The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “Obviously, they want us to walk the aisle. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

  He swooped under the cordon and squared himself in the center walkway. Frank made a more clumsy show of it, thumping about underneath the rope for a bit like a winded boxer before joining him. They looked at the boy, who still pointed dutifully down the line, before they set off towards the very front of the wave.

  “He knows we’re here then,” Frank said, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes agape at the throngs of people he passed by.

  “Yes, Frank. I would say he knows we’re here.”

  Conversations, singing, and chanting dropped off as they passed, as if a cone of silence hovered over them.

  “What are we going to do when we get there?”

  “Keep walking.”

  The two moved slowly down the aisle and the closer they came to the fortress the more the looks in the crowd changed. What were curious stares became glares, then rumblings. It was as if the crowd had been told what their charge was, that they were here to bring Mazaryk in. Always the flashlights were upon them, handing them off down the line.

  When the first shouts began, Lock picked up the pace, peering through the haze to find what awaited them at the end of the aisle, but he saw only the brick wall. No ambassador, no member of Black. Towards the end of their walk the path sloped downward. Soon the two men were pelted by things, snowballs at first, but then a stray bottle glanced off of Frank’s arm, and another fell just short of Lock, buried in the slush at their feet. They scampered now, keeping to the middle like prison guards, avoiding the cordons as hands reached out for them.

  “They’re gonna kill us,” Frank huffed, struggling to keep up with Lock.

  “Keep going forward!”

  “We’ll hit the brick wall soon, then we’re in a lot of shit!”

  “Worry about the wall at the wall!” Lock flinched as a half-full can of beer bounced off his shoulder. Squeezed between bricks and chaos, they were coming to an impasse. With no plan, Lock kept running. It had always worked before.

  Soon the cordons broke. The crowd surged around them, sluicing through the aisle. They ran with abandon. This close they noticed the wall was split by a thick iron gate. A sparse light fell through it and on to the two of them as they were halted and immediately beset, pressed on all sides as the crowd fell upon them and each other.

  Frank screamed for Lock, but could no longer see him. He flailed wildly, shoving his bulk about and gaining some brief purchase before being grabbed about the waist by a pair of stout men. He thought he caught the shine of Lock’s tracksuit beneath a throng of people to his right that seemed to have keeled over something. Frank fought anew, throwing people away from him and burying himself in the crowd like they were leaves. He dug through the pile at his feet like a dog, but was soon covered himself. There were too many. He was still screaming for Lock as he was pulled under. All he could see were bodies, all he could hear was shouting and a metallic screeching, and then he thought he must have taken an elbow to the temple, because things suddenly got quieter and darker, as if a shadow had fallen upon the night.

  The mob settled and Frank took advantage of the lull to shove his way apart. He saw Lock, lit from behind by the lights upon the mansion. He looked to be held up by a shadow the size of a large coffin. He was slumped over the shadow’s arm, but seemed to be regaining himself. Frank realized that the screeching he’d heard was the gate opening, and the shadow was a man. A very large man.

  “Hello Lock,” the man said, speaking to him even as he held him draped over his arm like a dish towel. His voice was loud and warm, totally divorced from his presence, but his presence wouldn’t be denied. As he stepped forward he parted the mob like a scythe. Those that had been willing to crush others to get forward fell over themselves to get away.

  Lock scrambled to find his footing as he was set down.

  “Hello Brander,” he said.

  The man was a tower. He appraised the crowd like a patriarch might look out upon an enormous family. He placed his hands in the pockets of a black pea coat that would have fit Frank with another Frank sitting on his shoulders. Its collar framed his long, sharp face like a portrait of a brutal nobleman from the dark ages, smiling because he was one of the very few who could. Frank had to step back to appraise him fully.

  “And you. You must be Frank Youngsmith,” he said, his English perfect. “The claims adjuster,” he added whimsically.

  “Not anymore,” Frank managed.

  “Not anymore.” Brander nodded slowly. Frank noticed that the entire crowd had gone dead silent.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” he asked, holding his hand out over the masses. When nobody answered him, he didn’t seem to care.

  “Come in, won’t you?” He held open the gate, watching them. Frank shouldered his way through to where Lock was brushing himself off. Brander swept the gate closed behind them, locked it, and strode off between the columns towards a small archway set back in the wall.

  “This way,” he said cheerfully as he ducked to pass under. He didn’t look back. The two followed.

  “I thought you were gone, man. I couldn’t see you anywhere,” Frank whispered

  “I did too, until he grabbed me. He picked me up like a sack of potatoes. I didn’t have any idea what was happening.”

  “He’s enormous!”

  “Just try to keep your head.”

  A single torch burned brightly amidst a row of darkened sconces above the archway. They walked under it and into a frozen stone courtyard. Large, decorative pots dripped ice. A prominent fountain depicting a cherub holding a conch shell was awash with sleet on one side, half of the angel’s face masked in gritty ice. The crowd swelled with noise again but it was muted and echoed eerily; more like a constant wail than shouting and cheering. Off in the darkness a large icicle broke from the roof and shattered upon the stone floor. Brander paused at an ornate wooden door ahead of them, already open, that led into a darkened receiving room.

  “In here, please.” He smiled.

  Frank slowed, panning up the building with a wary eye. Lock stopped altogether and signaled for Frank to do the same. The three stood facing each other in the flickering darkness.

  “You’re awfully chipper, Brander,” Lock said, breaking the silence

  “They tell me that of the three of us in Black, I’m the most... congenial.”

  “You’ve got to know why we’re here,” Lock said.

  “I do. And it’s no cause for alarm.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Please, follow me.”

  “You’ll have to forgive us if we’re not exactly raring to go into the house on haunted hill, here. With you. Given the whole, you know, killer thing,” Frank said. Lock turned and stared at him like one might a drunken uncle at dinner.

  Brander’s smile faded, although it didn’t disappear.

  “How far are you willing to go to get the answers you seek?” he asked, and shrugged before turning and walking inside himself, as if that answered everything.

  “I told you to keep your head! Whole killer thing?” Lock hissed.

  “I do want to keep my head, Lock, that’s why I’m hesitant here.”

  “You think you got a better shot out there?” Lock ticked toward the courtyard wall and the waving rumbles of sound beyond.

  “Good point.”

  Lock rolled his shoulders and did his best to find the part in his hair again. Then he walked up and inside. Frank followed.

  They entered a large room, its ceiling easily ten meters high. There was a small fire burning in a walk-in fireplace along the far wall that put out a flickering circle of light, but no discernible heat. The rest of the room was framed in shades of dark red cast upon the floor and walls as the moonlight passed through an ornate, circular window of stained glass set high on the sloping ceiling. In the full light of day Frank had no doubt this was probably a beautiful receiving room, but the effect tonight was unset
tling, as if the room was awash in a red mist that only showed itself when caught in the moonlight.

  Standing in the small circle of firelight was another man Lock recognized at once, a short stout figure, hands clasped behind his back. He had no hair to speak of, and his sharply starched collar revealed no neck, either. He turned upon their entry, his small, round spectacles flashing briefly in the low light.

  “Ales” Lock said, his greeting quickly swallowed up by the room.

  Ales Radomir, team Black’s silent sweeper, said nothing. Either he cracked his knuckles behind his back, or the fire popped. Either way, as Brander joined Ales near the fire, Frank stopped walking. The two men, the dim red light, the murmur of the crowd outside, soft but still frantic, all coalesced in Frank’s mind to form a juvenile state of fear, the type he hadn’t known since he dangled his hand below his bed as a child. All that stood between the two by the fire and himself was Allen Lockton, whose brand of stiff courage seemed extraordinarily lacking, and yet Lock popped forward nonetheless, balancing slightly on the balls of his feet. Brander gave a slight bow that might not have seemed so out of place here under other circumstances. He was signaling that he would now allow questions.

  “Where is Mazaryk?” Lock asked.

  Ales turned to look out of the stained glass window. Brander let out a gigantic sigh, something that might have come out of the bellows stashed to the side of the fireplace.

  “We don’t know,” he said.

  “Nonsense. You three are practically the same person. That’s like misplacing your head.”

  “You can see why Ales is concerned.”

  Lock looked at Ales, who watched him balefully, unblinking.

  “And you? Are you not concerned?”

  “Well. Ales has always been a bit of a worrier. I have a different view. The view from above,” Brander said, chuckling to himself.

  “You cannot possibly expect me to believe that you have lost Eddie Mazaryk.”

  “He’s not lost. He is where he is. Wherever that may be.”

  Exasperated, Lock shook his head. “Brander—”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Frank asserted.

  All three men turned to look at Frank.

  “He’s not lying, Lock.”

  “And how would you have any idea—”

  “I know. It’s—it was my job. I spent years asking questions and piecing together truths and lies. It’s in his tone, in the stance, his voice. Anyway, he’s not lying. Let’s move on. Next topic.” Frank made a rolling motion with his hands and looked uneasily about the dark corners of the massive red room.

  “Your friend is impatient,” Brander observed, his smile fading again.

  “Can you blame him? What’s going on out there, anyway? What is all that?”

  “They gather. For us.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “A week.”

  “They’ve been here for a week?”

  “Some. Some go. More come.”

  “Does Mazaryk know about this? About what’s happening here?”

  “He knows everything.”

  “Does he?” Frank cut in, narrowing his eyes. “Everything, huh? Then he knows who killed John Northern and Nicole Hix.”

  Brander’s smile collapsed. His eyes flashed at Frank, but whether from anger or the firelight, Frank couldn’t tell. Then he became downcast, and for a moment the big man looked as if he might cry, which confounded Frank. He could tell that Goran Brander wore his emotions plainly, as if his face was also his heart—but his heart was fickle. Transitory. Dangerous. For one trained to read emotions, it was unsettling.

  “I don’t doubt that he does,” Brander said softly.

  “Did he kill them, Brander?” Lock asked, equally soft.

  He looked up through the roof and to the sky. “I do not know. But if he did, they deserved to die.”

  “Deserved to die?” Lock repeated, incredulous.

  “Do you think they deserved to die?” demanded Frank.

  “I do not think they deserved to die. But sometimes what I think is not what my captain thinks,” Brander said. Ales shuffled his weight where he stood.

  “Jesus. The two of you are like some creepy magic act,” Frank muttered, before turning to Lock. “Let’s go. He’s not here, and even if they knew where he was, they wouldn’t compromise their own.” He turned towards the door.

  “The crowd will kill you if you leave that way,” Brander warned. “They’re loyal.” Frank turned back around and rubbed briskly at his weeks-old stubble, as if it was a charm that might whisk him away from this place.

  “We aren’t the only ones. Gatherings such as this, they are in every Tournament country in some form. Even in the United States, with no team.”

  “I would know if this was happening somewhere back home.”

  “You haven’t been paying attention. On the docks there have been nearly as many, just in one long, slow line. The Tournament... it has caught them all.”

  “He was there that night, you know. Eddie was. We have proof. Blue Admin tailed him to the docks, then lost him.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “When did you last see him?” Lock asked.

  “Dublin. We parted after the battle on the highway against Green. Ales was down.” At this Ales Radomir looked away with a silent snarl, “but the Irish were defeated. He told me to take care of Ales, and that he had something to do. Then he walked off into the rain.”

  “Something to do.”

  “That is all he said.”

  “Yeah, like kill Northern and Hix,” Frank said. “Let’s go, Lock, no answers to be had here. Is there another door? Like an underground railroad or something? This seems like the type of place that would have an underground railroad.” Lock started panning the room. Alternate routes were his specialty.

  “Perhaps he was going to save them,” Brander said.

  “Save them?” said Lock. “Then he failed. And he doesn’t fail at many things, Brander.”

  Brander was quiet.

  “In fact,” Lock continued, “since I’ve known him, he hasn’t failed once. He’s never even been shot in the Tournament. Never.”

  The popping of the fire sounded like a cap gun in the vast room and a cloud passed over the moon, raining down a darkness that thickened as it moved away from the hearth and into the corners.

  “So you’re saying that Eddie Mazaryk somehow knew that Northern and Hix were going to die, and left straight from Ireland to go and save them.”

  Brander shrugged.

  “Of every hare-brained theory we’ve come up with in the dead hours of the night, staring at the ceilings of airplanes and at the flat gray of this Russian sky, that makes the least sense,” said Lock, stepping towards him. “No sense at all!”

  “Take it easy, Lock,” Frank muttered, dampening down with his hands. He looked at Brander with an ill smile. “We haven’t had a lot of sleep—” he began, but Lock wouldn’t be deterred. Logic mattered a great deal to Lock, and logic was breaking down.

  “—No, I’m just trying to understand this. That’s all.”

  “Maybe now is not the right—”

  “First, it means he failed. Because they died. Second. What did he owe Hix and Northern? Nothing. Last, why is he still running, if he didn’t kill them?”

  Ales Radomir walked away from the fire and back towards their only exit. Frank’s eyes followed him warily, but Lock seemed not to notice.

  “Hey, where’s he going? Lock, he’s—”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” Lock asked, as if he genuinely wanted to know the answer.

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” Brander noted, his voice much colder now.

  “Lock, I think maybe we should—”

  “Innocent men don’t run, Brander. Bottom line.” Lock pointed at the ground in emphasis.

  “Who says he’s running?” Brander challenged, and he, too, took a step away from the fire. A slow, sweeping stride towards the
two of them. Frank stepped back, but Lock seemed frozen, running down possibilities in his mind.

  “Or maybe he killed both of them,” Brander said. Another step. “And dumped their bodies in the water. Breathing water like air, until their lungs burst.” Another step. “Maybe he snuffed them out like the wind, then blew away.”

  He was feet from Lock now, and it was his heavy shadow, flung by the red moonlight, that finally seemed to snap Lock out of his reverie. He blinked up at Brander.

  “What is this, Brander? I’m a courier. You can’t do this. It’s against—”

  “I have some questions of my own, Lock.” His voice was the low, threatening growl of an enormous cat. Frank could feel it in his core, and in that moment he made the decision to run out of the door. Ales was blocking it, but he figured he could at least bounce him out of the way. He made towards it but found, to his horror, that Ales had his gun out and a bead drawn directly at Frank’s face. Brander pulled out his own gun, an enormous .50 millimeter with a barrel that looked as long as Frank’s arm. The weapon dangled loosely at his side.

  “What do you know about this new team?” he asked, tapping the barrel on his thigh like it was a pencil.

  Lock was sweating now, beads of moisture glinted on his pale forehead. Frank was drenched a full five minutes back.

  “What new team?” Lock stammered.

  Brander shook his head softly once, angled his gun, and shot Lock full on in the chest.

  Frank screamed like a lost child until Ales grabbed him by what sparse hair he still had and flung him to the ground before shoving the end of his gun into the pit of Frank’s throat. The cold steel hitched his Adam ’s apple and clipped his hysterics, along with his breath.

  Lock had never been shot by a diode before. He wasn’t polarized; only Tournament team members received the inoculation that rendered them susceptible to the cellular pain of the diode system, so he always supposed that being shot with a diode would hurt, but wouldn’t be debilitating.

  He was wrong.

  He was thrown onto his back as if he’d been clothes-lined by a block of wood. He couldn’t breathe. And not the ordinary wind-knocked-out-of-you breathlessness, either; he was quite sure he would never breathe again. Every rib felt shattered, like his chest was a birdcage into which Brander had chucked a stick of dynamite. He moved his mouth about like fish, instinctively flopping himself over to protect his core.