Feral Empires: Fanning Flames

by Stephen L. Hadley

  “Nobody’d think twice if you stayed,” the madam said. Her eyes flickered toward Kathryn, who stood silently in Liam’s shadow. “The Occs aren’t known to be kind to gals.”

  Liam chuckled and reached back to ruffle Kathryn’s hair. It was even more disheveled than usual.

  “Likewise,” he said. “This one’s killed more Occs than I have.”

  The madam eyed the two of them skeptically, then shrugged and came around the bar to unlock the door for them.

  “Suit yer’selves,” she said. “But you two stay safe. It’s a hard world out there.”

  “But not here?” Liam muttered as he stepped out onto the street. He hadn’t meant for the madam to hear him, but she laughed.

  “Different sort ‘a hard,” she said. “Good luck.”

  Liam breathed deeply as the door shut behind them and he heard the sound of the wooden lock falling back into place. The streets were empty, almost unnervingly so, and even the scant windows seemed to have been closed and barred to the last. Though the residents were undoubtedly taking shelter, the lack of gunfire in the air made it seem as though the city had simply been deserted overnight.

  “Let’s check the western gate,” Liam said, glancing up to orient himself. The sun had risen sufficiently to render the sky an orange-blue, streaked with silver clouds, and he angled himself toward the darkest section of it.

  At his side, Kathryn took his hand, made a quiet note of agreement, and then took off at a near-sprint, dragging Liam down the streets in her wake. He attempted to navigate for them, but soon discovered that Kathryn’s sense of direction greatly outstripped his—so much so that he almost could have believed that she’d visited the city before.

  It took only a few minutes for them to near the wall, and Liam felt his anxiety grow as the scent of smoke and gunpowder grew noticeable. Even knowing that he had no ammunition left, he pulled the rifle from his shoulder and held it readily. If they encountered enemies, he’d much prefer that they target him first, rather than Kathryn.

  But, as it turned out, there were no enemies to battle, only rows and rows of the wounded and dead. Where once there had been slums, there was now only a makeshift hospital. Dozens of groaning men, boys, and a handful of women lay on unevenly spaced sheets in the morning light. An equal number of would-be physicians huddled around them, moving from patient to patient and doing their best to bandage wounds.

  Nearer the wall, close to a hundred armed soldiers eyed a few partially collapsed sections or moved rubble from one stack to another. The majority of the men wore the greys of the Mayor’s men, but there were two dozen or so Militiamen who labored on their own near a different section of fractured wall.

  For a moment, Liam almost headed for the militiamen. Then he grimaced, slung his rifle back over his shoulder, and dragged Kathryn in the direction of the hospital. Pushing his way through a cluster of medics, he held out an arm for Kathryn to bite. She did immediately. And ignoring the protests of the approaching men, he dribbled a thin trickle of blood onto the torn, partially bandaged chest of the unconscious man before him.

  The wound sizzled audibly, as if he splashed water onto a fire-heated stone, and then healed visibly with a fresh layer of pink skin. This miracle was greeted with appropriate gasps and murmurs of astonishment from the nearby men.

  Wiping the smeared blood from his arm, Liam held the limb up to reveal that Kathryn’s bite had healed as well.

  “Let’s start with the most serious injuries,” he announced. “I don’t know if I have enough to heal all of them completely, but I can at least keep anyone else from dying.”

  What followed was an astonishing flurry of activity that actually dizzied Liam. The men ushered him from bed to bed, practically shoving him into place and spouting a non-stop stream of encouragement to keep him bleeding and Kathryn biting. In his wake, he left a trail of speedily recovering men. Some had other injuries, of course, but many of those with one severe wound climbed to their feet and began to follow the crowd of doctors with Liam and Kathryn at its center. Soon, the commotion grew too much for even the soldiers at the wall to ignore and dozens of them stepped away to join the throng.

  Liam stumbled, light-headed and overwhelmed by the press of humanity on every side. Kathryn seemed overwhelmed too. She clung to his arm for dear life, face buried against his chest and nails digging into the meat of his bicep.

  “Alright, alright! Back! Let him breathe! I said back, you sons of bitches!”

  Liam looked up at the sound of the familiar voice and sighed with relief to discover Andrew wading through the crowd, pulling medics, soldiers, and freshly healed patients away in the process. He grinned as he met Liam’s eye, but it was an exasperated sort of smile. Fortunately, by the time he drew near enough to touch Liam directly, all but the dozen or so most insistent medics had been dispersed to an appropriate distance.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Andrew said. “Fancy meeting you here, Liam. Guess you heard about what happened!”

  Shrugging away from the many hands trying to steer him onward, Liam reached out and grasped the sergeant’s hand.

  “Slept through it, actually,” he admitted. “But I’m here now. What happened? Looks like we won.”

  “Won?” Andrew echoed, darkly. “Fuck, I doubt we fired a single shot. Occs hit us, cracked the wall like it was a damn eggshell, and then pulled back. Don’t know if they were testing us or just wanted folks to know they’re here. Either way, I’m guessing they’re smirking like a motherfucker right about now.”

  “Oh,” Liam said. The good feeling in his gut that had appeared in tandem with Andrew vanished. “So, what do we do now?”

  “First, you finish healing the last couple casualties. Then, we get you the hell away from here before anyone realizes what’s going on.”

  It was the second item in Andrew’s list that prompted the outcry from the nearby medics. Apparently, they objected to being deprived of such a fantastically useful surgical tool. But, before any of them could voice their objections openly, Andrew drew his pistol from its holster and held it, pointedly, at his waist with such a casual demeanor that nobody dared argue the point. Even Liam, surprised though he was to see Andrew pronounce such a threat, felt no need to question him further on the subject.

  Not publically, at least.

  Liam’s mind was racing so fast that the final few patients seemed to take no time at all. Before he even knew what was happening, Andrew’s arm was around his shoulder. The man steered him away from the crowd and the wall, gently suggesting with the barrel of his revolver that the medics would be better off caring for their swiftly recovering patients than following them away from the battlefield. And, for their part, neither Liam nor Kathryn felt inclined to disagree.

  “Damn fool,” Andrew growled once they were safely out of both eye and earshot. “I mean, you’ve got a good heart, Liam. Don’t get me wrong. But damn you can be stupid.”

  Liam bristled at the insults and felt his eyes narrow. Setting his jaw, he tried to step toward the man, only to find Kathryn holding tight to his arm.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Woods told me what happened last night. At the depot.”

  Liam felt a flush of embarrassment heat his face and neck. He set his jaw, doing his best to appear both apologetic and confident.

  “Jenn was helping Mayor’s men,” he explained. “I had to try and talk to her.”

  “That’s not what—wait! What? Jenn was… what are you talking about?”

  Liam frowned. He had assumed Andrew was chastising him for sneaking away instead of returning to the garrison with the other militiamen. But if he really didn’t know….

  He explained quickly. Even the quick summary, skimming over virtually everything Jenn had said to him, was enough to rekindle the fire of his anger. And, in the warm, self-satisfaction of that indignation, he was only too pleased to feel the firmness of Kathryn’s breasts squeezed tight agai
nst his arm where she clung to him. That was the only pleasure he could find in the conversation, however. The more he explained, the more the color drained from Andrew’s face. By the end of Liam’s recounting, he had slumped against the wall, a hand on his head.

  “I knew it,” Andrew growled, at last. “I knew that rat bastard did something. Fuck! I should have said something.”

  “What happened?” Liam demanded. “What did he do to Jenn?”

  Kathryn tensed at the mention of Jenn’s name, her nails digging into his skin. Liam winced, shrugging into a more comfortable position, then returned his steely gaze to Andrew.

  “Nothing,” the man said. “That’s why it surprised me. He just talked to her. You know, how everything he did was for the good of the city, necessary to stop the Occs… the usual bullshit. I didn’t think she believed it.”

  “Apparently, she did.”

  “You didn’t talk to her after we got back? I thought she went straight to the barracks?”

  “She did. We… uh… argued. She said the Mayor is working on some sort of weapon, something that could defeat the Occs permanently. She said it was more important than rescuing Scott. Or us.”

  Andrew did not reply right away. When he at last did, he spoke in a quiet voice. “Damn,” he said. “That’s cold of her.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Andrew shook himself and the light in his eyes changed from melancholic to purposeful. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to ask you about. Where did you go last night? Woods said you just disappeared!”

  Liam shrugged.

  “I guess I did,” he said. “After everything with Jenn, I didn’t want to go back to the barracks. I wasn’t sure if she’d be there, so I went to the safehouse Woods told me about.”

  “They’re not your private, little clubhou—!” Andrew snapped, then stopped short. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Nevermind. You should get back there. It’ll be safer.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because half the city has seen you by now, dumbass! Woods said you survived getting impaled! And then, you go and show off your enhancement in front of a crowd of the Mayor’s men! You didn’t think anyone would put the two together?”

  Again, Liam felt his face growing hot. He wanted to offer a biting retort—something about how he didn’t see Andrew saving any lives—but soon thought better of it. The man was right; Liam hadn’t been very cunning. So he remained silent, grinding his teeth and waiting for the man to continue speaking.

  “Like I said,” Andrew sighed. “You’ve got a good heart, Liam. You’re just a damn fool. Come on, let’s get you back in the safehouse before folks work up the courage to come out of hiding.”

  Liam nodded silently, following the man without a word. Then, after a few seconds, Andrew hesitated and glanced back at him.

  “Which safehouse did Woods show you?”

  Liam froze, taken aback. He hadn’t considered the possibility that there might be multiple locations, though it seemed obvious now.

  “Uh, it was beneath a brothel?” he supplied.

  Andrew sighed again. “Of course it was that one. Come on, if we’re quick about it, I imagine we can even grab a bite to eat before the place fills up again.”

  True to Andrew’s words, the brothel was still deserted by the time they arrived. It took a few minutes of knocking, and a brief face-to-barrel encounter with the madam’s shotgun before the door was opened for them, but Liam and Kathryn soon found themselves seated at the bar. They ate ravenously as Andrew spoke in a hushed voice with the madam. Healing so many had left Liam ravenous and he did not even taste the food he shoveled into his mouth. He spent most of the meal watching Kathryn eat with similar intensity, and did not even notice until his stomach was full to bursting that Dennis, the madam’s apparent guard, had been glaring at him the entire time.

  Liam nodded to man, then looked for Andrew. To his surprise, the man had wandered to the far corner of the parlor, and gestured emphatically to the madam. The woman had her arms folded and shook her head constantly, regardless of whether or not Andrew was speaking.

  Liam rose, intending to interject himself into the conversation, when a grunt from Dennis stopped him in his tracks.

  “Nuh uh,” the man said. He pointed a thumb at Liam’s chair. “You stay right there.”

  “Why?” Liam demanded.

  He never got an answer, as Andrew trotted back over toward him. The man was scowling and there was a vein bulging in his neck, but he made an admirable attempt at a smile regardless.

  “You two should head down,” he said. “I’ll stick around and keep an eye on things. Just… shout if you need anything.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Liam asked. “What if the Occs—”

  “It’s fine,” Andrew said quickly. “It’s just for a little bit. A precaution. I’ll come get you if anything happens.”

  Liam wanted to argue further, but Andrew was so distracted he wouldn’t even look directly at Liam. Instead, he chewed his thumbnail and tapped an anxious foot against the leg of Liam’s barstool.

  “Okay,” Liam said, on edge and unable to pinpoint exactly why. “Be safe. Come on, Kat.”

  “I’m Kat,” Kathryn reminded them.

  Liam found himself clutching his unloaded rifle as he made his way through the madam’s room toward the hidden stairs. Something was off. Every bit of the whole situation proclaimed some sort of trap—no matter how ridiculous the idea might be.

  Evidently, even Kathryn felt something was amiss. She clung to the tail of Liam’s shirt with a hand, the other vanishing inside a pocket, no doubt to retrieve the knife it held. They descended the stairs together, wincing at the creaking of the stairs and holding open the door to keep the pale, morning light trickling in.

  The motion, when at last it came, was almost a relief. And, at the very least, it explained both Andrew’s conversation with the madam and his apparent willingness to offer Liam up as a sacrifice.

  Jenn emerged from a darkened corner, vines wrapped tightly around her body in the form of thick armor. She studied Liam in silence, arms folded, and did not even glance in Kathryn’s direction. Then, striking a match, she lit the room’s solitary candle and set it on the bedside table. Face blank and unreadable, she seated herself on the edge of the very bed Liam had shared with Kathryn the night before.

  “We need to talk,” Jenn said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Liam folded his arms as he stared Jenn down. The sight of her brought an onslaught of fresh emotions to the forefront of his mind. That much, he had expected; what he had not expected was Kathryn’s reaction.

  Hissing, Kathryn swept past Liam’s side and leapt to the bottom of the stairs. Liam grabbed for her arm, intent on stopping her before she could leap, but he needn’t have bothered. Kathryn did not lunge or attack. Instead, she planted herself in front of Liam and stretched out her arms to shield him.

  “No,” she growled. “Jenn hurt Liam. No talk. Leave.”

  Jenn laughed dryly. She stepped forward, vines peeling from the frame of her armor like so many waking serpents.

  “I think you should leave, Kathryn,” she said. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

  “Enough,” Liam said. Brushing past Kathryn to shield her in turn, he glared at Jenn with the full force of his anger. “Threaten her again and…”

  And what, exactly? He’d teach her a lesson? The absurdity of it stopped his words.

  Fortunately, he didn’t need to finish his indeterminate warning. Jenn withstood his glare for a few seconds, then practically wilted before his eyes. Her vines returned to their designated spots as she averted her gaze.

  “Sorry,” she said, with uncharacteristic meekness. “I, uh, I really do just want to talk.”

  The suddenness of her submission took Liam aback. He glanced between the two women, then set a gentle hand on Kathryn’s shoulder.

  “Wait upsta
irs, please,” he said.

  Based on her squawked protest, Kathryn had not anticipated this outcome. Grasping his hand, she stared at him in bewilderment.

  “Liam! But—!”

  “Please,” he repeated.

  Kathryn stared at him a moment longer, until a desperate, high-pitched whine escaped her throat. Before he could even attempt to reassure her, she turned and mounted the stairs two and three at a time. This was followed, unsurprisingly, by the slamming of the door.

  Sighing as the basement was cast into greater darkness, Liam cautiously made his way toward the candle’s dim light.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t hit you,” Jenn said. Even with her face mostly hidden in shadow, Liam could hear her smile.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t hit you,” he replied.

  Jenn snorted softly. “That makes her the lucky one then. Guess we’ll never find out who’d win that fight.”

  “Guess not.”

  He sat at the head of the bed, several feet from Jenn. For a moment, they simply abided in silence, until Jenn reclined with a grimace. Her hand lay limply outstretched in his general direction and for a brief moment, Liam was seized by an irrational desire to reach out and take it.

  “What happened, Liam?” Jenn said. “Why is this… why are we fighting?”

  He took her hand. Jenn flinched, as if she had not expected him to actually touch her, but the corner of her mouth curled into a sad smile.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “This place is strange. Things were easier before.”

  “They were,” she agreed. It was a moment before she continued. “I want to help people, Liam.”

  “So d—”

  “I know you do too,” she said, talking over him. “But, please. If you’ll just talk to the Mayor. Hear what he has to say and you’ll understand.”

  Liam clenched his teeth and waited for the searing anger in his throat to subside. Everything always seemed to come down to that bastard. And after everything that had happened, Liam could not imagine a person he’d like to speak with less.

  “His men tried to kill me,” he reminded her. “They took you away from me.”