by Nisi Shawl
And to do that, one must be proximate to greatness.
So the man who would call himself anything stashed away the profits of his cleverness until he could move to the valley of kings and queens, where starry fortunes were built upon a vastness of sand. Like pharaohs these men and women lived, erecting monuments and pressing whole hosts into hard labor; and word of their power and wealth had come to his ears.
The man bid farewell to the women who all thought themselves his one and only love, with haste and without many tears, since he did not expect to see them again. He did not kiss the infant boy that one held, with his own dark hair and dimpled cheeks.
Time and space did not chain our storyteller, for the stories he told disregarded both as soon as they became inconvenient. And so by steamer and coach, Greyhound and plane, the man made his way to the valley of sand.
And where money flows and ebbs in deep tides like the sea, shifting mountains, crashing, storming, drowning, the humblest barnacle is sufficiently wetted if it only clings to a firm surface. So the man lived, studying the landscape, until he heard the clack of dice in every two shells rolled along by the sea. With adjustments to his former patterns, he crabbed small fortunes with the wire cage of his smile and landed wish-granting carp with his tongue for bait.
A little empire he eked out, nestling against the greater fortunes and powers that ironed the land flat, effacing a neighborhood there, shredding communities there. From the kings of that land he learned to spin his silken webs to catch not one fly but a thousand. Once stuck in his flatteries, they squirmed to be sucked, pleading to be wrapped in his glorious silks. And he, like a spider, was glad to oblige.
Dining on every rare delicacy, traveling to white-dusted parties by limo and helicopter, he was contented for a time.
Then, as he listened, as he grew familiar with that land, he learned that these kings were clever but lesser, that an emperor ruled over them, and that this emperor was a fool. The kings simpered and groveled when they came before the emperor, just as this man did before them.
Bit by bit, the glitter of the valley of kings faded. The man grew restless and hungry once more. Late at night, he spun plans to weave himself into the imperial court and staff. Favors were asked here, a rumor murmured there. A few careers had to be ended to clear the way, but what of it? Soon an invitation on cream-thick paper made its way into his hand.
All was ready, the story staged, waiting only for the curtain and the lights.
On the morning the man walked out of his old apartment for the last time, a plane ticket clutched in one hand, he found a boy no older than fifteen, dressed in the clothes of another era, standing in the building’s entryway.
“Excuse me,” the man said, stepping around the boy.
“You’re my father,” the boy said.
“I don’t have a son.”
“Here’s a picture of us. I was three at the time.”
“That could be anyone.”
“It’s you. I didn’t come to bother you. I only wanted to ask—”
“You’re making me late.”
“—why you left. Why we weren’t enough for you.”
“Nothing personal. Nothing to do with you. But look at your mother. Was I supposed to grow old—with that? In that small, ratty house? In that backwater of a time and place? No, I am meant for greater things.”
“She said you were a tailor.”
“I do stitch, weave, and spin.”
“Will you teach me to be a tailor too?”
“In ten minutes, I’m going to miss my flight, which will cause me to miss a very important appointment. See, I’m on a tight schedule. Call me another time.”
“But,” the boy said, looking after him, “I don’t have your number…”
“So sorry, your imperial grandiloquence,” the man said, several hours later. “Encountered an unavoidable delay. But now that I’m here, my various skills as a tailor are at your praiseworthy self’s disposal. I can sew you an outfit, invisible, that all your subjects must nonetheless kiss the hems of, and admire. Sew half-truths and falsehoods together, until a listener can’t tell head from tail. Weave tales to turn brother against brother, snipping all bonds of loyalty except to you. These matters make my trade.”
“Be welcome here,” the emperor said. “I can tell that you are a gifted man.”
And the emperor threw a fistful of peas at him.
“Quick, a suit that will make me irresistible. I need it in five minutes. The Queen of Sheba is coming.”
“Immediately,” the tailor said.
But when the tailor returned after four minutes, carrying a suit of exaggerations, the emperor was already pawing at the Queen, who resisted with an expression of deep distaste, extracted herself, and stormed off.
“Where were you?” the emperor said, mashing a handful of gravy into the tailor’s hair. “I told you to be done in two minutes. You took ten.”
The tailor said, “That’s right, O golden sun of wisdom.”
“I didn’t get to fuck her because of you.”
“To make amends for your disappointment, may I offer you this suit of Impregnable Armor?” And he held out again the invisible clothes that mere minutes before had been an Irresistible Suit.
“Don’t be stupid. I can’t get pregnant.”
“Ah, but this suit protects you from all harm.”
“Gimme,” the emperor said, and was quickly dressed.
Even though his wares were intangible, producing enough of them to please the emperor and thus avoid the latest flung dish of baked beans proved exhausting for the soi-disant tailor.
He spun the Three-Piece of Plausible Denial, the Vest and Cravat of High Event Attendance, the Cufflinks of Venality. Each time, the emperor toyed with his work, tried it on, pronounced himself satisfied, and promptly forgot it existed.
“May I suggest,” the depleted tailor said, “stripping the populace of their rights, so that no one has rights but the most righteous of all, which is to say you, our rightness, you who are never wrong.”
“Why not?” the emperor said.
That was carried out, despite demonstrations and strikes and scathing newspaper columns, and then the tailor had to invent a new diversion.
“What about setting neighbor against neighbor and stranger against stranger? Tell the old story of the dark-skinned foreigner with his knife dripping blood. A little chaos does for power what warm horseshit does for weeds.”
“Whatever you like,” said the triply-clothed emperor. “Next.”
And those foreign-born or born to foreigners or born to those born to foreigners were rounded up, accused of crimes, and variously punished.
“May I suggest plucking the flower of youth before it grows strong enough to revolt?”
“Let it be so,” the emperor said.
Across the realm, children were mown down like green grass ahead of the mower’s scythe. Even the onion-eyed kings in their silicon towers felt their quartz hearts crack and said, “No more.” But they spoke it softly, so the emperor would not hear.
And while the tailor measured and spun and snipped, the murmur of the people rose to a roar. For there remained some of intelligence and clear thinking and good judgment among them, and these had gently taught the rest to put on new eyes and see.
On a day when the emperor was deliberating between the empty suit of Universal Belovedness on the tailor’s left arm and the trousers and blazer of Religious Authority draped over his right, a herald ran in with the report that a mob had smashed through the palace gates and was headed toward the emperor’s palace.
Indeed, through the window they could see a dark storm of humanity swelling on the horizon. All that stood between that flood and the doors was a line of police with loaded rifles. Most of the mob was children, with some old women mixed in, and some young, as well as a few brave men, and they stepped over the bodies of those who were shot and pressed forward to the palace, inevitable as death.
The tail
or, with the instinct of a hare, twitched and backed toward the exit.
The emperor said, “Sit.”
And the tailor sat.
At a snap of the emperor’s fingers, servants tugged the curtains shut, so that they could no longer see the cresting wave. The lights were switched off. They waited in darkness.
“Bring me a bottle,” the emperor said, and poured two fingers of sixty-year-old liquor into two glasses. One he drank. One he emptied over the tailor.
“That suit,” the emperor said, “that prevents all harm—I’m wearing it now. But what will you do, clever tailor, when they come through these doors?”
Distantly, over the gunfire, they could hear the children singing, and the song rose sweet and clear on the wind. Soon there began, at the palace doors, a heavy and fateful thudding, like that of a heart under terrible strain. All the world, it seemed, kind and cruel alike, had come to beat down the palace doors.
If you’ll excuse me, I am now going to join them.
Heaven help the children.
Heaven help us all.
Blood and Bells
Karin Lowachee
THIS BE HOW my mother died.
Outside there be gunfire and voices. Maybe it’s rain, or maybe the sound of rain hitting the dirty windows be her worlds at war with each other. The smell of blood bloats the air to bursting. She be bursting in this room. She be locked away. Her home be a small cold apartment in the heart of the Nine Nations. The paint peels. The walls cry from leaks in the pipes. The broken-tiled floor spreads hard and slick. Her brother’s friend Yascha kneels in front of her open legs, as if he’s praying to her. Or preparing a sacrifice. She holds onto her brother’s hand. But he’s not the only one she wants. She hears his voice coming closer from outside, demanding, worried, a gushing wound of love and anger. Maybe she deserves both of these emotions.
She be fifteen years old.
There be something inside of her that makes violence where there was peace, makes traitors in the place of lovers.
That something be me.
The door opens, but too late. There be a rush of blood.
I come screaming into the world at the same time my mother leaves it.
MY SON TZAK has tiny bells in his hair, just like the Opike killer standing across from me in the puddle. Their mothers came from the same Opike band, but wan’t related. Still, all Opikei males wear bells in their hair. My son be only a half-blood, but he wears the bells. His mother would have wanted that so I give her that, even though she be dead now.
The Opike in the puddle has many bells, many skinny braids, and a dissatisfied face. He be nervous like me but don’t want to show it. So instead he looks like this be all a waste of time. The unusual night rain pours down behind him in sheets, echoing steel music on the flimsy, slanted roof of the abandoned clinic. Water collects in tiny lakes on the black pavement and makes liquid fingers in the uneven ground, reaching toward us. Garbage flows down with the water like drowning souls: bits of aluminum, cracked syrettes, broken chain links. Shell casings. The round white light shining from my leader Jeriko’s black lapel makes shadows and reflections collide.
Jeriko and Aszar, the Opike leader, continue their rough conversation. There was a murder yesterday in a stylehouse on Backbone Street, in Opike territory. Aszar thinks Jeriko might know something because the murderer supposedly fled to our band. But the murderer din’t. This be what Jeriko is trying to explain, but Aszar in’t listening. The victim was his cousin Yascha. The murderer even took the body. Aszar be a running rage. Even other Opikei be heard to grumble over Aszar’s foolishness and the blood it brings them sometimes.
Tonight, Aszar brought five from his Opike warband. Jeriko brought six from our Domani band, including herself. We all got weapons, an hour wet from rain, and I want to go home. I watch the Opike standing directly across from me. His hands are in his pockets. The bells in his hair chime lightly. All of the Opike make music when they move or talk, and they can’t talk without moving. Right now Aszar’s hands cut the air like his words cut off Jeriko’s words.
My hand is in my pocket and my gun is in my hand.
We don’t know about that murder. No Domani were on Backbone when it happened. No Domani would keep a murderer from Opike justice. The Domani and Opikei are blood nations.
All of this fails to penetrate Aszar’s gimpy brain.
Just behind me on my left stands Roon. I can almost hear her eyes moving from one Opike face to another. Hesi, Yei, and Pomjo make no sound. They stand on Jeriko’s right. The Opikei across from us look straight at us. We’ve picked our opposites. The argument escalates. Sounds echo. We shift, and lights on our leaders’ lapels flicker, shining on faces and half-destroyed walls.
Aszar flips open his gun, out of his pocket in a flash of steel.
They all come out, a unified snapping of impending murder. The guns whir as the bullets come alive, their narrow tips shining blue-white, like hot stars. They make the muzzles glow.
Jeriko stands with her hands flat out. She laughs.
“This be gamey, Aszar. You won’t find the murderer, much less your dead cousin’s body, by lighting me. You’ll only make yourself a target.”
There are seven other bands in the Nation. Some of them prefer the Domani to the Opike. Aszar should remember it.
The Opike across from me doesn’t blink. Only his bells twinkle and chatter in the rainy breeze. Moisture runs into my eyes but I don’t take off my target. I can’t tell if he recognizes me as the mate of one of his dead bandsisters. I don’t know if he knows that I hate Yascha, the dead one. Aszar knows though.
Aszar says, “If you’re keeping my cousin’s murderer, the Nations won’t stand in my way.”
Right. Aszar walks wide of the Council, even though he’s on it. He’s pulled the wrong noses in his time.
“I’ll unroll who did it,” Jeriko says. “But I need to be alive and so do you.”
Aszar doesn’t say anything for a stupidly long time. Our arms stay out and our guns pointed. But finally he sees the wisdom in Jeriko’s words. His gun lowers. He flicks his wrist and flips it into safety, a spiral flourish. Small brains like his want to show off when they can.
The other Opikei follow suit. Jeriko never pulled a gun. When she lowers her hands we flip ours to safety.
Aszar signals his band with a brief jerk of his barely bearded chin. They peel into shadows behind him. He keeps looking at Jeriko. Then he looks at me. His eyes are gray and clear and murderous.
He turns in a whip of coat. Jeriko’s white light points at his back like a laser sight. Aszar tests her. He be that bold.
The Opikei pass through the sheet of rain at the crumbled end of the wall and disappear.
I pocket my gun.
“Get on the street,” Jeriko says to us. Her gaze flickers to me like a subliminal. “Unroll who did it.”
We nod and murmur agreement.
“Taiyo,” my leader calls.
My bandbrothers and sisters glance at me but separate like grenade fragments, bleeding into the downpour. I go closer to Jeriko.
“This wan’t you.” It’s not a question in sound, only words.
“I din’t light his mudfaced cousin.”
Jeriko sighs. “No end to drama since Tzakri’s mother dead.”
I chew the inside of my cheek before I let some words fall out that I can’t pick up. I say nothing.
“It be simpler on all of us if his little bells be back in Opike territory.”
“He be my son!”
“Shut yourself. I speak truth and you know it. Prove to the Nations you din’t light Yascha.”
“As you say.” Like I need to prove something I din’t do.
I turn and kick the garbage at my feet as I step through the wall of water, right into little bullets of rain. I jog through puddles and pools of lamplight, heading back to my son.
SOMETIMES, LOSA AND me, we jawed about leaving the Nine Nations. Sometimes we jawed about dreams that we knew
were too high to ever land. “Imagine the green,” she’d say. “Imagine the sun. Does it feel different outside of the city?”
When I saw Losa dead in that room, the bedding all bloody beneath her and her neck slack on the pillow, every part of me in that moment went somewhere else. Someplace up and above but it wan’t no freedom angel gone to such great heights. All my breathing went under and my body went up, like tumble-end in storm sea. Death was the scent of iron and electricity. I tried to shoot Yascha, but Losa’s brother stopped me. Everybody crying, everybody mud-tears, and little Tzakri the loudest, this little wrinkly thing. A skinned cat, ugly gray, and for a second I hated him too.
But when Yascha reached for him I knocked that bastard back and took the boy myself. I took him up all blood and squall. Because he was mine.
He be mine.
THE ABANDONED CLINIC be five blocks into Gim band territory. The Gim band be neutral so both Jeriko and Aszar agreed to meet there. That was good because I don’t want to go into Opike territory if I can help it. Some of them do remember me. But it be not good because Gim territory be five long blocks from my higher, through rain and polize streets. The polize patrol heavily in Nation territory. Their crawlers whir from corner to corner like mechanical cockroaches. The arthritic buildings and erratic lamplight sliced by the storm help me evade them. I’m soaked to the skin by the time I reach my higher. The broken main door swings open from the growing wind and slams shut behind me like a flapping mouth. The front floor be a shallow pool of grime and water. I’m already wet so I walk through it without care and up the slippery stairs, holding the metal rail. The lights here flicker too, buzz blue and black, on and off like code. I pass lines of shut black doors on either side. Muffled voices and sharp sounds weave through the rumble of the storm—vis or reality, who knows.