The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree

by S. A. Hunt

  “Why is this city laid out like this?” I asked. “This big round maze is a pain in the ass.”

  Noreen took a deep breath, her head tilting back and her eyes scanning the tops of the protective walls. “Mainly for siege purposes. The longer it takes invaders to get to the center of the city, the more time the troopers have to attack them from the ramparts. The streets are basically great big gauntlets.”

  “The streetlights are low and soft to keep the battlement patrol in shadow,” said Walter. “And to prevent any troopers on the ground from being dazzled in a gunfight.”

  We found the picture show in a stucco-sided cabin in the crook of the first switchback. Inside was a dark room full of wooden folding chairs. Upturned faces watched a flickering movie projected over their heads onto a white sheet stretched taut across the far wall.

  The image was of a man in chaps and a hat, wearing dark eyeliner and gripping an oversized six-shooter, creeping up to a doorway. Beyond, three men were lasciviously counting a pile of shiny coins on a heavy pub table, by candlelight.

  “Oh!” I murmured. “It looks like the little theater from The Green Mile where they take John Coffey to see a Fred Astaire movie.”

  “It’s a silent movie,” said Noreen, the herky-jerky image dancing across her eyes. “Just like the old Charlie Chaplin films.”

  Sawyer was beaming. “I feel like I’ve gone back in time to see the birth of cinema. Like I could turn around and see Georges Méliès running the projector.”

  There were a few empty seats in the back row. We sat down and settled into the droopy canvas seats. On the screen, the man in the chaps and hat had gotten the drop on the others, and they were taunting each other. Script cards popped up between each line, but they were in Ainean and mostly illegible to me. I leaned back, folded my arms, and relaxed in the cool moviehouse.

  I recall wishing I had a box of Junior Mints, and then I was sitting in a dark study, slumped in a Victorian wingback chair. A nearby window flickered with faint firelight, giving me enough visibility to see that the place was tastefully furnished. I recognized the titles and authors of the books arranged on the shelves: Dickens, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jean-Paul Sartre.

  I got up out of the chair and went over to the window. The scene that awaited me was one of total devastation. The ruined shells of a peaceful neighborhood lay scattered all over the place, flaming and crumbling. The night sky held not stars but a goose-flock of airplanes. I could hear the drone of their engines.

  I looked down on this Boschian hell from a third-floor window. Someone was standing in the street. I opened the window and called out, though I don’t remember having a voice.

  The figure turned around. He was wearing a yellow longcoat.

  Embers danced across the brim of his weatherbeaten black Boss. I couldn’t discern his face because of the hat, but I already knew what I would see. He had taken out a gold pocket watch and was looking down at it.

  He snapped it shut and slipped it into a pocket. He walked toward the window, and into the entrance of the building.

  I ran for the door and closed it, not with a slam, but softly. As soon as it clicked, I hid in the footwell of the broad mahogany desk by the window, hugging my knees. I pulled the chair in with me.

  I waited. The oblivious ticking of a grandfather clock reminded me of the passage of time, sounding out a bat-like sonar that ricocheted off the passing seconds. I heard faraway thunder, muffled by the walls of the house. No—not thunder. Bombs. The planes I’d seen were dropping bombs.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Where the hell was I?

  My legs began to cramp. Maybe the front door was locked. Maybe he couldn’t get in at me. I pushed the chair out of the kickspace and slid out, unfolding myself. I stood like that for a moment, my hands on my knees, stretching my back.

  Tick. Tick. Tick....

  The clock had stopped. I walked over to it, the floorboards groaning under my feet, and looked up at the clock face. The arms had ceased to move. I opened the face’s glass front and saw a hole just below the arms’ center pin, and lying on the inside of the frame was a little key. I inserted it and started winding the clock up.

  The loud ratcheting of the clockwork startled me as I worked. I tried to turn it a little softer, but it was impossible, so I just turned it slower.

  A searing pain crept into my hand. I snatched it away. “Ow.”

  The key was red-hot, glowing in the shadows. I licked my fingertips and blew on them. What on Earth?

  The paper clock-face caught on fire. A trickle of flames licked up from the bottom and started chewing up the sand-colored backing. I could see orange metal inside, as if the gears themselves were connected to some power source.

  I backed away as the paper burned. Tiny ashes floated out of the clock like snow; as I remained there, the face’s backing was obliterated by a ring of glowing hot metal inside. It was like the eye of a electric stove. The arms drooped and fell off, and oozed down the front of the clock like slugs.

  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Something was next to the piano.

  I looked down and perceived a shape in the dark, a dimmer, hunched figure. It shuffled toward me and uncoiled as it moved, writhing open like a newborn fawn and reaching upward with long, angled arms and hands like empty black gloves.

  It groaned and stood up on lank legs, and the shadow turned toward the clock. It reached up with those empty hands and took the glowing ring of metal down from the mechanism inside, and put it on like a mask.

  The Feaster turned toward me, that eye burning through the night, and those slender, lightless arms crooked toward me like spider-legs. It opened those glove-hands and took hold of me. I could feel the heat of it through my shirt.

  “It’s over,” it said, and I screamed.

  I heard polite laughter from the last stragglers leaving the movie-house. Noreen was shaking my shoulder to wake me up. She covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her own chuckling. “Hey, the movie is over. Did you have a nightmare?”

  “I guess I did,” I said, and got out of my chair, stiff and mortified. My heart was still pounding.

  A little boy filed past, clutching his mother’s hand. He looked up at me and said, “Are you all right, serah?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I am. Yeah.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, smiling, as she pulled him into the crowd. Just before he was swallowed by the throng, he added, “He scares me too.”

  Walter took us to a comfortable little inn down the hill from the Weatherhead and set us up with cozy digs, since there were no guest quarters at Normand’s keep. The furnishings were rustic but top-notch: aromatic, unfinished cedar bed-frames from the mountains west of Ostlyn, blue flannel sheets to stem the spring chill, and handmade quilts.

  Someone had started a fire in the pot-belly stove in the corner, and the dry heat permeated the room with a sooty effulgence that made my head swimmy and scattered my thoughts. Noreen excused herself to go see if the King was still awake, and left us to our devices.

  As Sawyer and I were getting ready for bed, Chiral Clayton showed up with a pair of bulging gunny sacks.

  “You’ll be needin this,” he said, dumping them out on the floor. The vespine green K-Set armor inside cascaded out in a muffled clatter. The two of us didn’t pick any of it up, just sat on our beds with grainy eyes, dully taking in the old man as he stood there, the sacks hanging empty from his hands. “Well? Go ahead and try it on, see if it fits.”

  Sawyer looked as if he wanted to protest, but the Chiral’s piercing eyes made that seem like an unwise choice. I could tell he was a night-owl. I used to be, before I began my life spending all my time running from otherworldly beings and walking for hours across prairies.

  After a brief hesitation meant to drop the hint that we didn’t particularly appreciate the intrusion, we slid out of bed and started putting on the pieces. There were greaves, cuirasses, gauntlets, shoulder-protectors, helmets that looked like a prop from Robocop or Ju
dge Dredd.

  I had never really gotten a good look at anything but the gauntlet Gosse Read had handed to me on the Vociferous our first week here. I was astonished to realize that the retaining straps that hadn’t dry-rotted, fallen off, and been replaced with leather belts—why, they were made of elastic webbing!

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked Sawyer as I put the pieces on. “This is Spandex. Look, it’s even got Velcro. It’s wore the hell out and doesn’t stick to itself anymore, but it’s Velcro, all right.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The inside looks like neoprene, too. Those Etudaen really knew their stuff, huh? I hate to say co-inky-dink, but—hey, I dunno.”

  We stood straight and modeled the armor for Clayton. He nodded appreciatively, and we started taking it back off and putting it back into the bags.

  “I’m just glad we don’t have to fill out a hand receipt for this crap,” I said.

  “Hey, boy,” said Clayton, his nostrils flaring. “That crap will save your life one day. Believe it.”

  I didn’t know how he would react if I called him sir, so I just focused on removing the pieces. I unbuckled the cuirass and slid it over my head. On the way out of the vest, something caught my eye. I carried the chestpiece over to the pot belly stove and angled it so that I could see the inside of the plate by the light of the fire.

  It was the same icon I’d seen stenciled on the lightning-gun on the steamship, only this was in much better condition. A symbolic eagle in rampant, his wings spread and his head in profile, like a medieval coat of arms. It was a label, printed on the lining of the chestpiece.

  Underneath it were two words that sent the deepest chill up my spine that I’d felt since surfacing in the Aemev—again, as when I’d first heard about “Lord Eddick”, the world seemed to jar loose from its moorings. Sawyer came over and I showed him as well. I saw him get the same feeling of existential horror. He tore his eyes away from the symbol and looked at me. “Do you think Ed knew about this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “But I think I know who needs to know about it.”

  I looked down at the printed symbol and words.

  NEVADA ORGANON

  Noreen & the King

  SHE CREPT UP THE GRAND STAIRCASE, as cat-quiet and furtive as Dorothy heading into the palace of the Wizard of Oz. Only this time, the heroine’s beloved Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow were away sawing logs. The stone steps held the heat of the day, radiating it into the cooling night air. The two moons of Destin swelled in the sky like celestial Chinese lanterns, one as white as bone and the other a livid red.

  A gunslinger trooper was pacing back and forth on the torch-lit portico, serving as the night’s council retainer. Noreen could see a gun on her hip. “Well met, mis’ra. What brings you to the Weatherhead at such an hour? The Council doesn’t take visitors this late, I’m afraid.”

  “I came to see my father before I went to bed for the night.”

  One gunslinger? That seemed peculiar, Noreen thought, but then it was evident that nothing really ever happened to warrant heightened security in Ostlyn these days. She hoped that trend would continue.

  “Your father?” asked the retainer. She tossed her longcoat back, casually making room for a draw. The sleek green armor reflected the firelight as a faint, sparkling pearlescent sheen. Noreen couldn’t see her face inside the swarthy K-Set armor...she wore something that resembled a motorcycle helmet with a grille visor and looked for all the world like a grinning green demon.

  “Yes. Do you know if he’s still awake?”

  “Who is your father, that I may know who to disturb?”

  “Ahh—” said Noreen, and swallowed. “King Normand.”

  “Is that so?” asked the retainer. “I’ll have you know I’m the daughter of Ancress Momerren.”

  “Really?”

  “Uhh...no.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was being coy. Who are you in fact?”

  “Noreen Kaliburn, princess of the nation of Ain,” said a voice in the darkness.

  They both looked in that direction and saw a flare of light as Clayton lit a cigarette, cupping the flame with his hands. He shook out the match and evaporated into the shadows again. “We’re all learning to adapt to sudden circumstances. No harm, no foul, Meadow, but if I were you, I’d let er pass.”

  The army gunslinger seemed to regard her with new eyes.

  “My apologies, milady. May it be,” Meadow said, bowing low over her fist.

  Noreen blinked in Clayton’s direction and frowned slightly at Meadow. “It’s all good. Everybody makes mistakes. I only just arrived today.”

  “It is my job not to make mistakes, milady,” said Meadow.

  Noreen wasn’t sure what to say. She tried to think of several wise aphorisms, something appropriate and sly and princess-clever, but came up with nothing but trite bullshit that felt lame in her mouth. In the end, she said in a confidential tone, “Then this will just be between the three of us.”

  “Yes, milady,” said Meadows, pacing into the limits of the firelight.

  Noreen pulled the door open and went into the council chamber, giving Sawyer’s father a last glance, but she could see nothing there but an inky pool of night.

  Her father and another man were standing by one of the ancillary doorways, conversing when she entered.

  “Well met,” said Normand, noticing her. He was wearing a night-robe with a subtle, elaborate pattern and a pair of canvas shoes. “What a delightful surprise. August, I’d like you to meet someone very special to me.”

  He beckoned her over and put an arm around her, enveloping her shoulder in one of his ancient, rough hands. She felt very small and fragile, in a juvenile sort of way. Is this what fathers are supposed to make you feel? “My dear, this is August Armistead, the Councilman of the Kingdom. I’m sure you probably already know what August does here.”

  “I do,” she said, and Noreen realized that over the course of her life reading the Fiddle series, she had been privy to many secret indiscretions and questionable aspects of the people she was now meeting. She knew of some of the morally dubious things the Councilman had done in his career, and it pained her to act courteous toward him.

  Indeed, she experienced the urge to blurt out the things she’d seen him do on the page, but she stifled it. They seemed amicable enough. She didn’t want to rock that boat if the need hadn’t presented itself.

  An epiphany, broad and startling, slowly came to her as she nodded her head in deference, but it was tantalizingly out of her grasp.

  “May it be, Councilman Armistead,” she said.

  Armistead was a solid figure, barrel-chested, with a squeaking-bald scalp, a short, woolly beard, and the perpetual scowl of a vulture. He handled matters of diplomacy and served much as a Secretary of State. In Ain, that usually meant dealing with two political entities: Cice Jiunad, a nation to the southeast and home of the Griever cult, and the Antargata k-Setra, which over time had evolved from a colony into a distinct—but not wholly autonomous—government all its own.

  “May it be, young lady,” said Armistead. His voice was grave and erudite, like a fine cameo carved out of granite, but he spoke in refreshingly clipped tones. He was like a gnarly sea captain that spent his Saturdays at the bookstore reading legal thrillers over a soy latte.

  Normand winced a smile at her and winked. “This is my daughter, Noreen.”

  “Daughter?” said Armistead. “I was aware of no such thing! I look away, and she appears while my back is turned! You work fast, old man. But seriously....”

  “It involves the matter of importance that I’ve summoned the council to discuss. Goddard and Eleanor should arrive in two days’ time, and then we will convene,” said Normand.

  “I understand. I do know how you hate to repeat yourself.” Armistead asided to Noreen loud enough for the King to hear, “You will learn, he can be a man of few words.”

  The old gunslinger shook his head in disapproval, but
the ghost of a smile still remained under his chopped mustache.

  The Councilman bowed. “I’m afraid it’s getting late for me. I must retire to my quarters; there is a crisp new tome and a slice of lemon cake, and I can hear them chanting my name from here. I will leave you two be. I trust I will know much more about this lovely surprise in two days, then?”

  “That you will,” said Normand. “Sleep well.”

  He disappeared through one of the doors. The girl and the old man were alone.

  Normand smiled down at her. Even as warm as it was, she couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. They were warm, scratchy, fatherly hands to be sure, but she had been along for a very long and very dark ride. They were bloody hands.

  The smile was genuine and affectionate, but his blue eyes, like the skies over the tallest mountain in the world, were cold and distant. In this instant, she saw a flicker of regret in the back of her heart, like a fleeting glimpse of some rare animal. Suddenly she felt vulnerable and very, very alone.

  He finally said, “So what brings you up to see this old stranger, milady?”

  She didn’t know what to say. She caught herself staring at him and let out the breath she’d been holding, blinking. Her eyes were dry with fatigue.

  “Just wanted to come up and see me before bed? Spend a few minutes with this wore-out old bandit?”

  She nodded. Normand’s smile faltered, metamorphosed seemingly without moving from guileless and happy to wistful. “I get the feeling I’m not entirely what you expected,” he said. His voice had lost some of that baritone edge.

  “No,” Noreen said. She rummaged for the words. “You’re what—what I should’ve expected, I think.”

  Normand appeared to understand that she was cryptic out of necessity, out of a fundamental inability to put herself into tenable words. He turned and walked over to the doorway nearest to the dais, opening it. “Perhaps it might help to...well, just come with me.”