’s spearmen fanned out while more dragged the dead aside, Winds and peasants alike. Gore streaked the dirt. Stained, worried faces watched Fang and Red Hand step out into the circle of waiting men.
Fang held himself ready. Red Hand was apt to betray him at any time and order the brothers to slay Birch or turn on the exhausted peasants. He had to have some trick up his sleeve. A straightforward fight only favored Fang. Red Hand was too cunning to accept such a sharp disadvantage unless something else was in play.
Red Hand feinted toward Fang’s gut. Instead of moving, Fang belched fire. The flames forced Red Hand back, but stopped short of reaching him no matter how much force Fang put into his exhalation. He tried again, but the next spurt of flame was pathetic in comparison. Somehow he’d run out of flame. Was it because I drank the other night?
But he didn’t have time to contemplate that. Red Hand ducked a swipe of Fang’s claws and stabbed at Fang’s right flank. He grabbed the sword and jerked back in shock.
“Did you think you held the high ground here?” Red Hand laughed.”Didn’t I say we both had a dragon’s soul?”
That sword thirsted for Fang’s blood. For a dragon’s blood.
Fang retreated as his hand dripped black ichor. Instead of igniting, his blood merely soaked into the dust, as inert and ordinary as all the other blood spilled in the yard but for its color. Red Hand chopped at Fang’s thigh. Without thinking, he sidestepped. He knew the rhythms of battle better than he knew himself. A sword wounding him was nothing new. Whatever magic was within it barely leveled the field between them. Fang only had to remember what fighting had been before he’d bled on the dragon stone. He’d loved a good fight then. Now he had what was possibly the best fight of all, with a bigger, stronger, and best of all tireless body.
He caught Red Hand’s next slash between his palms. The steel burned, but the kick he landed squarely in Red Hand’s copious belly was worth it. The old man staggered back, breathless. Fang slashed him, splattering red blood over black. They traded a flurry of inconclusive blows, each scoring only shallow wounds.
Fang had expected to outlast Red Hand’s endurance, but each time he touched the sword, his strength faltered. He found himself moving more slowly each time he had to swat aside one of Red Hand’s attacks. The old man wasn’t even sweating. He controlled his breath like a true master.
But Red Hand was only a man.
Fang deftly wove past a thrust and drove his palm into the soft space beneath Red Hand’s sternum and hooked a foot behind the old man’s heel. Red Hand stumbled and caught himself on one knee. He seemed to sag, as though stubbornness had powered him and now his stamina had all ebbed away. Fang reared back for a crushing blow.
Sand caught him in the eyes. Faster than Fang could think, his third eyelid shielded his eyes from most of the blow. Still, he instinctively blocked his eyes with his off-hand. Something smashed into his right wrist. There was an awful, tearing sensation and the feeling of something terribly awry. The assembled crowd cried out, some in shock, and others in triumph.
Fang lifted the gushing stump where his main hand had been. Thick blood poured out, dizzying him to see. But Red Hand wasn’t satisfied with maiming Fang. He lunged, nearly taking Fang under the ribs. He avoided the strike just in time and roared without thinking, spraying cinders and smoke directly into Red Hand’s face. The old man bellowed in pain.
Without flammable blood, Fang knew he’d soon bleed too much to stay on his feet. Cold despair outpaced shock and pain. Not only was his body not perfect stone, even killing Red Hand would neither restore Fang’s old body nor his amputated hand.
The two fighters circled each other as the riveted crowd watched in breathless anticipation. This fight would decide the fates of everyone fighting in Dockside, from lowly fishmongers all the way up to the head of Dockside’s richest gang.
Red Hand glared through streaming eyes burned by an explosion of sparks from Fang’s maw. But Fang’s draconic body had failed him against the sword Red Hand had always carried. It’s like a battle from the legends, Fang thought. Except all the legendary dragons had been forces of nature rather than traitorous godsons, and no gang bosses ever had leading roles in operas.
Fang’s lopped off hand had flown off in an arc into the crowd. Birch darted through the cleared circle after it. It was a useless effort, but Fang didn’t have the breath to spare on warning Birch off. Instead, Fang tackled Red Hand when his attention was drawn by Birch’s sudden sprint. The two fighters wrestled for a moment before Fang found himself thrown off, unable to grapple with only one taloned hand.
Red Hand wasn’t a small man. Even though he couldn’t match Fang’s current height, his great weight gave him the stability and mass he needed to resist a throw. All he had to do was slap at Fang with that sword to weaken him and that was enough to drive Fang back.
Blood seeped from Red Hand’s shoulder, spreading down the breast of his linen robe in an ever-widening stain. Fang had wounded him better than he’d initially thought. They both regarded each other from opposite ends of the circle. Fang’s eyes flicked over to where Birch stood, holding what seemed to be a human hand.
Mine? Fang wondered. It was a cruel joke either way.
A boot sole whispered on dust. Red Hand launched himself forward, leading with his sword. Fang dodged right, but Red Hand anticipated the movement and had already corrected. The sword pierced Fang’s chest, driving through hide and bone just like a knife through a steamed bun. At first the pain didn’t register; the sword felt like a huge weight on his chest, like he was pinned under stone. Then the sword blazed. Fang screamed, spewing soot and heat enough to catch Red Hand’s hair aflame. It wasn’t enough. The old man laughed as his sword ripped through Fang’s back.
The crowd surged forward, either to separate them or tear Fang apart or fight again — he couldn’t tell. He wrapped his useless arm around the old man and tugged him close, then jammed his talons through Red Hand’s back and into his heart. All the strength left his legs then, washing out like rain through a gutter. They sank down into the dust together amid their allies, entwined like old friends.
Fang watched the life ebb from the old man’s eyes even as Fang himself slowly suffocated on his own blood. He struggled not to cough. The blood had to stay inside; without, he’d surely die.
“Is this justice?” Red Hand asked as Jun pulled him free. His hand slipped from the sword hilt as Fang’s claws slid out of his heart.
Without Red Hand holding him up, Fang sank onto his back in a spreading pool of his own blood. Worried faces peered down at him, not just peasants and Society fighters, but also brothers. Goat, almost unrecognizable from a beating, pulled Birch into the circle of onlookers.
Fang blinked once, slowly.
“Don’t worry,” Goat said, “he’s got your hand!”
Birch reached for Fang, who tried to protest. His voice came out as a bubbling groan, awful even to his ears. But perhaps this body had already reached the limits of pain and could feel no more, because Fang felt no more terrible fissures open. Birch pulled Red Hand’s sword free and cast it aside. The ringing clang was the last clear sound Fang heard before the world erupted into a deafening howl, a waterfall of hundreds of simultaneous cries.
He raised his arm to push Birch away before his body broke apart completely, but Birch caught Fang’s wrist and lined up the stray human hand with the clean cut.
A spring seemed to erupt in Fang, cold and pure, spreading from his chest and rushing outward. He sucked in a breath like he’d once again escaped drowning in the Silver River. He didn’t choke, didn’t even feel the hint of a need for a cough.
“Am I dying?” he asked, and marveled at how finally he sounded like himself again. At least that much was restored to him in the end.
Birch snatched up something from the ground behind Fang. Birch drew back to show it: there in a square of ragged silk was the dragon stone.
“I think this is called winning,” B
irch said, and released Fang’s hand.
Birch leaned back, but Fang followed, fisting his two suddenly very human hands in Birch’s begrimed shirt. “No,” Fang said, “this is winning,” and pulled Birch into a fierce kiss. Blood thundered in his ears, louder than the witnesses all around them. He’d finally won — no matter how transient that victory ultimately was, no matter how ephemeral the peace after, Fang had finally avenged his parents and all those whose roots had been severed by Red Hand.
Fang broke it off and rose. Justice had taken Red Hand away. With the density of the crowd around them, Fang couldn’t see. He felt shorter, disconcertingly so. Getting used to his old body would take time, but as he glanced sidelong at Birch, he knew it wouldn’t be unpleasant.
“As I defeated Red Hand, I claim the chair of the Four Winds,” Fang bellowed. His words were swallowed up by the crowd, but soon he could hear himself repeated faintly by others. “The fighting ends now! Put out the fires in Dockside. Release everyone you’ve imprisoned! There will be no more slaving, there will be no more tar, no more debt!”
The Rootless Society picked up his words and chanted them in a ripple that spread from the compound yard outward, a chant that would, he later learned, sweep through Dockside faster than any fire.
Goat retrieved Red Hand’s bloodied sword and raised it high. “For Fang! For loyalty!”
The faces in the crowd blurred as events unfolded around them. Fang was the center of a new kind of chaos; the loosening of Red Hand’s death grip on Dockside. The Moon Knives were out there, and so were the Demons, and untold smaller knots of lawless, desperate men, but Fang had changed what was within his power to change.
Birch gripped his hand tightly, almost painfully. “It won’t stay this simple,” Birch said, but he was alight. The high flush in his cheeks made him beautiful despite all the grime and pain.
“Let’s go.” Fang led him back toward the mansion, its facade now blackened and broken. The crowd parted slowly before them, setting a pace that was nearly stately.
Without Red Hand to threaten and cajole them, the vast majority of the brothers lost the will to fight. The few who carried on were silenced not only by the peasants, but also by other brothers.
Fang expected many of the survivors, especially the newest recruits, to simply slip away. He had no illusions left about his fellow men. All that he had in common with his brothers was that they’d all sworn allegiance to the Four Winds once upon a time. After that, the similarities ended. Just like there were truly evil men among the gangs of Dockside, there were indifferent and even good men. Fang hoped that many of the latter would stay to help him put the Four Winds’ banner to rest once and for all.
Fang and Birch dragged chairs into the bloodstained chamber Red Hand had used as his throne room. The throne listed in two drunken halves behind them, seemingly split by a single powerful blow.
Goat was the first to join them, then Orchid. Both were soot-streaked and bloodstained, though Orchid, unlike Goat, appeared entirely unwounded.
“We’re working on finding Ranu,” Goat said. “Jun is downstairs, digging a grave for Red Hand in the garden. I told the others to leave him alone. The others are already working on finding the missing people. They’re probably in one of the warehouses.”
“Including the other brothers?” Fang asked.
Goat shook his head. “I don’t know. Just before you showed up, Red Hand had the gates sealed and ordered a bunch of us killed.”
“How did you escape?” Birch asked, leaning toward Fang.
Birch’s leg was still wrapped in the same filthy bandage, Fang realized. “Orchid, can you find a surgeon? Birch’s been shot.”
“You idiots are trying to hold court after one of you almost died and the other’s been shot. It just figures,” she said. “I hope you’ll both be very happy together. Try not to die before the physician arrives, because I must pay for his time even if you’re dead when he comes.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and stalked out, nose in the air.
Goat watched her go, wearing the same mix of appreciation and mild fear on his face as Fang and Birch. “I, um, I hid actually,” Goat admitted. “Then the rioters showed up and started tossing fireworks in, so I did my best to reach the gate and let you in, since I figured things couldn’t get worse, right?”
“Why did he have his men slaughtering each other?” Birch asked. “He had to know we were coming.”
“Because he didn’t want any traitors on the inside helping,” Fang said. “I bet he was waiting for them to show their faces, and when no one tipped their hand when we were already marching, he decided to take care of anyone he doubted. The old man was paranoid.”
Goat held out the sword, hilt first, and offered it to Fang.
“No thanks,” he said, mouth dry from just looking at it. Red Hand had carried a dragon-slaying sword all this time. No wonder he’d been happy to have Fang wearing a dragon’s skin. Red Hand hadn’t made an empty threat when he’d talked about killing Fang if he left again.
Birch rose and took the offered hilt instead. He shoved it into his belt and tossed the dragon stone to Fang, who juggled it for a few seconds as though it were a burning coal.
“I’m the one who’s bleeding,” Birch said. “Unless you want to run me through with this thing, you should hold onto that for now until we decide what to do with it.”
Goat cleared his throat. “Oh, and you don’t have to worry about anyone giving you two, uh, any trouble. We’ll shut them up good.”
Fang looked at Goat’s swollen, pounded up face, then back at Birch. “You know what? That’s fine with me,” Fang said. Then more people arrived in the throne room, and there was no more space for privacy.
Epilogue
Dockside was ravaged by fires and violence during the battle between the Four Winds and the Rootless Society. Half of the Roses burned, destroying the old Maze and many of the homes there. The Pearl didn’t escape harm, either; what Pearl herself saved through heroic efforts with a bucket brigade was quickly looted by a small mob no one was willing to name.
Abalone’s Tea House fared better. Despite swearing off her work there, Orchid practically made it her center of operations. She met with other neighborhood leaders there, slowly hammering into shape a chain of observers and rumormongers. This chain would eventually form a net covering all of Dockside, one big enough that the Society would catch wind of any more rotten business and kill it before it could grow out of control.
In the end, the city guard had intervened to push the rioters back all the way down to the docks. Only Jun’s intervention prevented more bloodshed. Evidently the guard commander knew and respected him. Most were allowed to disperse, though some — fingered as looters and other opportunists — were seized and imprisoned. They were beyond Fang’s grasp, and so he’d turned his attention from them to the matters he could control.
Fang had his hands full with reining in his old brothers and with dissolving the Four Winds. Someone had ransacked Red Hand’s office during the battle and either destroyed or stolen seals and papers that documented the complex privileges and obligations tying Red Hand to the gang’s properties. They also designated heirs.
Given Red Hand’s prior announcements, Fang found himself in a state of limbo. Red Hand had never revoked Fang’s status as successor in front of anyone, yet any documents indicating who inherited the lands and leases of the Four Winds had vanished. Birch, for his part, found the entire situation hilarious — of course a gang’s dissolution had to be complicated by bureaucracy.
Fang had his suspicions, and that was why he sat in the throne room again, in front of the shattered throne. Birch had elected to stand behind him, pretending at being spymaster to Fang’s brigand king. Or at least that was how Birch had put it. The throne room, with its tattered and charred furnishings and the ruins of the throne itself, lent an air of holding court in the wreckage of a war-torn palace.
Fang wasn’t certain whether others saw him as the conqu
eror or as a defender sitting among the ashes. While reconstruction continued in Dockside, Red Hand’s favorite old haunts remained burned out and filthy. Fang had elected to restore the throne room last. He had only conceded to safety in shoring up those rooms to ensure that no roofs fell in on any heads, including his own.
Goat arrived first, followed by Fang’s surviving partisans, who all bore blades in case of trouble. They escorted both Two Coins Ranu and Jun into the ragged throne room. It was the first time either had returned since the riots. Ranu was dressed in his usual finery, but drying blood stained his left temple. Jun seemed untouched except for the rope binding his wrists.
Sweat streamed down Ranu’s narrow face as he was brought before Fang. “Good to see you’re doing well, little brother,” he said. His voice trembled as he spoke. “No more trouble with the guards, I hope?” His eyes darted past Fang to fix on Birch for a second. “No little surprises from Red Hand?”
Jun looked from Fang to Ranu. Without any further warning, he snatched the sword from the nearest guard and buried it in Ranu’s back, and was on his knees before Ranu hit the ground. The brothers lunged for him, but Jun threw the sword out of his own reach before his escort could skewer him.
Goat rolled Ranu’s body over. Red Hand’s eldest godson had died quickly and without even knowing who’d slain him.
“Explain yourself,” Fang snapped as he stood. Having yet another man murdered right in front of him, without being able to do anything to stop it, made his blood boil. “And why isn’t he restrained?”
“We bound his hands,” Goat stammered. “Holy hell, Jun.”
“Ranu tried to murder Red Hand and he tried to murder you. He wasn’t done with his schemes. He had you tracked. Your attack on the Knives. The men who attacked you at your apartments. His own gambling hall. The warehouse assassins.”
Ranu hired Wing, then. She remained a loose end, and a nagging one at that.