“Eat up, Jak,” Ryan said. Around them conversation gurgled and chucked like water underneath an old wharf, and utensils clattered on dishes as if there was nothing unusual about having dinner with a group of people in chains. Emerald, similarly chained, sat wearing a simple shift at the table head beside Brother Joseph.
“How eat?” the albino youth asked, fixing Ryan with hot ruby eyes.
“Hungry,” Ryan said, taking another bite from his roast chicken drumstick.
“I can’t believe they bull-rushed us,” Mildred said. Just around sunset the front and rear doors had burst open simultaneously and a dozen sec men armed with truncheons had charged the companions, who were sleeping soundly on their pallets after their sleepless, frantic night. Ryan hadn’t even known the back security door opened.
“It was a hell of a way to get invited to dinner,” Ryan agreed. “No reason not to eat hearty, though.”
Mildred looked as if she were about to pursue the matter, then her face went studiedly blank. Ryan suspected J.B., who was sitting slumped in his wheelchair at her side as if semiconscious, had given her a quick thigh-squeeze with his hand under the table.
They’d need their strength to jump when the opportunity presented itself, he thought. And if it never came, why die hungry?
Anyway, the food was plentiful and good. No denying that. Even if Emerald, the guest of honor, didn’t seem to have much appetite.
Doc was chattering away about nothing consequential. The plump little shopkeeper sitting next to Doc was hunched all into himself as if hoping his flab would serve as a turtle shell, to protect him from the strange wrinklie who wouldn’t shut up. Jak was sulking, and Krysty sat right across from Ryan eating with her usual good appetite, without an apparent care in the world.
The meal ended. Nervous young servers plucked the plates and utensils away from the captives under the stony gaze of the same twelve sec men, six to a side of the table, who’d fetched the companions here to the baronial palace. Ryan was amused. They hadn’t even been allowed butter knives or even forks, evidently for fear they’d try to take a hostage or maybe fork their way to freedom.
It was strike they were all used to eating with their hands. Even Doc in full-on Victorian gentleman mode seemed to think nothing of chatting away, casually waving around a half-eaten pork chop. The ville people around them looked scandalized, which didn’t exactly hurt Ryan’s feelings.
An annoying ringing sound came from the head of the table. Booker had stood up beside the guru and was beating on a big gold-colored metal goblet with a ladle for attention. He persisted until everybody shut up and dutifully looked toward the self-proclaimed holy man, who sat there with eyes half-lidded, smiling as if he were listening to God telling him what an ace job he was doing.
“Thank you,” Brother Joseph said when he had full silence and attention. He rose.
“Sisters and brothers of Soulardville, on the heels of the worst of news, I bring the best—our beloved princess,
daughter of our lost lamented leader Baron Savij, has been returned to us, safe and sound! And of course, a greater obligation has superseded Princess Emerald’s earlier duty. She is now called upon to step forward and assume her beloved father’s mantle as Baron Savij of Soulardville.”
The applause started out tentative, then swelled to thunder. People cheered.
Then they began to falter and look confused. If Emerald was the new baron, why was she being treated as a captive in what was after all her own palace?
Brother Joseph, beaming, spread his hands and
smoothed them all to silence.
“It is my privilege and pleasure to announce my betrothal to the Princess Emerald,” he said. “In three days, in the best interests of Soulardville and our beloved people, we shall be wed.”
The girl jumped up. “You’ll have to rape me, you fake!” she shouted. “I’d rather give myself to the screamwings than you!”
Into the shocked silence Brother Joseph shook his head sadly and said, “The poor child still suffers nervous exhaustion engendered by her terrible struggles and privations. She is clearly not herself. She will be removed to my chambers, where she may be cared for properly.”
Burly young male acolytes in the guru’s signature tie-dyed T-shirts stepped forward and grabbed Emerald’s bound arms to hustle her off.
When the new Baron Savij had been hauled kicking and screaming up the stairs to her father’s former quarters, a boil of excited conversation was bubbling off the dark-stained rafters. Booker banged furiously on his improvised gong.
“Shut it, motherfuckers!” he screeched. “Your spiritual
leader is gonna speak! Shut your holes or win the lottery for free!”
That
silenced the house. Brother Joseph would never suggest his so-called compact and the lottery that fulfilled it so bloodily, month after month, were pure tools of terror and social control. Oh, no, he was much too benign and holy for that. But what else was a toady for?
“We see, for the second time, strangers in our midst,” Brother Joseph said, nodding toward Ryan and his friends. His face looked less kindly now. “When first they came among us we made them welcome guests, did we not?”
“Yeah!” shouted someone enthusiastically. It was one of the bully boys in the gaudy shirts, Ryan noted without surprise.
“And now,” Brother Joseph said, “we see how they repay our hospitality. Charged with safely returning the precious princess to us, they did accomplish that task. But they also misused her in a most indecent and unacceptable way.”
“What!” Mildred exclaimed in outrage.
“Relax,” Krysty told her lightly. “They’re going to play their little game.”
“Yes, these men especially laid their profane hands upon her naked flesh,” Brother Joseph intoned. “Our princess. Daughter of our lost, exalted leader. They have profaned the very flesh and blood of our righteous Baron Savij, profaned our new baron. What price shall we exact, with sorrow in our hearts, for such an outrage?”
“Death!” shouted one of the acolytes.
“Death! Death!” shouted more.
It took a while, but the acolytes were young. They had leather lungs and boundless energy. They kept chanting, “Death! Death! Death!” until, one by one, the whole
crowd joined in. Even the fat-rabbit pot maker sitting next to Doc was red-faced and pounding on the table.
By the end, Ryan figured, the crowd probably thought it was all their own idea.
A
N HOUR
after the spectacular conclusion to the evening’s banquet, Strode appeared at the door of their prison house.
The companions were nursing black eyes and bruises, and Jak had got another split in his scalp to join the first one. As one they had decided not to go peacefully. Except for J.B., of course, who was still playing possum. He’d been griping the entire hour since about how he didn’t get to take part in all the fun as Mildred and Krysty tended the group’s hurts as best they could with no equipment but water and some rags.
Strode bustled in without ceremony, lugging a huge pack on her broad pack. This she dumped in the center of the floor and began to root around in, taking out rag bandages and jars of alcohol.
“You show up so Bro Joe’ll have us in good shape to face his chillers?” Ryan asked.
“Don’t be stupe,” the healer said. “You, boy—”
She pointed a finger at Jak, then at the floor before her. “Sit,” she commanded.
“Uh-uh,” he said.
“You took at least two severe blows to the head,” she said. “You need care so your brains don’t start coming out your ears. And don’t even think about what’ll happen if those scalp wounds get infected through lack of attention.”
Jak growled.
“Jak,” Krysty said, “do what she says.”
Pouting, the albino youth got up from his pallet, padded
to stand before the wide healer and knelt. The hair at the back of his head was pinkish, now, from Krysty doing her best to wash it with their limited supply of water. Strode, examining his wounds, called for her attendants outside to hurry up and replenish the water.
“Why are you helping us, then?” Ryan asked.
“You’re in my ville,” she said. “You need healing.”
“Ow!” Jak yipped, as she began to swab his wound with a clean rag dipped in alcohol. “Stings!”
“Don’t whine or I’ll show you the real meaning of sting,” she said. “And quit wriggling. Or I’ll have to clean this cut out all over again. I
won’t
be gentle!”
When Strode had finished her cleaning and patching as best she could and was repacking her gear, Ryan, who sat on a pallet next to Krysty, said, “We need you to take a message to Tully.”
“Tully?” she asked, continuing to pack without glancing at him. “He likes you less than I do. He’s a big defender of Emerald’s, if you didn’t notice. And there’s the little matter that you killed his buddy Lonny.”
She stowed the last item, sealed her bag and turned to face Ryan with hands on hips.
“Lonny was a pig,” she said, “but did you have to actually kill him?”
“Yeah. Now listen. Please. This is for Emerald and the ville as much as us. Tell Tully we can help him if he’ll help us.”
“What is it you want him to do?”
“Break us out.”
Strode laughed in Ryan’s face. “Why would he do that? He hates you like poison.”
“You know McCoy, a little black kid?”
“I delivered him,” Strode said. “Like every other Soulardite born in the last twenty-three years.”
“Tell Tully to send him outside the perimeter. He knows ways through.”
“He does?”
“Trust me,” Ryan said. “Or, nuke that. Ask Tully. He knows. Tell the kid to poke around some outside the ville. Especially down by the river.”
“You want me to send a child into an area infested with stickies?”
“If he didn’t know how to keep out of the stickies’ suckers, Healer,” Krysty said, “do you think he’d still be alive? He can obviously go through the fence whenever he likes.”
“He’ll find a crew of scavvies led by a dude named Dan E. Kind of a heavyset guy, white, thirties, brown hair, brown eyes. Got a goatee. Totes a SIG handblaster at his hip. Or this Dan E.’ll find him, more like.”
“What then?”
“If Tully can get Dan E.’s bunch inside, they can help him. Twenty-thirty scavvies, armed to the teeth and hard as rail iron. Together with Tully’s allies here in the ville they ought to be able to spring Emerald. Shift the balance of power, like.”
“It’ll take time for all this to happen,” Strode warned. “Tully may not go for it. A thousand things could go wrong.”
“So?” Ryan said. “What do we have to lose? What do
you
got to lose? Or do you want to go on delivering kids so Brother Joseph can have his screamwing pals rip them to bloody rags?”
She stared blue hate at them, then she shook her silver-haired head. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to hate you for telling me truth to my face. Mebbe for other things, but not for that.”
“Will you do it?”
“Yes,” the healer said without hesitation. She was a person who picked a direction quick and just put her head down and went that way. Ryan admired that.
“I can’t lie to you and tell you I see any realistic chance of your plan working,” Strode said, “but it’s the best shot I can see. For you or for us.”
N
EXT DAY
they were awakened at dawn to have a big bowl of oatmeal and some spoons thrust through the slot to them. They got fresh water and towels, too.
The companions mostly passed the day sleeping. J.B. was still healing; he had plenty of that left to do, for all that he claimed to be mobile and fully functional. The others were exhausted by their quest for the fugitive princess and their thumping of the night before.
It was too rad-blasted muggy to talk or even think. Sleep was the only sanctuary.
The sun was spilling light over the peaked gray roof of the house behind them through the back door security bars when hammering on the front door’s steel frame roused them.
It was the hard fist of Garrison himself raising the racket. He had a dozen of his men to back him.
“Get yourselves straightened up,” he said.
“Why exactly should we?” Mildred asked, sitting up from the sleeping pad she shared with J.B.
Garrison showed yellowish teeth in a brief grin. “Because Brother Joseph would prefer you turn out to the plaza without being all beat to shit,” he said. “If you would, too, get hustling.”
The late-afternoon air, enriched by the yellow slanting sunlight, seemed to crackle above the heads of the crowd with electricity. The glow turned Brother Joseph’s face and beard the color of gold.
“People of Soulard!” he cried, holding high his staff. “I have prayed and meditated upon the vexing problem of how to handle these strangers who have abused our hospitality and our virgin princess!”
“Wonder if still virgin after last night,” Jak muttered. Then he sagged at the knees as the sec man behind him gave him a savage baton jab to the kidneys. Mildred and Krysty caught him by the elbows and saved him from banging his knees on the pavement.
“Likely she wasn’t when she left here,” Ryan said. He glanced over his shoulder at the sec men behind him. “Any of you boys want to feel what’s like having one of those sticks broken off in your ass, feel free to give me a poke with it, any old time.”
The companions hadn’t been bound when Garrison and his sec men hustled them to the plaza. The sec men guarding Ryan gave him the evil eye but decided to do nothing.
“I have consulted my most trusted advisers,” Brother Joseph was saying. He waved a hand to indicate Booker and a clump of five or six local burghers, all of whom looked scared and uncomfortable. “All signs lead to one, the only possible conclusion.”
He thrust out his staff at the companions, who stood facing him across the plaza, with its grisly shrouded altar.
“Death! Death is the only punishment possible. Death, moreover, in such a manner as will impress upon the enemies of Soulardville the terrible price of trespassing against us. They shall not be forgiven!”
With some blatant prompting from the acolytes the crowd began a chant of “Death, death, death!”
“Sure doesn’t take them long to get into it,” J.B. remarked, not bothering to keep his voice down. His companions had to strain to hear him as it was.
“The beast lies barely hidden within every human breast,” Doc intoned.
Brother Joseph held high his staff. The crowd fell silent.
“We will not slaughter them all, crudely and at once,” he declared. “Oh, no. We must spread out the lessons over time. Vary the teachings, so that the utmost may be learned. Today one shall meet his or her well-deserved fate. And as a reward to you, the faithful people of Soulardville, and in celebration of the safe return of our baron to us, today’s execution will entail one of these evil intruders taking the place of our next lottery winner!”
The crowd cheered lustily at that. Acolytes hustled forward to yank the canvas cover from the altar and roll it at one side.
“Hum stopped, anyway,” Jak said.
“Figured,” Ryan said.
“And the first to suffer the just punishments for their many and hideous crimes,” the preacher declaimed in his most ringing voice, “shall be the mutie boy called Jak Lauren!”
“You shitmouth old nuke-sucker,” Jak screamed. “I no mutie!”
It took all the sec men on hand plus a dozen young male acolytes to beat down the companions’ furious resistance. Doc laid about himself enthusiastically with the silver lion’s head of his cane. Even J.B. climbed out of his wheelchair to jump on the back of a tall buzz-cut blond kid in a sunburst T-shirt, only to be dropped with a crack to the back of the head by a black-clad sec man.
Garrison sauntered across the plaza to stand and watch. Even as Ryan flung himself upright from where four sec men thought they’d had him pinned to the pavement, scattering his attackers with an angry-bear roar, he could see the sec boss gesturing for his men to lay off those already brought down.
Ryan lunged for him, but two waves of sec men crashed together in front of him. As he battered at them with his bare hands, he felt lightning blast through his own kidneys in a flash of white that filled his whole body with pain. He dropped to his knees, then a club smashed across the crown of his head and he fell on his face. The world spun and his limbs dissolved.
A sec man knelt on his back and turned his face to watch as Jak, his arms tied behind his back, was dragged to the altar. The albino twisted savagely and managed to sink his strong teeth in the cheek of a black-garbed man. The man screamed and yanked his head back, leaving a raw patch on his face and a strip of skin in Jak’s jaws. The other sec men rained blows on the boy in fury, defying Brother Joseph’s and Garrison’s commands to stop, payback for his comrades who had injured hands when they’d grabbed Jak’s jacket.
They laid off only when the sec boss, his sunburned face gone redder than usual, bellowed that the next to land
a blow on Jak would take his place on the altar. The albino teen was left sprawled on his belly on the slab, his face hidden by hair dyed scarlet with his own blood. He was clearly breathing, Ryan could see, but unconscious.
There was no additional ceremony today. Clearly Brother Joseph was afraid of further outbreaks. He raised his staff toward the heavens, now streaked pink and yellow and blue with sunset, and cried the invocation to King Screamwing.
A lone black figure appeared in the sky to the north, approaching swiftly with deceptively slow beats of its long and powerful wings. If the Soulardville crowd expected another spectacle like the girl’s sacrifice a few days before, they were doomed to disappointment.
The king came alone. Whether it was by some whim, or trick of screamwing biology, or because Brother Joseph had the knack of summoning the monstrous flock alpha alone, he left his retinue of crestless, seagull-size horrors behind. Only he descended, his wings beating with audible booms that sent down blasts of air so strong the spectators were bodily driven back.
He didn’t deign to land, this terror-toothed monarch of the skies. He descended only far enough to sink gigantic talons into the back of Jak’s jacket. The bits of glass and steel sewn there bit into his feet. The monster screeched.
But King Screamwing was made of stern stuff. He tightened his grip in the fabric, beat hard with his monstrous wings and bore Jak’s limp form up and away toward the black fanglike tower that was his stronghold.
A
S BEFORE,
Mildred tried to clean and bind their wounds as best she could with the material at hand, by the light of a pair of candle lanterns. Garrison’s watchful presence had prevented any permanent damage being done
to the rebellious prisoners. They suffered no concussions nor broken bones, just bloody contusions and bone-deep bruises that were already turning a sort of tainted rainbow of smudged and muted colors.
It was a quiet house as night settled into Soulardville. The evening bowl of communal gruel that had been thrust through the hatch at them sat against one wall, neglected.
Ryan sat in a corner by himself. He said nothing. He had no words to say.
“I still can’t believe that monster could carry Jak,” Mildred said as she cleaned a cut across Doc’s forehead. “I know it managed with the girl. But still.”
“Jak was a light lad,” Doc said. “Undoubtedly that facilitated the monster’s task in bearing him away. But truly, it staggers the mind that a creature of such prodigious size could fly itself, much less carrying such a burden.”
Ryan found his voice. “Don’t say ‘was,’ Doc.”
The old man drew his head back on his stalk of neck, blinking in astonishment. “Surely you do not imagine the boy still lives?”
“Denial isn’t your style, Ryan,” Mildred said, rinsing her rag in a bowl of brown-stained water.
“Moreover, Ryan, are you sure you want to wish such a fate upon the lad, as still to be alive in that lair of monsters?”
“Jak isn’t dead,” he said. “And I reckon he isn’t getting eaten, either.”
Krysty stroked his shoulder. “How can that be, lover? You know how those muties are. And the little ones, I think they’re the most vicious breed of screamwing we’ve ever encountered.”
“Jak’s smart,” Ryan said, “and he still got his blades. When I see his body, I’ll believe he’s chilled.”
“I’m with Ryan,” J.B. said. “Don’t underestimate the pale little runt.”
Doc shook his head sadly. “I fear we have as much chance of seeing him alive again as of ever seeing his corpse, or whatever may remain. The former would require a miracle on his behalf, the latter, a miracle on ours.”
From the door came a now-familiar pounding. They had shut the inside door, wanting to shut out the outside world and its horrors more than they wanted the extra breath of air in the still, hot evening. They couldn’t see who was knocking.
For a moment nothing changed. Mildred went back to examining Doc’s head. The others sat.
The pounding returned, sharper, more insistent.
“Mebbe Strode’s come to tinker up our bruises,” J.B. said. “Mighty conscientious, that one.”
“Doesn’t sound like her,” Ryan said. “Then again, it doesn’t sound like that stoneheart Garrison, either.”
With massive effort he heaved himself to his feet and walked stiffly to the door. He opened it.
Tully stood on the porch. Beside him stood a stocky guy with brown hair, brown eyes and a goatee.
“One-Eye,” the goateed man said, “you gave us one triple pain in the ass.”
“Here for the payback? You’re Dan E., aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m Dan E.,” the man said.
Tully unlocked the door. “Where’d you get the key?” Ryan asked.
“Off somebody who didn’t need it anymore,” the tall ginger-haired man said. His long face was sallow and his voice clotted with emotion.
The sec door opened. Tully and Dan E. stepped aside. A couple of men Ryan recognized from the patrol that had captured them backed in, bent over.
They dragged a pair of men in sec-squad black. The fronts of their black jerseys glistened. A shockingly bright wound gaped in each man’s throat. The stink of voided bowels filled the room, crowding all else to the corners.
The newcomers dragged the chilled guards to the side of the room, leaving two broad gleaming smears of red on the floor.
“Now what?” Ryan asked.
“Done my part,” Tully said. “Much as I hate to do it, I have to tell you, thanks.”
“Same for me,” the scavvie boss said. The pair had followed the corpses inside. “Don’t have any idea why you’d want to help us after kidnapping one of my people. Especially help us get her back.”
“Not sure you’re going to get her back.”
The brown eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”
“Mebbe she’ll choose not to go.”
“You should probably leave now,” Tully said. “We’ll take it from here. You’re not the most popular people here in Soulardville right now. Not even after hooking us up with Daniel, here.”
“We’ll shake the dust off this place,” Ryan said, “and soon. But we’ve got some business to take care of first.”
“What would that be?” Tully said.
“We’ve got to get our gear, and we’ve got to help you get Emerald free. Then we’ve got to settle accounts with Brother Joseph.”
“That’s still a pretty risky mess of doing,” Daniel E. said. “Why not just walk while you can?”
“Because,” Ryan said, “we owe Bro Joe a debt. And like I keep telling and telling you people, we always keep our deals, and we always pay our debts.”