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.

I pass a hand over the scan on my door then punch in the letters and numbers. The lock lights green, and immediately my son jumps up from the floor when I enter.

“Dehhh,” he whines, “Kujaku was mean to me.”

I shut and lock the door before the whole higher hears the complaint. The vis blinks in the shallow room, an old romantic prog that’s all I have in storage. Something Losa liked. The windows be tinted black like I always keep them, but the track lights are bright. They reflect on my son’s brown flat belly and his skinny legs. He keeps tugging at the waist of his too-big shorts. Little brown frog, all excited. He manages to hop over the toys and clothes on the floor and jumps into my arms.

“Kujaku’s been mean, ah?” I keep one hand around him while he hangs off my neck like a sling, legs dangling.

“Kujaku han’t been mean,” Kujaku says from the couch, where he sits sprawled and barefoot. “Kujaku be tired and wants Pup to go to bed.” He sacrificed a night of work for me because Jeriko called on me personal.

“Sorry,” I tell him, and sit on the couch. Tzak the Pup climbs over my lap and sits himself between me and Kujaku. I belong to him when I’m home; infiltrators beware. “Aszar was being an ass. It took Jeriko smack-talk to calm him down.”

“Moron Opike.” Kujaku tilts his blonde head back at me, sinking deeper into the faded cushions. “Least you be alive.”

“Deh,” Tzak says, loudly, to interrupt us. “Kujaku was going to pick me upside down and throw me in bed. That’s what he said.”

I’m wet and sitting on the couch, making damp everywhere. Tzak be damp too, now, but he don’t care.

“Kujaku won’t have to throw you, ’cause I will.” I stand and grab up my son, flip him upside down under my arm and cart him to the bedroom.

“Deh!”

I make small puddles as I go, all over the floor. It needs a clean anyway. Tzak wiggles ruthlessly. He has my doggedness and his mother’s defiance. I get bruised. I dump him on the bed and he bounces. The tiny bells in his hair make scattered music.

“Ouch, wild boy! You abuse your deh.”

He’s a tumble of free-flying hair, half a dozen thin black braids, bells, and baggy shorts.

“You’re all wet.” He bounces now out of his own volition. The bed can barely take it. Soon it will fall through the floor and the neighbor will kill.

“That’s because it’s raining.” I shake my hair and flick some droplets onto his face. He wrinkles his eyes and wipes at his nose, grinning. Such a little frog, easy in dry or wet. I struggle out of the heavy, soaked jacket. My shoulders sigh in relief. I hang up the jacket on the closet door handle where it will make a lake on the floor. Ah, I don’t care. “Come on, Kujaku be right, it’s way past your sleeptime. Get under the blanket.”

He crawls beneath like a spider. I squish across the floor and sit on the edge of the bed and tuck him in tight like a mental patient.

“Deh!” He squirms.

I laugh and untuck him a bit. He flops his arms over the blanket, wild noodles. His smoke blue eyes blink, getting heavy with sleep. I knew he would stay up until I came home. Kujaku always has it hard when I’m late.

“Go to sleep.” I use my father tone.

He holds out his arms. So I lean down and kiss him and let him hug my neck. I pat his hair and smooth it. The bells tinkle.

“Sleep.”

He rolls to his side and tucks in. I put his favorite bunny-soft in his arms and he holds onto it, eyes squeezed shut in obedience. It’s a rare thing and I don’t question it. I get up and take off my wet clothes, dump them in a corner and go to the bathroom to dry off. Then I pull on an old sweater and zipper turfs, take the gun from my jacket pocket and go out to the couch and Kujaku, who be dozing in front of the maudlin vis. He’s earned it. I slip the gun in the waist of my turfs and kick his bare feet before I step over them to the kitchen square.

“You want to stay here, Kujio? It’s still raining.”

“Eh,” he mutters, already half-asleep. He has nobody to go home to anyway.

I turn up the kitchen lights and call down the light over Kujaku. The vis screen flickers over him like glowing eyes. I put a package meal on the counter to flash, lean against the fridge and light a smoke. It dries the rest of the rain inside my skin as I pull on it. The smoke rises to the ceiling like a prayer, making me sleepy to watch it. Kujaku be my bandbrother all my life, before I met Losa and before she had Tzak. Losa be dead. Tzak be three years old already.

I feel more than seventeen.

 

 

THE LITTLE FROG wakes me up. He climbs onto my chest and pats my face with his small cold hands.

“Deh, I’m hungry.”

“Mmn, go to sleep.”

“I slept already!”

The sun beats at my eyelids and my son beats at my cheeks. I blink into light, grab him, and roll him into the pillow to tickle him like a tickle killer. He screams and kicks and laughs. It’s a mêlée of limbs and the sound of bells. One wild foot gets my knee.

“Ach! That needs revenge.” I chomp his bony elbow.

“Deh!” His fist flies. He has sharp aim and my ear be a stationary target.

I pin him in a truce hug, with my back to the window and the early sun. That window doesn’t tint for some reason anymore. Still, more time for sleep, just a minute or ten before Domani business. Tzak pats my face some more, pinches my nose, but I keep my eyes closed.

“Deh just wants a few more minutes, beba.”

He’s a warm squirmy thing, then he settles with his head under my chin. His hair smells like sleep and sunrays. I don’t know when, but the morning passes.

 

 

“DEH, SOMEONE’S AT the door.”

There’s a pounding outside of my head. Tzak shakes my shoulder. The sun has moved, or a cloud has walked up my alley of the sky. Tzak kneels on the bed beside me, little face wrinkled in worry. He doesn’t like visitors who don’t know the code. Kujaku is the only one besides me who knows the code.

“Someone’s at the door,” my son says again.

“Stay here.” I roll out and grab the gun off my bedstand. The air hits the skin on my arms and torso. I shut the bedroom door behind me and my feet get wet on the way to the front door. Overnight in’t long enough to dry the rain inside. Kujaku in’t on the couch or in the kitchen, but the windows are still dark.

I lean a shoulder on the front door. “Who is it?” My optic’s been broken for a week. I keep forgetting to fix it.

“Romko. Open up.”

Romko, Losa’s blood brother. Full blood Opike. I han’t seen him since she died.

I talk through the door. “What do you want?”

“It’s too gamey in the hall, Taiyo. Open up.”

My son be in the bedroom. I flip open my gun and unlock the door, aiming the weapon head-high.

“Whah, hold on!” Romko raises his beringed hands. His braids tinkle as he steps back. “I come to jaw, not scrum.”

“What do you want?”

“Will the whole higher hear it?”

I watch him. He has Losa’s exact eyes, inconstant blue. When he smiles it’s like Losa come back. I let him in but don’t safety the gun. I shut the door and lock it again. He stands in a little puddle from last night.

“Ach, Tai, han’t you housebroken Tzakri?”

“Third time asking, and my last.”

Romko folds his arms and spreads his feet, standing like a chief of an overturned apple cart.

“Street jaw say you lit Aszar’s cousin.”

Rumors travel like garbage to a gutter.

“Street jaw needs to be broke.” I go to the kitchen, but keep my edges on the Opike. Romko and the cousin were friends. Yascha. Stupid dead bastard. I won’t rain on my face for him.

“Aszar believes the street jaw,” Romko says, cutting off the ends of his words.

I put my glass under the dispenser, dribble some ice water into it and sip. “Aszar’s an idiot.”

Romko straightens. “Don’t say so, Tai.”

“I’ve said it. I’ve always said it.”

“You know lies serve selfish wonders. He might avenge Yascha on your disrespect.”

“I sho’ve avenged Losa on Yascha’s incompetence.”

Romko looks away first, toward the couch. His gaze finds interest in the menial mess. “Aszar han’t forgotten your threats on his cousin.”

I shrug. “Let him remember. Jeriko don’t chain me like Aszar whips his band. I might prove a little more than slightly entertaining.”

“Don’t you think this gone on long enough?”

“What this?”

“All this fight. Yascha tried, Taiyo. I know you hate to hear it but he hated himself more than you can for Losa’s end.”

“I doubt that.”

“Tai, Losa be dead.”

I look at him and his earnest face. Face, that’s all it is. Maybe he’s here to warn me. He really in’t here to give revelation. “I wan’t sure she was,” I tell him. “Thanks.”

“Listen,” he says. “Your Losa wan’t so full of grace.”

I feel the gun in my hand. “What you say now?”

The thoughts rotate in his eyes like a siren. And he backs down. Of course. “Aszar wants the murderer. Opikei don’t like you and some jaw say your own band blames you for this ongoing. I got my balls in a bind to tell you this.”

“Good thing you don’t need ’em.”

“You stupid fool, Tzakri be my little bandbrother. I want him to be safe!”

“He has a father,” I say slowly. “And a band.”

“There an’t no good end in this world for him.”

I step close up to him, fast. “You threatening my son?”

His hands rise, weak defense. “All I say, Tai. The Nations an’t all there be in the world.”

I stare at him. Wonder for the first time if Losa’s dream found brotherly ears.

I see his thought flip over like a card. His tone hardens. “The Nations won’t back a thief forever.”

“Or a murderer.”

His gaze be crooked and we don’t meet. For all I know he started the street jaw. The set up can run deep. Opikei are notorious. No Domani turns a back on an Opike.

Then again, no Domani should bed an Opike either. Jeriko had warned me. Even Kujaku.

“Good luck,” I tell him. “There be a trail of tragedy following Opikei these days.”

His eyes get mottled.

“That be all?” I smile. “The day ages and so do you.”

Romko don’t smile. “They be your waking hours, for however long they last.” He goes to the door.

I follow. “I’ll relay that to Jeriko.”

He glances at me and steps out, maybe a bit fast. He’s not a coward but he’s got a mind. And eyes. He saw the gun in my hand.

“Deh, who was that?”

I lock the door again. “I told you to stay in the bedroom, Tzakri.”

“But I’m hungry.” He stands on the threshold, a shoulder against the jamb, one foot on top of the other. He needs a good scrub.

I tuck the gun into my turfs. “Go shower, beba. I’ll flash something.”

“Who was that, Deh?”

“Nobody, beba. When I say to stay in the bedroom, I mean it. You know?” I look at him hard. His eyes are larger than they need to be in such a small face. When he smiles it’s Losa come back.

It’s Romko.

I don’t smile and neither does he. His lip sticks out. “I know, Deh.”

That pout can move staunch mountains and a father’s heart.

 

 

I MEET KUJAKU on the crowded corner in front of my higher. I called him but didn’t tell him about Romko. Those aren’t things you say over a call. I hold Tzak’s hand and smoke with my other. Kujaku trots up from a daybar across the street, weaving through a slow pass of scuffed, gem-tone crawlers. It’s a cool day after a long night of rain. The sky be deep blue. The sounds of a blinking city seem to suction to the painted walls of the highers and other buildings.

Emidit be a big city. I only know the portions that belong to the Nations, which an’t as shiny as those of the Regierun. Friends of the polize, the Regierun. They put us here and they keep us here, among highers and shops and streets that bend and snap from lack of nutrition, like sickly kids or wrinkled old women.

Tzak leans away from me, anchored by my hand, a tilted tree in a breeze. He’s playing, but I don’t trust the mash of people—the drunks, the kneelers, and the palmers. They will all make my son older than he is and I’m in no great hurry to let him lose his youth. So I yank him back and he bumps my side.

“Ah,” he says, working up to a howl.

“Stay still, Tzakri.”

“Ah ah,” he says, jiggling.

“Here comes Kujaku. Look.”

But Tzak in’t interested in Kujaku. He steps on my foot.

“Enough.” I grab him up, one scoop into my arm. It’s what he wants anyway. His arms go immediately around my neck and suddenly he’s perfect.

This child be spoiled.

Kujaku stops under the dead lamp, where I stand, and pokes Tzak’s stomach.

“Hei Pup.”

“Don’t.” Tzak flies a foot at Kujaku.

“Last time,” I warn him. He turns his head to peer over my shoulder and ignore me. Every year he gets heavier. My arm earns it.

Kujaku thieves a cig from my pocket. “You heard the street jaw?”

I light it for him and we walk. Most of the people step aside without touching. In our territory they know the signs, the black collar that means Domani.

“Romko visited.”

Kujaku’s pale eyebrows lift. “This sunup? All the way from Opikei mudholes?”

“All the way.”

“Well technically we an’t at war.” Kujaku shrugs and puffs. Streeters watch him go, even though he’s clearly not on duty. He has a look that makes fugitive eyes: low-lidded blue stare, large flexible lips. Losa wandered his way once, but only with her gaze. Her feet knew better and walked to me.

“I think maybe I should stay off the street.” I’m only half-serious.

“Might be,” Kujaku agrees. “Aszar in’t known for his agile logic.”

“He won’t get far. All Domani can smell Opikei. They might do the deed but they won’t leave our territory alive.”

“Tai.” Kujaku flicks his ashes. “I know your ears an’t sweet on these words, but not all Domani like your Losa years.”

I look at him hard. Tzak dozes on my shoulder. It in’t a good thing to have to walk your own street with an eye to your wake. Or for your bandbrother to echo an Opike. “So they’d side with Opikei lighting me?”

Kujaku frowns. “No. Jeriko won’t, you know. But the Nine Nations might just call it even and part.”

“Jeriko and the Nations stood by my side with Tzak.”

“You already had stole him, Tai.”

“I didn’t steal my own son!”

Kujaku touches my arm. “It be only frank jaw. I in’t saying I agree.”

“There be a wrongness in the understanding of the Nine. Just ’cause Losa died and the Opikei braided Tzak, it don’t mean they should own him. He be my blood.”

“And theirs, they say.”

“He be more my blood than any but a corpse’s.” Romko may have tied that braid to his wrist when he be born, but I be in his veins. “Jeriko stands by it and it should be enough for the rest of the band.”

In truth, the rest of the band can go to mudfire if they think I should abandon Tzak to the Opikei.

“We stand by you, Tai,” Kujaku says. “All who count. I said only some Domani.”

“And the Nine?” Nine bands across Emidit. Each one of them with their own pride.

“The Nation be full of people like Aszar. There be no help for them but death by stupidity.”

“I’d marshal them along if they stood in my way.”

Kujaku glances up at me. He blows out a stream of smoke. “I know it, bandbrother. And sometimes it be a heavy thought.”

 

 

ROON TAKES TZAK from my arms. We stand in her doorway, in the narrow hall of her higher. A city of scented candles burns behind her in a gauze-shrouded room. A blue haze. She’s got flaky tastes but she’s Domani dependable. She coos over Tzak like a cresty fountain bird. I see the bulge by her waist; her gun. She’ll look out for Tzak. Tzak be half-asleep and the handover wakes him.

“Deh,” he moans.

“I have to go somewhere,” I tell him. “Roon will keep you today.”

“Dehhh.” He’s set up for a tantrum. Children and feral dogs, never wake them from a nap.

“Go on,” Roon says, holding firm while Tzak builds up for a bawl.

“Be good,” I tell my son, and rub his braided hair.

“Not with you as a deh,” Kujaku puts in.

“Shut up, kneeler.”

I wrinkle fingers at Tzak, trying to ignore his crumbling face, and walk down the bare hallway with my bandbrother. Tzak’s wail follows me like a polize siren, echoing among the gut pipes above.

It be a daily abandonment.

 

 

“SO HOW ARE we to find this murderer?” Kujaku yawns.

“We ask,” I say.

We move through the midday streets like nose-poking polize. But here, in daylight, we are the polize. The power and the Regierun of Domani territory. Polize know better than to scrum with us in view of witnesses. Streeters here may have little voice, but enough of them can out-boom a bomb. They have no near affection for the Regierun on the rich side of Emidit. No Domani and few Nation bands are stupid enough to scrum in broad daylight, anyway. So it’s our haven, here on the street, bold with our black collars.

Emidit stinks, like it always does with the heat of the sun to expose its lower skins. The tall dark buildings suck up tight weather and hold it in, but there’s still ample sky to rain down daggers of light. Clouds be rare in these summer months; last night was a fluke. In this clime, what isn’t swallowed by steel gets spat up by gray pavement and vomited in the sweat of sardine bodies. Even my short-sleeve shirt, open at the neck, is a layer too much.

“Who’re we going to ask?” Normally Kujaku’s in his doorway at this hour, scoping hopefuls. This morning he scopes with me. Jeriko ordered an unrolling, so all of us pull.

We pass the gaping mouth of the Hank Street subterrain and hear the rumbling anger of its passing beneath our feet.

“Let’s catch it to the house.” I motion to the stairs leading down.

“Can we eat first?” Kujaku elbows me toward a pockmarked vendor box, strategically placed beside a guaranteed flow of flesh traffic from the sub. “You pay, of course.”

“Me of course? You make more living than I do by theft.”

“You be in the wrong thieving biz,” he says, with a kneeler’s grin. He’s the kind of pretty that rubs elbows with repulsive.

“I prefer to stay on my feet.” I punch in our unhealthy orders on the console and scan my ring. Mysterious workings rattle in the wide silver interior of the anchored vendor, then our spiced meat buns pop out of the gap at the top of the cart, steaming. I hand Kujaku his, with a nice swat upside the head, no extra charge, then take my own and head toward the subterrain.

Our rocking ride makes unsteady digestion, but it’s a short stint, only ten blocks. At least it be steely cool and we have our pick of seats from streeters with smarts. Rush hour tends to have little effect on a Domani. Up on the corner of Backbone and Dye we take the murderer’s alleged route to the scene of the offense, a high-end stylehouse with a long reputation. Pagoda. It looks like one, all bright blues and reds and golds, a peacock building. It be Opikei protected and routinely patronized. But not Opikei run. Regierungi living greases the palms of this place.

“Now this here be an opportunity,” Kujaku says.

“We’re on the roll for Jeriko,” I remind him. “Keep your soles flat.”

“Eyes can scope.”

There’s no reforming him.

I glance up and down the sidewalk, mindful of Romko’s words, but no Opikei gunmen spring from the crowd. It be one thing to talk of war, another to do it. So we said when Losa died.

I go in the stylehouse first, and my feet sink. There be carpet all over the interior; even the walls be thin engraved velvet, blood red. Gold-tasseled couches and glass partitions broadly divide the space. Everywhere be hollow rich. The bar be stacked with colored glass bottles and private lacquer drawers. A tall smooth woman attends to them all with a swan-necked scanner in her hand.

I step down into the social pit, through expensive cool air and the faint scent of previous nightly decadence, straight to a man in a white shirt. He be seated at the bar with an activated slate set on top. His pink, smooth fingers tap the screen expertly.

The woman looks up first. Her face be holo perfect, but it be plastic flesh. She in’t surprised. Somewhere in one of the back rooms, through the curtained doors at the edges of my sight, guards watch me and Kujaku, probably right down to the pores on our skin.

“Mr. Ong,” she says.

The man looks up and he in’t surprised either. He has an emotionless powdered face and small black eyes. They find our black collars and linger.

“What can I do for you?” A rounded Regierungi accent.

“An Opike man was shot here recently,” I say. “What do you know about it?”

He looks back at his slate, but it’s blank now. Protected. “I told the Opikei everything I saw. You can ask them.”

“I’m asking you.”

Kujaku walks around, grazing a hand on the ornate workmanship of the glass separators. The designs be all curlicues and vague entwined bodies.

“I have no association with the Domani.” The mole above his left eyebrow twitches. “But I do with the Opikei. So ask them.”

I can be patient. “The Opikei claim it was a Domani who did the deed. So you see we have a right to ask.”

These things sometimes take plateaus to reach. If he pushes me to the next flat then I will go there.

The woman’s eyes follow Kujaku like a trigger finger.

“I know your face,” Mr. Ong says. “They say you’re the one who killed the Opike. You’re the one who stole their child.”

Kujaku stops in my periphery with a hand on the velvet wall.

Maybe Mr. Ong knows how thin his life is. “Who says I lit Yascha?”

Mr. Ong doesn’t answer. He’s an uncreased Regierungi.

The sight of my gun wrinkles him slightly.

“You see how this can be, Mr. Ong.”

“Everyone knows you stole their child.”

“Who says I lit Yascha?”

He shrugs. “Everybody. Words,” he waves a hand, “they travel through the air like dust.”

I can kill a Regierungi every day and still not be filled. I take one stride and push my gun against Mr. Ong’s right nostril.

“Someone want to start a war?” I ask.

“Tai,” Kujaku says.

People have materialized from the walls. Tall men and women with hidden hands. Mr. Ong holds up his palm.

“The friend shouted Domani,” he says. “But in truth the killer was hooded.”

“Friend? Of Yascha’s?”

“The same.”

I ease back the gun a little, but not enough that he can’t still smell the steel. “Romko said it be Domani. Specifically me?”

Mr. Ong shrugs. “Aszar was in the back, playing and having some poke. The cousin and his friend were in the pit with some drink. A hooded man shot one of my guards and stormed in. He knew just where to look and where to shoot. He was good.” The black eyes look down the silver of my weapon, then flick back to my face. “The cousin died. Romko said he saw a black collar beneath the overshirt before it fled. He said it was Domani. Aszar drew his own conclusions.”

“This be how it fell out? A Regierungi rolls the truth?”

“A Regierungi with a gun up his nose will roll his tongue like a kneeler.”

The man be a survivor. I lower the gun. The room breathes slightly.

This information was too easy to come by.

I look at Kujaku and head to the door. He treads in my wake, backward to watch the room. Not one of them moves. We hit the sidewalk and street stink, hot from the cool indoors.

“What do you make of that?” I ask Kujaku.

He spits on the pavement. “They twisty their words like intestines. But they be gutless.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Romko. He ups and sees me for the first in three years? To warn me Aszar wants my blood? This in’t revelation.”

“Romko be no gymnastic mind.”

I nod. “True. He’s always been someone’s pawn.”

Kujaku says, “His king be dead. Who directs him now?”

So sits the question. But we can’t sit here.

“Let’s get out of this Opikei shade.”

Kujaku follows me to the subterrain. “The goods an’t so hot here anyway.”

 

 

WE CALL A report to Jeriko of what we unrolled from Mr. Ong, but she don’t believe it either, at least not the surface. “Dig deeper. Romko might plant the seed but someone else laid the dirt.”

And dirt stinks worse in the hot temperature of an Opikei agenda.

It’s back to Roon to check on Tzak, though. Except when we get there the door be blasted open and inside all the candles be upended, the blue gauze torn down, everything shredded. I run through the flat but no Tzak, and Kujaku hollers at me from the kitchen. When I join him, there be Roon face down on the tile, paralyzed. Her hand clutches her gun. It still buzzes live.

Silent, Kujaku leans down to flick it off.

“I found these.” I hold out my hand. Beads and bells in my palm. From my son’s braids. “They took Tzakri.”

 

 

JERIKO SAYS NOT to do anything but Kujaku and me both know we’re going to ignore. End the call. Who else would take my son but a wide-armed Opike? Specifically Romko. Romko and his generous warning that Aszar wants me dead. Before Aszar wanted me dead, Romko had me marked. Before even Losa died, Romko wanted me dead just for walking my feet to his sister. It goes back that far and further still if you count all the years in the Nation when Domani outsmarted Opikei and won the Council’s favor.

There be only one place Tzak can be—in Opike territory.

Kujaku and me hop back on the subterrain. But half-way through our ride, four black collars come up on us. Our bandbrothers. Pomjo and three novii, younger than me with their yellow training collars. But they all be loaded up.

I stare up at Pomjo from my seat. “You light me if I don’t?”

“Jeriko’s orders. Don’t make this tough.” He almost looks apologetic.

“Roon be shot,” Kujaku says. “Not dead, but someone got at her to get the boy.”

The air around Pomjo sinks. “You still gotta come.”

Jeriko’s dog. So at the next stop, me and Kujaku unboard with our bandbrothers. They walk us like prisoners back through the streets, back to Domani territory, full on every side. No borders but Domani. I don’t see the familiar streets, just Romko’s face and his lying mouth. All I feel is an itch to pummel it into the ground. To get Tzakri back.

We go to the Domani clubhouse, empty at this hour. There be Jeriko sitting at her usual shimmer blue table, arms wide as the white leather. White liquor sits in front of her in two tall bottles.

To me: “Sit.” And to Kujaku: “Get.”

So the game sets and everybody takes up their places. Pomjo in’t far, bulldog staunch.

Jeriko pulls a sip of her drink. “You an’t going to Opike territory.”

“You going to get my son back?”

Her hand lands on the back of my neck. Squeezes hard. “Taiyo. We an’t starting a war over your little belled bastard.”

I jerk my head but she holds on.

“Your ears be open, Tai?”

I say nothing.

Out the corners of my eyes, more bodies come through the door. Closer and they be three band leaders. From Gim, Sashasa, and Moj. Collars all flashing their colors, two sisters and a brother.

I count their meaning. Territories all closest to Opike.

“You an’t going to get your son,” Jeriko reiterates. “An’t nobody here be letting you cross. Their band be ordered to shoot you on sight. Your ears be open now?” She shakes me. “I need to hear it!”

I press my jaw together. “Ya.”

She lets me go. “Good. Now make peace in your heart and maybe one day the Opikei will let you visit your boy.”

I gather Kujaku with a glance and we exit the clubhouse. Sun hits my eyes hard, but I don’t rain on my face. I let it burn.

 

 

“NOW WHAT?”

He gives me a smoke and I spark it. “Gutless Jeriko think she can chain me? That an act of war to take what’s mine!”

“The point be it was always disputed he be yours, Taiyo. Family outrank where any of us put our pokers.”

I be sick and tired of everyone telling me what’s so. Like band rules sound better than what’s in the blood of my heart.

“What you be thinking?” Kujaku asks with some hesitance.

I walk and smoke.

“Tai.”

I tell him nothing. These days who knows who be listening on the open street. Instead I take Kujaku back to my higher. Everybody expects me to go there, so I go.

There be my weapons anyway.

 

 

BROWN PAPER ON the floor, the kind they use to wrap fish. Who uses paper these days but for stink purposes? I wait until Kujaku shuts the door before I unfold it. It smells like something mud dwelling beneath a bog.

Five words scrawled by hand: Losa’s den. Take the roofs.

 

 

“WHO ELSE IT be but Romko? What else but a trap?”

Kujaku doesn’t answer. It be not a question that needs jaw. Of course we go. We walk the roofs like birds at seed, peck and follow, from rim to edge and flat and back to rim again. Frog-hop high and light, swing from iron and jump to black gravel. I know this route, it be how I got to Losa back when we were kids and this journey felt like both romance and rebellion. Far below us, Emidit squeals life and rumbles threat, some animal storm resisting to be tamed. The sun be arching low, spreading blood light over all the jammed highers.

Losa’s den be half-abandoned now, it was on its way when alive she be. Roof door bent enough to sport a broken latch and me and Kujaku squirrel down steps from floor to floor, where there be no light but what ekes through broken down sliver windows. The steps be slick and smell of piss and rain.

To the fifth floor, barely lit. Echoes bounce along the puddles like skip stones and I stop before number 555. We used to think the triple 5s be luck, Losa and me. We’d shut this door and pretend all the world was some other planet, something from fairy jaw and cast aside tech. Three years beyond those times, more from when we saw each other on the street as children and latched like parasites to the thought of each other, and it feels more like dream than any outlandish jaw so far flung it makes fantasy out of history.

She said once, “This can’t always be.”

I used to laugh her silent. Asked her why she be ruining what we got. Not what we got in Emidit, since that was next to nothing, but what we got in our dreams.

I try to put some dreams in Tzakri but they don’t last the night.

“We go in?” Kujaku with his hand on my back.

I hold my gun at my side and shove the door in. It be broken like all else.

I expect Romko and my boy. That thieving bastard.

What I see be Yascha.

 

 

“PUT THE GUN down, Taiyo,” he says, all calm like he han’t be dead.

I want to shoot. But Kujaku spout behind me: “Where you come from?” He wants to hear this.

So do I. And there an’t a corpse in this world who speaks.

I lower the gun. I walk a circuit around the room, walls all peeling like dry skin, pockmarked like disease. The bloody bed be gone. There be just Yascha and he wears no Opike collar. I pace back and forth.

“We needed some way to get out,” the liar says.

The second part of that we comes through the door behind Kujaku. Romko and my boy.

“Deh!”

Good thing no Opikei blocks my son from running to my arms. I pick him up and hug him until his tears squeeze out. Until mine nearly do.

“So you blame me?” I turn so my back be to the corner and both Opikei in my sights. Kujaku steps outside of Romko’s periphery. His gun be out too.

“You were the one that would make sense,” says Yascha. “And we knew you’d come for Tzak.”

“I come for you too.” Not to collect except in blood debt.

“Open your eyes!” Romko moves to stand by Yascha. Aszar’s cousin and here they be, doing something diagonal of their band?

“What game?” I look from face to face. Romko be earnest as usual. Yascha gray-eyed like his cousin but there be a stillness in him, no hands moving. “You leave the Nations?”

“Ya.” He don’t even blink. “Once Losa died, once Tzakri be born, we be planning it. But you had the boy and there would be war. We knew you wouldn’t come by any other means than a theft. Losa used to tell me how you talked of going, but you never did. Me and her, we planned it for that night. You weren’t supposed to be there.”

But I had gone when she didn’t answer my call. So many words and so little sense. My boy be wrapped around me, his face pushed in my neck. I feel him breathing. The bells be broken from his hair, no chiming when I touch the back of his head.

“Tzakri be my son by blood, Taiyo,” Yascha says.

I feel my head shaking but no words fall out. Maybe it be my world instead.

Shaking and falling.

“I be not what you think I am, and neither was she. But you be the only father Tzakri knows so we want you to come with us. For him.”

“This was her dream,” Romko puts in. “And the bands won’t war if they think you ran.”

If they think I did it. Just like I ran diagonal of all Domani when I bed an Opike girl. Got a boy from her.

I got a boy from her. A boy with smoke blue eyes and his uncle’s smile.

I stare into Yascha’s eyes. He be so quiet and still, like no Opike I ever known. No bells, just blood.

This be where it started. How my world changed when the boy in my arms came screaming into the world. At the same time his mother left it.

Yascha could have taken Tzak and disappeared. Pin me with the murder. Watch our Nations stand in the rain and unfurl every weapon in anger. Become a muddy rage of revenge. This be all of what I think of him, like I think myself Tzakri’s father.

This falling down room have a habit of changing lives.

I still be Tzakri’s father. It in’t all because of blood.

I think of my higher but it be just a place.

I think of the boy so solid in my arms.

I hand Kujaku my gun. In one look he says he be with me, like always.

What else do I need?

“There be a lot to unroll,” I say to the Opikei. Though they wear no collars and no bells. For some reason I just notice the lack of music in this room. No chime from the past come to haunt us here. There be no Opikei in Losa’s dying place.

No Domani either.

“We have to move,” Yascha says. “Out of the Nine Nations.”

Kujaku says, “Where we go?”

Imagine the green. I can hear Losa. I almost see her too. I see her in her brother’s face, three years come back like that. So much blood and electricity.

“We go anywhere,” I tell them. Chained to nobody, no leader, and no Nation. Tzakri’s body clings to mine. Imagine the sun. “We be free.”