I looked at the mirror. My face didn’t entirely match Kell’s. Not yet. For the last eight days, I couldn’t exactly walk around looking like Kell’s long-lost twin without attracting the wrong kind of attention.
Until now, I’d been known as George Barnes. A black marketeer who was seeking a good price for kelp. I hadn’t been allowed to enter the capital city until I’d successfully arranged an appointment with one of Free Maritinia’s new officials. Lucky for me, I wouldn’t have to keep that appointment since it was still a week out. Poor George would be a no-show.
I felt for the sewing needle I’d neatly stuck through the leather of my belt. Locating it, I extracted the slender sliver of fishbone with my fingers.
I dipped the needle into the whiskey and, squeezing it tight between my quivering fingers, lifted the pin past my eyes to my forehead.
At the moment, my cheeks were too puffy to be Kell’s. Brow too pronounced. Same for my cleft chin.
My hand froze where it was. I didn’t like needles, dammit.
Biting my lip, I gave myself a poke and winced at the sharp sting. Having punctured the skin, I’d driven deep enough to run a hole into the implant underneath. Warm fluid squirted free, a mixture of saline and blood dribbling down my face. Holding my breath and clenching my jaw, I launched into a needle-poking frenzy, jabbing each of my cheeks, piercing the bump on the bridge of my nose, lancing both sides of my cleft chin. My face smarted all over. Protesting nerves chanted and throbbed.
But the hard part was done.
Like a water balloon that had brushed too close to a cactus, my face had sprung a half dozen leaks. Liquid ran down my face and dripped off my chin. The implants under my skin deflated, and overstated features sank and tamed.
My face became his.
I massaged irritated skin with my fingers, squeezing my implants empty. My Neanderthal-like brow had shrunk until it lay against my surgically restructured skull. Flabby cheeks had disappeared. The cleft chin cleft was no more.
I wiped the blood and saline off my face with my sleeve and checked the mirror. The pinholes were small, barely noticeable. The skin hung a bit loose where the implants had been, but I’d been assured that the skin would tighten up after a few days.
I worked for some clever folks.
I took another moment to study my newest face in the mirror.
I did. I was fully Kell now. Or at least a haggard version of the colonel.
Hurriedly, I stripped off my clothes and showered under chilly seawater that trickled from a bamboo showerhead caked with salt deposits. I gave myself a good rinse, this body still feeling strange under my soapy hands—firm biceps, trim stomach, thick chest hair, and muscular legs.
Quite an improvement over the original.
I dried with a coarse, mammoth-wool towel, then hustled back upstairs, where I pulled the Empire’s uniform out of Kell’s closet with barely a glance at the dead heap on the floor.
I dressed myself, the uniform a nice fit. My body had been perfectly tailored to fit his clothes—perfectly tailored to be Colonel Kell.
I applied the finishing touches, cap on the head, flag wrapped around my neck.
I was Kell.
It was time.
I marched back downstairs and to the front door. The guards stood just on the other side of the curtain. I reached for the drapery but stopped before taking hold.
What was I going to say?
I had the right face and the right body. My scraped vocal cords were a perfect match.
But I couldn’t breathe. The reality of what I was about to attempt clamped down on my throat.
What if they didn’t believe I was Kell? They’d cut me and drop me in the water and let the cuda fish have me. An entire school of them would nip and gnaw at my arms and legs before tearing me apart in bite-sized chunks.
My legs felt heavy. I wanted to sink to the floor.
My nerves had stretched to the breaking point. “What?”
The guards heard me and came through the curtain. “Are you okay, sir?”
I fought to keep my legs under me. “I’m okay. Just feeling a little under the weather.”
The one on my left studied me in the dim light. “You don’t look well. Perhaps you should retire for the night.”
“No. I’ll be fine. Just need to walk a bit.”
“Very well, sir. Where to?” asked the one on the right.
“To the . . . um the—”
“The usual?”
“Um, yes.” The guards nodded and stepped outside. I wobbled through the doorframe. My feet felt numb, like I was walking on stumps.
I fell in step with Kell’s protectors. My protectors now.
Darkness had taken the city, our path lit by a drizzle of faint moonlight. Pedestrians ambled about, their indistinct black shadows moving to and fro. Feeling more sturdy, I breathed deep of the cool, saltwater breeze ruffling the flag wrapped around my neck.
We turned left, and the smell of a mammoth stable swamped my nostrils. I could hear their snorts. The ruffle of flapping ears. The slurp, slurp, slurp of lapping tongues. I wanted to gag, the stench of matted wool was so bad.
We took another left, and a narrow alley with a raised water sluice running down the center closed around us. Tiny homes stood on either side, with paper lanterns hanging from the eaves. Jebyl children ran and chased, ducked and dodged to the sound of squealing laughter. Men sat in their windowsills, and women hunched over small fire pits, the air thick with the smoky aromas of roasted fish and stewed kelp.
Exiting the long alley, our destination stood dead ahead, the doorway surrounded by a string of glowgrubs, the yam-sized creatures wriggling as the string blew in the breeze.
Before I could reach the door, a Jebyl ducked through the curtain only to be backed out a moment later by a Kwuba doorman. The Jebyl dropped to his knees before beginning to beg. “Please, sir, I only need a bite. Just a bite for me and my children.”
Spotting me, the Kwuba doorman welcomed me with a smile before touching his heart with one hand, a common greeting on Maritinia. “Sorry, Colonel. You shouldn’t be subject-ed to trash like this,” he said, with a swat at the Jebyl.
The Jebyl rose to his feet but stayed bent at the waist as he backed away.
The doorman crossed his arms. “You believe these Jebyl? Somebody needs to teach them a lesson, I say.”
Standing opposite him, I shook my head in that what-can-you-do way. He pulled aside the curtain, and the mistreated beggar disappeared from my mind.
I had no idea what waited inside.
With nervous tingling in my fingertips, I stepped past the doorman.
My eyes scanned across leather chairs and wine racks. To my left stood a Jebyl workman, who turned a six-foot eel on a spit. Red-hot embers cast a deep glow across the workman’s bare chest and face. The eel turned round and round, its browned flesh sweating out juices that sizzled and steamed.
No wonder that Jebyl wanted inside. A rare posh oasis on this backward world.
I studied the faces in the room, wondering where Kell usually parked himself. My guards abandoned their position on my wings and took posts in an out-of-the-way corner, while I stood paralyzed by the thought of choosing the wrong location, or the wrong people to join.
Of all the eyes that had looked my way when I came through the door, there wa
s only one pair still meeting mine, a heavy man, his broad face bathed in firelight. Everybody else appeared to be ducking for cover. Targeting the lone pair of friendly eyes, I weaved through tables of foreigners in business suits and Kwuba elites, who wore formal silk robes that hung past their knees, their feet in sandals.
Tense nods of greeting came from every direction. These people were scared of Kell. Terrified. Broadcasting an image of yourself committing the vicious murder of a hundred civil servants will do that.
I took a seat on an eel-skin wingback, the quilted leather soft and supple from years of wear. I faced my new . . . friend? Coworker? Business associate?
“Good to see you, Colonel.”
“Same here,” I said.
A bottle of wine appeared with two glasses. From his pocket, the waiter pulled what looked like a leather shoelace with a knot on one end and wormed the knot between the cork and the glass, shoving it past the bottom of the cork with a filleting knife. Wrapping the lace around his hand, and giving a long, sustained pull, he uncorked the bottle.
“So have you thought over my offer?” asked my new drinking partner.
I did. A colorful band of cloth tied around his pinky.
Catching me looking, he rubbed the cloth with a thick thumb. “The red stripe is for luck. The yellow for prosperity.” He took a glass from the waiter. “I’ve brought this special bottle of wine from my home world. Accept my offer, Colonel. Let’s toast to a deal.”
I took a glass for myself. “I’ve, um, been giving your offer serious consideration.”
“And?”
“Must we start with business? Can’t we just chat a bit first?”
He stared at me, this stranger with cheeks so fat they sagged like soggy slices of bread. He twisted in his seat, the chair’s sturdy arms only affording his sprawling hips a few degrees of leeway. “I’d love to chat, Colonel, but I’ll be much better company when our business is concluded. You’re not going to find a better price.”
I lifted the wineglass with an unsteady hand. “I think your offer is um . . . a pretty good one.”
“Ah, I thought you would,” he said. The corners of his smile disappeared under fleshy cheek overhangs. A gold tooth glowed in the candlelight. He held up his glass. “It’s a deal then?”
We clinked glasses. “Deal,” I said.
I took a sip tasting of tart grapes and bitter tannins.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “These people you’ve become so enamored with, they need protection.”
“Yes.”
“And you, too, Colonel. If the E3 ever caught up with you, I can’t imagine what they would do to you.”
“I can,” I said with a sober tenor.
He gave me a thoughtful look. “I suppose you can, can’t you? You spent enough time in the Empire’s employ to know their ways.”
Chop-chop, I thought, as a sick twist wrenched my gut.
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
A simple question was all it was. But through the filter of my guilty conscience, it sounded like an accusation. “Do what?” I asked tentatively.
“Don’t be coy, Colonel. Tell me why you did it.”
I wanted to say that I was following orders. That I meant for him to go quick. I didn’t mean for him to suffer.
Instead, I said nothing.
“Come now,” he said. “Look at all the people in this room who came to do business like me. Besides the pursuit of profit, you know what they all have in common? They all want to know why you betrayed the Sire and helped Admiral Mnai capture the Ministry.”
I reduced pressure on the teeth I’d been clenching. The question was a good one. One I needed to find an answer to. “I had my reasons,” I responded.
He frowned, his jowls sagging halfway down his neck. “No problem, Colonel, you don’t have to tell me. They say you converted, you know.”
“Do they?”
“They say you’re a Falal now.”
I lifted my brows. The Falal were a local cult.
“Hey, Colonel, don’t get upset,” the man said. “Your spiritual life is your business. I’m just trying to make conversation.”
I chugged the rest of my drink, my tongue awash in harsh flavors. His people were sorely mistaken if they thought they’d made a decent wine. As I refilled my glass, the waiter brought a bowl of food, the smell absolutely intoxicating.
I peered into the bowl—some kind of shellfish in a thin brown sauce. Smelled like butter.
My new business partner pinched a shell between his stubby fingers, then brought it up to his lips and sucked the creature down before returning an empty shell to the bowl.
I picked a shell from the bottom of the pile, making sure to scoop up as much of the sauce as I could. Ignoring the purple flesh and the wilted eyestalks, I pulled it up to my mouth. With a suck, butter splashed over my tongue. More oily than the butter at home. My mouth was instantly slick with it. I bit into the snail-like creature, a bizarre flavor bursting forth. Not that bad.
My dinner partner was getting in the groove now, slurping them down as fast as he could with one hand motoring back and forth between the bowl and his mouth, his lips shiny with buttery grease.
I picked up another shell, marveling over the simple wonder of butter. No idea what animal’s milk they’d made it from, but I didn’t care.
“What is that on your forehead?” asked my dining partner.
The fingers of my free hand went to my forehead and came away wet with saline.
“Sweating,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Is it hot in here?”
“Not really,” he said, deep-set eyes searching my face. “You don’t look well. I didn’t notice until now, but what are those marks on your face?”
“I have been feeling a little feverish. Must be coming down with something.”
“That explains why you’re sweating but not the marks.”
“What kind of marks?” I asked, trying to keep the mounting panic out of my voice.
“Little red marks.”
I brushed his concern away with a wave of my hand. “Those are just bug bites.”
He gave me a long stare, eyes boring into me from deep sockets.
I sucked down a snail and reached for another. Next, I took a hearty swig of wine. “See, I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.”
He relaxed into his seat. “You must take better care of yourself.”
My blood pressure eased. “All this fine food and drink will fix me up.”
“That it will.” He refilled his wineglass. “It’s hard to believe we used to be enemies, eh?”
“That was a long time ago,” I said because it seemed like the right thing to say.
“That it was, my friend. I like to think that if we had met back then, you’d have seen I wasn’t really your enemy. I’m just a good businessman, that’s all. I had no stake in the Secession Skirmishes.”
“I suppose not.”
“You were great for my bottom line, Colonel. The rebels were so scared of you, I could’ve sold them anything. Could’ve sold them rocks if I’d called them projectile missiles.”
<
br /> He reached for his wine, and the glass was swallowed in his big mitt. “Wait until you see the system I got for you. The Empire better bring a fleet if they want to retake this world.”
CHAPTER 5
“There atre times to be a gentleman, and ther are timmes not to.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
Daybreak was coming. Weak gray light came through the windows to gradually erase the room’s darkest shadows. I’d been awake all night. Perhaps dozed a little here and there, but I was too hopped up to get any serious sleep. The best I could do was lie here and try to relax.
My back hurt. So did my hips. These bed mats offered little comfort on the stone floor although I should probably count myself lucky I’d found a spare, considering the state of the previous one.
I looked over at the closet. Disposing of the dead colonel was a must. But if I dropped him through the trash chute, I couldn’t guarantee the cuda fish would dispose of his body. The smart move was to make sure he would sink. For that I needed more rope. Lots of heavy stones. But a late-night search of the entire residence yielded neither.
I still couldn’t believe I’d done it. It felt like a dream now. My father would be proud. Finally living up to the family name.
I heard voices outside. Holding my breath, I tilted my ear in the direction of the sound. “Go on in,” I heard one of the guards say.
My breath caught in my throat.
Too late for that.
Whoever had entered was already on the stairs.
Tides of Maritinia Page 3