Shield and Crocus (19 page)

It was dark in his room, the way he liked it during daytime, when he slept and plotted and played. There was one red-tinted light in the corner, by the door, where they came and told him things, where they brought the new playthings and took them away when he was done with them, bored, or satisfied.

The Smiling King looked over to the bed, where the new playthings were struggling against their bonds. He had them bring two after the beautiful machine was destroyed.

Those monsters, inhuman, foolish, and near-sighted, why didn’t they understand what he was trying to do? To free them all from the limitations of the flesh, let their spirits erupt from their bodies and dance with the beautiful storms.

The storms. He wanted a storm, yearned for it, to feel the change lick at his skin like the tides, caressed like a lover. Before the beautiful machine, the storms came to him so rarely, so few chances to add to the family.
And now they’ve taken it from me, those monsters!
he’d string them up in his tapestry; make them eager participants in his art.

They squirmed again. The playthings, not the criminals. They were not playthings yet, not this kind, just the playmates that sometimes cheated and broke the rules and broke his heart and left him to cry for days and days in the room, when he sent them all away, and the playthings, too.

But today, today he wouldn’t let them ruin his joy, his art. These two were beautiful, a brother and sister, plucked from a brothel. The boy’s wide eyes were like caramel, his skin like a blooming flower, soft but supple, struggling in the ropes like they were a summer wind. And she was like a little doll, sharp features and ravendark hair. Clumps of that gorgeous hair were spread across the bed, the scissors from his last game set on the bedside table. She was crying, they were both crying, their mouths bound.

They’re so close, almost ready. Ready for Rebirth.
“now, my dears, it’s time for another game. The winner will be the first to be Reborn. A new life and new joys, a part of my grand cast of players.”

He strolled over to the bed, jumped on top and bounced before reaching over to their gags. The boy turned his head.
He’s shy, the poor thing. Not for much longer.

The Smiling King removed the cloth from the girl, tapped her button nose with his finger, and then turned to caress the boy’s beautiful jawline while he twitched.
Still shy.
he removed the boy’s gag, and the plaything started to plead.

“Just let us go, please let us go, we didn’t do anything wrong.”

The Smiling King dug his fingers into the boy, strong but supple flesh yielding to his touch. “We have a winner.” he felt the change ripple through him, tickling him up and down. The Smiling King squirmed and laughed, letting the change flow out into his new friend. The boy’s skin darkened from yellow to dark, dark blue, midnight blue like bonnets in the nighttime, friends of the moon with its silver light and his eyes turned silver too, little moons wide.

He’s still afraid, poor thing.
“don’t be scared. Let yourself be Reborn.” The boy’s skin hardened, then cracked, patterns spreading across his skin like the dirt of a desert thirsty for rain. His bonds broke with his newfound strength, and the boy fell forward into the Smiling King’s embrace.

He held the boy close, cooed to him and stoked his hair as the Rebirth continued. The boy’s nose ballooned and popped, revealing a bare nasal cavity. His sister was screaming too, a discordant harmony between them separated by octaves and the Smiling King reminded himself to keep them together.
They make such wondrous music together.
The boy’s screams modulated, shifted in pitch and tone, from fear and horror to exultation.

The Smiling King burst with excitement. “Yes, yes, yes! That’s it! Embrace it!” The boy’s skin shifted color again, turned white by the ivory sheets, yellow by the Smiling King’s skin. The boy wasn’t resisting anymore, his hands clutched to the Smiling King like a needy baby. He was Reborn into his new life, a blank canvas waiting to be turned into a part of the great tapestry. The Smiling King smothered the boy with a sloppy kiss, and then whispered in his ear.

“Welcome to my family.” he left his newborn child squirming with joy on the bed, and turned to the girl, her face stained with tears, screaming her brother’s old name.

“Please don’t, let me go, I don’t want to change.”

The Smiling King brought a finger to her lips, silencing her screams. He reached inside himself and brought up the rush of the change, reaching out with both hands for her pretty doll face.

“Hush. It’s your turn now.”

They waited in the safehouse for two days. Two days of surgery and pacing and hushed talking. Two days of uproar and chaos on the streets. Aegis was nowhere to be found in the city during the chaos, because Selweh spent every waking moment at his father’s side.

He’d studied every inch of the safehouse’s four walls over the hours, committed it to memory alongside blueprints of warehouses and the indelible memory of his old home.

The safehouse was somewhere between the size of a large closet and a small apartment. It had one room and a beaten old bed that had smelled like a grandmother, and had started to smell like near-dead Ikanollo, stained with sweat and blood and fading hope. There were no windows, no decorations but the bare wooden walls that splintered every few inches.

He stood in the same place he’d stood for the majority of two days, at the foot of the bed, looking at the sleeping form of his bandaged and beaten father.

Wake up, Dad. You’re not done here. I need you
, he repeated for the thousandth time, willing his father to recover, to wake up and lead the fight.

He kept hoping that Wonlar would wake up, emerge from the sleep that scared Selweh more each hour. He whispered the hundredth prayer of the day and then started changing his father’s bandages, starting from the broken ankle and working his way up to the probable concussion. Finally, Selweh wrapped another length of gauze around his father’s shaved head.

Don’t you leave me. Not now, not ever.

There was a knock at the door, and Selweh perked up, his hand finding the club he’d stuck into his belt. Then the knock finished—three quick raps and then one hollow pound.
It’s Rova.

Selweh set down the club, laid his father’s head on the soaked pillow, and walked to the door.
Remember to get ask Mehgi for another pillow, or at least a clean set of sheets.
The apartment was hers, since she was the Shield-bearer nearest to the street where they’d crashed after the fight in the train-car.

They were lucky she had a spare room set aside for emergencies. His father had lost a lot of blood, and they’d been able to get Dr. Acci over within half an hour.
Father’s web of contingency plans comes through again.

Selweh saw Rova only as a silhouette, backlit by the naked bulb hanging from the hall ceiling. But the shining jade thread winding hopefully towards him couldn’t be mistaken. The constant reminder of her feelings, the feelings he couldn’t return, not yet. The mission needed all of his attention if the city was to be free in time to save his father from a bloody grave.

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside as she ducked sideways under the lip of the doorway.

“Any change?” She put a hand on the foot post of the bed. Next to her it looked like a child’s bed or a toy.

“No.” The two stood side by side, a river of unspoken words crossing between them, until Selweh cleared his throat. “I need some fresh air. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She nodded. “Of course. Take as long as you need.” Sapphire pulled up the armless chair from the corner of the room and set her weight on the edge, legs wide to support some of her weight.
I’ll see if Mehgi has a stronger chair—something Rova can actually use without having to squat.

Selweh waited at the door and watched his father for just a second more, then descended the stairs two at a time and walked out to the front stoop.

Out on the street, traffic was light, even at two before the academies let out. Mothers or fathers strolled up and down the street with small children; merchants pushed rickety carts along cobblestones and barked their fresh wares; there were few buggies and motor-trikes. The air was sticky, an unseasonable rash of heat that had carried on for three days.

It wasn’t the welcome heat of a warm spring, but the sticky heat of deep summer, the kind that made people shower three times a day and go running for the shade. His father would call it a symbol of the Shields’ imminent victory, the coming summer after the long winter of the tyrants’ rule, but that poetic idea was hard to swallow just right then.

Selweh fanned himself with a hand and took a seat on the stoop. His feet dangled over the edge like he’d done since he was a little boy. He watched the people pass him as just another Ikanollo, distinguishable only by the threads that bound him. Wonlar had given him a brass ring with inlaid emerald that provided the same thread-masking as the amulets the others used.
It used to be Aria’s, he said.

He sat there for several minutes, enjoying the slow flow of traffic and the slightly-more-fresh air. He hopped off the stoop to street level and started a circuit around the block. Selweh lost himself for a while in the rhythm of his steps, the heel of his shoes on the street. He listened to the sounds of the merchants’ calls and babies’ gurgling cries, the pedi-cabs whirring by, and took in the smell of smoke from the belching motor-trikes.

In these simple moments, he could nearly trick himself into thinking that all was right with the world, that he lived in the version of the city that his father told him about, the city he’d fought to restore, instead of a city enslaved. He saw the city the way he dreamed it would be once the war was over and justice restored.

As usual, the vision lasted only a moment. A half-dozen red-clad neighborhood guards walked around a corner, clubs in hands, scanning the street. Coppery threads of malice flailed about them, searching for an outlet. A baker saw the group and turned his cart to cross the street. His axle threw a wheel and the cart toppled, spilling loaves of bread in the middle of the street.
That’s going to be a situation in about three seconds.

He counted in his mind as he walked toward the cart, nonchalant.

Just after he reached three, one of the guards blew her whistle. “You there! You’re blocking traffic.” The goons were Nevri’s, at the bottom of the heap in her corporation.
Take a vacuum of power above them and conflicting orders from all sides and you have a great recipe for uncontrolled aggression. Simmer with heat until boiling.
Selweh bet they were just spoiling for a chance to lash out.

Thank you, City Mother. Something I can actually do something about.

The guards encircled the baker and his cart. Selweh didn’t have his raiment, or the Aegis.
I won’t need much to send these cowards running. They’re as scared as the baker. Just better armed and more poorly mannered.

“Let me help you pick up, sir,” Selweh said to the baker, ignoring the guards. He picked up the wooden wheel and walked towards the group, coming up behind two of the red-clad thugs.

“Stay out of this,” said an Ikanollo guard, tapping his club in hand.

Selweh raised his hands to his shoulders as she approached. “I’m just trying to help.”

“We’ve got it taken care of,” the Ikanollo said, swallowing the ends of his words, vein in his neck pulsing.

Aegis walked past the guard and lifted the cart enough to re-fit the wheel. Without the Aegis in hand, he had only a fraction of his strength, but it was close enough for this small feat.

“How’d you…?” the female guard asked, trailing off as she watched Selweh’s Goddess-blessed strength.
That’s right, I’m not just another Ikanollo. Why don’t you leave?
he thought, half-wishing they had a Qava to get the clue.

Selweh knelt again to pick up a loaf with a hard crust, never taking his eyes from the crowd. Behind him, the baker quaked with fear. “I can help with the spill, officers. I’m sure you’re very busy.”
If you take the easy way out, I don’t have to get my hands dirty or endanger the civilians. Or you can be dumb and start something. Your choice.

They decided on option two. The guard who’d called out the baker took an overhand swing at Selweh. He sidestepped and pulled the guard over his waiting foot, sending her to the street. Two more guards rushed him.

Selweh slid between one and the cart, pushing the first guard into the other. He kept going, pressing the next guard. They outnumbered him and had weapons, so they were able to land a few glancing blows. But in less than a minute, the thugs were splayed out on the cobblestones around the baker’s cart, clutching nerve clusters and cracked bones. Selweh finished helping the man gather his wares. The guards had the sense to leave rather than trying again. He bet that they’d be back in minutes with backup, but he’d be far gone by then, and the baker too, if he took Selweh’s advice.

* * *

Selweh walked back to the apartment building holding a bag of still-warm loaves of bread. The baker had insisted on giving Selweh a reward, and they’d spent more time arguing the point than it’d taken Selweh to down the guards.

He knocked his code at the door, and after a moment, Sapphire let him in.

“Bread?” he asked, shaking a loaf beside his head, a smile on his face.

“What happened out there? I felt your adrenaline rush,” she took the loaf and broke it. Sweet-smelling steam licked out of the loaf, and Selweh reached out to tear off a piece for himself.

“It was nothing. I met a very kind baker by the name of Bau. He runs Bau’s Breads, two veins over.” Rova chuckled as she took a bite from her half of the loaf. Selweh set the bag down at the foot of the bed. “Any change?”

Rova’s silence was answer enough.

Wake up, Father. We need you.

“When is Dr. Acci coming back?” Rova asked a minute later, breaking Selweh from his repeated entreaties. “Tomorrow. If he doesn’t wake up in the next day and a half, Acci says he may not wake at all.” Acci had survived Nevri’s purge, one of the few Shield-bearers who hadn’t been targeted, which made him the Shield’s last and only doctor.

Her heartbeat jumped. “I’ll have Bira come by again. Maybe she can reach him this time…”

They were all grasping for hope, but if they give up on Wonlar … they might as well give up entirely.

Selweh lied. “That’s a good idea.”

The air was thick with silence and sweat for another minute, and Selweh went back to the door.

“I’m going to get something to go with this bread.”

Rova waved him out of the room. “You’ve been cooped up here too long. Go take a real break, at least an hour. You’re wound tighter than a grapple gun.” She tapped the bracelet on her left arm. “And this time, call if you decide to make some new friends.” She sent him off with a smile, showing that she didn’t take it too seriously. Selweh picked up a bag from the corner, containing his raiment, and more important, the Aegis.

“And leave that here,” she called after him. He didn’t listen to her. The shield helped him think. His mind worked better with it in his grip. He couldn’t say if it was the voices of the past bearers or just the comfort of habit, but it worked.

* * *

Most of an hour after leaving the safehouse, Selweh was very happy he’d insisted on bringing the Aegis. At the north end of collar’s crook, he heard the sounds of someone trying to batter down a door.

“Open in the name of the executor!” someone shouted in a booming basso voice.

And which Executor do they mean?
Selweh asked himself as he ducked into the nearest alley. He was met by a fifteen-foot-wide pool of still, sewage-covered concrete. Selweh took three dashing steps and vaulted over the pool, then hid behind a pile of trash. He set the groceries aside and pulled out his raiment. He donned the mask and exchanged his everyday tan shirt and worn black pants for the warded green-and-white tunic and leggings. Lastly, he drew the shining Aegis and ran his left arm into the loops, grabbing the polished handle. Aegis felt the shield’s power wrap around him like the memories of his mother’s embrace.
Now let’s see what you’re up to.

Aegis took two steps back towards the street and leapt over the pool. He turned the corner and bellowed with the titan’s voice, “leave these people be!”

He heard his father’s voice in his mind again, an old lesson from when he was still Second Sentinel.
Draw the public’s attention, make it known that we are here for them, that we accept the responsibility and will not stand by while they are terrorized.

Part of the crowd was arranged on the stairs leading up to the greystone, the rest milled about on the street. They’d already taken down the door, so he couldn’t tell how many were already inside.

Aegis activated his bracelet, hoping that Rova would be happy, or at least satisfied. Emergency alarms didn’t tend to make anyone happy.
Except maybe father when he’s grumpy.

Long strides carried him down the block as the former Plutocrat’s thugs squared off. There were twenty of them all together, ten at the base of the two sets of stairs leading up to greystone apartments, the rest trailing up the stairs and into the buildings. Aegis raised his shield and barreled in to the crowd, sending guards tumbling like pins of some game from someone else’s childhood.
This is more like it.

Selweh’s games as a boy had been “I spy a clue” and “tail the grocer.” Aegis had gotten in many fights as a boy, standing up for the Shields, so he knew well how to fight a crowd. Even so, twenty was a lot. If they actually knew how to use their numbers, this would go poorly for him.

Aegis swung the shield left and kicked out to the right, catching the chest of a surprised Ikanollo guard. The guard flew up and back into the stairs. Aegis heard bones crack as he spun the shield in a horizontal swipe, catching another guard across the temple. He leaned into the swing of a club and grabbed the offending arm, stripping the club and breaking it across the guard’s knee. He took the opening and barreled out of the crowd, getting himself space again, never letting the group envelop him.

Aegis spent twenty seconds clearing them out, dancing between half-trained guards, grappling and throwing them around like rag dolls. When half their number lay on the street, the group broke and scattered, deserting their comrades inside the building. He didn’t know what was happening in the rest of Nevri’s district, but if it was as chaotic as what he was facing here, there would be far worse things happening that night than a simple break-in.