Margaux (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

  Don't, Gredel wanted to shout.

  But Caro gave a pleased, catlike smile, and reached for the injector in Lamey's hand.

  Gredel and Caro spent a lot of time together after that. Partly because Lamey wanted it, but also because Gredel found that she liked Caro, and she liked learning from her. She studied how Caro dressed, how she talked, how she moved. And Caro enjoyed dressing Gredel up like one of her dolls, and teaching her to walk and talk as if she were Lady Margaux, the sister of a Peer. Gredel worked on her accent till her speech was a letter-perfect imitation of Caro's. Caro couldn't do voices the way Gredel could, and Gredel's Earthgirl voice always made her laugh.

  Gredel was learning the things that might get her out of the Fabs.

  Caro enjoyed teaching her. Maybe, Gredel thought, this was because Caro really didn't have much to do. She'd left school, because she was a Peer and would get into the academy whether she had good marks or not, and she didn't seem to have any friends in Maranic Town. Sometimes friends from Blue Lakes came to visit her-usually a pack of girls all at once-but all their talk was about people and events in their school, and Gredel could tell that Caro got bored with that fast.

  “I wish Sergei would call,” Caro said. But Sergei never did. And Caro refused to call Sergei. “It's his move, not mine,” she said, her eyes turning hard.

  Caro got bored easily. And that was dangerous, because when Caro got bored, she wanted to change the music. Sometimes that meant shopping or going to a club, but it could also mean drinking a couple of bottles of wine or a bottle of brandy, or firing endorphin or Benzedrine into her carotid from the med injector, or sometimes all of the above. It was the endorphins she liked best, though.

  The drugs weren't illegal, but the supply was controlled in various ways, and they were expensive. The black market provided pharmaceuticals at more reasonable prices, and without a paper or money trail. The drugs the linkboys sold weren't just for fun, either: Nelda got Gredel black market antivirals when she was sick, and fast-healers once when she broke her leg, and saved herself the expense of supporting a doctor and a pharmacy.

  When Caro changed the music, she became a spiky, half-feral creature, a tangled ligature of taut-strung nerves and overpowering impulse. She would careen from one scene to the next, from party to club to bar, having a frenzied good time one minute, spitting out vicious insults at perfect strangers the next.

  At the first of the month, Gredel urged Caro to pay Lamey what she owed him. Caro just shrugged, but Gredel insisted. “This isn't like the debts you run up at the boutique.”

  Caro gave Gredel a narrow-eyed look that made her nervous, because she recognized it as the prelude to fury. “What do you mean?”

  “When you don't pay Lamey, things happen.”

  “Like what.” Contemptuously.

  “Like-” Gredel hesitated. “Like what happened to Moseley.”

  Her stomach turned over at the memory. “Moseley ran a couple of Lamey's stores, you know, where he sells the stuff he gets. And Lamey found out that Moseley was skimming the profits. So-” She remembered the way Lamey screamed at Moseley, the way his boys held Moseley while Lamey smashed him in the face and body. The way that Lamey kept kicking him even after Moseley fell unconscious to the floor, the thuds of the boots going home.

  “So what happened to Moseley?” Caro asked.

  “I think he died.” Gredel spoke the words past the knot in her throat. “The boys won't talk to me about it. No one ever saw him again. Panda runs those stores now.”

  “And Lamey would do that to me?” Caro asked. It clearly took effort to wrap her mind around the idea of being vulnerable to someone like Lamey.

  Gredel hesitated again. “Maybe you just shouldn't give him the chance. He's unpredictable.”

  “Fine,” Caro said. “Give him the money then.”

  Caro went to her computer and gave Gredel a credit chit for the money, which Gredel then carried to Lamey. He gave the plastic tab a bemused look-he was in a cash-only business-and then asked Gredel to take it back to Caro and have it cashed. When Gredel returned to Caro's apartment the next day, Caro was hung over and didn't want to be bothered, so she gave Gredel the codes to her cash account.

  It was as easy as that.

  Gredel looked at the deposit made the previous day and took a breath. Eight hundred forty zeniths, enough to keep Nelda and her assortment of children for a year, with enough left over for Antony to get drunk every night. And Caro got this every month.

  Gredel started looking after Caro's money, seeing that at least some of the creditors were appeased, that there was food in the kitchen. She cleaned the place, too, tidied the clothes Caro scattered everywhere, saw that the laundry was sent out, and, when it returned, was put away. Caro was amused by it all. “When I'm in the Fleet, you can join, too,” she said. “I'll make you a servant or something.”

  Hope burned in Gredel's heart. “I hope so,” she said. “But you'll have to pull some strings to get me in-I mean, with my mother's record and everything.”

  “I'll get you in,” Caro assured.

  Lamey was disappointed when Gredel told him about Caro's finances. “Eight hundred forty,” he muttered, “it's hardly worth stealing.” He rolled onto his back in the bed-they were in one of his apartments-and frowned at the ceiling.

  “People have been killed for a lot less than that,” Gredel said. “For the price of a bottle of cheap wine.”

  Lamey's blue eyes gave her a sharp look. “I'm not talking about killing anybody,” he said. “I'm just saying it's not worth getting killed over, because that's what's likely to happen if you steal from a Peer. It won't be worth trying until she's twenty-two, when she gets the whole inheritance, and by then she'll be in the Fleet.” He sighed. “I wish she were in the Fleet now, assigned to the Port. We might be able to make use of her, get some Fleet supplies.”

  “I don't want to steal from her,” Gredel said.

  Lamey fingered his chin thoughtfully and went on as if he hadn't heard. “What you do, see, is get a bank account in her name, but with your thumbprint. Then you transfer Caro's money over to your account, and from there you turn it into cash and walk off into the night.” He smiled. “Should be easy.”

  “I thought you said it wasn't worth it,” Gredel said.

  “Not for eight hundred it isn't,” Lamey said. He gave a laugh. “I'm just trying to work out a way of getting my investment back.”

  Gredel was relieved that Lamey wasn't really intending to steal Caro's money. She didn't want to be a thief, and she especially didn't want to steal from a friend like Caro.

  “She doesn't seem to have any useful contacts here.” Lamey continued thinking aloud. “Find out about these Biswas people. They might be good for something.”

  Gredel agreed. The request seemed harmless enough.

  Gredel spent most of her nights away from Nelda's now, either with Lamey or sleeping at Caro's place. That was good, because things at Nelda's were grim. Antony looked as if he were settling in for a long stay. He was sick, something about his liver, and he couldn't get work. Sometimes Nelda had fresh bruises or cuts on her face. Sometimes the other kids did. And sometimes when Gredel came home at night Antony was there, passed out on the sofa, a bottle of gin in his hand. She took off her shoes and walked past him quietly, glaring her hatred as she passed him, and she would think how easy it would be to hurt Antony then, to pick up the bottle and smash Antony in the face with it, smash him until he couldn't hurt anyone ever again.

  Once Gredel came home and found Nelda in tears. Antony had slapped her around and taken the rent money, for the second time in a row. “We're going to be evicted,” Nelda whispered hoarsely. “They're going to throw us all out.”

  “No they're not,” Gredel said firmly. She went to Lamey and explained the situation and begged him for the money. “I'll never ask you for anything ever again,” she promised.

  Lamey listened thoughtfully, then reached into his wallet and handed her a hund
red-zenith note. “This take care of it?” he asked.

  Gredel reached for the note, hesitated. “More than enough,” she said. “I don't want to take that much.”

  Lamey took her hand and put the note into it. His blue eyes looked into hers. “Take it and welcome,” he said. “Buy yourself something nice with the rest.”

  Gratitude flooded Gredel's eyes. Tears fell down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said. “I know I don't deserve it.”

  “Of course you do,” Lamey said. “You deserve the best, Earthgirl.” He kissed her, his lips coming away salty. “Now you take this to the building agent, right? You don't give it to Nelda, because she might give it away again.”

  “I'll do that right away,” Gredel said.

  “And-” His eyes turned solemn. “Does Antony need taking care of? Or need encouragement to leave? You know what I mean.”

  Gredel shrank from the idea. “No,” she said. “No-he won't stay long.”

  “You remember it's an option, right?” She made herself nod in answer.

  Gredel took the money to the agent, a scowling little woman who had an office in the building and who smelled of cabbage and onions. She insisted on a receipt for the two months’ rent, which the woman gave grudgingly, and as Gredel walked away she thought about Lamey and how this meant Lamey loved her.

  Too bad he's going to die. The thought formed in her mind unbidden.

  The worst part was that she knew it was true.

  People like Lamey didn't survive for long. There weren't many old linkboys-that's why they weren't called linkmen. Sooner or later they were caught and killed. And the people they loved-their wives, their lovers, their children-paid as well, with a term on the labor farms like Ava, or with their own execution.

  The point was reinforced a few days later, when Stoney was caught hijacking a cargo of fuel cells in Maranic Port. His trial was over two weeks later, and he was executed the next week. Because stealing private property was a crime against common law, not against the Praxis that governed the empire, he wasn't subjected to the tortures reserved for those who transgressed against the ultimate law, but simply strapped into a chair and garroted.

  The execution was broadcast on the video channel reserved for punishments, and Lamey made his boys watch it. “To make them more careful,” he said simply.

  Gredel didn't watch. She went to Caro's instead and surprised herself by helping Caro drink a bottle of wine. Caro was delighted at this lapse on Gredel's part, and was her most charming all night, thanking Gredel effusively for everything Gredel had done for her. Gredel left with the wine singing in her veins. She had rarely felt so good.

  The euphoria lasted until she entered Nelda's apartment. Antony was in full cry. A chair lay in pieces on the floor and Nelda had a cut above her eye that wept red tears across her face. Gredel froze in the door as she came in, and then tried to slip toward her room without attracting Antony's attention.

  No such luck. Antony lunged toward her, grabbed her blouse by its shoulder. She felt the fabric tear. “Where's the money?” Antony shouted. “Where's the money you get by selling your tail?”

  Gredel held out her pocketbook in trembling hands. “Here!” she said. “Take it!”

  It was clear enough what was going on, it was Antony Scenario Number One. He needed cash for a drink, and he'd already taken everything Nelda had.

  Antony grabbed the pocketbook, poured coins into his hand. Gredel could smell the juniper scent of the gin reeking off his pores. He looked at the coins dumbly, then threw the pocketbook to the floor and put the money in his pocket.

  “I'm going to put you on the street myself, right now,” he said, and seized her wrist in one huge hand. “I can get more money for you than this.”

  “No!” Gredel filled with terror, tried to pull away.

  Anger blazed in Antony's eyes. He drew back his other hand.

  Gredel felt the impact not on her flesh but in her bones. Her teeth snapped together and her heels went out from under her and she sat on the floor.

  Then Nelda was there, screaming, her hands clutching Antony's forearm as she tried to keep him from hitting Gredel again. “Don't hit the child!” she wailed.

  “Stupid bitch!” Antony growled, and turned to punch Nelda in the face. “Don't ever step between me and her again!”

  Turning his back was Antony's big mistake. Anger blazed in Gredel, an all-consuming blowtorch annihilating fury that sent her lunging for the nearest weapon, a furniture leg that had been broken off when Antony had smashed a chair in order to underscore one of his rhetorical points. Gredel kicked off her heels and rose to her feet and swung the chair leg two-handed for Antony's head.

  Nelda gaped at her, her mouth an O, and wailed again. Antony took this as a warning and started to turn, but it was too late. The wooden chair leg caught him in the temple, and he fell to one knee. The chair leg, which was made of compressed dedger fiber, had broken raggedly, and the splintery end gouged his flesh.

  Gredel gave a shriek powered by seventeen years of pure, suppressed hatred, and swung again. There was a solid crack as the chair leg connected with Antony's bald skull, and the big man dropped to the floor like a bag of rocks. Gredel dropped her knees onto his barrel chest and swung again and again. She remembered the sound that Lamey's boots made going into Moseley and wanted badly to make those sounds come from Antony. The ragged end of the chair leg tore long ribbons out of Antony's flesh. Blood splashed the floor and walls.

  She only stopped when Nelda wrapped Gredel's arms with her own and hauled her off Antony. Gredel turned to swing at Nelda, and only stopped when she saw the older woman's tears.

  Antony was making a bubbling sound as he breathed. A slow river of blood poured out of his mouth onto the floor. “What do we do?” Nelda wailed as she turned little helpless circles on the floor. “What do we do?”

  Gredel knew the answer to the question perfectly well. She got her phone out of her pocketbook and went to her room and called Lamey. He was there in twenty minutes with Panda and three other boys. He looked at the wrecked room, at Antony lying on the floor, at Gredel standing over the man with the bloody chair leg in her hand.

  “What do you want done?” he asked Gredel. “We could put him on a train, I suppose. Or in the river.”

  “No!” Nelda jumped between Antony and Lamey. Tears brimmed from her eyes as she turned to Gredel. “Put him on the train. Please, honey, please.”

  “On the train,” Gredel repeated to Lamey.

  “We'll wake him up long enough to tell him not to come back,” Lamey said. He and his boys picked up Antony's heavy body and dragged it toward the door.

  “Where's the freight elevator?” Lamey asked.

  “I'll show you.” Gredel went with them to the elevator. The tenants were working people who went to bed at a reasonable hour, and the building was silent at night and the halls empty. Lamey's boys panted for breath as they hauled the heavy, inert carcass with its heavy bones and solid muscle. They reached the freight elevator doors, and the boys dumped Antony on the floor while they caught their breath.

  “Lamey,” Gredel said.

  Lamey looked at her. “Yes?”

  She looked up at him, into his accepting blue eyes.

  “Put him in the river,” she said. “Just make sure he doesn't come up.”

  Lamey looked at her, a strange silent sympathy in his eyes, and he put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “I'll make it all right for you,” he said.

  No you won't, she thought, but you'll make it better.

  The next morning, Nelda threw her out. She looked at Gredel from beneath the slab of grey healing plaster she'd pasted over the cut in her forehead, and she said, “I just can't have you here anymore. I just can't.”

  For a moment of blank terror, Gredel wondered if Antony's body had come bobbing up under Old Iola Bridge, but soon Gredel realized that wasn't the problem. The previous evening had put Nelda in a position of having to decide who she loved more, Ant
ony or Gredel. She'd picked Antony, unaware that he was no longer an option.

  Gredel went to her mother's, and Ava's objections died the moment she saw the bruise on Gredel's cheek. Gredel told her the story of what had happened-not being stupid, she left out what she'd asked Lamey to do-and Ava hugged her and told her she was proud of her. She worked with cosmetics for a long time to hide the damage.

  And then she took Gredel to Maranic Town, to Bonifacio's, for ice cream.

  Ava and Lamey and Panda helped carry Gredel's belongings to Ava's place, arms and boxes full of the clothing Lamey and Caro had bought her, the blouses and pants and frocks and coats and capes and hats and shoes and jewelry, all the stuff that had long ago overflowed the closets in her room at Nelda's, that was for the most part lying in neat piles on the old, worn carpet.

  Panda was highly impressed by the tidiness of it. “You've got a system here,” he said.

  Ava was in a better situation than usual. Her man was married and visited only at regularly scheduled intervals, and he didn't mind if she spent her free time with family or friends. But Ava didn't have many friends-her previous men hadn't really let her have any-and so she was delighted to spend time with her daughter.

  Lamey was disappointed that Gredel didn't want to move into one of his apartments. “I need my Ma right now,” Gredel told him, and that seemed to satisfy him.

  I don't want to live with someone who's going to be killed soon. That was what she thought to herself. But she wondered if she was obliged to live with the boy who had killed for her.

  Caro was disappointed as well. “You could have moved in with me!” she said.

  Shimmering delight sang in Gredel's mind. “You wouldn't mind?”

  “No!” Caro was enthusiastic. “We could be sisters! We could shop and go out-have fun.”

  For days, Gredel basked in the warm attentions of Caro and her mother. She spent almost all her time with one or the other, enough so that Lamey began to get jealous, or at least to pretend that he was jealous-Lamey was sometimes hard to read that way. “Caro's kidnapped you,” he half-joked over the phone. “I'm going to have to send the boys to fetch you back.”