CHAPTER 20

  "Wait at the elevated!” Ran called. "I’ve got to drop something at Cree’s.”

  "We don’t have time!” Kiyo barked. It wasn’t smart to irritate her just now, but Ran wanted this done, and so jogged away.

  Once around the corner he slowed to a walk and stretched his back. Still hurt, even if slightly, to breath.

  Everyone he passed smiled, tipped red hats, sang "Morning Gift!”. In his time in Wordheal he’d never seen everyone so happy. Even more odd when he considered that in the weeks leading up to Gift a tangible, well, not exactly anger maybe, but irritation, had seemed to settle upon the south like fog.

  A block from Cree’s, planning to drop the biblio on the first shelf and go, Ran fished the thing out of his pocket. "Ever since I got you everything’s gone nuts. Weird dreams. Like the black eyes' 8Form. . .no, I mean the yellow's toil principals."

  Free of the thing’s bad mojo, toil or whatever, he’d go to estate, then to Urba, be disappointed, and then. . .Pym.

  The prospect of seeing Pym made it all bearable. The card. . . Three simple words: Thinking of you. And then a wonderfully symmetrical heart. The age-old cure for sad: love. What a loser his poet-self was. She’s so much hotter than me. I mean, wait, what? I’m not hot! What am I thinking?

  Ran stared up at the broken moon in the morning sky. "Exactly on cue,” he sighed. Above the circle of Nameless she hung in pieces. Three great chunks surrounded by hovering sparkles flaring in the pink dawn. Thousands of legends all across the world asserted what broke the thing. Everyone had a rokk or rokkae to blame.

  Alone. Something as innocuous as looking at the moon. Why? Why would that make me feel this way? It wasn’t the way the moon was supposed to be. It made no sense, he knew, but somehow he knew it should be different.

  Cree’s door cracked and the bell chimed as Ran opened it, and he turned and wondered why he’d been able to open Cree’s door. It should have been locked. The store was closed, but Cree should be in. He was every other Dayone, doing inventory, wrapped in the thick scent of spiced rice.

  "Cree?” Ran whispered, looked around at the loose piles of books and dust and paper. Did it seem more a mess than usual? He called again as he reached the counter. A sudden, unwelcome terror, a macabre image of his boss, not alive but a corpse, bent in half at the middle, on the other side rocked him.

  He shot his head over the top. "Oh, thank Rokk!” he gasped at nothing.

  As he pushed away from the counter, his elbow caught Cree’s current large leather ledger, and knocked it onto the paper-strewn floor.

  "Shhhhhhhhh.” he hissed.

  He picked it up, turned it over, found himself on a page recording names of all received books in Monone of this year.

  Ran felt the sensation of cool stickiness under his thumb and raised it to reveal a black ink splotch on the lower left corner of the ledger. It appeared that Cree had been in a hurry to finish that day, as this was not the only splotch, all varying in size and shape, across the pages.

  His eye was drawn to something in the middle of the packed tables, mostly because it had been circled several times using the same dark ink that Ran was now trying to rub off his thumb.

  "Uh," he squinted, held the ledger up to the light. "Maw, those ain’t even numbers.” The odd squiggles looked more like terrible, tiny hieroglyphs.

  Ran sat the large book back on the counter and, after rubbing his hands clear of dust and ink, moved to the stairs leading to the basement.

  One step down, and his legs locked.

  Horror horror horror came silent voice. Why? As a child, the last of his friends out of a dark basement, and he knows there is nothing there, and yet he feels he escapes, cold fingers in his spine. Why? He’d gone into that basement a thousand times.

  Get down there, coward.

  Instead Ran retreated, stared down at the biblio. He could, should, just leave it on any bookcases or table. Instead he returned into his pocket.

  He'd check in on Cree after Gift. For now, he simply had to leave

  On his way he snapped the lock on the knob into place and pulled the door shut.

  It had not occurred to him how bad the place had smelled until he gulped down several large, nervous throats of open air.

  ------------------------------------

  Kiyo fumed, "Even on Morning Gift!” Ran and his family moved with a manic-inducing slowness toward the Liberty Canton’s amphitheater along with the faithful Given throng. Many stared at the dissipating tendril of smoke rising into the city’s northern sky.

  "Silly,” said Pilgrim. He alone walked, not shuffled like all else (well maybe Kiyo too), hands in his jacket pockets, through the world like a lazy cloud.

  "Show me another trick, Nod!” Tek yelled up at the bald man. Ran had told him Pilgrim’s real name, but he preferred 'Nod.'

  "No,” said Pilgrim, and he poked the boy’s forehead.

  "C’mon!”

  "No, no, no.” With every "no" a poke, and with each poke a laugh.

  "Pleeeeeease!”

  Kiyo said, "Enough," but she managed to make it sound like a whisper and a shout.

  Pilgrim leaned back, said out of the corner of his mouth, "Your ma may have a they follow silently or two or two thousand. Don’t worry little man, you’ll have plenty of time to bug me when we’re working on the shelter later, all day, for free.”

  Tek groaned.

  It was a half hour more before they finally turned the corner on Main and the giant, pearl white shell of the Freedom Canton came into view, jutting out the back of its corresponding tower. Only on Morning Gift, Gift itself and Kiln did the people of Wordheal forsake their small estates to come to one of the original three.

  Tek jabbed Ran in the ribs. "Memories, right?"

  Ran nudged back. He didn't like reminders of his first day in Wordheal. He looked up. Had Pilgrim been listening? Had his head snapped forward just then?

  Pilgrim stumbled, fell forward into the old woman ahead of him, begged and called her 'nice lady' many times as she beat him with her handbag. Finally those with her were able to drag her away.

  They began their descent into the shadow of the carapace, seemingly limitless rows of seats circling the dark stage, almost a dot, buried far into the ground at the bottom. They passed the first of the four great columns, two near the stage and two in the back. Alone among the many, smaller pillars these shone bright red. Ran wondered if the original Ovoni amphitheater out rise, of which the three Cantons were copies, were designed to resemble the Nameless World and the Field. He could vaguely remember reading something to that effect in a book of later Sebi legends.

  There were no other decorations, which set the Freedom apart from Glory and Mystery. He'd been in neither, but he'd seen picture of their prints and ribbons and golden chains.

  Freedom was so boring.

  People began to haphazardly break from the line and into the rows.

  "Geez,” Pilgrim said from behind as he avoided these divers. "Why aren’t they just going on down to the bottom?”

  "They want to sit with their estates,” Kiyo replied.

  "Their estates?”

  "We’ll stop here,” Kiyo said as she pulled Ran and Tek backward and into an aisle. "The closer to the stage the more animated folks get.”

  "I can barely see!” squawked Tek.

  "That’s why they have the screens, sweetie.” Kiyo pointed to the walls where massive video arrays hung down from the dark.

  "Not like we’ll miss much,” said Ran.

  "Hush now.”

  Ran was pushed down the aisle all the way to the wall, and was happy for it. At least he wouldn’t have to share an armrest. Tek sat beside him and Pilgrim, who again tripped and just managed to catch himself (with Tek’s help) before diving forward into the people in front, sat side Tek.

  "Not a spot of red,” someone beneath and glowered at Pilgrim. "Fool.”

  The screens flickered, displayed numbers as invisible tech crews checked equipment.

  Pilgrim took his jacket, obsidian in the dark, off, draped it over his chair.

  "Old Sitor.” Tek pointed to the screen. Word Ferapa’s assistant, a skeleton of a man Tek liked to mock as old even though he was not, was shown angrily directing people near the stage. Noticing the camera, he swiped at it. The screen went to a blue standby.

  "Charmer,” said Pilgrim.

  "He’s a jerk is what he is. Did the same thing last year to girl who tripped in front of the stage. The camera got him yelling at her for a whole minute before he noticed. Fallout was so bad Ferapa made him apologize on the news the next week to the girl personally. Everyone who comes into the Pub says he’s nothing but a mouth.”

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  "You don’t even know him,” said Kiyo. "It must be hard being a Word’s assistant. You should be more generous.”

  In the next half hour the amphitheater continued to fill until a blanket of whispers wrapped them. Tek kept Pilgrim occupied by pointing out the different estates.

  "Cresters,” Tek pointed to the people closest to the stage, all sporting hipster hats.. "’New wave’ they say. They love Ferapa, and to do anything to make everyone think they’re weird. Gobble and cluck when we sing and dance like psychos too.”

  His little finger drifted to a set wearing small red scarfs, "The guy and girl standing down there? Cissa and her husband. Can’t ever remember him. Everyone calls them the "Feels.” They cry a lot. Mostly during the terrible songs they write and sing.”

  "Ar, and Fe. That’s the two old guys there with the paranoid bunch, always glancing over shoulders? They’re all old. The Watch. They like to blab on and about Sebu and put lapzu makeup around their eyes. 'Maw-lovers,’ that’s what I call them. Prolly seen 'em yelling at people on street corners. Now it gets fun: the reverse magnifying glasses--”

  "I was wondering about that,” said Pilgrim. "They group themselves by iris, I think.”

  "Yep. But only blue eyes.”

  "Why?"

  "They think blues are bad and always need reminding." Tek waved a hand, "Boring history stuff I dunno ask Ran."

  Pilgrim sighed, then his eyes widened as if he'd just watched someone's face get smashed in by a turtle dropped by and eagle. Yeah, his face looked that stupid frightened. "Smack me with a handle and Maw open and take me in a gulp, that the Dead Light? Really?”

  Ran looked behind him and saw a group of about fifty sitting on long, bunched-up red robes, each emblazoned with a blue, twisting serpent winding its way, as if anacondas preparing to bind, around them.

  "You know em?” Tek asked. "They’re pretty new. Some people,” he pointed at Kiyo, "put up a fight when they started showing up at other estates. Cresters don’t like 'em, but can’t find a good reason to keep 'em out. The Maw-lovers won’t even walk. From Ovon, where all things shitty and ugly in this nameless world seem to find their font.”

  Kiyo coughed, "Language, sir. I’d be more upset if I didn’t feel the same way.”

  Pilgrim smiled, "Sorry. Guys, don’t aggravate ma with cussin’.” He then rested head on hands, bald brow furrowed. "The Dead Light. . .” He grinned down on Tek. "Head on a swivel. Smart little man."

  Ran nearly had to squint from how brightly Tek beamed.

  "The only other one I know anything about are Brights, want to be more like First.”

  "Where are they?”

  T"Probably scattered all over the place in here and the other cantons.”

  The room went dark as the great wall behind rolled down, closed the back of the amphitheater like a beetle shell. Gasps floated about as the canton grew silent. Just when Ran began to wonder if something was wrong, the stage and screens exploded with red lights and beams that cut at the darkness. All stood as Word Ferapa, in robe and triangle hat, emerged to a mixed explosion of guitar riffs and mindless, endless cheering.

  "MORNING GIFT!” The Word cried.

  Once all settled, Ferapa did as well, hitting his most common themes with his strange mixture of charm and never-so-serious self deprecation: the founding and the tears and glory won by the first citizens when they’d struck out from rise. Ferapa was on tv four mornings a week and his was an easy enough style to imitate. He made up for this by having perfected it.

  Pitch, tone, rolls of the tongue, not a bit of it was wasted by the World

  Only when Kiyo had once made a remark of how little he actually mentioned Heir had Ran taken note of this theme as well. A pressure against his shoulder, and Ran realized Tek had dozed off already. As long as Kiyo didn’t see. . .

  Pilgrim sat still, hands steepled against his mouth, listening as if Ferapa was the first man he’d heard speak in a thousand years. Ran grunted an odd disappointment.

  ". . . danger from First,” said the Word. "A valueless people, meaningless by their own estimations. A base pit of nothings who seek nothing and know nothing. Well and wise is the Text for calling them broken."

  Ran repeated this last word.

  In the next three hours he seemed to play tag with consciousness, resisting the urge to violently wake his brother on the principle that it was beyond cruel that he suffer alone.

  Finally, just as Ran let out an open-eyed snore,Ferapa asked for all the new citizens of Wordheal, all those who had entered the city since last Gift, to come and scarlet. Ran would have fist-pumped if he wasn't surrounded.

  Kiyo leaned across Pilgrim, tapped Ran’s knee, whispered, "You should go down.”

  Ran shook his head vigorously, Kiyo leaned back, apparently failing to notice Tek. Why did she do that? Every week she did it. Why give him another reason to feel less than? If he didn’t do it at their estate, why’d she think he’d do it in front of the whole canton?

  The willing trickled down, massing below the stage where workers hastily unraveled large cuts of fiery red cloth.

  A young girl Tek’s age was first and Ferapa smiled as he held before her mouth. With beet-red face she whisper, "With Heir, heir also,” and jumped as Freedom exploded cheers. With a smile she turned and ran beneath the sheet, pressing her face and hands into it until she emerged, face glistening.

  Pilgrim erupted to his feet, screaming, stomping, whistling, until Tek roused and clapped stupidly.

  Many scarlet seemed unaffected, and these Ran did not clap for. Pilgrim did. Some fell to their knees in the sheet, had to be helped out.

  Ran felt a steady thump, a kind of whirl in his chest, quite apart from the beating of his heart. He must have over-eaten at breakfast. Another man did not cry but laughed Soon Ran laughed, happily, heartily, all over himself with visions of warm clouds and cold stars invading his mind and he knew a joy as when a child discovers a new sweet and she realizes she will have it many, many more times in her life.

  When there were no more scarlet, Ran sat, wondered at himself. As soon as it had come, it had gone. No matter how thoroughly he tried to follow it back, one thought and feeling leading to another, he found it sourceless.

  Pilgrim's eyes flashed and misted, though he didn't cry. He grinned as he sat, crossing leg over his knee so Ran could see something imbedded, and glittered in the light on the bottom of his shoe. The red lights bounced off Pilgrim’s eyes, and Ran suddenly remembered the creeper, the hood with fiery eyes. Pilgrim had been watching Ran and not just met him that next morning. What did that mean?

  I am wary of people with many names.

  Pilgrim’s head jerked so fast that if Ran hadn’t been looking directly at him, he would have missed it. It was as if he were listening to for something very far away, and then he smiled and moved no more.

  Weird upon weird upon weird.

  Weirder still, beyond Kiyo, in the aisle, Ran saw Sitor, Ferapa’s attendant, glaring at him, his family, and Pilgrim.

  --------------------

  Life used to be a lot less complicated for Reduke, thought Reduke. He sailed over the buildings for the. second time that day, crashed onto the open middle floors of an incomplete skyscraper. His sliced arm itched. He had been thrown at least twenty stories, maybe thirty. Strong.

  Fat moron! Nightmaster raged, stay outta the way and let me fight him or I swear to Rokk I’ll let him gut you with his bare hands! Reduke relinquished. He was nothing without Nightmaster.

  With his patron’s guidance, Reduke rolled as he landed until his feet were beneath him, skidded backward until he rested against a wall. He looked around. Tools and naked steel beams and the smell of welds and duct and drywall pulled at thin remembrances of a life long gone.

  An explosion of yellow, Reduke looked up into the twin suns that served as the eyes of his attacker: massive bloke looked like he shit muscles. A big scarf wrapped a big neck connecting to big shoulders. Also, he held a big sheathed sword that was big.

  Off of man and sword both peeled great tongues of gold flame

  Shaking shaker! How many does that damn kid have following him! What is the deal? SHAKE!!! And Nightmaster’s confusion became Reduke’s until Reduke rubbed at the dried blood on his hands. Black-eyed bastard bled everywhere.

  "Why attack me, stranger?” Not even Nightmaster could make Reduke’s gravelly voice sound innocent.

  The scarfed man’s sun eyes blinking to silver. "You’re a clever one, and you have shine control surpassing all I’ve yet seen. Nevertheless, you’re discovered. Had I been farther away, well, I’ve never known one who could track anything like you. One’s mercy I have you now.” The man cracked his neck. "Tell me why you're here, and you won’t suffer.”

  Reduke laughed because Nightmaster laughed and made him sing, "Not afraid to die,” over and over as he swung his dangling arms back and forth before his body like some ape.

  "Wretch. Easy enough to see you are ruled, though I can't fathom how. Who is your master?”

  Nightmaster forced Reduke to ignore this. "Really wanna test your luck, Rockman? Lucky no one’s seen us yet.” Reduke said the word 'Rockman’, saw images of battle and blood, but himself knew little of either. "Your impotent rokk won’t stop the Heir-munchers from stringing you up like a yo-yo.” Reduke smiled.

  The man 's powerful hand curled around the sword’s hilt and he drew the curve from the scabbard just enough so Reduke could see a glint of exposed skeel.

  "Shiny,” said Reduke.

  "With your limbs or no,” the Rockman whispered, "you’ll tell.”

  I can’t beat him, Nightmaster called. Not with you alone. Not enough of me yet. . .And, sadly, I still need you. One severed limb in a week is enough, I think.

  "One is enough,” Reduke agreed.

  "What?” asked the Rockman, and he was consequently unprepared for Reduke’s charge as Nightmaster struck out with him.

  It was if he fought in the depths of a golden volcano, the skeel flashed and burned like a column of fire, but Nightmaster had attacked low, from his left, and Reduke easily jumped both blade and man. The man had not expected Reduke's agility, and Reduke wondered why he should not just kill him.

  Hehe. . .Bloodlust is never far from you, Reduke. Your bones would splinted against him like driftwood, his shine alone would cut you to cubes, clothed even as you are with mine. Drop it.

  Reduke, still hanging in the air above the stranger, pulled Nightmaster’s gift from his pocket and dropped it, landing on his feet behind the man and vaulting for the edge. He fell like a stone--

  --and crashed like a stone into an open dumpster. Nightmaster hissed a laugh. Couldn’t resist. I am a stinker.

  Reduke spat out rotten banana peel, pulled himself out of the dumpster as bones reset and fused. "Nightmaster, what about the boy? What should Reduke do now?”

  Rage laced the reply, Return! You’re only any good in shadow and crowds. Yet no one has given me as much of themselves are you, majumbo. I’ve got eyes on him. Just have to stay close. Where are all these shaking shiners coming from?

  Reduke hopped out of the garbage and rubbed his sliced arm.

  "A lot less complicated."

  -----------------

  Nail picked at the strange metal with the tip of his sword, turned it over and again.

  By the burn and char about, he’d assumed the other half had exploded, but he smelled no smoke. When the monster had dropped it at his feet, he’d thought it a concussion weapon, slashed it in half. All that was left was a hunk of gnarled metal.

  Nail had seen many strange devices during the Set Wars, employed by both Rock and Gift, many of which he had not desired to know the mechanics of. Had it not been for the utter foreignness on the rim of his shine just before his strike he might have brushed it off. "’Foreignness,’” he said aloud. It was the best he could think of. Icy? Alien? Unwelcome?

  He had been wise to abandon poetry.

  Nail grunted, moved to the building’s edge. The filthy, fat, death-reeking man was no shiner, no unique color was his, and yet employed shine. How? To what end?

  Nail sheathed his blade, and bounded away. Did so again and again until he reached the patio of some studio apartment near Central’s ringed edge.

  His mantle snapped in the high winds as he gazed down at reams of Copulators pouring out of the amphitheater below. Morning Gift was finished. He considered going back to see if the atrocity had circled back, thought better of that. All appearances to the contrary, he had proven wily. It would be a miracle if he was fool enough to return. The streets were packing again anyway.

  That Pilgrim, the one who acted a fool but had skeel eyes, was down there somewhere, with Ran and Tek. Had Nail not thought him odd, not followed them, he’d never have felt the monster lurking along the roofs. Nail was fond of these Given. Even Sarge had treated him with a respect beyond anything he’d yet experienced on his journey. He wouldn't let some fraud con them.

  After a few minutes of vain, half-hearted searching, Nail fled south, only dropping to the street when he was far away from the Cantons, his shine-coated legs casting embers around as he turned. . . to find a small brown-eyed girl sporting a tattered red ribbon.

  Of course she stared at him with a wide mouth.

  Nail smiled and put a finger to his mouth, while with his other hand he pulled several large gold half-moons from the purse in his satchel. The girl’s eyes managed to widen yet further.

  "Our secret.” Nail flicked the pieces and the girl jumped to catch them. She took one more look at him, let one side of her mouth curl up, and ran down one of the twisting alleys.

  "What you need not to them that do,” the Confirmer had taught, straight from One.

  Nail pulled his mantle down, wrapped his sword again, set off down the alley further south. He had promised to help with the Given poor house, a further extension of Confirmer’s teaching.

  For just one instant, apropos of nothing Nail had considered thus far, the idea that the he creature had been following Ran flashed across his mind.

  "How foolish," he said, and smiled.