KINGMAKERS PART 4

Interlude

In the days when the monster King Julien was still a man called Jules, the Kingdom had enough while the world starved.

And so came the foreign diplomats to influence and bribe and threaten.

In the days when the man called Jules was on the rise, the Kingdom suffered and the world was satisfied.

Part 4

Yanic

The gunfire begins at sunrise.

The acrid stench of gunpowder tinges the air as a gray haze rises up over the citadel. Even so far outside the city limits, the screams reach my ears. I can almost taste the blood spilling into the streets; my skin prickles with the desperation blanketing the valley.

Blinking world-weary eyes, I look away from the warzone in favor of the smooth white face of my sister’s gravestone.

The grave is still fresh. Fresh as the cauterized wound that festers away where my right leg once was. Still, small sprigs of green are already shooting from the upturned earth under which she lay.

I wheel my chair over them, crushing the desperate plants before they can smother her with their liveliness. I can’t stand it. Can’t stand the injustice of these hungry young things greedily reaping the benefits of her untimely death.

Does the natural world forget so easily?

From the depths of my coat, I pull out a weed cigar. I light it, hold it toward Zoya’s grave, and take a long drag. “Remember the first time we had the stuff?” I say to the morning mists swirling around her blank headstone. “We coughed so hard it turned to laughter. But the weed of our homeland was much stronger than this, wasn’t it?

“Remember when we used to play in the fields?” I can picture them in my mind, the fenced off acres of green and gold that had been our homeland’s one hope for survival. “And you would slip a bud or two into your boot?”

“I seem to recall,” a shape coalesces from the mists, “that it was you, little brother, who was always slipping things in your boots.”

My deadened heart comes to life in my chest. When I suck in a breath, it’s like the first one I’ve breathed in days. Zoya's ghostly form flickers in the sparse sunlight fighting through the haze.

“Ah,” I say, taking a long drag. “That’s because only I was caught. The guards thought you too pretty to do something so criminal.”

She laughs and the sound is like silver. “Perhaps if you had worn a skirt and rouged your cheeks, you would have never been banished.”

My smile is sad and so is hers. “We both know that would’ve made no difference.”

A stick breaks in the copse of trees surrounding this secret cemetery. Zoya vanishes like dew in the morning sun. I sigh turning to see who has come. I know it must be one of the rebels, for only we bury our dead here. Sure enough, a young slip of a girl sprints through the trees, her face shimmering with sweat.

I recognize her, though I cannot remember her name. I only remember the day she begged us to let her take her brother’s place when he was killed running information to one of our allies. She peels to a stop before me, panting almost as loud as the shots still firing in the city.

The girl bends over, hands braced on her thighs. “Mister Yanic,” she pants. “We… Need… You.”

I look at her.

There’s panic in her trembling voice. There’s blood on her fisted hands, ash coats her flushed cheeks. There’s fear in her darting eyes.

I turn my back to her and take another long drag. “They wasted your time,” I grumble as I inhale a cloud of smoke. “Sending you here. Don’t turn back to the city, girl. If they sent you to me, they must know the fight is almost over.”

“Please.” She’s still breathing hard, but not so much as before. “Please, sir. The people, they’re faltering. They need a hero to inspire them, that’s all. That’s why they sent me. Please, you have to come!”

I laugh so hard, tears spring to my eyes. “A hero?” I stub my cigar on the wheel of my chair before spinning around to face her. “A bloody hero, eh? You’ve come to the wrong place then, kid. No heroes but the dead in this place.”

“Your sister said you’d say so. That’s why she told me to give you this.” The girl opens her hand to reveal a note, darkened from the sweat on her hands.

I shake my head. “If she wants me, she knows where to find me.” For it’s where she should be, too. Mourning. Not fighting a battle that cannot be won.

The girl clasps her hands before her chest, stumbling over tired feet to kneel in front of me. I hate this fucking chair. I hate how everyone feels they must squat before me like I am a dog.

“Please, Mister Yanic.” Her bottom lip wobbles. “Marguerite the Rose—“

I grab her jaw, forcing her to look me in the eye. “What about her, kid?”

“Sh-she made a speech.” A small smile comes to her lips. “That we will all be free.”

I hiss, withdrawing my hand. “She is dead, then?”

The girl shakes her head. And for a moment, that glimmer of fear in her eyes becomes a gleam of hope. She moves even closer, bowing her head toward mine like a conspirator.

“They say the One Shot Lady and the mage, Solene, have returned. They travel from the South with Marguerite the Rose. They say they’re coming to save us all!” The girl grabs my shoulders and shakes me when I say nothing. “They are coming, Yan! Coming to save us! Did you hear?”

“Oh, child.” Familiar sorrow tugs at my heart for this dear, naïve girl. “For many masters, I have fought. I have fought for kings and queens and rebels alike. And they all say the same things at the end.

“’The heroes are coming,’ they always claim. ‘We will soon be saved.’” Tears drip over her lashes. I turn away from her and watch the citadel burn. “But those words are lies. No one is coming, kid. You’d be better off running as far away from this city as you can.”

A soft sob comes from behind me. “But they will die. They will all die.”

I spy another green shoot the very moment it pops its small head from the ground. Leaning over the side of my chair, I pluck it. The soft, young leaves crush easily between my calloused fingers.

“We all die,” I say, and I throw the broken leaves to be taken in the wind. “It is not a matter of if, dear. Only when.”

~

When I fled my home country and started taking jobs as a mercenary, I’d never been abroad before. Yet in only a few years time, I’d seen every inch of the earth. Seen the color it turned beneath the blood of man and woman and mage alike.

I was world wearied before I turned thirty; I retired before I turned forty. And then I used the money I’d saved to buy the biggest club in the Kingdom. Ten years, I lived and thrived in peace.

That peace ended the night I celebrated my fiftieth New Year.

At twelfth hour exactly, while the patrons of my club drank bottles of sparkling wine, the lights went out.

The generator kicked in only a few moments later.

But there she was.

Sitting across from me with no sign of how she’d arrived. Like a phantom.

I recognized her by the pale color of her hair and the rifle slung over one shoulder. I’d heard of her. Anyone with ears in this kingdom likely had.

“The One Shot Lady,” I said, giving her a look over. “You’re younger than I expected.”

“And you’re older than I expected,” she replied.

My friends were too drunk to know what was happening, but I dismissed them anyway. My guards released the shades that closed off this balcony from the rest of the club.

I rose and crossed to the wooden box on my credenza, taking a cigar from within.

“Do you smoke?” I ask her, lighting my weed cigar.

The One Shot Lady frowned. “I’m not here for pleasure.”

I take a long drag and nod to my bodyguards to leave us. The music from the club pulsates through the room.

“Business, then.” I sit across from her again.

She says nothing, only stares. The only sign that she is human and not statue is the slight twitch of her chapped lips to the pulse of the music.

“As you know, I’m sure, I was a mercenary before I settled in this kingdom.” I cross one ankle over my knee, looking over my shoulder at the battle ax displayed on the wall. “Killed thousands with Kingfeller, there. You ever learn about the War of the Brothers?”

The One Shot Lady narrowed her eyes. She watched me for a moment. Calculating, cold. Yet there was some softness to her steel, like a tip on a practice sword to blunt its edge.

“I didn’t come for a history lesson,” she said.

I took a long drag from my cigar. “I know exactly why you’ve come, kid. And you’ll sit and listen to my story if you want to hear my answer.”

She sits back awkwardly in her seat. I get the impression she is not one for long conversations. But she waves a hand for me to go on.

“The War of the Brothers on the Shattered Continent, yes,” I nod, remembering. “It was a civil war, a war between Southman and Northman, both originally born of the same seed. When I first arrived for the fighting, I came only for glory and the pay I was promised. But after a year of the bloodiest battle I’d seen in all my years as a mercenary, I began to wonder.

“My questions were answered one day when I was stabbed just here,” I tap the scar tissue at the base of my ribs, “and I lay on the battlefield, thinking I was dying. A spirit came to me then. It was the spirit of a Northman, lingering on the battlefield where he’d fallen decades before. He told me the truth about the war, about the reason it began.”

The One Shot Lady's mouth curls into a frown.

I ignore her doubt and stub out my cigar. “The people of the southern continent had grown tired of their all-powerful rulers of old, the spirit told me. They wished to form a republic of free men. So they rose up against their kings and destroyed their thrones in a fiery blaze. The people lived in freedom and peace for almost 30 years.

“But,” I held up a finger, “there were some who grew as hungry for power as the kings they despised. A Northman rose up, a Southman, too. One stood for freedom, the other for peace.

“Yet these ideas were only to mask their hunger for power. The same mask they tried to tear from the faces of the monarchs they set ablaze. From these men, the War of the Brothers was birthed. And it raged for a hundred years and still rages on with no end in sight.”

“When I awoke in the medic’s tent, wounded but alive, I vowed I would never again fight for nation or king. That vow,” I looked her in her eyes, “has not changed. And there isn’t anything you can say to me to make me change my mind.”

The One Shot Lady looked unimpressed with my tale. “Whatever you mean to say about my king,” she said, “state it plainly.”

“Bah,” I grumbled. “You people have too little value for stories in this Kingdom. What I mean, kid, is that your Julien may stand for good things now. But the moment he tastes power, he will stand for no one and nothing but himself.”

“You can tell the future, then.”

I sighed. “One doesn’t need to see the future to know the past repeats.”

The One Shot Lady twisted her mouth in contemplation. The music from my club filled the silence between us. Until, at last, the One Shot Lady rose, her hand no longer on her rifle.

“I heard you might say something of this sort.” From her jacket, she pulled a tan folder and tossed it on the table before me. “Which is why I came prepared.”

My fingers twitched with interest. I leaned back in my seat, folded my arms over my chest. “I’m retired, kid. Nothing you could have in that folder there to make me change my mind.”

“I know who you are,” she said plainly.

“Yes, you’ve made that quite clear.”

“I also know how much your head is worth.”

I stiffened in my seat. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“Perhaps not.” She tapped her finger against the folder. “Then again, perhaps you know exactly what I mean.”

I eye Kingfeller, hanging on my wall. “You’re walking on dangerous ground, girl.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of how dangerous you can be.” She began to button up her coat. “ That’s why I copied all this information and left it with my comrades.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Dare to find out?”

“Get out!” I roared, swiping my hand across the table and sending glasses and liquor spewing everywhere. “Get the fuck out of my club!”

The One Shot Lady smiled like the slash of a knife. And then she strolled from my home just as casually as she’d entered it.

If I had held to my vow, perhaps my words to her that night would not have come true. Yet I was a mercenary. And I was nothing if not a man who could be convinced to set aside my convictions for the right price.

~

To be continued...