Beneath Ceaseless Skies #160

by M. Bennardo

  And every string pulling a man along with it, making him jump and dance as Roach saw fit. And Warren’s own string? He knew now, after his ordeal last night, that Roach had measured him for a string of pure physical fear—

  Warren closed his eyes. The moment had come.

  His arm dropped and the trigger clicked, a terrific blast of fire and smoke sending his ball harmlessly into the mud.

  A few seconds passed. It took Warren that long to be sure that he had really done it, hadn’t just dreamed it. But yes, his gun was smoking and spent, yet Caxton still stood at the other side of the field.

  Warren felt a wave of relief—and foolishness. He’d been a fool not to apologize to Caxton instantly—even if it had meant reading a retraction into the Congressional Record before the entire Senate assembly. What a prideful, selfish fool he had been to let things get so far!

  So far? Yes! Even to the doorstep of murder! And he, a man of compassion and intelligence—a man of enlightened ideals!—acting as a willing accomplice in the conspiracy. Driven by fear! Fear of death—and the mad, paralyzing fear he had felt in Roach’s office.

  Only thank God that Roach had drawn the line just an inch too far. Only thank God that Warren had found the courage to balk at murder. But what if Roach had asked for a less drastic favor? What if Roach had merely asked for votes, for speeches, for information... How far would Warren have gone? How far would fear have driven him in step with Roach’s designs?

  “Is the offended party satisfied?” called out Dardnell. The smoke on both sides of the field now made it impossible to see anyone clearly. If there was to be another exchange, they would have to wait until the wind blew the field clear again.

  “The insult is a serious one,” called back Caxton’s second. “We demand further satisfaction.”

  “Blast it,” muttered Warren, flinging his pistol to the ground in disgust. He was beyond this pettiness now. Beyond any caring about the consequences of breaching the protocol of this ridiculous pantomime.

  “Senator!”

  “Let go, man!” Warren shrugged off Dardnell’s hand and strode quickly through the smoke to Caxton’s side of the field. “Caxton!” he called, loudly and sharply. “Let’s end this nonsense.”

  In no time at all, Warren found himself standing face to face with Caxton. How easy it had been to cross the distance! The seconds, white-faced and astounded, tried to slide between them.

  “Did you fire into the ground?” demanded Caxton, his anger no longer confined to his eyes. His whole face was flamed and red, the veins of his temples throbbing under his black curls.

  “Yes, by God—”

  “Coward.”

  Warren reeled back a step, his cheek burning and his eyes dancing with stars. Caxton had struck him across the face with his bare hand.

  “I won’t fight you again,” said Warren, rubbing his jaw.

  “You refuse to resent the blow?” asked Caxton, striking Warren a second time. Though decades younger than Warren, he cuffed him as one would strike a child, short and sharp, dispassionately and with his open palm. “You refuse to give satisfaction for your insults to my father?”

  “Yes, I refuse it all!” returned Warren. “I’ll read an apology into the Congressional Record today, but I’ll not fight you again.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” growled Caxton, curling his hand into a fist. “Consider the insult repaid.”

  The next blow brought darkness down.

  * * *

  When Warren regained his senses, the field was desolate. The little surgeon’s table of unused implements still stood under the willow and the stream still tinkled by musically, but Caxton and his second were gone. That was only to be expected, however—the duel had ended dishonorably, and even Dardnell was bound to wash his hands of the matter if he cared for his reputation.

  But Warren had no such cares anymore. It was incredible to him that the solution to his dilemma had been so simple. All he had needed to do was prove himself beneath contempt, and all that had required was to break from form. He could have stopped it simply by refusing to take the field! Or by standing with his arms crossed and his tongue sticking out! It was all ridiculous, this marching in lockstep by invisible rules towards senseless destruction.

  To kill or be killed! God, what a choice!

  Warren laughed bitterly, pushing himself up to his elbows, putting all thought for the future out of his mind—until he saw the false surgeon alone advancing slowly on him. The porter! Roach’s agent! He, at least, remained.

  Warren’s eyes darted to the table under the willow again, but it was too far to see if anything was missing. Too impossible to tell what the porter carried in his hand, whether saw or lancet or knife—

  The mirthless laughter died on Warren’s lips. He still couldn’t read any expression on the porter’s face—not anger, nor disappointment, nor menace. Nothing at all. But Warren had crossed Roach. He remembered that now. He had agreed to the bargain, and then he had failed to hold it up. Warren swallowed and closed his eyes.

  A half-minute later, when he opened them again, Warren found that he was then utterly alone—unharmed and untouched, save for the red silk handkerchief spread open across his chest.

  * * *

  It was almost two months until the full consequences of the day rattled down into place. Two months of colleagues ducking him in the halls of the Capitol. Two months of lonely dinners, leering waiters, missing invitations, veiled references, half-stifled snickers...

  Two months of the bright stab of fear that Warren had felt slowly draining into a common, all-pervading dread. He could eat again, but he took no pleasure in it. He could lose himself temporarily in manic fits of work, and again in the troughs of exhaustion.

  But wakefulness always came again, and it came now more often in the small hours of the night—attended by dark visions of snuffling, waxen monstrosities—

  And then he received the letter from the state legislature back home in Pennsylvania, containing a unanimous request for his resignation, with no reason given.

  Regretfully, Warren complied.

  And now he crouched in the ruins of his office, feeding the last of his papers to the stove, watching them curl and disintegrate as he raked the coals, the fine hairs of packing string glowing and the red splotches of sealing wax erupting into bright white flame.

  Then something in the air changed. Some primitive sense suddenly fired, alerting Warren that he was no longer alone. He looked up, half expecting to see Roach’s porter in the doorway with his borrowed surgeon’s saw.

  Instead, this man was older, about Warren’s own age. Slim, tall, dark. There was a weariness around his eyes but a brightness in them all the same. Certainly a stranger, but there was something familiar about him as well.

  “Senator Warren?” he asked.

  A job-seeker, perhaps. Or someone looking for a favor. Warren smirked to think what favors he could grant now, then sadly shook his head. “You’re too late,” he answered. “There is no more Senator Warren.”

  Turning back to the stove, Warren took up the next item from his pile of papers and mementos. It was the fateful red silk handkerchief, saved for some reason from the day of the duel. Why not feed it to the stove along with all the rest? And once it was reduced to ashes—what then?

  His garden, he supposed. His grapes. He would finally have the time to try pressing them now. He ought to have started that thirty years ago, but responsibility always seemed to get in the way. Still, even at his age, he might just be able to taste a few vintages before...

  Well, before it all began to feel pointless, he supposed. Before it began to feel like marking time.

  “I’m just here to clean up,” sighed Warren, “which I suppose makes me more like the charwoman than a senator.”

  The visitor stepped inside, undeterred. “Considering your own humility in the matter of titles, Senator, it feels overly officious to introduce myself as Governor Caxton, of the Missouri Territory.” H
e paused and smiled. “Former governor, that is.”

  Warren closed his eyes, his body tensing at the name. Governor Caxton! Of course! He’d been too distracted, too preoccupied with Roach to recognize the family resemblance. Was this then how it was to end instead? Would this stupid, childish persecution never end?

  “Governor,” whispered Warren, “there is nothing I can say that I have not already said before my former colleagues in the Senate—”

  But the elder Caxton stepped forward and put his hand on Warren’s shoulder. “Please, Senator, too much has already been said on some subjects.”

  Warren opened his eyes and rose slowly. Somehow, the look on Caxton’s face seemed kindly. Warm, friendly. Warren felt more ashamed than ever. “How I have paid for my immoderate language....”

  Caxton nodded. “I have heard from my son. I want to thank you—” He paused, seeming almost to flinch. It was just barely visible, a mere tic of the eye, as though he were reliving the memory of a missed blow that had very nearly fallen. “I don’t think he understands. I don’t think he knows that it was in your power all along to kill him.”

  Warren felt his face go white. He might have flinched too, considering how close he had come to being felled by the same horrible blow. He opened his lips to reply, but he had no words.

  Caxton trembled a moment, seemingly overcome in sympathy. Then he shook his head. “Pass it by,” he said. “For both our sakes, Senator, pass it by. I’ve come for another reason.”

  Warren shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  Caxton gripped Warren’s arm. “It took courage to cross Roach, as I know you did. Regardless of what may have come before that moment, it took courage to master your fear at the last moment and—and to do what you did.”

  Warren sat heavily on the desk, looking up at Caxton in amazement. “Excuse me, Governor. This is a bewildering interview.”

  Caxton smiled. “I know Roach well. I’ve known him here in Washington, and have seen his handiwork in the territories. Out there, he has a rather weaker grasp on things... His methods are somewhat clumsier and more obvious—much like this duel.”

  “It started honestly enough,” murmured Warren. “And stupidly enough.”

  That brought another kind smile to Caxton’s lips. “I’ve rarely met a man so willing to heap blame on his own head. Don’t you care what society says about you?”

  Warren laughed. “I don’t give a fig for society now! Good God, society would have marched either me or your son to the undertaker, if it had its way. Society! Barbarism, more like!”

  Caxton nodded and stood straight, carefully smoothing down the front of his frock coat. It was the motion of a man, Warren suddenly thought, who was about to come to the real point.

  “In that case,” continued Caxton, “I wonder if I might induce you to come out west with me—out to the territories. You see, we mean to keep Roach out of there, by hook or crook. I want clean government in Missouri—and in all the rest of the states they carve up. If we can do it, perhaps we’ll even outnumber Roach here someday as well.”

  Warren shook his head. “Oh no, Governor. I’m an old man—older than I thought I was. And my grapes—”

  Caxton snorted. “Grapes! Senator, we need men who aren’t afraid to defy this so-called Cockroach Club—or convention, or society, or notions of honor—no matter the consequences.” He frowned thoughtfully. “My own son is still too young—too bound up in learning his place in society, that is. Later, he’ll grow out of it, just as I have. Just as, it seems, you have too. But for now, he cares a little too much about the shine of his shoes.” Caxton was silent a moment longer. “That’s the other thing, Senator. We need men who are willing to pay the cost. Roach thought nothing of attempting to sacrifice my son to score a point against me—”

  Warren stood stunned. “You don’t make it sound very appealing,” he said weakly.

  “Appealing? No, Senator, it is certainly not appealing. But you simply need ask yourself what will happen if no one is willing to act.”

  Warren nodded slowly. Roach’s red silk handkerchief still lay next to him on the desk. He picked it up, holding it with something like amazement. What would happen? He had only the vaguest suspicions regarding Roach—but those were bad enough. Imagine if those half-guessed plans were to come to fruition—if Warren’s worst nightmares about the man were to chase him out of his sleeping subconscious, and into the street, into his very home and the homes of those he loved—

  Or perhaps it wouldn’t happen for another hundred years or more. Perhaps they were safe enough for now, and he could retire in quiet, confident he would die before any such horrors visited the earth.

  Warren crushed the handkerchief in his hand and stuffed it into his pocket. He wouldn’t burn that—no, not today at least. “Where do I find you,” he asked quietly, “if I do decide to join you?”

  Caxton laughed and clapped Warren on the shoulder. He, at least, seemed confident somehow. “Missouri, of course. A man like you—you’ll find the way.”

  Copyright © 2014 M. Bennardo

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  M. Bennardo’s short stories appear in Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and others, as well as multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, including “The Pentitent“ in BCS #122, podcast BCS 106, and The Best of BCS Year Five anthology. One of his stories was selected for Jonathan Strahan’s Best Science-Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but people anywhere can find him online at www.mbennardo.com.

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  THE STREETKING

  by Peter Hickman

  Always chuckle to think how it began.

  I were finished with the nightwork, taking my fresh stolen shine through the channels back to an ale. The sun scaring the last of us streetmen away, when I near knocked her over. Defiant child, shivering and spitting at me, awkward in the morning. Me, a man thrice the width and twice the height. I were blade shining ready for a teaching when those flashing green eyes caught mine.

  Thank the Gods none played witness. Few in the city would have faced me and not been quick bleeding for it. There I was, melted down like spring ice by a bone-built slip of a thing. I first figured her for a madling. Bad omens in killing the mad. Their mind meeting yours as the life leaves. Else the child were one more drop of waste for the Sweepers. Then I noticed her clothes. If she were madling, she were a rich one. I’d prised into enough bedrooms and whistled away enough finery to know Arimean goldtrim when I saw it. Nine silvers a bolt, if you lay it clever in the right claws.

  “The alleys of Tel Elenor make poor playground,” I warned her, gruff despite the smile that bred inside me.

  “I walk where I please,” she says, chin steady as a bench.

  That birthed the laugh out of me. I sheathed my blade and bent like a windreed. “Walk back then, little lady,” I says, “where the sun shines a mite brighter.”

  I stretched a hand out, only to take a cats’ rake cross the knuckles for the chance. And laughed all the more. Rose and bowed. Gods’ eyes upon it I did. Rose and bowed and walked away. Even sent a streetman back later, though without the tale of what to look for. The alley clear. And me relieved no harm had found the child.

  * * *

  A season after I found her again. High summer and a warm day, lazy as Tel Elenor ever saw, and me with it, taking it light, resting on the circled stones of the Fountain, under the Spire. A different girl, beside the fountain in her finery. I would have passed, but the eyes caught me again. She ran a hand through the waters and flicked gem drops at me. And some impulse, like I was a lovelorn fool, found me beside her on the fountain’s edge, though my back was bared and I little liked the expanse of the square.

  “And where’s your mother, little girl?” A petty venge, but sport enough. Gave me a daggerish look, she did.

  “I get the veil next festival,” she said, angry, telling me she wasn’t called girl much longer.
Nor was she, small breasts pushing out. But bones enough still.

  Always was a poor man at such talk. Kept some chatter when I was plenty aled, for those women who needed none. I felt foolish before this one, the fountain making pale green ripples down her back.

  She held a hand out. Skinny soft thing, with a braided silver ring. Nice little piece. And what to do? Kiss it?

  “How many silvers?” she asks, sweet as a summer rain.

  That had me smiling. Safer ground. Unexpected, but I played ‘praiser. “Three.”

  Snorted a little breath, good as any House trader. “Eight my mother paid! I know. The servants told me. Three?!” Breathy little snort again.

  “Eight at some Darius stall. Three in the street.” Another piece of madness in the tale. To let this sliplet hear a little streettalk. All she needed was to raise that quiet voice of hers, and every noble wandering nearby would have hauled me to the Robes and the end of daylight for this streetman.

  “Four then.”

  Before I knew it myself I’d slid the silvers over. If you made me walk all the way to an answer as to why I done something foolish as that, well, I’d be trudging along still. When she’d pursed the coin she held out her hand, prim. That was a sweaty moment. Taking a ring from a noble child in the Testerris square at highsun. But I was playing a game I couldn’t leave. Slipped it over the knuckle and quick away. And she caught it all, the shoulder glance, the flash of a frown on my face. Had her smiling prettier than ever.

  “I sit here on market days,” she says, earnest as a lover. Another flick of fountain over me, like she were some Pentarch priestess and me the dirt-dry farmer. She laughed and trickled away, leaving me with half a smile and half a frown and a silver ring.