Incomplete No. 7 / The Executioner Goes Home

by Sean Williams

  Central had agreed, of course, as they had to. But oh, they’d added, your term must be seven years. And then we will see to it you’re King of your world. King of Terra. King.

  If you live.

  Seven!

  Adao had been young, a teenager, full of bravado, and all he’d heard was King.

  And so now Adao, the Executioner, the man who would be King, stood and straightened his Executioner garb.

  Of all the things that frightened him—had frightened him, for seven years—none equalled the bowel-clenching dread that accompanied the necessary departure from this room. One final leave-taking, a solitary exodus, an abandonment of the hollow life he’d made in the last seven, dutiful years. He was headed home.

  Tomorrow was the first day of his retirement.

  The Bride suffered the wedding cloth to be wound tight across her limbs.

  But when the aides left it loose and flabby over her belly, like a pouch, she bunched it in the small of her back.

  ‘Can we do something about this?’ she asked.

  ‘There’ll be wedding food,’ Nonna said. ‘You’ll be glad for the give.’

  The Executioner had been a teenager when he left. A skinny kid with a large chin and hands that were flat and wide like gloves. Seven years ago, it had all been some giant adventure. But seven years was a long time. No Bride in living memory had waited as long as Lucia for the return of her Executioner. No Bride to the Executioner had become a wife. Not for generations. No Bride had been anything but a Widow by the end.

  ‘You should be grateful,’ said Nonna, hitching up the long sleeves of her robe until they hooked on her shoulders.

  ‘For the wedding?’ the Bride asked.

  Nonna looked abashed. ‘I meant, for the cloths. At least you don’t have to wear these heavy robes.’ She kicked at the stiff cloth of her skirts. ‘But also, for the wedding.’

  Lucia herself was older than the Executioner by a decade. Well, more than a decade. She didn’t care to count. The challenge of finding a partner on Terra who was sanguinely unrelated was so hard that no one looked twice at differences like age.

  ‘You must be looking forward to seeing Adao,’ Nonna said.

  ‘Adao?’

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  Seven years stuck in the underground passageways that served as a palace on Terra. The hastily-demarcated bridal chambers were made from an old opal mine, drained of its haul and hand-carved to a blinding white smoothness. As soft and featureless as marshmallow. As if some people—trapped people, like her—had been running their hands over the stone for decades, rubbing the sharp, hewed edges off.

  The furniture was smooth and curved, too, all plump lines as if the pieces had been grown here. It was like living in hard-packed icing sugar. Or toothpaste.

  Today, particularly, she felt distinctly anomalous in her bridal black with her curling, dark hair cascading to her waist. Seven years she’d waited. Seven years on the Bride’s pension, with nothing to do but plan a wedding and/or funeral.

  Truth be told, she’d expected the funeral. At the last minute she’d had to borrow second-hand bridal wraps from the descendants of the last Bridal Widow of Terra. The cloth was barely worn, though the edges had frayed. She’d glued them back in place for days, and Nonna had painted the last of the split ends into submission.

  ‘Any word from the Executioner?’ the Bride asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Nonna replied so fast, she’d obviously been expecting the question. Waiting on it, probably wondering why the Bride hadn’t asked sooner. She was barely older than the Bride herself, but she was still the oldest woman in the world.

  Terra didn’t foster age very well. It was too hard a place.

  Nonna gave the Bride’s shoulder a squeeze. Not in reassurance, but sympathy. As if no reassurance was to be had. The Executioner hadn’t come home, not in hundreds of years. Not alive.

  ‘He’ll be glad to be back, I should think.’ Nonna’s voice faltered before the end. ‘Quickly. Let’s paint your hands and feet.’

  ‘Not more black?’

  ‘Maybe we can get away with a very dark brown.’

  Anything was a change from the white walls, she supposed.

  The Bride jumped at the cold tickle of paint on her soles, a deeper brown than even her skin.

  ‘Beautiful!’ she exclaimed at the unfurling patterns Nonna added to her palms.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Nonna smiled. ‘Not enough call for wedding paint these days. People not taking the time.’

  ‘Tradition,’ the Bride snorted, naming the unnecessary thing. Then she coughed, expelling white dust.

  The cold paint touched her face. She did as Nonna bid and closed her eyes.

  She wondered what an Executioner might usually do, in retirement. Those that made it. She wondered what kind of King Adao might make. Then she stopped herself wondering, because first, he had to make it home.

  One of the aides stuck her head around the doorway. ‘They say he’s left his room!’

  ‘If he goes straight to his ship, how long… ?’ the Bride asked.

  ‘Five hours. Six, at most,’ Nonna said.

  The Bride sighed. Six hours mummified in these awful wraps.

  The truth, she knew, was that Nonna was only guessing. No one knew the route or how long it would take. The path of the Executioner was random to stave off unseen attack. There was no certainty about the timing. But then, there had never been any certainty, not for the past seven years.

  Seven years of waiting, she should have been immune to it by now.

  ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll see,’ Nonna said firmly.

  ‘And him?’

  Nonna cupped the Bride’s freshly-painted face and turned it up towards her. ‘Lucia. Whatever happens…’

  The Bride nodded and pulled Nonna’s hands away. Her face felt like stone. Like the cold, carved stone walls that surrounded her. Adao would be in space soon.

  What a terrible way to die.

  His intercom chimed for the second time that evening. ‘Lord Executioner, are you ready to depart?’

  The Executioner stood alone in his room.

  ‘Lord Executioner?’ The voice came again.

  ‘Yes,’ he snapped. ‘I’m ready.’

  Forgetting to stay silent. Forgetting he shouldn’t give away his position.

  They called this world Central. Because they were elitists, when it came down to it. What a wonderful place, they told him. What natural glories. What marvellous cultural pursuits! He’d been on Central seven years and he hadn’t seen any of it. Nothing beyond his room and the rooms where the executions took place by knife, gun, gas or guillotine. And a few other tools he’d never worked out how to use.

  Hell, Central may as well be thirty-two square metres wide.

  He took nothing with him, nothing from the room except the Executioner’s pistols. He straightened the magenta wool coat of his uniform, flicked imaginary dust from the gold silk brocade on each sleeve, and gave a cursory glance to his white breeches and black boots.

  ‘Fit for a King,’ he muttered, almost wryly.

  Then he moved to the door and examined the hallway on a scanner beside the lock. The readings noted nothing new in the corridor, nothing mechanically amiss. He thumbed the door release and stepped out quickly, both pistols raised. He swung the firearms left and right in a stiff, wide arc, covering the corridor.

  Empty.

  He ran.

  He made it all the way along the short, plush corridor in a blur of sweat and strain. At the lifts he checked the scanner. No one inside, so he buzzed the doors open and stepped within, his knuckle already raised to the Close control.

  The lift spun down to the underground car park below. He watched the scanners that gave a view into the darkness of the lift well itself. Nothing was in the lift well. Nothing could be.

  When the lift stopped eighteen floors down, the screens broadened to a view of the car park. Em
pty, again. Except for his armoured, self-drive vehicle. He took a breath. He let it out.

  He took another breath.

  He thumbed the lift doors open and sprinted.

  One, two, three seconds across the narrow space to his car. He was out of shape.

  He dived for the car door and it closed, smoothly, behind him. Feet still in the air, hip to the car seat, knees up in an accidental foetal impression. Pistols raised high in front of his chin.

  The vehicle dash lit up, black screens with green lettering. He let out that last breath and unclenched from his position, sliding his feet into the foot-well and uncurling his arms so the pistols rested on the dash.

  ‘Drive,’ he said.

  The vehicle moved forward on one of several pre-programmed paths, and even he didn’t know which one.

  At the garage door the scanners showed nothing but the night-empty street outside. The car hesitated, waiting for his command.

  ‘Forward!’

  The car scooted into the darkness and hurtled towards the airport. The force of it threw the Executioner back in his seat.

  One block down, a swarm of security vehicles met him. Dark metallic beetles with no apparent seams, powerful rifles encased in their bodywork. A dozen cars controlled from a dozen remote locations, failsafe upon failsafe. If the Executioner hadn’t been paranoid before, witnessing the extent of the security measures would have made him so.

  ‘Change course,’ the Executioner said into the silent interior.

  The car swerved, nudging the security vehicle to its left. The other vehicles rapidly re-calibrated, following the unpredictable path. The car scooted with its skirt of security vehicles behind it, first up one alley and then down another, zig-zagging to the port.

  They met no interference. The trip, which should have taken ten minutes, took more than three times as long.

  They breasted the port from the parkland direction, skimming unexpectedly across a runway and then up to a fat, round disk of a ship in a line of identical ships.

  ‘Is this the right one?’ the Executioner asked the car.

  ‘They all are,’ the car replied.

  Another failsafe.

  The Executioner allowed his car to be swallowed whole into the belly of the ship. Then he leapt out before he had time to reconsider the action. The air held the syrup taint of corn fuel. It was disorienting; a part of the world he thought he’d never experience again. The world outside his rooms.

  ‘We made it,’ he greeted his security squadron.

  He even almost smiled.

  The security squadron was six people strong, and their eyes raked him, pleading. To attend the Executioner was almost as dangerous a role as the one the Executioner performed. Like him, they could retire at the end of this trip. If they lived. Release was so close the Executioner could almost taste it in the sweet, liquid air.

  He slapped the nearest soldier on the shoulder.

  ‘Ladies,’ he murmured acknowledgement. ‘Gentlemen. Good work.’

  ‘Sir!’

  Beyond the squadron stood the ship’s captain and second-in-command, grey wool uniforms with plain black trim. It suited the woman better, the Executioner noted, because of the grey of her eyes.

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ said the Captain, a bald man with an impossible moustache. ‘I’m Captain Justice Welles.’

  The Executioner ignored the Captain’s extended hand and Welles, realising his error, dropped it to his side.

  ‘Two-I-C, Sympathy Holder,’ said Welles, gesturing to the woman on his left.

  ‘From Central, then,’ said Adao, recognising the naming conventions. ‘It’s very good to meet you.’

  He meant it was very good to make it this far. Welles looked like he didn’t agree. Perhaps he’d been hoping the Executioner would die on the way to the port.

  Adao wondered briefly what they paid the crew that transported the Executioner home. Or rather, he wondered what they paid the families.

  He said, ‘Are those your real names? Welles, Holder?’

  ‘We don’t use real names,’ Holder replied. ‘So no one can trace us back to our families.’

  ‘And so no one can blackmail you by exploiting family members?’ The Executioner nodded. ‘Good. Right, then, let’s get through this thing, shall we?’

  Welles looked dubious.

  It took Holder to say, ‘Of course, sir.’

  The Executioner was marched to his bay.

  ‘My mother was the Executioner,’ Holder called over the heads of the Security squadron. ‘Some years ago now.’

  ‘How long did she serve?’ the Executioner asked.

  ‘Just over eleven months.’

  ‘Then she served a goodly time.’

  He’d nearly said a goodly sentence, but that wasn’t how he was meant to refer to the Executioner’s role. Welles stepped forward and gestured him towards the bay.

  ‘You’ve scanned the cabin?’ the Executioner asked.

  ‘Consistently. For three days straight,’ Captain Welles confirmed from outside the security squadron.

  ‘And so has your own squadron,’ Holder added.

  ‘Good,’ the Executioner said. ‘And you’ve scanned the scanners?’

  ‘Biologically and electronically.’

  ‘The rest of the ship?’

  ‘Clear,’ said Holder. ‘All clear.’

  ‘No one will disturb me?’

  ‘Only for meals.’

  ‘I’ll take my meals now.’

  Holder hesitated. ‘We don’t have a way to keep them warm—’

  ‘I’m used to cold food.’ The Executioner gestured with a hand. ‘No disturbances. None. At all.’

  ‘Unless,’ said Captain Welles, ‘there’s a problem with the ship.’

  The Executioner entered the cabin. ‘Not even then.’

  White was the colour of funerals. A return to the white dust of Terra. A white cloak had been put aside for the Bride, to cover her wedding black should the need arise.

  The Executioner’s grave had already been dug in the deepest catacombs. His body would be laid to rest there or, if not his body, then at least some token in his memory. Depending what was left.

  Within six hours, she would know which.

  They’d been touring the catacombs for nearly an hour and the wraps were beginning to chafe. So much tradition, Lucia thought. So much past. Hardly any idea of the future.

  ‘Adao,’ she whispered out loud, testing his name on her tongue.

  Nonna cast her a sidelong glance, then reached out to grip her elbow. ‘No bride should be so sad.’

  The Bride snorted. ‘I’m not just a bride.’

  She was Bride to the Executioner. Of course she was sad.

  People came to pay their respects. Some of them she’d been schooled with, some had been teachers, none were strangers. They all greeted her like someone alien. As if the office of the Bride had stripped her of any recognisable humanity.

  Years ago she’d ceased trying to wink or pull faces or greet friends with hugs and chaste kisses to cheeks. More and more, the Bride had become something hollow even to herself.

  Adao had proposed to her drunkenly, one night. He’d been a young man supposedly on his way to die. He needed a Bride, he’d said. Or at least, he’d like one. More to the point, Central would pay for one. Maybe she’d enjoy the pension. She could take some time off from working in the mines.

  She’d thought maybe it’d last a year. A holiday. There was no equivalent pension for the Executioners’ Widows and Widowers. There were so many.

  And wine was so rare on Terra. Drunkenness so rare. So when she’d agreed, she’d joked, but only for a taste of the wine on your lips. And he’d kissed her. Pressed his warm, wet mouth to hers so she could taste the wine. She hadn’t even asked what the term was, how long he’d be away. She hadn’t thought it would matter.

  The fumes had rolled into her mouth and stung her eyes so she blinked away tears. That’s how she’d agreed to marry the Exec
utioner. For wine and pity.

  She’d been swept away by Adao’s youth, indulging in this child’s game. Outlasted by the adult she became again, as soon as she woke with her head throbbing and her throat dry as desert dust.

  Hung-over, she’d attended his departure ceremony where he stood young and proud and yes, tragic, already in his dark Executioner’s garb, bloodshot eyes to match his coat. So soon the Executioner, and he hadn’t even stepped on the Executioner’s ship let alone made it to Central.

  And, in truth, some of the Executioners didn’t make it that far. The last serving Executioner had succumbed to her stab wounds on Central sometime the night before. Perhaps while Adao and Lucia rolled, drunk, in Adao’s bed.

  Adao had given her a sorry grin as he strode into the ship that would take him from Terra. Shortly after, she’d stopped thinking of him as Adao. He’d become only the Executioner. Lucia had stared straight ahead as his ship spun into the air. She’d focussed on not throwing up.

  Later she’d found they’d attributed her ill health—kindly, she thought—to the likelihood she was already in mourning.

  They’d moved her into the Bridal Chambers that day. She wondered how to explain to them she didn’t belong there: how to say, we were drunk, it was an adventure, neither one of us meant it.

  But somewhere in that initial intoxicated haze she had become the Bride.

  In the years since, she’d taken to roaming the catacombs beneath her rooms. She’d grown used to each gargoyled headstone and serpentine woman carved from the walls to guard family plots. So used to them, she’d taken to holding conversations with them, their stone cold faces implacable.

  ‘Don’t dwell.’ Nonna tsk-tsked.

  They reached the Bridal hall, decked for the wedding or funeral, depending. The current Queen’s guard was already in place, their faces implacable. She supposed some of them would resent the loss of tenure. If Adao made it home.

  Nonna was sampling the punch with appreciative sucking noises. She cautioned Lucia when she reached for a cup, ‘Not too much.’

  The Bride grunted.

  Her first sip sent a potent sting up through her nose and into her brows. Nonna laughed at her expression.