“What’s that for?” she asks.
“Call your mother,” I say. “Tell her you’re okay. You’re just staying with a friend. The shooting freaked you out.”
She frowns. “What if I don’t want to?”
“You were arguing that I should let you call.”
“Yeah, before.”
“Rachel,” I admonish. “Do you really want her frantically looking for you?”
She pales. I imagine what it must have been like for her when she ran away from home for the first time. “No, guess not,” she mumbles and dials a number. “Yeah, hi Mom. No, no, I’m cool. Yeah, decided to stay with a friend instead of coming home from campus this weekend. No, no, it’s fine. I’m fine. There’s no need for the guilt trip! I said I’m fine! God!...okay. Right. Sorry. Okay. I’ll see you next...” she looks at me. “Next Saturday?” I nod. “Next Saturday. Right. Fine. I love you, too.” She hangs up and places the phone between us. “There, happy?”
“Yes. I am curious Rachel, how do you intend on springing me on your mother? And how will you keep her from punching my face clear off?”
She picks at her cuticles. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“I gathered.” I stand from the table and go to do the dishes. I can’t abide a mess.
She comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist and presses her cheek against my back, and asks, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”
“Whatever you want,” I say. “I’m all yours.” I turn in her arms to find her grinning. She believes me, whole-heartedly, and she should. I never lie, and it’s the truth. For now.
5
When the week is over, I sit her down on my operating table and carefully poke around the bullet wound. In the x-ray, the bones appear healed without a scar. Her skin is dewy and unmarked. The stitches have dissolved and a scan with a handheld remote shows that the nanobots are all dead and ninety-three percent have been flushed from her system. I anticipate the other seven percent will be gone after her next trip to the toilet.
I scan a bit lower down, but there is nothing there to be concerned about, either. We have not been using prophylactics, but I’ve been sterile since I used the serum. It was a personal choice. I had no desire to outlive my grandchildren.
Rachel hops from the table, bare feet on the white tile, and grins. “It’s Saturday!” she says.
“Yes, it is.”
“Time to go!”
“Yes.”
She takes my hand. “And you’re coming with me, Olly. Then they’ll see, they’ll all see. You’re different now. You’re a good man.”
I smile and close my fingers around hers and, for the first time in many decades, I lie. “Yes, I am, thank you.” I use our twined fingers to pull her into the kitchen. “Celebratory drink before we go?”
She grins. “Gonna open that champagne I saw in the back of the fridge?”
I laugh. “Clever Rachel. I can’t hide anything from you.”
Only I can. I am. When I pop the cork she shrieks in delight. Every ticking second of her happiness stabs at me like a branding iron and dagger all in one.
I thought I would need a whole machine, a gun, a delivery device, but in the end my research and experiments offered up a far more simplistic solution: rohypnol. Except that it is created by me, of course, so it’s programmable, intelligent in the way the cheap, pathetic drug available to desperate, stupid children in night clubs is not. My drug knows which memories to take away.
Clever, beautiful, dear Rachel trusts me. I pour our drinks and hand her the glass that is meant for her. I smile and chat with her as she sips, pretending to be oblivious as her eyelids slip downwards, giving her no clue that there is anything amiss.
I catch both her and the glass before they hit the floor. Tonight she will wake in her own bed. She will honestly remember spending the week with a friend she then had a fight with, and no longer speaks to. She will wonder what happened to her backpack, her cell phone, her law textbook. She will not remember the Prof, or The Tesla. Her mother will be annoyed that she will have to tell her the stories over again, stories that Rachel should have internalized during her childhood.
And I will shut down this hidey-hole and go back to my apartment and cash my welfare cheque and watch television. And it will be good. It will be as it should be.
The stupid boy with the gun might have been the bad guy in our little melodrama, but I am the villain.
I am the coward.
J.M. FREY is the author of Triptych (Dragon Moon Press), “The Once and Now-ish King” in When the Hero Comes Home (Dragon Moon Press, August 2011), The Dark Side of the Glass (Double Dragon Publishing, June 2012), and “Whose Doctor?” in Doctor Who in Time and Space (McFarland Press, Fall 2012). She holds a BA in Dramatic Literature, where she studied playwriting and traditional Japanese theatre forms, and a Masters of Communications and Culture, where she focused on fanthropology. She is active in the Toronto geek community, appearing on TV, radio, podcasts, and live panels to discuss all things fandom through the lens of Academia. Triptych received a Publishers Weekly starred review and was one of PW’s top ten SF/Fantasy books of 2011. It was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and won Best SF/F in the San Francisco Book Festival.
BIRTHRIGHT
Clint Talbert
Khrandor had hoped for a bright morning, for blades of sunlight to stab the nightmares that plagued him. Instead, clouds snagged on mountain peaks and their frayed tendrils roamed like wraiths through the valley, filling every rocky shadow with an imagined terror. It would only get worse as they neared Idren. Idren—one place he’d never thought to return. But here he was on this accursed road, and every landmark reminded him of the night he fled propelled by fear, with bandaged hands and snow biting his feet. He fidgeted with the reins. Once he settled his father’s accounts and took control of the gold mines, he could be away. Another memory flashed, like a spark in a moonless night: Kassandra. Was she still as beautiful as she had been at fourteen? Had she grown into the woman he imagined each night before falling into his hellish sleep? Were her hands still strong, was her hair still the color of setting sun, were her lips still welcoming as soft pillows? He remembered fumbling moments in her father’s shop, the heavy smell of shoe leather covering them like a blanket.
What if his father wasn’t dead? What if this was a rebel trick? He glanced at the fifty loyalists and mercenaries he’d hand-picked. They were good men. He had survived ambushes with far less. And if his father was still alive...Khrandor could see the old house, the bastard standing on the steps. Khrandor imagined riding up those steps, swinging his axe through the bastard’s chest. Chills of victory rippled through his body, leaving goose bumps in their wake. Maybe he would draw out the man’s death, using the tactics he’d learned as an interrogator. Maybe breaking the bastard would end the trauma of the nightmares that endlessly pursued him through the black, restless nights.
As if he’d called their names, images of last night’s evil came to mind. He’d dreamt of the last time he saw his father. He could smell the corn whiskey on his father’s breath, feel the big paws on his shoulders as his father pushed him into the fireplace. He remembered the stinging pain as he pulled the log from the fire and hit his father with it. His breath came in short gasps, the scars beneath his gloves ached. He coughed and spat. Stop thinking about it. The bastard’s dead.
They crested the southern rise of Idren’s valley. Khrandor halted his horse. He had stopped here on that fateful night when he was fourteen. That boy had looked back, not out of remorse, but out of terror that his father would be galloping up the road in the moonlight, his riding crop salivating for Khrandor’s flesh. Kassandra had bandaged his hands. He remembered that she packed snow into the bandages to stop the burning. He’d begged her to come with him. Back then, she wouldn’t leave her father. Will she now?
Idren
looked much as it had thirteen years ago. The river still fell in roaring cataracts down the far side of the valley and passed swiftly beneath the two bridges. There were more homes with slate roofs, fewer with thatch. Khrandor’s eyes went to one large house at the north end of the valley, the prison of his youth. What demons awaited there? Who might be behind one of these naked aspens? Was his father even now fitting shaft to bowstring? Khrandor pulled his axe free.
“Sire, what is it?” Colonel Girath said, eyes sweeping the valley.
Khrandor spat. He tried to swallow his fear, lest his voice tremble. “Trust no one here. Remember, Gorick drafted many of them to fight us. We do not know if the summons is another rebel trick.”
“T’would be a vile one, lying about your father—”
Khrandor snorted. “That’s what makes me think it real. In Idren, everyone knows there was no love between that bastard and myself.” He turned to the men. “Circle up. Arms ready.” Ten men rode ahead; arrows notched.
As he followed them downhill, his eyes fixed on the ancient, gnarled pine on the edge of town. Kassandra would meet him beneath those low boughs, her body warm, her lips wet. Would she still cling to this icy backwater? Surely not, he was no longer a boy with no prospects fleeing a vengeful father. He was prince of the united lands. How could she resist being his queen? As he passed the tree, the memory changed. He had been waiting for her there when Brennan appeared. Khrandor shuddered. Brennan had come armed with a heavy staff, whereas he had nothing. Khrandor tried to clear his mind, but the memory clung with iron claws. He could feel his ribs cracking beneath the blows of the staff. He remembered the awful stink when he lost control of his bowels. Brennan had nailed his soiled trousers to the meeting tree in the center of town. Khrandor recalled the horror on Kassandra’s face when she arrived hours later, finding him broken and bloody and naked. He’d been certain he would die. She bound his wounds, washed away the blood with her tears, but her actions merely delivered him to his father’s hungry riding crop. The iron and leather hilt of Khrandor’s battle axe bit into his palms as he tightened his grip.
“Sire,” Girath’s gauntleted hand touched his horse’s neck.
Khrandor blinked, freed of the memory. He chuckled at the ragtag line of men arrayed across the road armed with rusted swords and pick axes.
“You’ll find no shelter here!” An old man brandished a pitted blade.
Master Resivak? Surely not. Khrandor remembered Resivak tending his wounds after a beating when he was five or six, not long after his mother had died. Resivak had been ancient even then. Father had threatened the old man, and Resivak had ignored Khrandor since. The old man’s blade shook with palsy.
Khrandor dismounted, raising a hand to stay his men. “Master Resivak? Is that you?”
The old man’s eyes widened; the blade clattered onto the road. Khrandor saw his men instinctively charge forward, weapons raised. He held his hand high. These were good men.
“Khr—Khran—Sir—Lord Investigator—I mean General—Khrandor?”
“Yes.” Khrandor grinned at the collection of titles from his service in Gorick’s army. He flashed his best interrogator’s grin: disarming, sly, cunning. “You sent word that my…” Khrandor swallowed, struggling not to say bastard, “father had died. I am here to settle his accounts and take ownership of the mines.”
“What are you doing here?”
The voice came from a young man with thinning brown hair. Hurovan. “Hello little brother,” Khrandor said. “Were you planning to usurp my claim to the mines?”
“We need them!”
Khrandor gestured with his battle axe, roaring. “I need those mines. Until I crush Prince Rajan there will be no peace.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I need the gold mines. And as the eldest, it is my right to claim them.” He pointed the curved blade toward his brother. “Do you object?”
Hurovan’s eyes glanced from the axe to the mounted men. He sighed. “Welcome home, Khrandor.”
Khrandor smiled. So the summons is real, the bastard is dead. This will be simple. He mounted and rode through the line of villagers. They walked fast to keep up with the horses. Resivak babbled about the hardships they had suffered while other men nodded their heads. In a few moments, they had crossed Idren to that accursed stone house on the north side of the village. The pitched roof looked like his father’s angry, arched brows. Khrandor had felt less fear leading a phalanx into a hail of arrows. His mouth went dry. The oak door stood open, like a demon’s gesture, welcoming him into its shadows and horrors. He checked his sword, it slid easily in the sheath. Dead or alive, his father would not hurt him again.
“Sire, is something wrong?”
Khrandor looked from Girath to the house. He did not trust his voice, so he shook his head. Resivak and Hurovan stared at him, as though they expected something. “What?”
“We were just talking about the hardships we’ve suffered. And I do hope that you will keep some of the profit from the gold mines here, so that we can provide for our people. After all, Idren is your hometown, Lord Khrandor.” Had Resivak just demoted him from Lord Investigator to some miserable noble?
Khrandor laughed. “You will still be paid for your work in the mines, if that is what you are worried about.”
“I can oversee them for you, brother. I’ve been helping father with it for...” His voice trailed off as his eyes met Khrandor’s. “For...some time.”
Hurovan. Little coddled Hurovan. Father didn’t slap you, did he? He didn’t burn you, did he? No, you were always the bright one. Always the baby. You never worked in the mines. You never dug until your hands bled. You never felt the lashes on your back. You have no idea how to run those mines or how to ensure I get paid. In fact, you probably administered them for Gorick, didn’t you, little brother? Do you think I’m a fool? Khrandor swallowed the urge to backhand the privileged imbecile. “I have my own men for that.”
Khrandor took the steps to the veranda two at a time, hand on his hilt. The men followed. His father lay on a table in the middle of the receiving room. It smelled faintly of rot. The bastard appeared asleep, and Khrandor immediately wanted to silence his footsteps lest he wake him. His palms sweated. Plunge the dagger through the bastard’s heart before he wakes! No, he couldn’t appear superstitious before his men. He had to show them he was in control. The damned villagers followed him inside. Khrandor looked at the bastard’s bushy eyebrows, the receding hairline of salt and pepper hair braided in a short queue, the thick mustache. Hatred simmered under his skin, pooling into pearls of sweat on his brow. Heat prickled up his shoulders, along his neck. The wool cloak burned against his skin, the chain mail crushed his lungs. Any moment now, the bastard would sit up. He would swing his legs off that platform, crop in hand. Khrandor’s knees shook. His breath came in gasps. The bastard would smile that demon smile and raise the crop...and…and...
Sweat ran down the scars on his back. The melted skin on his hands ached. The nightmare’s blackness encroached on his vision, threatening to swallow him. Calm down. Calm down! The bastard is not moving. Calm down. Khrandor took a shallow breath. From a safe distance, he spat on the corpse’s face. The bastard didn’t move. Khrandor exhaled. The room expanded, giving him space to breathe. Blackness receded from his vision. Thank the gods, the bastard is dead.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd behind him like sunlight flickering across a river.
“Burn him,” Khrandor croaked.
More murmurs.
Hurovan spoke over them, voice confident. “Brother, his wish was to be buried in the mines.”
Khrandor whirled, smashing his fist into his palm. “I will not have that bastard’s ghost haunting my mines!” Calm down. Don’t be hysterical in front of the men. “He will be burned.”
“But Lord Khrandor, we only burn criminals,” Resivak said.
“This man sinned against me.” Kh
randor leveled a gaze at Resivak—he should know. “And I am the prince of the united lands. I administer justice in this kingdom, and I declare him a criminal.” Khrandor stabbed a finger toward the corpse, keeping one eye on it at all times. “He. Will. Burn!”
“No!” Hurovan rushed toward him. “I will not—”
One of the mercenaries cracked his gauntleted fist against the back of Hurovan’s neck, sending him to his knees.
Khrandor forced his interrogator’s smile again. “It doesn’t matter what you want, little brother. I will let you keep this damned house. Cross me again, and I’ll burn it down too. Resivak, have Umaya draw up the documents for the mines.”
“Umaya is four years dead, milord.”
“Who is your judge?”
“I am, sir.”
“Would you do me the honor, Master Resivak?”
“What is the ratio of profit sharing?”
“I told you. The men that work the mines will be paid. As they are currently paid.”
“But, Lord Khrandor, it has been several hard winters. And the ‘men’ that work those mines are mostly children. The men were drafted into Prince Gorick’s army when you—” Resivak swallowed. He stepped backwards.
Resivak may have been old, he may not have known the difference in noble titles, but he was smart enough not to remind Khrandor that Idren had been drafted to slay him when he rose against Prince Gorick. “I saw many familiar faces in that battle. And I am sorry they were drafted into that fool’s army. I gave Prince Gorick a chance to surrender.”
“You gave him a chance to surrender his daughters to you. What sane man would agree to those terms?”
The outburst came from a tanned face, with curly blond hair, and a scar down the cheek. Khrandor’s spine tingled. “Why, Brennan, well met. Were you there?” The interrogator’s thrill opened like a flower in Khrandor’s gut, replacing the abject fear caused by the corpse. “Yes, those were my terms. I could not risk Gorick turning against me as I continued the advance east; I’d have been trapped between armies. You obviously don’t understand tactics of war.”
When the Villian Comes Home Page 25