The thin wail of sirens careening off buildings, around shouts of protest, through the static hissing out of Tathadann bullhorns.
We’re going to bomb the Tathadann.
Stay behind the barricade or we will be forced to shoot.
With my broken hands I’ll tear down Morrigan.
This is your final warning. Do not breach the line.
Then the clap of gunshots, screaming and singing and more warnings. Block after block after block. The barriers that striate the streets are as much to keep people in certain neighborhoods – like Amergin and Findchoem – as they are to keep people out of others. It takes me forty minutes to get where I would have been in ten last week, as much from all of the barricades creating labyrinthine city blocks as from keeping to the less populated streets, my face tilted down. Though many of the men I fought with understood my situation with the Tathadann, most newcomers don’t. Not to mention the number of Tathadann soldiers who might or might not be looking for me with orders from Morrigan to shoot on sight. With all the chaos mainlining people with adrenaline, loyalties and alliances can become very flexible very quickly. Still, block by agonizing block, I’m coming closer to my goal.
Of killing my best friend.
The thought stops me in the middle of the sidewalk. People hustle by, some as if it’s any normal day, others with canvas bags full of projectiles. A Tathadann soldier patrols the street on horseback.
I will kill him because he took my son from me. He lied to me, repeatedly, and that cannot be forgiven. But he also saved me numerous times, from attacks, from ambushes, from myself. But he stole my boy.
A man with an official-looking haircut sprints past me, wagering a quick glance back. A group of teenagers with pipes and boards follows close behind. One of them stumbles and hits the sidewalk. I jump backward to avoid a board in the foot. He pulls himself to his feet then looks up at me.
“Oh my god,” he says, already looking for his friends. “It’s you.”
I start to say he’s mistaken me for someone else, but he’s already yelling for his friends, saying, “It’s him, it’s the traitor. Get him.”
I’m gone before he can finish his sentence, head down and sprinting, dodging and weaving through the crowds on the sidewalk, box thrown aside. Because there are a lot of people out, it’s hard for them to see me, but they can still see where I’m heading in the wake of the crowd.
At Minidae Avenue, I bolt left, letting my legs extend in the mostly deserted street. Their footsteps fall heavy behind me. I glance back and see they’ve picked up another kid. If I could stop and talk to them, I might find that I knew their parents, maybe fought with them, but I wouldn’t be able to get the words out before their boards met my forehead. I knock over trashcans, trying to create a few obstacles, and as quickly as they fall back, they regroup. My lungs burn and feet throb. Maybe it’s time to reconsider running in boots, or scale back my bourbon consumption.
Two blocks down, I push it hard, stretching my stride as far as it will go, driving my legs into the concrete with all the strength I have. A pho house sits on the corner. There should be an access road past it. I barrel down and put as much distance between the pack and me as I can, then throw myself into the access road at the last moment and run.
A dumpster on the right. A few shipping pallets piled against the wall on the left. A man sitting cross-legged on the concrete halfway down the road. That is not a road, but an alley, dead-ending at a brick tenement that looks like a lagonael den.
Wrong pho house.
It’s too late to get out of the alley. They’re too close. They’ll catch me before I clear the edge.
I hurry to the end, put my back to the wall so at least they can’t surround me. An acrid stench fills the alley, gasoline and exhaust and old food. The man looks up, his eyes far away.
“Hey, it’s you,” he says. I start to tell him he’s got the wrong guy then realize it’s the lagon from Johnstone’s. The campfire man. And he’s sitting in a puddle of his own piss.
“Oh, give me a damn break,” I yell, right as the pack rounds the corner, bearing down on me.
I feel the gun against my back. If I get a first-time headshot on each kid, or at least enough to put them down, I could get out. But I would have no bullets for Walleus. I leave the pistol in my waistband and square up, scanning the alley for anything to use as a weapon.
“I’m never going to know,” he says, oblivious to the pubescent psychopaths bearing down on me.
I find a chunk of brick on a pile of papers and snatch it. This is what your life has come to. Beating a bunch of kids to death with a brick in an alleyway or getting beat to death by a bunch of kids who are barely old enough to remember the Struggle.
“My boy ran – told him he had no direction – joined the fight. You might’ve known him.” The lagon slots a cigarette between his lips. “They burned him – the stake.”
The kids are thirty feet away. They slow as they approach, cockiness or sadism filling their steps. One pulls out a butterfly knife and flips it around, the metal glinting.
“Never found – peace with death,” he says. “Drove away – mother looking.”
“You kids really have no idea what you’re doing,” I say to them. From the menace in their eyes, I don’t think negotiation or reason will hold any sway with them. I switch tacks. “Are you sure you know who I am?”
“My dad knew Forgall Tobeigh,” says the one who holds a crooked piece of pipe. “I heard all about you.”
“I wanted – understand what he felt – let me finally sleep.” The lagon continues to talk as if there’s not a horde of sociopaths with patchy mustaches about to get hurt really bad. “But those memories – the past is static. A barrier – you and the experience.”
“So you know who I am.” I stand tall, let the brick hang beside my hip, let them see the picture of composure, the calm before the storm. I catch a strong smell of gas. “Then you should know what I’m going to do to you if you come any closer.”
Three of the kids exchange glances. The ones with the pipe and the butterfly knife advance, weapons extended. There’s a small chinking sound.
This is it, Henraek. You’re going to kill two kids who could easily be Donael’s classmates.
I raise the brick, ready to defend myself, when a fist of heat strikes me, flames devouring the lagon’s body. The kid with the knife jumps back but the one with the pipe unleashes a scream and falls to the ground. Tongues of fire lick his back. The lagon simply sits there. I cannot move.
The knife kid smacks his friend’s back as the three timid ones bolt out of the alley, the other two following behind thirty seconds later when the boy is no longer on fire. I can see scorched flesh through the holes in his shirt as they run away.
I should be looking for a blanket for the man, or screaming for a hose. At the very least smacking the fire down with my shirt. But he sits there, legs crossed and peaceful, as if he’s tapped into some long-forgotten part of our collective conscious, and I fear that doing anything to tamp the flames would disturb him.
I watch him burn, listening to the flames crackle, his skin bubble, his hair singe. I feel the tension in my body dissipate, and somewhere inside there I imagine I can hear him inhale on his cigarette.
He’s found his peace. But I will never find mine until I know.
I drop the brick and exit the alleyway.
Walleus.
The man in the gatehouse is the same one who called me Tyrell and I should not have expected anything different. I pull the hat down farther on my head, mostly covering my eyes, and walk at an efficient pace, like I have more deliveries to make and no time for small talk.
“Afternoon,” I say, motioning with the long shipping tube I found on my way over after I dropped the box during the chase.
“Can’t believe you left the house without an umbrella,” the man says.
“Oh, yeah, I know.” He obviously has no idea who I am and for a brief second I wonder if he’s actually an automaton. “I won’t have to take a shower then, I guess.”
The man gives a laugh and taps his temple. “Work smart, not hard, right?”
“Exactly,” I say. “Got a delivery for Mister Blaí in Unit 138.”
“You missed him.”
Of all the places I don’t want to stand around waiting for endless hours, this is number one. There’s an obscene amount of foliage but too many cameras and it’ll be hard enough getting to his house without getting flagged as it is.
“Hold on a minute. I’ll ring one of the boys to pick it up.” The man picks up the phone.
“It’s OK,” I say, a little too eagerly. “It’s a surprise, looks like.”
“Surprise?” He holds his finger on the hang-up button.
“For his son,” I blurt. “Donael. It says hand deliver. It’s fragile.”
He shakes his head and sets the handpiece back on the base. “That man does spoil those kids rotten. Love to see a father take such an interest in the kids, you know? Never happens these days.”
“Yeah.” I can hear my teeth squeak from grinding them so hard. “I hear that.”
“Let me guess.” He scratches his chin, stubbled with white hairs. “New soccer kit? No, not with that box. One them holograms of Canchie Lit?”
“It’s Concho Louth.” Shut your mouth, old man.
“Nah, that can’t be it. Oh, I know. Telescope.” He wags his finger in an assured manner. “Yeah, that’s it. He’d talked about that a few months ago. Donael’s been banging on about a telescope for years.”
The shipping tube creases beneath my fingers. My breath claws through my chest. I want to bludgeon this man for destroying my heart.
“I can’t see inside things,” I tell him, “so I never know what I’m delivering.”
“Ah, right, right.” He pushes a button and the gate opens. “Tell Donael I want to see his surprise later.”
I give him a short wave then walk toward Unit 138 to murder my best friend.