by Andrew Post
But while his suffering would last, hers cut away a moment later when Raziel’s attention was swept elsewhere.
Directly above, the hatch flew off, suns pouring light in. A starship just outside kept time with the crashing frigate, and at the second hatch stood a man with a bloody shirt, tie fluttering about his face.
“You have to throw us something,” Raziel shouted at him. He pointed to Tym on the floor. “We’ve a man down, thanks to this one.” Nevele’s ribs received a mirthless kick.
She coiled around the blow, coughing. As she struggled up into a sitting position, her elbow brushed something soft. She still had the parachute on.
Watching Raziel bark at the Bullet Eater, hissing at the new pain in her side, she looked skyward, her hand finding the rip cord. But if she deployed in here, she’d be pulled out of the frigate, banging all the way up through the room and probably along the outside of the frigate as it continued to crash, likely getting tangled in her own lines. She’d have to wait until they were moving across from one ship to another and then deploy in the open air between . . .
The man with the eye patch reappeared at the far ship’s hatch and dropped a weighted rope. Grabbing it, Raziel shoved it toward Nevele: she was to go first. She began to climb.
She felt the rope go taut and saw Raziel, below, guide his blinded brother on. She looked back up, climbed a little more, and was out in the open space between the ships. The eye-patch man was at the hatch’s edge above, reaching for her.
Not taking his hand, she saw they were at an altitude where if she deployed, she’d likely be fine. Touching boots to the desert would be a grand thing. She freed one hand from the rope with exactly that in mind when the man above latched onto her wrist. She looked into his face, the one eye that had been staring down at her in a curious way. Apologetic, almost. He shook his head and, of all things to do right then, popped a bullet into his mouth. The hell?
Raziel shouted something stolen by the wind. Below, Tym swung around on the rope, holding on for dear life, lids closed over ruined eyes.
“Pull us up,” Raziel screamed.
But the man above didn’t. Instead, he leaned out of his craft, near Nevele, their faces nearly touching. He opened his winking eye, and a bronze shaft telescoped out. She didn’t have time to ask him what it was—its function was made apparent with a blast, loud even amid the rushing wind.
Tym, never knowing the shot was coming, was winged across the forearm and tumbled free of the rope, sailed past Raziel, hit the edge of the hatch, and fell into the frigate.
Raziel glanced down, then back up, hate in his mismatched eyes. He started to coil his arm in the rope to free up a hand. Nevele let herself slide down. Her boots crashed into one of Raziel’s hands, and he fumbled with his other, turning and screaming as he followed his brother, even hitting the edge of the hatch before dropping back in.
“Hold on!” came from above, but Nevele scarcely needed the recommendation.
While they rose, she watched the frigate make a slow, awkward, twisting plummet. When it was completely upside down, she could see the massive rip in its underside. It bled fire and something else that, when ablaze, burned with a syrupy green that curled and stretched like reaching tentacles.
The frigate hit the desert floor, a ringing shockwave leaping out from around it. The hulking craft continued to push, digging a long trench behind. It came to rest intact but still aflame. She hoped some kind of call managed to sneak out, some distress beacon for those surviving.
The Bullet Eater helped Nevele the rest of the way up and closed the hatch, inducing enormous silence as if a mountainous schoolmarm had just boxed her ears.
The man said nothing else, merely walked back to the cockpit and collapsed into the seat. He didn’t reach for the controls. Just sat there, slumped, looking browbeaten, watching the autopilot work.
Stepping in after him, she noticed Coog McPhearson dead on the floor, wedged between the copilot seat and the bulkhead.
“Why’d you do it?”
The man twitched as if he hadn’t heard her clunk up beside him. “He shot at me first.”
“I meant about the other two.”
He continued staring at the vidscreens, silent for nearly a minute. “Don’t know,” he said at last. Then, startling Nevele, he began shouting to someone not present. “Shut up, Karl. I’m changing sides, okay? Doing what we should’ve done months ago.”
She didn’t take a seat in the cockpit with him but instead folded down one of the jumpsuits just outside. She surveyed the contents of the starship. Lots of junk and chark bars scattered everywhere. “Is this Coog’s ship?”
“Yeah. And to explain my outburst a minute ago, I was speaking to my ex-coworker. He works for Raziel and Tym. They’re Clyde Pyne’s younger brothers.”
“I know.”
“Oh. Then I guess you probably know what they were up to, what they wanted with you.”
“Yes.”
“So . . . you’re probably wondering if you can trust me, then, right?”
Nevele, minding her aching side, took off the parachute. “You just told Karl—was it?—that you’ve quit, changed sides. And if you’re no longer on Raziel’s side, I don’t really care what side you’re on. Not that he’s in any position to have anyone on his side anymore.” The parachute thumped to the floor. She made note of where she dropped it just in case she’d need it again. “Either way, thank you is what I meant.”
He shrugged. “I’m Aksel, by the way.” He said the name as if giving an unfavorable diagnosis. “You’re Margaret Mallencroix, right?”
“Nevele, but yes.”
She noticed the rearview vidscreens. The frigate, as it shrank behind them, continued to not detonate. She asked Aksel to alert Adeshka. He said he’d already done so, even before turning on the brothers.
“So,” Aksel said, “since we should probably make ourselves scarce lest we get blamed for that, where would you like to go?”
“Home.” She withdrew her radio from her pocket. “That is, if you don’t mind we check in on a friend first.”
CHAPTER 8
Dusty Walk
Clyde felt cooked on the spot, each step heavier than the one before. Without need to eat or drink or sleep, all he knew of sustenance was taking confessions. It seemed to fill him up somehow, the same way, he imagined, that food nourished people unlike him.
He considered asking Bandit Boy if he had anything he wanted to confess but refrained, knowing it’d put the boy in even more danger. While the boy suffered an open wound that still hadn’t been cleaned, jinxing him might not be such a good idea.
“What’s your name?” Clyde said. He wouldn’t be surprised if Bandit Boy’s name was actually Bandit Boy.
“Emer. Well, Emer Junior.”
“I don’t expect you’ll be forgiving Emer Senior anytime soon,” Clyde said, “but after we get you patched up, do you have somewhere to stay? A mother or—?”
“Momma’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, I . . .”
“It’s fine. Happened a while back.”
But, Clyde thought, you’re only eleven. You barely happened a while back.
Emer continued, “And yer damn right, I don’t believe I’ll be forgivin’ Daddy anytime soon. He’s done some stupid crap, but shootin’ me was the last straw on this here camel’s back, tell you what. I’ll be my own man now, with nothin’ or nobody holdin’ me back.”
Clyde nodded, glad to hear it.
“What’s yers?”
“My name?”
“Yeah.”
“Clyde.”
Emer nodded. “I remember that now, from them signs.” He carefully spelled Clyde’s name and asked if he’d been accurate.
“Yes, well done.”
Emer tried it out again. “Clyde. Not bad. Gotta good sound to it.”
“Thanks. Emer’s not bad either.”
“This Emer,” he said, poking a thumb toward himself, “sure as hell ain’t.�
� He took a second to pause and rub his leg. If the gunshot wound itself hurt, then having the rest of the limb starved for blood probably wasn’t feeling so wonderful either.
“We’ll get you some care soon,” Clyde said.
“I know. We got only ’bout thirty-five, forty miles yet.”
“Uh, what?” said Rohm.
They walked on.
When Emer spoke again, Clyde gave a start, his mind’s deep drifting aided by the isolation of this place. He thought about Nevele mostly. Flam too.
“Ya was born in November,” Emer said. “Am I right?”
Clyde tugged his bandanna down to speak. “You might be. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know when yer own birthday is?”
“I don’t, actually.”
“Huh. I’d put you at . . . twenny years old. And November? Pretty sure on that too.”
All Clyde knew of how old he was had been based on his history as told to him by Nigel Wigglesby. That fateful day, when the old miner gave him the royal revolver and with it, just as heavy, the truth about who he was—and who he had to be from that day forward.
“Didya hear me?” Emer said. “Said I bet yer twenny years old.”
“I heard you,” Clyde said agreeably, still lost in thought. The heat brought on daydreaming like a possession. He’d stared at the few photographs of Pitka Gorett he’d found in the palace’s archives, memorizing every detail of the man’s face. He wanted to see it in the flesh, albeit firmly behind dungeon cell bars. Was this what his mind made manifest, his mirage of what he desired to find waiting over the next hill, above all else?
“Even if ya can’t confirm it, I’m going to say yer . . . twenny years an’ two hunnert days, give or take few hours.”
“And how can you be so certain of a thing like that?” Clyde said, welcoming the distraction. Thinking about Pitka Gorett too long made his stomach hurt.
“To me, folks wear it pretty plain, their age. Ya could be older, though. Got what mah granny used to call a worldliness to them weird eyes of yers. Ya been through some rough stuff, I reckon.”
“It’s been a challenging time for my city recently, yes.”
“You too, seems like.”
Clyde nodded.
“Got a thowzant-mile gaze on you like a man twice, maybe even three times, yer years.”
“If your estimation of my age is correct,” Clyde said with a smile.
Marching with his new, uneven gait, Emer looked over at Clyde. “Sheeit. No estimatin’ to it. Ask anyone. I always get them birthdays right. Magic. Like a daggone weaver, I am. No ’fense.”
“None taken.”
When they took a break, Emer staked his walking stick into the ground and carefully snapped open a cactus for some water for him and Rohm. Clyde busied himself by trying Nevele on his radio again. Still no response. He turned south for a moment, toward where he approximated Geyser to be, somewhere past the Jagged Mountains, an indistinct serrated row of black peaks. Did she make it back okay? He wished, then, he could trade his fabrick for one that’d allow him flight.
After a few more cactus pods were drained, Emer wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So if ya ain’t out here to eht nobody’s soul, what is ya out here fer?”
“We were on our way to Nessapolis, actually.”
Emer goggled. “Whutcha wantin’ to go there fer?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Who? Ain’t nobody livin’ there, ’cept ghosts.”
“Well, we’ll have to take our chances—ghosts or no.”
“Why?”
“It’s kind of a secret.” He winked, trying to end the conversation in a friendly way.
“If it’s a secret, why’d you bring it up?”
Clyde rewound the conversation a bit. “I didn’t. You did. Are you feeling all right?”
The asynchronous crunch of Emer’s boots and the chunk of his spear continued for a moment, two. “I am a little light-headed, and I mean, thankee for the cheese
an’ all—”
“You’re welcome,” Rohm muttered.
“But I usually eht more than that for dinner. Was gonna have somethin’ good tonight, too, so I think mah stomach’s still thinkin’ we’re havin’ sky whale. That’s what we were doin’, actually, when Uncle Lou spotted your fancy buggy. Damn easier catchin’ city folk than whale, he said.”
Clyde said nothing.
“Caint blame us none; everybody’s gotta eht.”
“What about the rocky crawlers?”
“Poison blood.”
“Oh.”
“People say we eht each other up, but that’s a damn lie,” Emer said, head turned partly away to avoid the sinking suns’ rays. “Plum nasty that is. But I reckon y’all from Geyser think that’s the damn truth, though, don’t ya?”
“No,” Clyde said. “I don’t think that.”
“We should start bein’ quiet now. Rocky crawlers hunt by listenin’. Be kind of stupid if we done got eht because we were talkin’ about ehtin’.”
Clyde agreed, and just then something not quiet at all happened behind them. A dull boom that reverberated over the arid landscape, shaking the air. Faint here, perhaps, but undoubtedly riotous near its source.
Rohm was perched on Clyde’s shoulder in a second, whiskers flicking.
“What was that?” Emer said, afraid.
Far to the southwest, a bright emerald pinprick winked in the twilight like a dying candle, neither snuffing nor growing. “What burns like that?” Clyde said.
“Plasma, if it’s caught a flame,” Emer said.
“He’s right,” Rohm said.
Clyde’s heart sank. Nevele was due to return to Geyser tonight on a commercial frigate. And if that was burning plasma, in the southwest, right where she would be passing over the Lakebed . . .
On Clyde’s hip, his radio crackled. He snatched it free of his belt so fast the clip broke. “Nevele?”
Static.
“Who’s Nevele?” Emer said.
Clyde didn’t hear him. He collapsed to the sand, gear clattering. He kept staring at that sharp green dot as it faded and flared, shrinking only to blossom bright again. Please, no. Please, please, please.
Rohm scurried down onto Clyde’s knee to stare into the radio’s grille as if Nevele’s fate played out behind the plastic grating.
Then, indistinct: “Clyde?”
Clyde stared toward the green dot as if it were his fiancée, glowing alive on the horizon. “Nevele! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, mostly. Where are you?”
Clyde turned to Emer. “Where are we?”
Emer, without aid of any device or map, rattled off coordinates.
Clyde repeated them to Nevele. She apparently pressed the Talk button too early and Clyde heard her conferring with someone else, relaying the coordinates. “Yeah, that’s where we need to go,” she was saying.
“Who are you with?” Clyde said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Listen, stay where you are. We’re coming to you. Actually”—her voice grew faint again as she asked someone to flash lights—“can you see us?”
Clyde watched the sky. “No . . . yes!” Blinking white rays, far away, pierced the bruise-colored clouds. It was about the best thing he’d ever seen. “I can see you!”
Relief flooded both Rohm and Emer’s features. But while Rohm’s smile never faded, Emer’s quickly did. He quickly looked to the side, zeroing in on something behind them.
Clyde got up, his hands snapping to meet upon Commencement, ready to draw. “What is it?”
“We got heard,” Emer whispered.
Behind them stood a slight hill. The pod tines of a cactus patch rustled, scratchily dragging across something hard. Pushing under bristling limbs: long, bulky shapes, submerged in shadow. Each pulse of Nevele’s starship lights caught otherwise unseen eyes, throwing back an eerie yellow. Six. Staring, unblinking.
Never looking from the glowing eyes, Clyde bent to blindly fe
tch the radio from the sand. “Nevele? Could I possibly trouble you to step on it?”
CHAPTER 9
A Guardsman’s Job Is Never Done
With the first toll of the clock tower, Nula sprang out of her chair and buckled on her sword belt. “Evening rounds, then off the clock we go.”
“And not a minute too soon,” Flam said, not bothering to push in his chair. Mouflon custom dictated you did that only in a place you respected.
They joined the other guardsmen making their way out the back of the station to the large garage at the rear of the building.
“You and me? Fourth Circle?” Nula said.
“Sure.” He flung his keys to her. “You drive.”
After boarding the armored vehicle, Nula plunked down a helm and flipped up the visor. Flam donned his own, custom-made to accommodate his horns.
“Looks like you could benefit from a holiday too.” Nula started the vehicle. “Maybe I should bring you, hide you in my carry-on.”
“Holiday?”
Nula moved them in line behind the other Patrol vehicles. He knew it wouldn’t matter much because she was only kidding; she wouldn’t drag him along on any vacation. She was young, probably wanted to party with friends, lounge around on Crescent Coast’s beaches, play holoboxing until their thumbs were calloused, sing themselves hoarse at karaoke.
“Oh, nowhere special. Just the weekend.” She leaned over and gave a buddy-buddy pat-pat-pat to his knee. “I wouldn’t want somebody to be all lonesome at his desk, no one to pass the time with.”
Flam snorted. “Thanks.”
Their vehicle turned out of the garage and onto the cobblestone drive, swinging nimbly for such a large auto.
Flam furtively peeked to his right. Behind the wheel, holding the twin sticks of the eighty-ton machine with the evening suns hitting her face, Nula looked beautiful—nearly agleam, incandescent. Before his thoughts could move any further in that direction, he made himself look past her, directly into the orange luster, in hopes it’d char his crush on her. All he got were spots in his eyes.