Havemercy (59 page)

I could barely swallow my own excuses, but I forced myself to do so.

“Perhaps,” I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts, “you might send me a card in the post.”

“Care of,” he said. “Maybe.”

“When are you leaving?” I asked.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said. “Got myself a ride and everything.”

I made my excuses and took my leave of him before I did or said anything rash. If Rook was going, then there was no more reason for me to stay in the Airman. I had to rearrange the pillow on the couch, dig the last of my notes from underneath the cushions. I was missing a few socks—part of one of the earlier pranks, no doubt, and one which I’d never got around to realizing until now—and then I sat down all at once as my legs gave way beneath me and cried at last in the common room for all the times I hadn’t.

No one came in; no one saw me. It was as private as I’d ever managed to be in the Airman, now that I no longer required such privacy.

Because I was so tired—because I’d been unable to sleep properly for weeks—I must have drifted off, and when I woke it was early morning, my whole body stiff from the uncomfortable position I’d been curled into all night long.

I combed my hair with my fingers. My suitcase was already packed; I was already wearing my shoes. I paused only for a moment by Rook’s door, but it was quiet inside and no light spilled out from underneath it, and I knew immediately he was already gone.

That was it, then, I told myself, and squared my shoulders against the change. I would have to write Chief Sergeant Adamo, now ex–Chief Sergeant Adamo, a letter of thanks; and shorter ones for each of the other airmen, Ghislain and Luvander and Balfour. It was a small gesture, and one by which they’d like as not be baffled, but I was certain I needed to bow to the formality of the moment, as if by treating my time with the Dragon Corps as a chapter in my life I could just as easily end it as one.

Except for Rook—John—who was sitting on the stairs when I opened the door. I nearly fell over him before I caught my balance.

The sun was rising from the direction of the Cobalt Mountains, rising properly now, and the whole sky was alight without any hint of the grayish color of predawn.

“So, Hilary,” Rook said, “where’re we going?”

I closed my eyes and let the sunlight wash over me. “I’ve always wanted to see the hanging gardens of Eklesias,” I said.

Rook stood up and shifted his sack more comfortably over his right shoulder. “I don’t even know where the fuck that is,” he said.

ROYSTON

Things had changed, and they also hadn’t. For some time since the unveiling, there was talk of tearing the Airman down now that it no longer served a purpose, and popular opinion had long been that the building was a blight on the architecture of Thremedon, flat and too modern and entirely out of place. Yet no one ever quite got down to doing anything about it, and it went on standing solid and gray as a mausoleum, a testament to the Dragon Corps in its own way.

The view from the Rue d’St. Difference was different now that there were statues lining the crossing between lower Miranda and upper Charlotte. I couldn’t walk my usual route home from the Basquiat without seeing all fourteen of them, which I supposed was the intention when it was decided they should be erected there. Nevertheless, it was still jarring to see the faces of men I’d known magnified and elevated to the status of war heroes.

In that respect, I was exactly like Hal: not entirely prepared to deal with the realities of living in a time when the statues were freshly built rather than hundreds of years old.

On the days when Adamo wasn’t giving guest lectures at the ’Versity, “like some fucking professor” as he so adeptly phrased it, we would meet occasionally for lunch, and it was during these times that I took full advantage of the opportunity to compare him to his larger bronzed counterpart.

“He’s taller than you,” I said, signaling our waitress in the hopes of speeding up the service of our coffees. If there had been a statue of me set along the Mirandaedge, I was sure this wouldn’t have been a problem, yet Adamo refused to use his fame toward such petty ends as obtaining a decent and expeditious cappuccino. How very like him. “And handsomer, certainly.”

“You’re sure you didn’t lose your eyesight in that plague?” Adamo drank his coffee any way it was served, and particularly if it was black, which forced me on occasion to wonder why we were even friends at all.

“That was quick,” I said. “Perhaps your time at the ’Versity hasn’t been wasted after all.”

He shrugged easily, though there was still darkness in his eyes when he turned to look at the line of statues all along the Rue. “After dealing with my boys,” he said, “talking to a bunch of students who’re actually interested in what you’ve got to teach ’em isn’t really much of a challenge.”

“Oh, don’t be so sour just because you’ve found your true calling so late in life,” I told him, and laughed when he brought his teaspoon down hard against my knuckles. “Bastion, look at the hat on that one.”

Just as the Ke-Han in their lapis city, we were rebuilding. It was a slow enough process even without the daunting task of restoring destroyed buildings to their former glory—something the Ke-Han alone must suffer—but there were some days when I believed us up to the task, and some when I suspected I would never see my city fully recovered. Between the loss of the airmen and what colleagues I’d bid farewell to beneath the golden dome, it seemed as though there was no replacing what we’d lost. There were days when I could no longer look at the Basquiat without remembering, and it had once been my favorite sight in all the city.

At my suggestion, Hal and I went on long walks around the city, and I pointed out the best places to go for a quick meal in between daily lectures, or where he might drop in to a private library if he needed to study in real peace and quiet.

“And I just follow Whitstone Road to get to you?” he asked on one such walk, when we stood side by side in front of the ’Versity fountain, sun dappling the water so that it arced like molten gold in all directions.

“That will take you to the Basquiat,” I confirmed, and slipped an arm about his shoulders for no other reason than that I wanted to and could.

He fished for something under his shirt at the neck, and drew out the silver key the Esar had given him with a glad look of triumph. “This time, they can’t keep me out.”

“I would use my Talent to explode anyone who had the gall to try,” I confirmed, and he kissed me then in front of the spray, so that by the time we were finished we were most unfortunately damp.

For the first time I could remember, there were empty seats in the Basquiat, but there were familiar faces too, and more than I’d dared to count on. The handy trick about doing a service for royalty was that they couldn’t turn around and banish you once again after they’d made a public acknowledgment and handed out the medals.

Among the magicians I’d known before the plague, Caius remained, and though I was sure Alcibiades would rather have spat on us than join our numbers, I did see him about the city every now and again, mostly with groups of men who I assumed had been soldiers once. There was talk of erecting some sort of a monument for those magicians who had died during the plague, and when after a few weeks it became evident that no one was particularly keen on reentering the room at the top of the golden-domed tower, it was cordoned off. One of the magicians with a Talent for sculpting stone carved an uncanny likeness of their faces around the walls, and though I’d visited it with Hal when it had first been opened to the public, I found I couldn’t bring myself to go again after that.

What had started as a plan to acclimatize Hal to the winding streets of Miranda unofficially became his habit of walking me to and from the Basquiat every day, pointing out everything I’d showed him with the kind of tenacious memory and eagerness to learn that I knew would serve him well at the ’Versity. I’d been right to bring him to the city, and not only because he’d saved all of our lives in the process.

Hal belonged in Thremedon; he belonged with me.

I’d never before been a man prone to permanence. In that respect, I was much the same as the city herself, for even with all her familiar landmarks she was constantly shifting just below the surface. For the most part, her appearance remained the same, but she was always changing just enough to keep me on my toes. I, too, felt myself in constant flux, adapting to her whims and pleasures. For Thremedon, it would not have been a problem to remain ever so in this permanent state of mutability, but I was a man, and there were some things that for me must necessarily remain constant if I were ever to remain this content.

One afternoon, barely half a week before the spring term began at the ’Versity, I returned home to my private tower to find Hal waiting for me on the top step. In one hand he held a long roll of fine paper—I recognized it immediately for a list of required texts—and an envelope in the other, its ’Versity seal broken. His cheeks were flushed from the brisk nip of late winter air.

“It’s so long!” he exclaimed, as soon as he saw me. “How am I ever to find all these books? I thought I’d start early, but I’ll never be done!”

I drew close to him, giving the list a brief glance. “You’ll find,” I said gently, “if you look at the titles a second time, while better composed, that you are familiar with at least half of them. If you wait a moment while I fetch my wallet, we shall visit the shops together, and I’m sure by the end of the day we’ll have them all.”

“Thank you,” Hal said simply.

There was a wealth of feelings in his words, which extended far beyond the moment. I found it necessary just then to turn my face away from his, and in doing so I found myself faced with all of Thremedon descending before me toward the water, the uneven rooftops catching the clean sunlight through crisp, bracing air. This was my city, beautiful and dangerous and twisting and coy, and I knew in that moment that I had at last come home to her.

JAIDA JONES is a nervous Japanese student at Barnard College, Columbia University, studying monsters in modern Japanese literature and film. She’s a native New Yorker, and lives in Brooklyn with her two cartoonish cats and equally cartoonish parents. She has had poems published in Mythic Delirium and Jabberwocky, and a collection of poetry published by New Babel Books. At some point, she assumes that someone is going to wake her up and tell her she’s not allowed to write about giant metal dragons. Until then: more metal dragons!

DANIELLE BENNETT is from Victoria, British Columbia, where she studied English literature at Camosun College. She has never seen a firefly, but has held many interesting jobs that merely got in the way of writing, and knows exactly how to make your decaf iced venti unsweetened one pump mocha soy café con leche. Her parts of Havemercy were written while amply caffeinated between four A.M. openings at Starbucks. This is her first published work, but definitely not her last.