Rising - Patrick Sean Lee (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

of bubbles. He does not object at all to the bath—I think he even likes it. He has taken immediately to the children, who are fascinated by him. Two of them hang six feet off the ground from one arm. They are giggling. He is smiling. Soon he will smell human? again. He will come with Sant and me.

The crowds, mixed with scores of children and adults now, has thickened. My return is almost secondary in their minds I’m betting. It is Faerborn sitting like a monstrously large drowned rat that takes their breath away. Quite a few, though, are both intrigued and frightened by the Helicere sitting silent ten feet away. Even in repose, the sheer power of it makes the few who dare, approach it with trepidation. The children inside are not in the least cowed. Streams of soap suds and water flow out of it in foul-smelling little streams. Over and over, more of the little ones carry buckets up the ramp, slipping and sliding, returning seconds later to gather more.

It is their laughter that I’ve so missed, I think. The young ones here are so like those in Catanar. Those whose laughter and innocence and wide-eyed wonder will never again grace the earth. My loathing of Polit has turned to hatred because of all that happened to them. I am nothing like these children here, or there...or anywhere. As I watch them scrub Faerborn it occurs to me that I will become a singular Polit; a culmination of Marcus and his Jades. I will wind up murdering hundreds, perhaps thousands of Polit innocents. The thought makes me ill, and unsure of myself.

Somehow I must find a way to destroy Darra and the government, the the hundred-thousand, the million who support it blindly or otherwise, yet in the same breath save and redeem the children destined to become another generation’s cruel leaders. The victims caught in the crossfire. I see only dark and depressing days ahead.

I must do what I have to do, regardless, at the cost of my humanity. Oh Sant, help me bear the weight.

 

                                     ***

 

Faerborn glistens, even in the overcast atmosphere. A moment ago he carefully set the children onto the muddy earth below him, stood tall, and then shook the gallons of water from his fur, sending showers as dense as a downpour in every direction. Now, a half dozen kids have leapt back into his grasp, climbed up his body to perch themselves on his broad shoulders. One brave one, a little girl I have never seen before, has managed herself onto the top of his head, one tiny hand grasping the hair above his right eye.

He is suddenly in the realm of the gods.

Where will I find someone truly meant for him? Is there such a giant anywhere?

I leave him and his tiny entourage, leave Sant and the crowds, run back into the Helicere to check on Gerstam. He sits in the same seat I was in an hour ago, facing Darra, whose face is as white as snow. A splotch of red stains Darra’s shirt just below his heart—or where any decent person’s heart would be. Gerstam holds the knife in his lap. I see droplets of blood clinging to the tip. He is smiling wickedly, the headset sitting cockeyed on his head.

Darra notices my sudden appearance.

“If I die!” is all he says.

Gerstam scowls and raises the knife quickly, shoving it at the president. Stops it before the point reaches his throat.

You won’t die just yet, Darra. Not until my job is done. It’s only then I’ll let Gerstam skin YOU alive.

“Where are my sisters?”

Darra half-whimpers, “On the way.”

“Did he call his officials, G?”

Gerstam shrugs, waves the knife around Darra’s face. “He spoke into this thing to somebody. Said to ‘bring the girls’. Fifteen minutes ago. Before I cut him.”

“Keep this animal away from me, Benedrece! He’s insane! They’re on the way, I swear it. Get me out of here. I’ll be your hostage. Me for them, and then it’s over. You can take the ship and just go away. I’ll make certain the military lets you leave.”

“Yeah, right. I’ll just sit there and work the controls as though any child could master flying this thing.”

“I’ll provide a pilot. You can do with him whatever you like when you’re safe and away. Let this thug cut him to ribbons. I don’t care. Just get me away from him!”

“Let’s say I do that. Five minutes after we leave, your thugs descend on Black and massacre every living thing left behind. You must think I’m stupid,” I spit at him.

“I give you my word, no one left behind will suffer a reprisal…”

“Your word. Hah! Go to the demons, Darra. Your word is as good as a pile of…” I don’t finish the sentence.

“How long before my sisters arrive? How many of your men will be with them?” I demand.

“Soon. Probably within the hour. Sooner if they’re brought in a Skirter. I have no idea how many policemen will escort them.”

I yank the headphones off Gerstam’s head. Shove them at Darra.

“Call them up. Tell whoever is bringing them to stop a hundred yards away from the gates. Tell them to let Mondra and Tereka walk into Black by themselves. And tell them that if they try anything—if I even suspect that they might—I’ll blow every last one of them to the devils. When that’s done, I’ll let Gerstam have at you. Tell them that. Do it!”

Darra conveys the message, though I have no idea if it was actually sent. I can only assume it went out. When he finishes, I bring my fist down as hard as I can on his nose. Blood spurts in a geyser. He screams and flies backward against the control panels.

I enjoy this. I regret having done it, it speaks badly of me—but I enjoy seeing his pain. Gerstam smiles. My turn next…with the knife, he has to be thinking.

“On your feet, Darra.”

The three of us leave the ship, Darra between us with his hands tied firmly behind his back. He has to be utterly humiliated—bleeding, spit upon, cursed at as we walk toward my home and the north gate not far beyond it. The once-powerful man brought to his knees, at least for the present.

Faerborn clomps along behind us, scads of children either riding on him, or running like excited puppies all round him. Where once he protected me in our march through the forests on Folly, I will protect him, now. Strong and fearless as he is, he will be no match for Polit numbers and firepower in the coming days.

It is hard to see any order in the snarl of Black dwellings beginning on either side of the wide avenue. Sagging roofs that scrape those of their neigbors. Narrow walkways between the houses that run only as straight as the crooked walls separating them, leading to the meager vegetable patches behind each. Here and there an added chimney stack blocks the way so effectively that only rats and snakes and spiders can squeeze their way through. The need for heat in the bitterly cold winters trumps the need for passage. Once long ago, Father told me, some of the homes were painted, but these days there is little evidence left. I hang my head as we walk, not really in shame—no one here can possibly afford wood to burn, let alone paint to brighten the dinginess that stalks these hovels like dark grey ghosts. I think back to Catanar, laid out and built among the tree’s top by free men and women. All gone, now, but the difference is nearly shocking. Gliding a hundred feet or more above Black in the Helicere, seeing from a new perspective the streets spiking out from this main avenue like twisted arrows, the nearly continuous carpet of rooftops and crumbling chimneys, made my heart sink. It is no wonder the cruel gods looking down at Black have abandoned its desperately poor people. Our prison-community is shameful.

In the midst of this disgrace, though, there exists a brightness. The children. Save the infirm, they are the same as Catanar’s, or the gods forbid, Polit’s, I suspect. Not having seen anything beyond their secluded, small existences, they make the light dance with their laughter and simple games. The dump is as good a playground for them as the mighty trees were for Catanar’s children, or the extravagantly appointed parks for Polit’s innocents. There is a forest here beyond the west wall. Two hundred yards away, accessible, but forbidden, by a tiny hole knocked through it. It is a dwarf compare to Folly’s forests, but how many times did I sneak across the no-man’s land with Mondra to enter and play inside the lush, spooky interior? Had we been caught…

On the seaward side there is the swamp, filled with danger and excitement, and the endless sea with beaches stretching north and south a mile or so beyond the miasma of reeds and stagnant water. This sea citizens of my Black have always been granted access to—if one cares to brave the treacherous swamp to get there.

I see the gates in the distance, imposing. Close-set iron rods with speared tops, locked each evening, but open now. The gates and the ten foot-tall stone walls are the only things in this pit that are maintained by order of Darra’s decree. Outside, another wide stretch of nothing until Polit begins to rise, scrubbed and perfect in its sterile elegance. What lies north of the city of haves is only conjecture. Some say there is no end of Polit, that it stretches in an infinity of cleanliness and beauty. Foolish, even in the mind of an imbecile. Still others whisper stories of a woman, long dead, who ventured past the rolling hilled end of Polit. Her accounts of what lay there read like stories from a picture book liberated by Gerstam from Polit’s vast library. Mighty forests similar to Folly’s, inhabited by tiny nymphs and winged horses; princesses in turreted castles with multi-colored flags wafting in soft breezes that blow constantly. A thousand streams with fish that talk, if only a person listens.

I always chose to believe the latter account. Some magical land, the counterpoint of both Polit and our hideous dungeon of Black. A place of peace. Perhaps a kingdom of furry giants. Perhaps that, and lest I die, someday I’ll visit whatever lies out there. I’ll take Faerborn with me.

My home, fifty feet ahead on the right. Maybe the best maintained of the lot, thanks to Father’s and Jeren’s efforts. Mother is waiting outside the door, missing since the Polit cops bashed it in the day I was arrested a thousand lifetimes ago. Beside her, Jeren. He sees the parade approaching and bolts toward us, his arms flung out in front of his skinny little body.

Thank you gods. No, thank you whoever kept him alive. Now all that remains is to wait for Mondra and Tereka to arrive. Rejoice.

Then what?

 

 

FIVE

 I take hold of Sant's hand, Jeren clinging to my side fighting back his tears, and I lead the way across the threshold. Even at his bravest, Faerborn would not try to follow, petrified as he is of man-made domiciles. He stays