by Andy Graham
“If that’s what I’m told to do.”
A log cracked, sending sparks fizzing into the damp night. A flat-eared growl from a dog hidden in the night rumbled through the air. One of the Donian women held her fist out in front of her opponent, her role in the paper-scissors-stone game forgotten as she watched the exchange.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Orr shrugged and rubbed his belly. “Hope doesn’t play by the same rules as us.”
The swaggering leader of the Hoyden, the man who had faced down each of Captain Aalok’s patrol in turn last time, seemed like a different man, subdued, beaten, as if his purpose had been taken from him. It made Nascimento’s skin crawl. Much as he hadn’t liked the kid, he’d had balls. Men with no balls weren’t men.
“I’ve been practising,” Lukaz said. The pink tint to his eyes gave him a sad but devilish look. “What you taught me. Heavy hips. I can’t remember the other wrestling tips you shared with me.” He fingered a lump above one eyebrow. “It was a bit of a crash course, to be honest.”
There was the crack of a branch and the crunch of feet. The growling got deeper. Brennan, Malakan and the rest of the legionnaires had arrived around the fire, eager whispers flashing between the uniformed men and women. The games of paper-scissors-stone stopped. Brennan’s gaze swept the group, stern, vacant and implacable. Malakan of the twitchy hands had a gloating expression that made Nascimento want to break those hands off and shove them up the kid’s arse.
“Well?” Brennan asked Lukaz, toying with a two-way radio. “Have your Elders made a decision? I’m tired of waiting.”
“Captain Brennan,” Lukaz said. The mocking sneer was back on Lukaz’s face. Maybe he hadn’t lost his balls after all. Behind Brennan, Malakan was almost hopping from foot to foot. Shadows flickered in a sudden crack of lightning.
“This ain’t good, Orr,” Nascimento whispered.
Orr’s response was to march over to Brennan and stand by his side, hands clasped behind his back. The fire in Lukaz’s eyes faded as he said, “I’m here to escort the Unsung guests to the caves. Kaleyne and the Elders will see you now.”
And as they fell in behind Lukaz, the storm broke. A squall of needle-like rain lashed down at them, hissing in the fire.
26
A Change of Plan
Dusk. The sun had almost set. Trickles of gold and orange stained the River Tenns where it slid behind the horizon. Behind the motor boat cutting through the waves, the four giant chimneys of the Brick Cathedral cut into the night. They were up-lit in the colours of the Ailan flag: red, white, blue and green. The lights were never switched off. Never. Even when Randall’s bastard half-brother had torched Substation Two, the main power station for the capital and its surroundings, the lights on the chimneys of the Brick Cathedral had blazed with patriotic fervour. It was said that should the lights fail, Ailan would fall. (It also ensured the great and good of the country who lived in the Brick Cathedral were guaranteed constant electricity — unlike the common people with whom they claimed to stand united.) The lights were a symbol of the country’s greatness and independence, its strength and stability. And as Randall watched, the lights winked out to leave the chimneys shrouded in darkness. No point making an obvious target a blatant one. And it should ratchet up the tension amongst the populace just that shade more. On cue, a woman screamed.
Randall’s motor boat hit the wake of one of the police boats escorting them, lurched, and the VP fell into a seat next to Jake Swann. The boy was staring at the bank they had just left. The walls of the Brick Cathedral were crawling with blue lights from the police and army vehicles. Jake pointed. The question was obvious. “Latest news is someone assassinated Field-Marshal Chester,” Randall shouted over the roar of the outboard motor. “Do you know what that means?”
Jake didn’t react.
“Killed. Murdered. Done away with. Exterminated. Gone underground. Deleted. The police are looking for evidence. I have a feeling they’re going to find Mennai bullets.” His laugh was whipped away by a sudden burst of white spray. Jake turned his back on Randall, spiking an overwhelming urge in the man to slap the boy. An urge which was subsumed by his stomach tying itself in knots. “Boats. Hate them as much as I hate dark water.”
Ahead of the motor boat was the private wharf he maintained in Tye. It was untouched by the fires raging through the city, mainly thanks to the Unsung pulling down the structures around his private holdings. The buildings closest to the edges of the rubble were not much more than heaps of bricks and smouldering beams. The latter were patterned with squares of black outlined by a crackling red light. Farther away from the river, smoke crept through the streets and around houses that burnt in all the colours of the rainbow. It was beautiful, primal. Maybe the Famulus had been onto something with her worship of the elements.
The throb of the motor slowed as they approached the wharf. The air was hot on Randall’s skin here, bitter to breathe. The second the motor boat clunked against the wood, Randall scrabbled onto the jetty, thankful to have something solid under his feet. One of his guards jumped up after him. He dragged Jake out of the boat. The boy was kicking and screaming, the beads of sweat on his young face were lit up crimson by the fire. That kid blows as hot and cold as his mother, Randall thought. A sharp crack of flesh on flesh, and Jake slumped into his captor’s arms. “I hope you didn’t break anything?”
“No, sir.” The Unsung private looked towards his sergeant for help. The officer didn’t react.
Randall should have been happy with this, but a part of him, maybe the small boy who had only ever wanted his adoptive dad to stop shouting at him, recognised the fear in the officer’s stiff-backed posture. Damn that man. Damn the officer. Damn everyone. “Take the boy to a medic. He’s useless to me dead.”
The private scurried off, Jake Swann’s limbs dangling loose from the man’s arms. His footsteps sounded hollow on the wooden planks above the water.
“Sir,” the sergeant said, “Captain Brennan just radioed in. The Elders have allowed the Unsung into their Council Chamber. They were allowed an honour guard for tradition’s sake. The legionnaires are all armed, sir, just like you said they should be. Just in case the Donian double-cross them. It’s good to have you looking out for us like this, sir. Laudanum wouldn’t have done this.”
At that moment a crack of lightning split the night. It turned the flames that guttered through Tye white. Fisher gulls launched themselves into the air. They spun in circles and screeched in figures-of-eight. The lightning was followed by a rolling boom of thunder. A fat drop of rain splatted onto the wooden planks of the wharf. Rippling concentric circles butted up against each other in the water. The rain ricochetted off the sergeant’s shoes, plastered his hair to his forehead.
“I am a president for the people, and that includes the legions.”
“Captain Brennan informed me Corporal Jamerson Nascimento is unaware of the change in orders. Brennan is suspicious of his loyalties. Not got any hard evidence yet, sir.”
Brennan suspects Nascimento and I suspect Brennan. It almost has a kind of cynical poetry to it. Rain was dripping down Randall’s face now, streaming off the chin of the legionnaire in front of him. The trousers of both men were soaked to their knees. “Suspicion is enough to convict most people, Sergeant. Dislike of a person will usually do if you have more money than the other. Always been this way. One of the reasons we have laws — they exist to help people rise above their own humanity.”
The legionnaire blinked the rain out of his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
Had there been a sneer there? An eye-roll? Is the man laughing at me? Did he mean what he had said about Laudanum? Can I trust him or should I be suspicious of him as well as Brennan? Randall’s eyes drifted to the revolver at the sergeant’s waist. The restraining clip was unbuttoned. Had he forgotten to do it up or is he planning to use it on me? A squall of rain whipped across the jetty. It tugged at their clothes. Sprayed cold, hard drops of water in t
heir faces. Filthy weather to go with a filthy business. Randall made a mental note to refer the sergeant to Brennan. Maybe that would improve his mood. As for Nascimento, Wu-Brocker could have him. The man had enough skin to keep her busy for a long time. “And the choppers?” he asked.
“Yours is ready, sir. Yours and the troop carriers. The weather will slow us down but we will be in the Donian Mountains by first light. We’re just waiting for your command.”
“My command?” At this, the small boy that had been bullied; the small boy that had pissed himself in the cupboard that his adoptive father had locked him in; the small boy that had pieced together comics that man had ripped to shreds; the child that had read by torchlight until his eyes were watering; the child that had made a deadly bet with his adoptive dad and honoured it and left him to die in a burning building; the child who had been described by one of his teachers as an ‘intellectually gifted, emotionally retarded moral-chameleon, the perfect technocrat for modern government’; that small boy raised his hand to speak, to remind his older self that no matter how far you walk, you can always turn back. The child saw what he had become, lowered his hand and shuffled farther back into the darkness of his piss-soaked cupboard, where he watched, wide-eyed at his slow slide through purgatory.
Lightning hissed white in the cracks between the churning clouds. “Get me Brennan on the radio. It’s time.”
Captain Brennan stood in the cave mouth. The storm light flickered around him, steam rising off his clothes. With the radio pressed hard to his ear so he could hear above the crack and boom of the downpour, he looked twisted and broken.
“Looks like a one-man impersonation of a haunted house,” Nascimento muttered. “What d’you reckon, Orr? Think Brennan would—”
“You talk too much, Nasc.”
“Yeah, whatever, dude. What’s up with you anyway, eat something dodgy on the way over here? You keep rubbing that stomach of yours.”
Orr rammed his hand into his pocket. His fingers toyed with something hidden there.
“What you got there?”
“Nothing.” It seemed that Baris Orr’s recent experiment with sentences was over.
A crack of lightning lit up the cave mouth, illuminating the pock-marked gravel slope that led down to the rock clearing bored into the mountains. The clearing held the access tunnel to the rest of the village. Over on the other side, at the far end, were a waterfall and a small orchard. There were shadows within shadows that marked out the entrances to the small cave farms. And, of course, the Dawn Rock where Donian justice was administered through combat.
“Wouldn’t want to storm this place,” Nascimento said to Orr, trying to shift the conversation back to something Orr enjoyed: violence. “You could hold out for years up here. Cave farms to feed you. A maze of tunnels to hide in. Even if we bombed this place, they could hide deep down in the salt mines. Unless the Monster got you, you’re as safe as houses. Not haunted houses, though. You’d practically need an invitation to get in here unscathed. No wonder Aalok took his time when we were here last. You . . .” The kernel of doubt that he had been ignoring for as long as possible burst. He replayed the words he’d just said to Orr. This time, the truth behind what he’d said was painfully obvious. He grabbed Orr’s arm. “What’s going on?”
Orr shook him off as Brennan stepped over to the small group of Unsung, leaving damp footprints in the dust. “Plan B. Ready?”
A chorus of “yes, sirs” and salutes answered him. There was a tension to the group that unnerved Nascimento: the set of a jaw here, the flicker of a pulse in a temple there, twitching fingers and quick breathing, and, above all, Private Malakan’s eager face.
“What in all the hells is Plan B?” Nascimento said as the two former Rivermen followed Brennan down the tunnel. Over his shoulder, the faint grind of the Donian peoples’ boots, the guard to Brennan’s honour guard, followed.
“Got told it may happen while you were stuffing your gob around the fire.”
“I should have realised you numpties were up to something with all that cloak and dagger whispering around the cook fire. I’m a fucking idiot for missing it. Gonna give me a clue or am I supposed to wing it?”
“You’ll get it.” A bead of sweat trickled down from the point of Orr’s widow’s peak onto the bridge of his broken nose.
“Now that’s an ambiguous statement, if ever there was one. Any number of ways that could play out for me and I’m not sure I like some of them.” He nodded at Orr’s pocket. “At least we’re all unarmed. Wouldn’t be good form if we were going to try and abuse the Donian hospitality, would it now? Dude, seriously. What’s going on?”
“Captain Brennan,” Kaleyne’s voice rang through the cave as Orr turned his back on his old friend. “You do us great honour in coming here.” She sat in a massive stone seat that looked to have been ripped out of the mountain. Either side of her sat the two Elders in similar chairs.
The Left Hook of Judgement and Straight Right of Justice. Straight from boxing training 101, Nascimento thought. Question is, I’m not sure who’s swinging at who just yet. Eleyka, with a dainty, fragile-looking face that didn’t seem able to cope with the grim twist to her lips, sat in the former. Karaan, with a white handle-barred moustache embedded into a greying beard, the latter. Nascimento counted. Ten other Donians. Lukaz and a couple of kids covered in decorative scars that had to be Hoyden. Seven folk that looked normal, leastways normal in that they hadn’t carved pictures into their own skins, completed the gathering. The latter included a man with the maddest mane of hair Nasc had ever seen, all dreadlocks and curls and frizz, and a woman who, judging by the skeletal necklace, must be the bonesetter. Given the size of her, Nascimento wondered if she’d eaten her patients to get her jewellery.
The cave behind Kaleyne’s rock throne arched into the darkness. Shadows licked the walls, cast by torches hanging in upside-down sconces. And here and there, amongst the towering stalagmites and cascading stalactites, was an occasional thread of red rock — gwenium, the energy source and poison that was threatening to ruin Ailan like the wars for oil and coal never had.
Kaleyne’s skirts rustled as she approached Brennan. “Rarely do we show guests our Council Chamber. But in a display of cooperation which I hope will make things easier for both parties, we—”
“They all here?” Brennan asked Malakan.
The private licked his lips.
“Captain,” said Kaleyne. “We hold to certain traditions here. I would ask that you respect them. This is a place of peace, we have come here to talk and listen, unarmed.”
Brennan pulled out a snub-nosed pistol from under his jacket and pointed it at Kaleyne. “We have come to talk; you will listen.”
Orr, Malakan and the other legionnaires pulled out similar weapons and a handful of palm-sized blades. Lukaz lurched towards the group, firelight flickering on his pale skin. Orr pointed his revolver at the man he had once beaten, then befriended, and now betrayed. “Now, now,” Malakan said, “we wouldn’t want any accidents, would we?”
“This is fucked up,” Nascimento said, shouldering an Unsung legionnaire out the way to get to Orr. “Why wasn’t I told about this Plan B?”
“Trust, Nasc,” Orr replied, the muzzle of his revolver inches from Lukaz’s brow. “We don’t trust you no more. This is your chance to earn back that trust.”
“You lied to us!” Kaleyne said in hissing tones. The torchlight flickered off the steel hair clips in her hair, adding fire to her voice.
Over the shouts and mutters, Karaan’s low growl of a voice said, “I told you they would do something.”
“You said we could trust Baris Orr,” Eleyka, the third Elder added.
“And I was wrong to overrule you.” Kaleyne turned a sad gaze on the legionnaire. “We would have given you a home, Baris.”
“Got a home, thanks, ma’am.” Orr’s eye twitched furiously.
“Elders, the leaders of the Hoyden and—” Brennan gestured at the last of the assem
bled tribespeople. The hostages looked as docile as a cat cornered by a group of mice. “What are you other people?”
“Representatives,” Malakan spat the word. “Seven people from a cross section of society. The bonesetter, an expectant father whose body shall not touch a blade until his child is born” — he pointed to the man with the thicket of wild hair — “a bereaved mother, that always seemed harsh to me, even for these peasants, a child and so on.” This time he spat for real. “‘The Old Ways that root us in history, bind us in the present and guide us through the future.’ Crap. Total crap. Superstitious peasants.”
“Malakan, where did all this hate and resentment for your people come from?” Kaleyne asked.
“You, Grandmother. It came from you. You know that. I know you do. Stop pretending. Not gonna bully me no more, are you? No more of your rules of this and that and these and those and—”
“The discipline I showed you and all my progeny was a form of love, not hate.”
Malakan leapt from the line of legionnaires and punched her in the face. Her nose snapped with a wet crack. “That’s for your fucking discipline.”
The Donian hissed and surged forwards. A clicking of hammers being cocked forced them back. Kaleyne waved away Karaan’s help and stood tall, dabbing the blood from her deformed nose. Malakan, grinning triumphantly, looked at Brennan, seemingly for approval. “Enough, Malakan,” Brennan said. “Playtime later.”
“You said I could have her, sir. You said I could practice my whispering on her and Lukaz. Gonna start with finger bones first. Like you did with that kid in Laudanum’s office. Might knock the cartilage out of her knee with a chisel, next. That stuff don’t grow back. Then—”
“Shut your hole, Malakan, before I fill it with my fist,” Nascimento snapped. As the Donian legionnaire looked to Brennan, Nascimento grabbed Orr. “Orders were not to harm them.”
“We got new orders,” Orr replied. “New orders are anything goes.”