Hang'd Knight

- 12 -

My head is feeling pretty clear for the first time in a while. I got myself a Universal Audio Player tuned to a local channel, some rock and bluetimes, none I recognize but all sound alright. I'm fishing in the bay again. This angle in the southmost part of Salt Row has a good view of a cruise liner that's been hanging out in port a while. Colossal thing fifteen stories tall and gleaming cyan and red and plastered with League flags. Tethered with enormous ropes to a civilian dock with a mansion-sized office to take tickets. Suits, guilders, a few Neriak that look Imperial to me, at least a dozen Confederate tourists in clean-cut slacks and awkward, expensive rain jackets.

I have my rod up on a pole that only cost a Vick. Makes things easy. Leaves me a lot of time idle.

-

The first few days I was doing things unpaid, but Ceder and I eventually settled at thirty Vicks a day, made easy to swallow by the fact myself and Rhodes are getting room and board as a result. Was catching up on sleep the entire first week but eventually started to doze off normally, though the complete lack of sunlight in the daytime hours keeps me yawning through the evening shift.

Each day after eight, when the place is open and ready but nobody's coming by, I head up the same way via Laudenberger Subway Station on foot to get to the seaboard to fish. I found a nice spot—an abandoned concrete dock that heads far into the water. There are parts crumbled to rubble from where it used to moor a big ship, maybe a trawler, and those days are long behind it. But it's good and lonesome still.

Been easy living overall and lots of time spent staring at the ships going in and out of the bay. I get a lot of time to think to myself. Sometimes Rhodes taps me on the knee with my hand, lets me know she's still here. I tap back. Sometimes we tap a lot. Don't know how to put it other than I've gotten to liking her company in spite of disliking her baggage.

I've shaved. Flat buzz-cut for generally disrupting my silhouette. Ceder gifted me an old full-face guilder mask meant for humans of a bygone age and I took to an enormous green jacket from his wardrobe that does well at keeping my tackle organized.

Obviously during all this downtime I'm thinking of ways out. Probably could manage to get aboard one of the superfreighters, somehow, bribe someone or stow away. From Berith or Ere or Sanctoport it would be at least easier to find a shuttle into orbit. But the risk is never gone, no matter how I go about it. If Greenview paid the League enough to get through the orbital blockade back home, they can pay to scan for one fugitive that's wronged them. Even if I get home I'll still be radioactive. Won't be safe to have me around. They'll come looking for their missing fed if they know you're alive.

And this doesn't account for Rhodes either way. She has a distinctive face, look, behavior. Even if we hide the cybernetic we'll never be loose. It's their property, it's their problem. Loose end.

She did kill Jericho Arborist. No other way about it. Wired into the building, turned on the turret at the right time. The question is why. And she won't fess up to it—not that she did it, not why she did it. Just boggles the fucking mind why she'd lie. All I wanted were answers coming here and I don't even have that. Just a bug I'm too sympathetic for and lethal levels of heat.

I guess she's guilty about Pell. Never said as much but it would explain things.

Might be worth bringing Pell up.

-

By noon I've got three kilos of brown gruel and a wriggly thing a meter across called a lace ribbon, which is eyeless and looks more like some kind of distended tongue than a fish. The former go well in haykays when boiled and mashed, the latter makes for a good special. I lug everything in a steel bucket filled with ice back to Corundum Town and keep my head low.

-

The lunch and evening are busy enough at the Hang'd Knight. Maxine the chef (and seemingly a thousand other things) likes the look of the lace ribbon, says she'll sear it in rounds like steak. She has me ready the brown gruel for filling. I don't talk much or at all—was actually pretending to be mute the first day but it quickly became too inconvenient. But I'm doing okay and keeping my head low. Always a lot to do.

I get the haykay filling ready and fresh-frozen by one o'clock and we start getting orders for them soon after. Corneo tortillas fried crispy, mashed mixed meat (some synth-beef makes the gruel go further), loads of aromatic savory spices from Little Hegemony deeper down. Made of mushrooms and mixed with peppers that grow in the marshes south of Velnias.

Not a lot of people eat in but a lot get food to go, or stay for drinks. Lots of homebrewers in Corundum Town, a local vodka called Boyz Unlimited, a local synth-gin called Coolio. There's an old-as-dirt jukebox in the corner of the main room that usually gets hogged by some of the Little Hegemony punks, playing loud-ass techno and singing karaoke over songs not meant for karaoke. But they're all Baldari and seem to treat the place better than anyone. I vastly prefer the guys that drop in every day for an evening beer than the various tourists and Guilders who look at me funny. Keep looking for earpieces, haven't seen any yet.

Lots of spoken Vasthi in the air. I haven't picked up jack shit unfortunately. Ceder flips effortlessly between Vasthi, Common, and his language back home, Dronhas, when he's chatting on the datapad after a long day. Lilting and with long words and low sounds that would hurt my gut. Even Vasthi seems pretty tough to speak. I guess I feel like I'm pretty much stuck in my ways. Maybe, deep down, I figure that if I learn the language of Velnias, I'm gonna be stuck here the rest of my life.

However long that is.

Pretty quickly a lot of people are off work and we get an evening rush. Dozens of haykays, some of the lace ribbon steaks go out as specials. We run out of fish to use in the rolls and resort to synth-lamb which gets a sad look from the first Baldari who gets the lame stuff. I'm set to task on a round of cheesebread and immediately get thrown onto dish duty afterward. Just me and Maxine most of the day, Ceder popping in, and then some burnout from elsewhere in Corundum Town makes a brief appearance in the kitchen but burns a steak and gets cussed out.

Finally an older woman named Gabs shows up to lighten the load, and Maxine lets me off the clock at around eight.

-

Saved a couple good haykays for Rhodes. We set up around the old table in the back area of the office with stools from out front and eat dinner together. She has a brightened look in her eyes. "Hey, thought of something. You want me to buy you a datapad?" I ask, in the middle of a slice of cheesebread.

"Ahh, ehhhh," she mumbles, considering it. "Could probably use it safely. Been kinda eager to check the news and stuff, see how, ah..." She takes a little bit of a haykay in one hand and drinks some water with the other. "—I don't talk with 'em anymore but there are some people in the Gutters I used to hang out with, and I wanna stalk their forum accounts, you know, make sure they're still okay."

"Sounds like a yes." I shoot her a little smile. Been saving anyway. Datapads are pretty cheap.

"Cool. You getting anything for yourself?" Rhodes tilts her head slightly, and her antenna flourishes a bit. "Um. Maybe use the datapad first for something?"

"Was thinking maybe call home, but..." I shake my head. "Definitely not safe."

She nods. "Obviously. Sucks you can't, though."

"Is what it is. I told folks I'd be unlikely to come back or contact them." I frown. "Garcia was supposed to have some secure way of doing it, but never told me."

"Prolly was gonna use burners," Rhodes says. "Buoy burners. Anonymous messages. Gets carried on the buoy net and can't be traced back. Cool little tech thing, prolly sold around here somewhere."

"Oh," I say, thinking about it for a sec. "Even so. Don't want any attention getting back to them. It was already enough, what happened."

I let it stir in the air, but in spite of a weird look from her, she doesn't ask any questions. We keep eating.

-

After I've gone and gotten Rhodes a gin and tonic, Ceder finally gets done with whatever call he's making in the office and gets up, takes a big stretch. I call over to him. "You want to chill with us a little?"

"I don't want to intrude," he says, putting his broad hands on his hips. "But sure." He picks up his glass of clear liquor of some description—I don't think it's anything local—and pulls his office chair to sit perpendicular to myself and Rhodes.

"Not intruding," I tell him. I scoot to make way for his enormous legs.

Rhodes leans a little against the wall beside the table and takes a sip. I didn't get the impression she drinks a lot. "Was that family you were talking to?"

Ceder smiles, but it's only a moment. "I wish it weren't. My mother's half, who are not keen about any of this."

"My mom used to, ah, ah, lock me in the room a few days for hanging with the wrong people."

He gives her a funny look, and then nods. "Likely would have done the same to me."

I pipe up. "What got you over here and into all this?"

And to that Ceder just kind of sighs, laying his broad elbows on the table and resting his chin on his palms. His piercing rattles a little on his wrist. "I was younger during the War, and became long friends with many from Salt Row in particular. Things were much more amicable on the Palisade by necessity." A long breath from him. Some history in the air. "I had my part to play during that time, and though the Vasthi I knew are old-timers, I know their children and children's children, and I remind them how we fought for the city. You might recall the interests of the UCC overhead for many years...?" He motions at Rhodes.

"Wasn't born yet," she murmurs. "Ah, I mean, I read about it. I'm twenty-six this year. Learning about it makes me fuckin' hate the feds anyway."

Ceder laughs a little. "Oh, that so," he says.

"What?"

I glance at Ceder. It's not really a glare so much as a look of curiosity. I guess of anyone he'd probably know. You still walk like a fed, asshole. Pick up the pace.

He starts smiling obnoxiously with all his teeth. "Hate the feds, hmm?"

Rhodes leans forth like an animal. "What, you implying I'm a fed?"

"No, he's guessing that I'm one," I say, grinning.

"It's the small details," Ceder explains, leaning back again. He takes a short sip of his liquor. Even from the adjoining seat I can smell ginger and hellfire from the liquid. "Your accent is... Nowy, and stilted like an old Tasran. No doubt you intend to make it sound descended from the first Polish-Hallat settlers of Stromm's Landing, centuries ago. But you speak sometimes with words like 'adjoining', 'adequate', 'numeral'. You mention things tasting like 'red meat', 'white meat', like 'real beef', which we don't rear here often, nor on Stromm's." No, no, hun, sorry. No meat for a while. Things are... uh, complicated right now. We've still got plenty of food, that's not the problem. Ceder gives me a self-satisfied look. "And you still walk much like soldiers I've met, and little like partisans I've trained."

"No shit," Rhodes gasps. "Nelly?"

"I mean, I told you I was a prisoner in the War."

"Fucking, ah, I forgot about that! Holy shit!" She doesn't know whether to be astonished or mad or both.

Ceder asks, more plainly this time: "Where are you originally from, Nelly?"

"Old Tibor. 'Til I was sixteen."

To Ceder this is a pretty straight answer but that actually incenses Rhodes to keep going. Now I see that 'smile' on her. "Oh, so you're like that? Does that mean you got opinions on New Tibor? Do you think they shouldn't have been liberated?" It's its own planet, Pell, it wasn't our business.

"God." I lean dramatically against the wall some more and let out an exaggerated sigh. "Rhodes, you've been online too long. It's too politically complicated for you." Then I grin. "But, uh, no. It made things way worse."

"Oh, dear," Ceder laughs.

Rhodes has her eyes on me wild and excited. "Oh? Oh? So you're still kinda UCC, huh?" She really wants to goad me into a play-argument and I'm not turning it down.

"Not like the League helped them out at all afterwards. Shit, Rhodes, it's not like you're from there."

"Yeah, but I read politics! A lot. I used to."

Ceder butts in, smirking like an idiot. "Did the Confederacy treat it well before the War, then?" He's asking rhetorically. He knows.

I wave it off. My memory of home is straining. Hard to figure out what's real. "I dunno. I was just a kid. I'm not saying New Tibor wasn't, like, an occupied colony. Just saw how things were pretty stable where I lived."

"I appreciate your candor," he says, "though you'd cause a scene if you brought this up anywhere else." It's unclear if he's talking to me or her by the way he's angled.

Rhodes has some recited lines now, and she's rattling them off. "Don't you think it's fucked up that New Tibor gets no aid from anyone? Don't you think Old Tibor could do something? That's like, the thing, about being Tiborian, right?"

"It's a shit show out there."

"I mean, yeah," says Rhodes. "Total shit show. And they're the victims."

"Totally."

"Like—"

I interrupt her because I'm having fun. "Victims of the League—"

"—of the Confederacy abandoning them, you mean!"

"Sure, kinda, I mean, the League still won't make it easy for independent aid to get on planet..."

"Oh, fuck's sake." She giggles a little and slaps the table. "I should not have started this shit."

It should have been rough and tense and serious but none of it is. I finally crack into the beer I got from the kitchen marked Zesty Misty in a recycled aluminum can, and we drink.

- 13 -

Past eleven o'clock some of the more serious types come into the Hang'd Knight and I help Ceder out with the other end of his job. As I understand there's a militia coalescing somewhere, some local cops but also some ex-Rebellion types, who want to flush out the League from one of the districts in midtown, in spite of the threat. I saw pretty quickly what makes Ceder actually good at this—he has a warm demeanor and he talks kindly, sure, but he's scarily quick and efficient, and has a memory as solid as stone. Often people come in for seconds at a time, drop a bag on their table, get handed a second bag. Small arms most commonly, then very often there's written info, meeting times, cash being laundered. I mostly play tough guy out in the main room while Ceder retrieves some illicit cargo below the floor of the back room and in the ceiling of the kitchen. I asked what a certain thing was—Ceder explained it was an old spike-strip from the League arsenal, painted gray and with a strip of folded, black tissue paper to make it invisible in the night. Lots of things like that. Whatever works. He has pride, I think, in guerilla tools and concealable arms, and maybe some are his invention. Says he knows gunsmiths and the like down here, and I wonder if it's all as simple as him liking the work in earnest, or even just the parties at play. Jarman has what you need. Everything comes with a guarantee, and ours is a warm drink with your refurnish, every time.

It runs well into the night. We get some drunk people seeking the Undercity nightlife but more often just a Baldari who's late to the party and they don't seem to notice the difference between grey market and black market.

It doesn't tire me much but it does get blurry. We close at two and I usually retire then.

-

I am still kind of buzzed from my second Zesty Misty when I ask Ceder about his little shrine. Think he'd mentioned it some other time but not in great detail. I'm leaned against the door, Rhodes is bubbly and curled up on the floor looking at the many idols. She pipes in. "Yeah," she says. "Why all the different people? Why not just, like, Norak over and over?"

Ceder steps over. He has a slightly drunken grin and a synth-wool nightgown on. He lifts up one of the figurines from the top shelf. I noted earlier they are hand-hewn—I'd seen him work on one for the past week, something cut out of balsa wood and painted by hand with a little brush the size of my pinky. The one he holds now looks very much like one of the humans in the kitchen, Maxine or Linda or maybe Gabs. Distinctly I see that there are no eyes despite other facial features. He speaks, now, showing it off in the candlelight. "Depicting Norak is a task best left to the Norakkin. They frown upon idolatry," he says, adopting almost a preacherlike tone, "but in Haraad idolatry is a most sacred practice. Are you familiar?"

"Not at all," I say honestly. "Did know some of the gods. Norak and Baor and... uh. Hasul. The one that eats."

"The gods are for those who seek the gods," chuckles Ceder. "No, ah. With us they are always, but in us they flow, not any other which way. They are the eyes and we are the hands which hew."

Rhodes tilts her head, and her antenna flicks. "Is that Maxine? The, ah, the woman out front?"

"It is," Ceder says, nodding. "A depiction of her. As all these are depictions of people important in life. Here, and this," and he takes hold of another, squatter figure with a lizard snout, "is One of Riverbeds of the Greater Sun, a priestess, most wonderfully recounted in some, ah, older tomes back home. Some centuries my prior and yet in depicted memory she persists."

"With no eyes," I note.

"With no eyes. Eyes are that which belong to Norak and the rest of the pantheon of the Naarnhask. Those few who actually met with godliness, who became tangibly holy." The blazing red Eye of Norak is always visible in the night sky of a little-regarded Free World called Tursho. To think a star so significant could reach so far! "For us who live and relive, we remain without sight. At least in depiction." He smiles. His character fades for a second as he regains his balance from leaning over his shrine. "Ah. So—there are a great many halls in Haraad which evoke the idea of holiness, but we reserve depiction for those like ourselves. There we have trust in our ability to be guided by Norak, but not absolute trust in our ability to be guided, forever, by one another."

"Yeah," Rhodes muses. She does sound mildly drunk still. "Yeah. Haraad's around just as long as Velnias. I-I don't even know any people from a hundred years ago, but you do, right?"

"A great many." Something of an odd expression strikes Ceder's face, but it's gone just as quickly. "It has an air like a necessity, to sculpt those who are important. The prayers are many and intimate. Especially for the dead."

Then it's quiet in the back room for a little while. Ceder looms over his shrine and Rhodes ponders it, eyes wide open. I am thinking about something far away and far off and terrible. My eyes flick to the floor, and after a short while, I notice I'm crying.

What did you look like?

Why can't I see you?

What cruel shit is this?

"Nelly," says Ceder, his holy tone fading instantly. "What is wrong?"

"Fuck," I murmur. I am too loose to keep the thoughts in. "I, um. I was thinking about someone. Is all."

"Who?" asks Rhodes.

"It's alright," Ceder assures me.

I swallow. Something like rocks in my throat. "My, uh. My wife. I was trying to picture her and I realized I can't. At all." Fuck I can't swallow.

It becomes too quiet again. And Rhodes sinks into the floor further and doesn't comment. And when I look over, Ceder is offering a hand. His palm is broad, his claws are little mountains in the candlelight. "It would not be too late to hew an image of her," he whispers.

"I don't remember," I murmur.

"It would come to you. Your hands. I know the feeling." He speaks lowly.

I wipe my face and look up at him, and the brunt of it gets too overwhelming, and I go to lay in the corner to get away from it all. I don't hear either one of them call to me. The night becomes quiet.

-

Another week goes by.

- 14 -

She's sleeping underwater.

I'm drowning.

She's fucking collapsed. Pell, get over here.

On my back. Sand billowing heavy into the freshwater. A boot holding me down. Do you know where you are? Need water.

God I just need a drink of water.

She's sleeping. She's unconscious.

I must have got a concussion.

That's her hand against your face.

Metal hand.

My hand.

-

My hand shakes me awake by the cheek. Rectangular metal digits squeezing the life into and out of me. I am panicking and heaving and can't catch my breath—but I'm not underwater at all. Just camped out on the dock again and the sun is intense and my eyes crackle with dryness as I open them. You trying to make a piece of jerky out of yourself? I wrest control of my hand again and sit up straight in the deck chair.

"Fucking," I say, but I'm not talking to anyone. I look around for Rhodes but she's nowhere.

Not nowhere. I look back down at my arm.

I tap my middle finger against my knee, weakly. Sign for all-clear.

-

Must have been spasming in dreams. I head out from the dock to get water. Despite having some cash now it's always free to find a water fountain. Lugging my fishing rod in the hem of Ceder's jacket and breathing heavy through the plastic mask I head up Burnish View on a thin and corroded sidewalk up by some old buildings where a coffee shop and bakery sit on top of one another, each accessible to a different level of the walk. There's a small plaza here like a spot in some rustic Norakkin town with benches and ceramic eaves and a little sculpture of a dog, bronzed and with brass inlays. Would feel some degree like a homely place but it's uncrowded and a little worn down and, most blatantly, in the shadow of some enormous glass-and-steel office building only a hundred meters from the waterfront. Wonder if, long ago, it was a nice spot, or if it was always being eclipsed by some obelisk like that one. A microscopic electric taxicab goes by in steeled silence.

I get to the drinking fountain out front the bakery. Got to take a sip first so I pull off the mask. I have seen lots of guilders wearing ones that look more expensive—made of some polymaterial and I've heard they're bulletproof. This one's just plastic. It depicts some Tasran spirit, a biztram, but I don't know which. None of the five I recognize. Big obnoxious fangs and kaleidoscopic pupils and horns that flow like hair. The paint is cracked and fading, it's more like a party favor, but it does an adequate job at hiding my face from cameras so I got few complaints.

I fill up a plastic bottle before noticing there's a little post board hung up on the locked glass door of the bakery. Some scraps of paper, a ballpoint pen clipped to the top. I get an idea and snatch the pen.

-

Slow day going at the dock anyway and I got reminded of Rhodes when she woke me up. I get back to the deck chair, pull free a brown gruel that was suckling on the lure, and once it's killed and in the bucket, I get a piece of newspaper from my bag to write on.

'THANKS', I write on the paper. My handwriting is still shit. Then I realize she's probably not here, not present, so I go to tap my knee, but before I know it I lose control of my hand.

'FOR WHAT?' my hand asks. The discomfort fades in favor of a sort of amusement and awe that it worked. Not like she can see through your eyes. She's just feeling it out.

'WAS HAVING NIGHTMARE'

'THOUGHT SO OR DYING'

'NOT YET'

'HOWS IT GOING'

I smile at that. Never done this before with her. Wasn't convinced it'd work at all. I write back. 'FINE. DATAPAD?'

'DATAPAD GOOD'

'DOING WHAT?'

She pauses, or at least she stops writing me for a second. Maybe distracted, maybe just gathering her thoughts. I set the rod back into position into the harsh waves of the Cestabin, and then my arm acts up again. 'PLAYING INTRANET POKER TO GET BETTER', Rhodes writes me.

'WANT TO PLAY WITH CEDAR TONIGHT?'

'SPELLED CEDER I THINK', she explains.

'HOW DO YOU KNOW'

'LIKE HES A GUY THAT CEDES'

'NERIAK NAME?'

'YEP.' The newspaper is now covered in scrawled, barely-readable handwriting.

'PLAY WITH HIM TONIGHT?' I ask.

'YES'

I keep fishing for a little while. Don't know how to describe it other than there's a little flutter of something nice in my stomach which has been absent for a very very long time.

-

It's a pretty good haul in the end. Less brown gruel, more of the bigger types—a Cestabin lesser gulper, which is a rotund, tasty-looking, and aggressive thing that took a few strikes to kill, as well as a young flop jewelfish with some kind of split in its tail like it's a mutant. I also fish up something slimy and freaky with two mouths on its sides, which I don't remember from the book Rhodes got me, so I throw it back.