by Andy Graham
She’d heard rumours that De Lette had instigated the Silk Revolution, that he’d used unofficial back channels free of government oversight to engineer a coup that would, paradoxically, keep him in power, albeit behind the scenes. The oddest part of the rumour had been that the only evidence was said to be a coin — one Mennai crown that had been symbolic payment. President De Lette had given it to the bombers and it had somehow ended up back in his hands. Chester had looked and probed, but Beth had politely ducked her questions. Not even once she had made field-marshal had Chester managed to find out the truth about the Silk Revolution.
Everything has a price. Freedom has a price. What would you pay for it? Would you pay a crown to wear the crown of freedom, to have your shackles loosed and manacles sundered? Would you steal another person’s freedom to feed your own?
Chester was reading again, eyes racing over words that Beth had written decades earlier. She skipped the pages that held Beth’s memories of Rick’s breath moist in her ears, tickling the back of her spine, warm inside her thighs. She hurried past the words that spoke of the smell of gun oil that lingered around Rick Franklin, the way the former military electrician could never look at a light switch or camera without making a comment about how it could be improved. Hidden between leather covers, in black ink on white paper, was a side to Bethina Laudanum that not even one of her oldest friends had appreciated.
Hunched over the low table, Chester read until her back ached, until the long shadows of morning had shortened and lengthened again into the afternoon. As she read, she stacked the books in an orderly pile, trying to undo the mess the VP and his men had created. She read until her guilt at prying into her dead friend’s life felt more like an act of remembrance. Until her eyes were watering, she pored over battered diary after beaten journal.
She read about the wedding burn tradition of Northern Mennai, where Rick’s wife had come from. How a couple would wrap a cloth around their wrists and set fire to it. The scars left by the ceremonial burns were a permanent reminder of the vows they had made, which couldn’t be taken off like a ring.
She read about Beth’s failure to rescue Rick Franklin from the uranium mines.
He wasn’t there. No records. As if he never existed. Did De Lette kill him after all?
And the disappearance of Donarth Franklin, Stann Taille’s son. Donarth’s partner, Rose, had been pregnant with Ray and Rhys at the time when he’d deserted her.
Out of character! Beth’s words were underlined and circled.
She read about the dead president’s mixed feelings for David Prothero, and her guilt for insisting that Prothero place his only son, the VP, under the care of an abusive adoptive father.
“Guilt?” Chester mumbled. “I thought Beth was immune to the stuff.”
She read about Beth’s anger with politicians who claimed that serving in the military was a noble thing to do for the country, but refused to let their children sign up. About Beth’s frustrations with citizens who wanted more and more for less and less. About her annoyance with people who outsourced their responsibilities and then got shitty when life didn’t work out they way they’d dreamed of.
She reached for a more recent volume: 2107 — the year the Second Great Trade Conflict started. The pages of this binder were crumpled and smudged with dirt and fresh blood. Chester refused to think about whose it was. Bold sweeps of black ink on white paper spoke about the attempts to revitalise the Morgen Towers, how the ghosts of the dead soldiers murdered by Corporal Simms had refused to leave the living alone. Chester read about a meeting she’d had with Beth, a meeting where she had pointed out to her president that the Morgen Towers were too isolated, too vulnerable. Their position off the coast of Ailan in the South Sea was good for running to and hiding in but not so good for escaping from. And as she read, it dawned on her where she could look for the Resistance, where she could find Rick Franklin’s grandson — Ray.
And if Chester knew, Randall knew.
17
The Morgen Towers
Ray Franklin pulled the metal hatch closed and slid down the ladder. The room shuddered, air thudding in his ear drums as Skovsky Senior brought the bucking chopper under control on the roof of the steel tower.
“We made it,” Ray said.
“By a prayer’s breath,” Martinez replied.
The room at the top of Morgen Tower One, one of the sea-locked towers designed to protect the Ailan coastline and now housing the Resistance, held boxes of flares, revolvers, scuffed body armour and a collection of knives, some rusting and blooded. Worse, the room rustled with the ghosts of those Ray had led into the Bridged Quarter of Tye: Sebb, the twins Dylan and Seren, and Kayle — the Donian gunslinger with the big irons. Baris Orr had stolen those revolvers after shooting Kayle at point-blank range. Even for Orr, that had been a low point.
A metal clang shook a rivet loose. Ray followed Stella and Dan. They, in turn, were following the hop-skip lope of Martinez. Vena had taken charge of Emily; the little girl seemed quite taken by the older woman.
They hurried away from Ray’s ghosts and into a corridor lit by the dull red glow of filament bulbs. Turned left and left again. And as Ray, like many who had been stationed on these towers, wondered why the corridors never seemed to turn right, Dan staggered to a halt. Teeth gritted, he banged his head against the wall. The sound thudded between the steel walls. Stella laid her hand on his back and gave Ray a tiny shake of her head, as if to say, “Give him space.”
“You OK?” she whispered.
“No.” Dan wrapped his arms around her, a purple glint sliding from under his eyelids. The tendons in his hands stood rigid as his fingers gripped her shoulders. “There’s something in my head. My brain. Like a caterpillar with claws for feet.”
The two ex-legionnaires watched, waiting for the explosion of violence they could practically taste. “Can I help?” Stella asked.
“I’m good,” Dan said in a thick voice. He kissed his wife on the forehead, a chaste gesture that seemed unduly intimate. “I’m good,” he repeated to the men. “Thank you. For everything, but I made a promise. And we keep promises, don’t we, Em?” He smiled at his daughter.
The little girl nodded, unsure how to react to her father. Judging by the expression on Dan’s face, that fact wasn’t lost on him.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take Emily for some food,” Vena said. It didn’t sound like she was asking permission. “I think it’d be good for her to have some space, wouldn’t it, Dan?”
The husband and the president’s twin exchanged a long look and the slightest of nods. “Vena’s right.” He pulled Stella close. “And just think, when we get out of here, we’ll be able to tell Em that when she was a kid the president’s sister was her nanny.”
Vena’s smile could have cut glaciers.
“I’m not sure—”
“Just in case,” Dan cut off Stella’s sentence. “Just in case I can’t control what happens to me again.”
Stella watched Vena escorting Emily away, the girl taking two skipping steps to every measured one of the woman’s.
Ray and the others rushed down another set of corridors and burst into the map room. It was awash with a nervous buzz of voices. Men and women, who looked like they’d bought their clothes from the Military Surplus Store for Fancy-Dress Connoisseurs, were gathered around a giant table. The Resistance Council seemed to be doing as much jabbing of fingers as they were spouting nonsense, talking to be seen to be talking. Up on the wall that had been engraved with a detailed relief map of Ailan’s coast, a skull stared down at Ray.
“Rose is dead,” he said.
More noise, louder voices. One man, in a loose red-and-black plaid shirt and a beak for a nose, slammed his hand down and waved a finger around like it was made of rubber.
A flash of anger surged through Ray’s veins. “I said, Rose is dead.”
The hubbub of voices died.
Silence. Accusing fingers dropped. Was my mother the only per
son in this outfit that could do anything? “Didn’t you hear me?” He stamped to the map table. “I said—”
“Your mother is dead. We heard you. We know,” Beak-nose replied.
The silence in the room deepened.
“You know?”
“We monitor official broadcasts. How could we not know? I’m Renn.” Beak-nose held out a hand.
Ray had seen Orr spit in a man’s hand before, but decided against it. Before he could reply, the door clanged open and Vena stepped into the room. “Ever think they only let you know what they want you to know?”
“Where’s my daughter?” Stella asked.
“The man waving a frying pan and an egg around while pretending to be a chef took her to the main dorm to eat and sleep. The nanny delegated.”
“You delegated my daughter? You had her less than five minutes!”
“The nanny decided looking after the big children was the priority. Emily’s safer where she is.” Vena nodded towards Dan.
Ray’s temper, frayed at the best of times, erupted. “Did your sister delegate responsibility of Ailan so easily? Is this a Laudanum trait? And how do you know the government might be drip-feeding the Resistance information?”
“Contacts. Connections. My looks may have damned my sister but they have served me well.” A hand drifted up to worry the mole on her nose.
“You going to tell me any more?”
“No.”
“I could make you.”
“How?” Vena’s head tilted to one side. “Torture me? Your brother would. You wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
“The cry of men across the ages.” The tower seemed to shudder as she advanced on Ray, armed with a frown that could sink a thousand ships. “I know a damn sight more about you than you think, Rhys. That is your real name, I understand? Wallow in guilt if you think it will solve your problems or bring your mother back. Otherwise, stop behaving like the world owes you and get on with making good your debts.” She snorted. “Men. Incapable of outgrowing the child within them.”
“The what?”
There was a shuffle of shoes and a chorus of nervous sidelong glances between the Council members.
“You heard, Franklin. You’ve got better genes than this. Don’t let them down.”
“Don’t you—”
“Ray.” Martinez’s voice cut through the anger.
Dan had pinned Stella to the wall. His lips were pulled back over teeth that seemed to be sweating. His fingers were wrapped around her throat, quivering, slowly bruising the flesh. Stella was talking to him, low and quiet, sharing details of their life, of their children: the way he would let them wash their hair; how they would sit on his feet as he walked up and down the stairs to their flat; his failure to stop the kids from eating all the dough as they baked bread together; his insistence that his children needed to learn to read well enough to be a threat to anyone who lied to them; and how the Dan-ster would stay in bed with them until they fell asleep and the nightmares wouldn’t come back. It was a snapshot of parenthood that was all the more rare given that it came from a father.
Ray and Martinez moved closer to the couple. Ray’s hand hovered over the butt of his revolver. Martinez clutched his spare crutch like a club. Stella held up a stalling hand as Vena watched the scene unfolding with eyes of cut glass.
“I’m OK.” Dan’s fingers eased. They had left red marks on his wife’s throat. “I’m good.” A tear wound its way down his cheek. “I’m sorry. It’s getting harder to control the violence. It helps ease the pain in my head. It feels natural. As if that is what it means to be human.”
Stella pulled him close. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered, hand cradling the back of his head. “It’s the drugs they gave you. That’s all.”
“He has to die.” Vena’s voice cut the room like a whip.
“What?” Stella rounded on the older woman, pushing her husband behind her. Dan was ramming his fingernails into his forehead, leaving scratches on scratches.
“The vice president has to die. It’s the only way.”
The members of the Resistance stopped their study of their feet, the maps and the backs of their hands, and risked a glance across the table.
“You know I’m right, Ray.”
“He’s my brother.”
“Your half-brother.”
“Would you kill your sister?”
Vena started as if he’d slapped her. “If I thought it would benefit the greater good, yes. It would be hypocritical to send others into danger to save my family or children. That’s not the way it works.”
“That’s exactly the way parenthood works, you heartless bitch.” Stella lunged at Vena. The older woman stood her ground. Ray reached for Stella, only to find she had been pulled away. Dan held her, a smile wrapped around his face that made him look as if he was about to take a chunk of flesh out of his wife’s neck. “One psychopath in the family is enough, Stella,” Dan said. “Let her speak.”
“He has to die,” Vena repeated. “It is the only way.”
The Resistance found their voices. Chatter rattled around the room. Maps were pointed at. Fingers waved. “He killed my mother,” Ray said to Vena as the Council struggled to be heard over their own opinions.
“She was mother to both of you,” Vena replied. “You and Randall Soulier.”
“She was only his by birth.”
“Only because she was never given a chance to be anything else.”
The image of Rose Franklin lying on a damp cell floor under the Bridged Quarter rose in his mind. The curls of her hair tangled in the dust. Her skin tinged blue. There was an element to the picture that was stark but beautiful, a painting that could have hung in one of the galleries that Vena had so recently been lamenting the loss of. Except this picture of Rose had a hole in her chest, cold blood congealing around the edges. Death imitating art. “I thought I would want to kill him. It’s not going to bring her back, though.”
Vena shook her head.
“It still needs to be done, doesn’t it?”
“Life is tough. Seek solace in righteous anger.”
“Righteous anger,” he repeated, quietly. “That’s what Brooke said. Always sounded like an excuse for violence to me.” He plucked a map out of the gesticulating hand of the nearest member of the Resistance. The man, who made up for what he lost in chin with an expanse of forehead, spluttered theatrically through his floppy moustache.
“We kill the VP,” Ray said to the committee. “It’s the only way.”
“Who put you in charge?” demanded a cravat-wearing woman.
“Me,” Ray replied.
A faint smile crossed Vena’s face.
“But—” the woman said.
“Killing him may not stop the legions.” Martinez stepped up to the table and unrolled the map.
“But you—”
“Reckon Chester would help?”
“But you can’t—”
“Worth a shot,” Ray answered Martinez’s question. “She’s always hated him.”
“But you can’t just—”
“We already know he’s going after the Donian people,” Ray said. “We got told that little gem before we went into the Bridged Quarter. Then he’ll come for the Resistance, all of them, not just the Council. I guess he wants to crush any and all opposition.”
“But you can’t just waltz—”
“Your brother; you’d know,” Martinez said with a shrug.
Ray grimaced. “Thanks, Tino.”
“Anytime, man.”
“But you can’t just waltz in here and—”
“What about the Mennai?” Ray pointed to Ailan’s neighbours on the map.
“But you can’t just waltz in here and assume—”
“They won’t do anything.” Vena gently, but firmly, shouldered the men out of the way and tapped on the map. “While the VP’s aggression is restricted to the Donian people, at least. They’ll want to see how it plays out,
see Ailan weakened. Mennai have had a run of conflicts based on lies and exaggerated claims of imminent destruction. They’re weary of war and politicians to the point that they’re shooting themselves in the foot.”
“But you can’t just waltz in here and assume command of—”
The woman’s indignant voice was echoed by grumbles from her colleagues.
“What?” Vena asked the two ex-legionnaires flanking her. “How do I know this?”
Martinez nodded silently.
“My sister and I ran the country together for a long time.”
“Seems logical.”
“Decided then,” Ray agreed.
“But!” the woman’s face was as puce as her cravat.
Dan stalked around the table. One foot was dragging slightly. Sweat dripped down his face, over the scratches his own fingernails had carved into the flesh. “But what?” he hissed.
“I—” Her voice cracked. “Just think the committee should—”
“What?” Dan was nose close to the woman, his eyes glowing with a violent purple light.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Ray watched the woman scurry back to the safety of the committee. Dan swayed on the spot and would have fallen had Stella not rushed to his side. “I’m good,” he muttered, pushing her away with one hand, the other clutching his forehead.
There was a squawk and a scuttle of claws. A fisher gull had landed on a window sill. Its rainbow-coloured feathers gleamed in the evening light. The bird cocked its head and turned an eye the colour of a black hole on the assembled people. “One for sorrow,” Martinez muttered.
“What?” Ray asked.
Martinez pointed at the bird. Its brightly coloured plumage was radiant in the sun. “Those things. Fisher gulls. Beautiful but evil. Some towns call them sinner birds. My Town, Axeford, calls them scythe birds — the Grim Reaper’s messengers. At least we called them that before Axeford got wiped off the map. Bad omens, those birds, the lot of them.”
“I never realised how barking you Free Town folk sound sometimes,” Ray said