by Jim Heskett
Some of them ate breakfast with dates. These women and men, blank-faced putas in scant clothing, sat obediently by while the paying customers ate. Yorick tried not to think about it.
The elevator opened behind him, and Yorick turned to see Rosia strutting toward him. She looked gorgeous in her uniform of a blue skirt and a white button-down shirt, which fit her curves in ways uncommon to Rosia’s usual clothing style. She didn’t look too happy wearing it, though. Her fingers continuously tugged on the bottom hem of her skirt, trying to force it to reach a few millimeters lower.
“What are you doing up here?” he asked.
“I’m done with lunch prep, so they sent me to help you clear tables.” Her eyes skipped around the room. “Wow,” she whispered. “This is nice up here.”
“Do you remember the kitchen workers in the plantación cafeteria?”
“Sure. I knew a few of them, made a couple of friends over the years. It’s how I learned to cook a little. Why do you ask?”
“I never thought about them much. I could see what the farm serfs did every day, out there, breaking their backs in the fields. And I knew what we guerreros did, training every morning and afternoon. But the kitchen workers mostly did their jobs out of sight. They would give us the food, smile, and then disappear until the next day.”
Rosia cleared her throat. “We were all prisoners of Lord Wybert, no matter what we had to do on a daily basis.”
“Yeah. We had it easier than most, though.”
After a pause, she asked, “Anyone important here?”
Yorick checked the room before answering. There were only a handful of people remaining at two separate tables. At one table were two women, both of them working at portable computers, sipping tea and focused on their screens.
But the other table was of more interest. Three men who Yorick guessed were important, judging by their dress and behavior. They each had a brothel-provided date. They had consumed half a dozen drinks apiece. At least, that’s how many Yorick had seen during his trips from the kitchen to here and back. They’d been here at least two hours, so no telling how many they ordered when Yorick hadn’t been looking.
One of them said something funny, because the other two tossed their heads back, cackling at top volume.
“Who are they?” Rosia said as she tilted her head in that direction. She added a little hint of a sneer to the corner of her lips. Even though she’d only been here for twenty seconds, she obviously knew how distasteful and brash these three men were.
“Don’t know. The king’s men, maybe? They act like they’re important, for sure.”
One of the men whispered something to his date. She stood and backed away a step, a look of revulsion on her face. The man accompanying her reached out and snatched her by the arm. The woman winced and tried to pull away, but the man wouldn’t let her leave.
Rosia instinctively took a step in that direction, but Yorick put a forceful hand on her shoulder. He gave her a subtle shake of the head.
“We need to stay invisible, remember?” he said.
Rosia nodded her understanding, but she winced at the look of pain on the puta’s face. Something bad was about to happen here. The energy in the room had taken a sudden turn.
The man at the table used his free hand to unbutton the fly of his pants. Seated, with a lecherous grin on his face, he spread his legs wide and nodded down at his crotch.
“No,” the woman said, loud enough to attract the attention of the rest of the room.
“I paid for you, and you’re going to refuse me?” the man asked, an angry slur in his words.
“Not in the restaurant. I could get into trouble. Please, don’t ask me to do this here.”
The man at the table rolled his eyes and then let go of her arm. Instead, he snatched the back of her head and dragged her down to her knees by her hair.
Rosia grabbed Yorick’s arm and squeezed it. “No,” he whispered. With an angry sigh, she stayed put and didn’t try to intervene.
The woman moaned and tried to pull away, but he held her in place.
The man hesitated a moment and then drew a blade from his back pocket. With a quick swish, he sliced the blade across the woman’s neck.
Rosia let go of Yorick’s arm as she inhaled a silent gasp.
Sputtering and yelping, the puta fell back, trying to stem the tide of blood rushing from her open wound. Her hands became instantly slippery with blood as she couldn’t close the wound. A losing battle. The cut had been too deep.
After a few seconds, she dropped onto the floor, blood rushing out into the lush carpet of the restaurant. Her mouth ceased its movement, and she became still.
The three men at the table paid no mind as she bled to death. They didn’t even look down at her as they stood and dropped gold pieces onto the table. They adjusted their shirts and pants and then headed for the exit. On the way out, one of them cracked a joke at the others. Not a single look back to check on the puta on the floor.
Yorick was dumbfounded. Part of him insisted he rush toward the cut girl, but he knew it was too late. Dead eyes had already replaced the ones full of life only a few seconds ago. The flow of blood from her neck had already slowed.
Yorick looked to Rosia for answers. “What in the stars?” he asked, and she could only shake her head.
An arm grabbed Yorick from behind, and he craned his neck around to see the same young woman who had led them to their room yesterday. She had a mop and a bucket next to her.
“Clean it up, now,” the young woman said. “And, if you speak of this to anyone, you will lose your tongue first. Then, your eyes. And, we would still expect you to return to work.”
With that, she turned, leaving the cleaning supplies behind.
Yorick glanced at Rosia. Her eyes were full of tears, but even more so, red and bubbling with rage as she watched the young woman march to the elevator. Rosia made a few attempts to speak, but each time, she slammed her mouth shut, lips pressed so hard they were almost white.
“Okay,” Rosia finally said. “I’m in. We need to burn this all to the ground.”
Chapter Ten
Tenney rode in a van for the third time in his life, the morning after joining this nameless chapter of the sun worshippers. The first two times had occurred the day before yesterday. Both in chains. Once to the processing facility after being drugged by Yorick’s parents, the second time leaving from the processing facility after their failed escape attempt.
This evening, Tenney didn’t feel like a prisoner. But, he didn’t feel free, either. This group of cultists hadn’t told him much. He would meet up with Yorick and Rosia tomorrow, after two days apart, and saw no reason his new employer wouldn’t let him go.
They had offered him food and shelter and fresh clothes in exchange for accompanying them on what they had deemed “missions in the name of justice.” That was all. He had not been locked in his room the night before, and they hadn’t specifically told him he could not come and go as he pleased.
Not a prisoner, but not exactly free.
Right now, though, they were on one of these missions. No idea where he was going or what he was supposed to do when he got there. He’d been told to be ready, so he was. In the back of a van, with benches on either side, a crew of sun worshippers staring across the van at each other as it went somewhere. They chanted, a low rumble under their breaths.
Santiago, the sun worshipper leader who had granted Tenney admittance to the group, sat across from Tenney, studying the new recruit. Tenney pretended not to notice.
Tenney watched the sun setting out the van’s window while they drove. The sheer size of the city baffled him. So many buildings, so many tens of thousands of people. The city had walls protecting it, but the diameter of the interior had to be at least a hundred kilometers. Maybe more. Tenney wasn’t good with that sort of calculation. Whatever the exact size, it was the largest continuous wall he had ever seen in his life.
Probably not as long as the wall t
hat separated Wyoming from Colorado, but he hadn’t paid much attention to that one. He’d only thought of getting into Colorado, to safety.
All that was before Malina died. Before the world changed for him forever.
“I see you watching out the window,” Santiago said to Tenney as the van rocked back and forth along the streets. “You’re not from here, are you?”
“No, this is my first time in the city. My second day, actually.”
Santiago grinned at this, his thin and wrinkled flesh stretched over his skull like a taut layer of paint on a skeleton. “And what do you think of our fair city?”
“I think it’s a sham. I think the soldados work hard to keep the streets clean of the homeless, so they can push the ugliness to the side streets. They want it to look like a land of opportunity, but it’s built so only the wealthy get the best of the best and everyone else is left in a perpetual state of hoping for it. The workers live with the illusion they can break out and join the ranks of the rich, but it’s all a lie. A lie they’ll never figure out, as long as they keep playing by the rules.”
Santiago barked a laugh. “You’ve seen all this, and it’s only your second day in Denver?”
“It’s no different from anywhere I’ve been before. It’s masters and slaves, whatever name it goes by.”
“Tenney, you have a darkness to you I think you’ll find an asset in our work. As long as you can figure out how to channel it like a weapon and not let it consume you.” Santiago leaned around to catch the eye of the others. “You could all learn a lot from our newest member. Never trust what you see with your eyes. Question authority.”
Santiago paused, then looked over Tenney’s shoulder, out the window. “Get ready. When these doors open, we go in fast. We’ll only be outside for a few seconds, but since there wasn’t a way to disable the cameras, we have to get inside before we’re seen. You heaps of flesh good with that?”
“Sir,” barked the half a dozen other men in the van. They all pulled a thin and stretchy fabric down over each of their heads. Like socks.
This was beginning to look and sound like a military operation. Everyone so serious and focused. Eyes tense and jaws set.
The van came to a screeching halt, everyone grabbed onto something to keep from flying out of their seats. The doors flung open.
All of the crew poured out of the van in a flash. The warehouse was a large rectangular structure, with bay doors every few meters. Tenney found himself running toward the back door of what appeared to be a large warehouse. Feet pounding on concrete. A gray sky overhead poised to rain, shouts and the rustling of gear carried by Tenney’s new companions.
One member of the crew slammed a crowbar into the chain securing the door, and he ripped it apart. Links clattered onto the ground. The door cried as it squeaked open.
Each of the fabric-clad sun worshippers filed in through the door, bellowing and raising their weapons above their heads. Tenney rushed inside to an open space stacked with pallets. He immediately sized up the threat. Five men armed with pistols and uniforms like the king's soldados, but not exactly. They were security guards.
One stood a meter to Tenney’s left, and he struggled to draw his pistol. Tenney popped him in the mouth, more out of a self-defense reaction than anything else. He still had no idea what in the stars was going on here.
The rest of the crew made quick work of the hapless security guards. Even though they were all armed, not a single one of them got off a shot. The sun worshippers overwhelmed them with speed and brute force, cracking their skulls open with bats and metal tools. Like a wave of violence and destruction flooding across the room.
Tenney barely had time to take it all in. No one had explained to him why they were here or what he was supposed to do. Who were these people the sun worshippers were attacking?
The one Tenney had punched made another attempt to draw his weapon, and Tenney slid in close. He snatched the man’s hand and bent his wrist back, sending the guy to his knees, wailing. Tenney opted not to break his wrist. He could have, and a part of him wanted to, but something in him felt unsure.
Why did he have an urge to break the guy’s wrist? Tenney had no idea who this person was, or whether he deserved such a thing.
The guard dropped the gun, and Tenney reached down to pick it up. Santiago appeared in the corner of Tenney’s field of view, and he stepped on the gun.
“No,” the leader said. “No guns today.”
Instead, Santiago smacked the guard in the side of the head with a crowbar, sending him to the ground, bleeding.
“Over here!” shouted one of the crew. He was standing near a pallet, with an opened box on top. Tenney squinted as the others ran over toward it. They pulled packages of something off-white from inside, carefully placing them in duffel bags they unfurled on the concrete floor. Everyone stopped what they were doing to join in the task.
Tenney at first thought it was drugs. He’d seen a white substance like that at the plantación, a couple years ago. Rumors were that some of the guerreros indulged in the powder to give them an advantage on the battlefield.
But, after a moment of observation, he realized what it actually was. Not drugs. Explosives.
These sun worshippers weren’t a band of testosterone-fueled brawlers and drinkers. They were terrorists.
“You look confused,” Santiago said as he lifted his goggles up onto his forehead. Tenney hadn’t even realized he was still standing nearby.
“No,” Tenney said, trying to wipe the look from his face. “I just didn’t know what we were doing here.”
The leader smiled. “I know. We had to bring you in blind so your eyes could be opened on their own. But you did well.” He waved his hand over the injured, bleeding and dying on the warehouse floor. “These men are not innocent. Don’t think that for a second. They knew the risks of dealing in dangerous substances.”
When Tenney didn’t respond, Santiago pointed at the plastic explosives across the room. “And I’m excited to see how you do with your new toys.”
Tenney looked up at him with a frown on his face. “What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow is going to be a very big day,” Santiago said, a broad grin on his face. He put a bony hand on Tenney’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Tomorrow is the day we make our mark on this putrid city.”
Chapter Eleven
Yorick wiped sweat from his brow. Steam from the dishwasher made him feel like he was standing outside in the rain. In his second full day working in the brothel’s kitchen, he was getting a little better doing the dishes. He still did not consider himself to be good at it, but he wasn’t terrible anymore. The frantic pace was hard to manage and keep up on a consistent basis.
Also, maybe his lack of focus had something to do with the fact that they had seen a brothel patron slash the throat of a puta at breakfast yesterday.
Yorick and Rosia had discussed the incident after work, alone in their room. Quietly, in whispers, with the water in the sink running. A quick sweep of the room had revealed no surveillance, but he and Rosia weren’t experts in that sort of search. There was no reason to trust Zan and think he wasn't keeping an eye on his employees.
After work, they’d strolled around the interior courtyard of the brothel and spoke about ways they could make the lives of these slaves better. They had, in fact, learned that most of the putas in the brothel were slaves. Erica and Rosia could come and go as they pleased, within reason. But putas were all what the management referred to as "indentured servants." They had a debt to work off, and they worked it off on their backs, servicing men and women who worked in King Nichol’s government and other high profile citizens.
Some did come and go from the building on a limited basis, and Yorick didn’t quite understand why or how that worked. All he and Rosia had learned so far came from whispers and rumors and bits of overheard conversations. The bartenders in the restaurant were often chatty. But, Yorick didn’t know how much to believe what people here said
. Too many of them had secrets or agendas.
So, on their second day, Yorick and Rosia went about their jobs, exchanging knowing glances but, by all outward appearance, acting as regular paid brothel workers. Sweating in the kitchen just like all the others. Dutiful employees. Not as two outsiders planning to tear apart the government to free the slaves.
When they finished their shifts, they decided to walk up to their room instead of taking one of the interior glass elevators. The building was a large and tall square, with an interior courtyard populated by a fake waterfall and a leafy garden. Each floor had a mezzanine that overlooked that courtyard, with stairs up to each subsequent level. Yorick and Rosia walked those mezzanines, mostly not talking. They didn't know what to say.
Twenty-four hours of planning had yielded no results. In a few hours, they would meet with Tenney for their two-day check-in. There had been no messages written on the board the day before. But, they’d had nothing to report other than finding employment, learning this brothel was a horrible place, and members of the king’s government frequented it.
There had to be something in that last piece of information they could use, however. Someone around here knew a way into the building, perhaps? Maybe the only way to help the serfs was from inside it, or by influencing someone who could get inside the building. Too many unknowns. The plan was too vague.
As they walked, Rosia paused. She put her hands on the ledge overlooking the courtyard and leaned down. “Do you think this is where we’re supposed to be?”
Yorick shrugged. “I don’t know. Three weeks ago, we were slaves in a plantación. Three days ago, we were almost slaves again. I’m happy we’re alive.”
She eyed him and gave him that little twinkly smile meaning she thought he was cute and dumb at the same time. He knew that smile well. “No, Yorick. I don’t mean in the grand sense. I mean this brothel. Do you think we’re going to find a way to help from here?”