Your father? Killian asked.
Died last year. I said with a shrug. Your mum and sis are fine. I take care of them. Oh Killian I’m sorry so sorry my fault sorry so very—
Hush, Killian said, firm and gentle at the same time. I chose this path. How could I let him take you? My little brother.
You knew? He must have felt my shock, because his lips lifted in a small smile.
I felt it. How else to explain this connection?
I felt dumb. It was obvious, now that I thought about it, but I had never made the connection. I had always thought of our link as something stronger than the mundane bond of blood. Da had told me the truth before he passed. He’d not been the same after Killian was taken, but he had never blamed me. He only blamed our cursed blood.
I reached out for Killian’s hand and he let me take it. When I saw the webbing of scar tissue that criss-crossed his wrist and palm, I had to bite my lip to smother my cry.
What have they done to you, Killian?
Experiments, Killian said with a shrug. My master is a devoted scholar of the Gift, a task which is very difficult given his limited ability. Me, on the other hand…I guess you could say I’m something of a prodigy.
I’m so sorry, Killian.
Never mind apologies. Never mind the past. I want to talk to you about the present, about the load of explosives you have set up beneath the town square.
When I flinched, Killian only nodded serenely. Yes, I noticed it when I patrolled the area. Are you planning on a surprise for my Master?
I’ve been planning it for the last three years, I said.
You hid it well. I wouldn’t have found it, if I didn’t know you. But you must know that you cannot carry out this plan. When news returns to the Empire that my Master has been blown to smithereens by rebel muddogs in some backwater town…well you see, there will be a price to pay. For everyone in the Swamp.
I didn’t know, Killian. I wasn’t thinking right. I…I’ve never been good at that. I took a deep, shaky breath and stood up. I retrieved a metal cylinder from the chest at the foot of my bed and folded it into Killian’s palm. It looked for all the world like nothing more than a pen, and nothing like the detonator that it was. Maybe nothing will happen tomorrow, Killian. Maybe tomorrow is Tax Day and I’ll unplan whatever it is I had been planning, because I can see the price of my actions now, the way I couldn’t then.
Killian smiled and closed his hand over the detonator. A man hardly ever understands the price of a thing until he’s paid it.
I’m so sorry, Killian.
I know, Killian said. He stood up. Goodbye.
~.~.~
The explosion woke everyone up, even folks from outside the Swamp. It happened in the early hours of the morning, when most everyone was still asleep. What the Taxman and his apprentice Scryer and his circle of guards was doing in the deserted town square at that time was anybody’s guess.
The fancy detectives from the Empire came and did their investigation. They talked to everyone, using their Scryers to probe out every morsel of evidence, but there wasn’t much to find since nobody in the Swamp knew anything.
The most they could get from the muddogs was that it was karma. The Taxman was a bad man and he finally got the bad ending that he deserved. Simple as that, end of story.
The Bluecoats had a more elaborate theory. They said the detonator for the bomb had been found on the apprentice Scryer’s body, and everybody knew there was something not quite right with the apprentice, what with all those scars and the way the Taxman mistreated him. The Bluecoats’ theory was that he’d just snapped one day, as those with the Gift were known to do from time to time.
It was a shame, said the Bluecoats, but it just went to show that you couldn’t trust Scryers.
The detectives didn’t question me except to ask only the most cursory questions, but I knew what had happened. Every muddog knows you can’t ever take nothing from the Swamp. Sooner or later, the Swamp takes it all back.
THE END
Swamp Dogs: A Story Story Page 3