Walker

by Michael Langlois

  “Even one person means that somebody knows we’re here,” said Daniel.

  “Amiri can keep his mouth shut. He’s one of Keldon’s men, hand-picked for this particular assignment. As long as we stay away from the Sanctum, we’ll be airtight.”

  Saul led them out of the alley and into a busy street. It must have been early evening, with people hurrying home from work or heading out to eat. Most of them wore multi-layered robes made out of a flowing, sheer fabric. Enough layers of the nearly transparent material provided opacity for modesty, but plenty of airflow to help with the thick humidity, which Daniel was already beginning to envy in his neck-to-toe leather sheath.

  Most of the men wore dark robes with fewer, heavier layers, while the women wore pastel confections of many gauzy sheets crossing each other in varying lengths. The only people not wearing robes were what looked like policemen or city guards that stood in a group at a nearby corner.

  They wore brown leather outfits similar to what Daniel was wearing, only much less ominous. They also wore short curved machetes on their hips in well-worn holsters, right next to their service pistols. People nodded to them, or spoke briefly as they passed, giving Daniel the impression of small town cops who were just as much neighbors as policemen.

  The street was lined with light posts that gave off a yellowish-blue radiance, which Daniel judged to be about the same brightness as the gas lamps on Olympus. Unlike the gas lamps, the light was steady and came from a large flower growing out of the top of each post.

  The flowers were two feet across with bulbous, clear petals traced with fine blue veins. The meaty flesh of the petals gave off most of the pale light, with the blue highlights coming from the brighter veins, which stood out like highly polished metallic threads.

  “I had Amiri book us some rooms at Bentil Feme,” said Saul. “It’s close, and I’ve stayed there before. Some advice to a young Walker from an old one, don’t stay at the Sanctums. It’s free and comfortable, but boring. You need to get a feel for the people and places of the worlds, and you’re not going to get that surrounded by a bunch of Guild jerks too good to mix with the natives.”

  Iyah gave a throaty chuckle. “Don’t let him fool you, Daniel. The real reason he stays in town is because it’s harder to bring women home in the middle of the night at the Sanctum. I have no problem sleeping at the Guild houses and still learning about the local culture. But then, I’m not really interested in the kind of cultural exchanges that Saul is.”

  Saul shrugged agreeably and Daniel smiled, feeling content to let the now familiar banter wash over him as he examined the city. They walked down a broad boulevard lined with single-story buildings, most of them shops or taverns. They had the appearance of being pushed out of the jungle-covered ground, leaving whole sections of thriving wilderness on top. Long ropy tendrils and vines hung down from these aerial plots, neatly tied into bunches and secured to the walls like vegetative ponytails. Tall springy trees with coconut-like clusters at their crowns towered over most of the buildings, erupting from the spaces between them at every opportunity.

  Flora of every description pushed upward at the bases of the buildings, and from every square inch of land that wasn’t covered by heavy paving stones, which seemed to provide the only plant-free thoroughfare for traffic.

  The stone road ran between the buildings and extended between some of them to provide a way for people and carts to access the side doors, but mostly the ground was a riotous mass of waving fronds and bushy headed stalks, flowers, and ground covering vines.

  Pedestrians stuck to the stone walkway in front of the shops, only stepping off the path when Daniel and the others approached. People looked at the ground and waited nervously for them to pass. One young mother pushed her small daughter out of sight behind her as they drew near, and then turned her face away as they passed. Daniel felt ashamed. If it bothered Saul and Iyah, they made no mention of it, but Daniel did notice that the banter came to a stop after that.

  Bentil Feme turned out to be a three-story hotel with a pub on the ground floor. The sign on the front had unintelligible writing on it, but there was a color picture of an open sunlit glade printed in the center of it. Delicate green tendrils wound around the sign supports and down the edges of the sign itself, the trailing tips of a much larger vine on the roof.

  They entered the noisy common room and approached the counter. Every footstep they took became more audible as the full-throated roar of conversation around them dwindled to a shriveled hissing noise, like wind slicing through a field of tall grass.

  Saul spoke to the man behind the bar in a melodic language that sounded like a mixture of French and Spanish, and received three room keys, which he distributed. Seeing that nothing more exciting than getting a room for the night was likely to happen, the noise level in the room gradually began to regain its former vigor.

  They sat at a table made of dark wood with a top so finely polished that it looked like a black mirror, surprising for a surface that held wet glasses and scratchy silverware all day. Saul noticed Daniel’s inspection, and spoke up.

  “Nice, eh? There’s no varnish or lacquer on that. It’s just plain Brila wood. This town’s famous for it. Hard as a rock, and just as heavy. Makes great furniture, houses, you name it. I’d bet half the people in here are in the local Brila trade in one way or another.”

  Iyah smiled fondly and ran a fingertip over the glossy surface. “Saul gave me a bookcase made of Brila last year for my birthday. It’s beautiful, but it’s so heavy that he had to get some of his Channeler friends to carry it into my apartment for him. I told him that I could have gotten it myself, but he said that it wouldn’t be a surprise that way.”

  Daniel liked seeing Iyah’s more sentimental side, so different from the ruthless face that she showed the rest of the world. Besides Saul, he was probably the only other person who had seen it.

  “Yeah, I’m an old softie,” said Saul. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure, how about filling me in on what happens next? What’s the plan?” asked Daniel.

  “The plan,” said Iyah in a more businesslike tone, “is to eat dinner and go to bed. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to try to teach you some basic self-defense. If you’re going to get killed, you may as well not embarrass yourself in the process. A Channeler’s strength can mean a lot, even when backed by little skill.”

  “That’s not going to help me much against a bullet, though. Maybe I should just work on keeping my head down, and not worry about the whole fighting thing.”

  Iyah narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.

  “Uh, on the other hand, it couldn’t hurt. And I should probably learn to take care of myself even if I wasn’t being shot at,” said Daniel quickly.

  Saul laughed and slapped Daniel on the back. “See? Your survival skills are improving already!”

  Iyah opened her mouth to reply, but Saul was saved by the arrival of the food. An empty plate was placed in front of each diner, and a large platter was set down in the center of the table. Thin curls of meat were arranged neatly around a pile of assorted greens, with several kinds of plump beans sprinkled over the whole thing. A bowl of dark rice joined the platter, and everyone received a tall glass filled with a murky, foamy liquid. It looked like dark beer, but tasted like red wine mixed with fruit juice.

  Several minutes of silence passed as plates were filled and emptied. Daniel enjoyed himself immensely, delighting in the surprisingly spicy greens and tender strips of wild game.

  “This is the real reason I stay here whenever I can, thank you very much,” said Saul with a glance at Iyah. She rolled her eyes at him.

  “Now,” he went on, “let’s talk about the job. I know that you have some training to do in the morning with the Queen of Bruises here, but try not to break anything. The day after tomorrow we’re going to pick up a package from a local factory and transport it back to Olympus.”

  Daniel frowned. “Why don’t one of the Walker
s from the Sanctum just go and get it? What do they need us for?”

  “Because this package is important. We only get one delivery a year, and it’s always transported by the First Tracker. That way, if it gets stolen by another Walker he can follow them to get it back.”

  “Another Walker?”

  “It’s never happened before, but anyone on the council would love to get their hands on the whole package before it gets shared out to the rest of the members.”

  “So what is it?”

  Saul dropped his eyes for a moment. When he looked up again, he appeared tired and sad, as if his usual cheerfully belligerent attitude was merely a façade that he no longer had the energy or interest to maintain.

  Iyah watched Saul’s face, her own features frozen into a perfectly neutral mask.

  “You’ll find out soon enough, let’s not talk about it now, okay?”

  Daniel shook his head. “This whole deal sounds pretty shitty to me, Saul. What’s the Guild up to here? For that matter, why did we have to get all Gestapo’d up in the first place? We’re obviously scaring the crap out of these people. It feels wrong.”

  Saul’s features became animated once more, angry now. “Get used to it. You think I’m not ashamed of some of the things I have to do? You think Bruce is a saint and I do the Guild’s dirty work? Who do you think built the inhibitor in your Arc? You have no idea. The Guild isn’t like some kind of evil empire, it’s more complex than that. We bring stability. An end to war, famine, and even the occasional plague.”

  “But we also bring weapons and fear, do we not?” said Iyah in a quiet voice. “And to mention plague is to remember our guilt there, as well.”

  “I’ve never delivered weapons or a plague, and neither have you.”

  “No, but the Guild has done both of these things with our knowledge, if not our cooperation. They bring stability to some, and ruin to others, and always for their own ends.”

  “What other choice do we have? Do you want to leave everything behind and try to live on some unknown world that could be even worse than Tuote for all we know? And what if somebody finds out that we’re planning to leave? You know what’ll happen to us if anyone from the Guild even suspected that?”

  Iyah stood up sharply, nearly knocking her chair over. “And what does that tell you about the people we work for? Maybe you should think about why you are always so eager to defend those who would enslave you. Sometimes salvation demands sacrifice. Perhaps position and comfort sway you more than any good the Guild may allow you to do in between their atrocities.” And with that, she stormed away from the table to her room.

  Saul looked at Daniel, hurt plainly visible on his face. He teetered on the edge of speaking, but instead stood up and left the room.

  Daniel sat for a while at the table sipping his drink, with only the furtive glances and whispered conversations of the remaining diners for company.

  16

  Iyah woke Daniel at dawn the next morning, with no mention of the previous night’s argument. She was wearing long cotton pants and a sleeveless shirt, with her hair pulled up into its usual ponytail.

  “Leave your uniform here,” she said. “You might end up on the ground a lot, so wear something you don’t mind getting dirty.”

  “Define ‘a lot.’”

  Iyah just smiled and stepped outside, closing the door behind her. Daniel threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and hurried after her.

  Downstairs they grabbed a few pink, plum-sized pieces of fruit from a long platter on the bar, and ate them as they made their way around to the back of the inn. The fruit was fragrant and tart, somewhere between a peach and a kiwi.

  Behind the inn was a small fenced area where the exuberant fauna had been beaten back, and the grass mowed low to the ground, leaving a thick springy carpet. The morning air was heavy and damp and smelled even greener than last night, if that was possible.

  In the light, Daniel could see that several of the taller trees surrounding the courtyard had long streamers of bright red berry-clusters, long wicked thorns, and elaborate, frilly flowers growing directly out of their trunks. The flowers sported long sticky tendrils that were beaded with sap and unlucky bugs, which helped to explain the lack of overwhelming insect life in such a warm, damp environment. Though weird looking, the flowered trees had a seductive scent, all citrus and honey.

  In one corner of the fenced area was a blanket, and on it were a pair of black knobby poles and Iyah’s backpack. Iyah grabbed the staves and tossed one to Daniel. He nearly fumbled the catch, but recovered quickly.

  “We’re going to start with some basic staff drills. You can get a stick pretty much anywhere, making it a handy weapon to be proficient with. I cut these earlier this morning. You can do a surprising amount of damage when you add the leverage of a staff to your Veil enhanced muscle. In a real fight, you’d want one of the collapsible steel poles from the Protector armory. They’re heavy and hard to break, which is a good thing where a Channeler is concerned. A Veil-blind fighter would have a hard time using one at all, which is also an advantage.”

  Daniel hefted his staff experimentally. It seemed very light, like bamboo, only a bit springier and woody, rather than splintery. The cut ends were perfectly clean, as you would expect, since they were cut with a razor sharp blade backed by enormous force.

  Iyah stood facing him, and began explaining the concepts for today’s lesson. “There are eight lines of attack for the staff, coming from the outside of your body to your center. Think of a plus and an x on top of each other.”

  She mimed sketching a plus and an x on the grassy lawn. “Where all of the lines intersect is the center of your body. The sword only uses 7 lines, that bottom leg of the plus isn’t much use without a weapon that can sweep upward easily, like the staff.”

  Daniel tried to keep from wincing. This had bad day written all over it.

  “Each line is named by position, the top two points of the x are first, from left to right, so those are one and two, the bottom two points are next, also from left to right, so three and four, with the rest of the numbers coming from the plus—left, right, up, and down. So the cut that goes from the upper left to the lower right, is a one-four cut. I’m going to call out the cut and then we’ll do it at the same time.”

  She moved to Daniel’s side so that they were facing the same direction, and called out, “ONE FOUR!” and swung the staff in a precise, crisp diagonal line, snapping the staff to a halt at the end of its arc, which caused the end to quiver while her hand remained rock steady. Daniel belatedly and badly imitated her swing.

  “Don’t lean forward like that, and pay attention to where you stop the tip, not just the direction of the swing. And start rotating at your hips, not your shoulders. ONE FOUR!”

  Daniel swung again. And again, and again. Iyah’s varied and inventive commentary on his mistakes continued with the same dispassionate monotone the entire time. On the plus side, his Veil affinity seemed to drastically slow the rate at which he became tired. Unfortunately, that did nothing for his ego.

  After a hundred strokes, she called out, “TWO THREE!” and switched cuts. Daniel groaned. A hundred strokes per line? Eight hundred strokes? He seriously considered running off into the forest.

  As the morning wore on, Daniel found himself closer and closer to the end of his stamina, and began consciously drawing more power from the Veil. He turned his sight inward and concentrated on the cool flow streaming through him.

  As always when in contact with the Veil, he could feel its movement through the people around him who were also manipulating its flow. He discovered that he could make out Iyah’s position and stance with his eyes closed, sensing the dimensions of her body in the altered currents. Since he could only sense the flow of power, the staff she held was undetectable, making her appear to be miming her staff practice, swinging and turning with empty hands.

  Being only halfway through the six-five set and bored, Daniel attempted to expand his sensory range
, trying to detect Saul in the building behind him. After some patient searching, he managed to pick out the faint emanations of Saul’s unconscious draw on the Veil as a tiny glimmer floating in the air where the second story of the Inn would be. He was still and horizontal, indicating that he was still asleep, the bastard.

  Up to this point, Daniel had only been able to feel things in a very focused way, concentrating upon the person, rather than an area. It occurred to him that he should also be able to detect the flow in a general sense, without focusing on a single place. Opening himself up as much as he could, in the same way that a person might strain to hear a noise in a quiet house, Daniel expanded his awareness as far as it would go.

  At first, there was just the faintest touch of Iyah nearby, like seeing movement out of the corner of your eye. He could focus on her and get a much more definite impression, but he deliberately chose not to do so. His range seemed pretty short, so he sought out the expansive feeling of his Walker training, at the same time that he was channeling power.

  At first it seemed impossible, like trying to read fine print and look at a distant mountain at the same time, so he started searching for a better metaphor. He imagined that he was standing in the ocean up to his knees, feeling the currents of the surf surge around his legs while gazing out at the ocean. Expanding his senses, he imagined that he could feel the entire ocean connected through the surging water around him, as if he could encompass the entire thing at once.

  He swam in it, surrounded and permeated by it, like a deep diver in the ocean. The currents carried him as they swirled and flowed, but also they moved through him, as though he were a fisherman’s net swaying in the deep sea.

  Distant worlds made their presence known by feel. They sat rigidly fixed in the ever-surging, ever-rolling Veil, more concrete and immediate than he had ever experienced before. Each of them had a slightly different texture and gave off a distinct sense of place.