The Harvest (13 page)

“Used to be one of their jail cells, I’m told,” Lane says, getting out a decanter of a liquid so red it’s almost black. With one hand he manages to claw-grab three glasses and he plunks them on the table, starts messily pouring. “This is wine. Like, actual wine made from actual grapes. They grew all kinds of stuff up here. Potatoes and grapes and funny fruits like rangpurs and bloodberries and papa-yuzus. Like I always figured they gave us their scraps as rations. Worse than scraps. Food pastes in tubes and mechanically separated meat goop. Just eyeballs and buttholes mashed up. Poison, basically. But this stuff”—he swills the bottle and it goes
gloonk gloonk gloonk
—“this really is the top of the pops, the uppermost level of heaven itself.”

Three glasses, one going to each of them. He lifts a glass and walks around, clinking it to each.

Lane finally sits.

He laughs. “I think you’re supposed to, like, smell the wine or something. . . .” He pauses, shrugs, then takes a big long gulp.

“Pegasus City is one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen,” Pop says. “I’m proud of you for what you did here.”

Rigo watches Lane stiffen. His old friend tenses up, like he’s suddenly uncomfortable in his own clothes, in the chair, like maybe the wine tastes bad, too. The smile that arrives looks forced. “Thanks, Pop.”

“I bet the Empyrean are hungry to get their hands back on the fallen flotilla. They made attacks?”

“A few in the beginning. The first wasn’t an attack—it was a salvage mission.” Another gulp of wine, finishing the glass. “They thought they’d be hauling the city back up into the sky, but they were shit outta luck.”

Pop leans forward. “Were there Empyrean folk alive after that? After any of the attacks or even when it fell?”

“There were some.” Lane smacks his lips now, looking guilty, like a child being interrogated by a teacher. Or a parent.

“What’d you do with those people?”

“Some of them are in prisons like these,” Lane says, gesturing with the empty glass to the prison bars all around them. “Some of them didn’t . . .” He clears his throat. “Some of them didn’t quite make it.”

Pop nods. “I see. Lane, it’s time maybe to talk about why I’m here.”

“Sure, sure, okay.”

“Remember what I was doing in Martha’s Bend?”

Lane leans forward, eyes narrowed. “I do. Hobos and Blighters. A fresh garden. That was something special.”

“I’m doing it again.”

Blink, blink. Like a silent bomb going off—all concussion, no sound. Rigo detects—well, he doesn’t know what it is. It’s tension, but possibility, too. Lane’s got gears turning behind his eyes as he thinks this over. He pours himself another glass of wine and drinks it.

“How many?” Lane asks. “People, I mean.”

“Two hundred and fifty-six.”

“That’s a big number.”

“Big enough. What do you have here?”

“Not quite two thousand.”

“My people would add to that. In a big way.”

Lane nods. “We have the infrastructure. To support them, I mean. The Saranyu has resources out the wazoo.”

“I could bring my people here.”

“That would be . . .” Lane laughs. “That would be incredible.”

“But there’s a catch.”

“Okay . . . ?”

“I need you to step down.”

Lane smiles like it’s a joke, but he fast figures out that nobody else is joining him. “I don’t understand. Step down from . . .”

“Being mayor of this place. I respect what you’ve done here. But you’re still a boy, Lane. The world can’t rest on your shoulders for long, or it’ll flatten you like a tin can under a motorvator tread.”

Lane stands up. Not quite angry, by the look of it, but Rigo can see he’s getting there. Right now, he stammers: “But—but you said you were proud of me. Of what I did here. This place is all me. I’m . . . I’m the guiding hand!”

“And it’s time to step back. Let someone else take over for a while. You’ll still have control, not like you’re a cow pushed out to pasture.”

“Let someone else take control.”

“That’s right.”

“Like you.”

“Like me.” Pop sighs. “Lane, son, I know this is difficult—”

“I’m not your godsdamned son. You had one and he’s dead. He was a selfish kid,
Arthur
. You didn’t teach him to care about the Heartland, you taught him to care about himself. But you, on the other hand, you used to be somebody. You think I don’t know that you used to be one of the Sleeping Dogs? That—that—that hell, you helped
found
the Dogs? And now you wanna waltz on in here and take the captain’s wheel outta my hand as if you’d never left?”

“Lane,” Rigo says. “C’mon, just . . . just calm down for a second.”

But Lane’s hand falls to his hip, to the sonic pistol dangling there.

“I oughta back out of this cage,” Lane says, “and lock it behind me. Traitors. Treating me like I’m still just some dumb kid. I’m not! I’m old as you were when you started this damn thing!”

Pop says softly, “And that’s the problem. I didn’t do it right. I was . . . blind to a lot of things. Because I was young. I wasn’t ready.”

“Get out.”

Again, Rigo tries. “Lane, c’mon—”

“I said get out. Get in your skiff and go back to your . . . gardens.”

Pop grunts as he stands, leaning into his hip. “I’ll go. But I need to ask you first: What do you plan to do with all this? The city. The raiders.”

“We’re not raiders anymore. We’re liberators.”

“Supposing that’s true, what’s next?”

Lane grins: a smile empty of humor and heavy with malice. “We’re going to fly this thing. Have a flotilla of our own. Conquer the skies.”

A moment goes by, and Pop seems to consider this. Then he nods a sad nod and gives Rigo a look.

Rigo knows what’s coming.

Pop leaves. Lane trails after, roving and zigzagging behind them like he’s already a bit drunk. The long trip back to the skiff is silent and about as uncomfortable as trying to sleep with sand in your ass-crack. By now the crowd that watched Pop and the two sloop boats come in has dispersed, but folks still mill about, many of them working on repairing the shattered city: a heavy woman spreads some sort of white goop across a long crack in pale brick while a man below her tinkers with a plasto-sheen machine.

Comes the time, then, to get on the skiff.

And Rigo’s heart hurts. Because of what happened up there in that tower, sure. Because Lane and Pop are fighting, and that’s like watching your own family fall apart in front of you. But his heart hurts, too, because of what comes next. Rigo prayed to all the gods and angels and devils that this wouldn’t come to pass, but the mission is the mission.

“I’m not going with you,” he tells Pop.

Lane seems taken aback. Pop turns, looking confused. A rehearsed look. “
What?
Rigo, you already left once. And I need you. We have work to do.”

But between them, an unspoken transmission:
This
is
the work.

Rigo says, “I think Lane’s on the right side of history. Thanks for taking care of me. And for bringing me back here. But I’m staying.”

The look on Pop’s face isn’t real, Rigo knows that. He’s acting. A mask to serve a purpose. And what he says next isn’t real, either, but it still cuts to the quick: “I thought we were family, Rodrigo. But I guess we’re not.”

A TIGHTENING NOOSE

“WHY?”
SCOOTER
ASKS.
“Why do we gotta leave, Gwennie?”

“Because,” she says, kicking open the boxes next to her bed and bundling up what few clothes she has here. “Because they know who we are. And they’re going to come for us. Is Mom packing?”

“I . . . I dunno.”

“Well go!” she says, clapping her hands. “Go check, now. Go on.”

Scooter darts out the door, ducking past someone as they approach.

It’s Balastair.

Gwennie sees him, his dust-lined face, dirt under his nails. A far cry from the prim, crisp man she met on the Saranyu. He scratches at the patch of facial hair along the bottom of his chin.

“Gwennie,” he says. “Maybe this is all . . . blown out of proportion. We’re just starting to really make something of ourselves here.”

“You and Cleo, you mean.”

“What? No. All of us. All of us! Maybe you misinterpreted—”

She wheels on him. “No. Don’t do that to me. Don’t try to make me feel like some foolish schoolgirl who doesn’t know the tip of her finger from the back of her ass. They were gonna kill me, Bal.” She hesitates, feels a tremor run through her. “So I killed them first.” She bites back tears then looks away, goes back to packing with her teeth gritted.

Balastair is silent for a moment. Like he’s chewing on what to say. “H-how? How did this happen?”

A shadow darkens the door to the room.

Gwennie turns. “Because of
him
.”

She flings a wad of his clothes right at Boyland, who catches them not with his hands but with his face. “What’s going on? What happened?”

Gwennie tells him. About going into the bar. About how Solow was planning—probably still
is
planning—to send men here.

“This is your fault,” she rails. “So desperate to be a big man like your father that you’ve gone and nearly got us all killed. Now we have to leave. What little we have we have to throw away, start over somewhere else.”

Boyland pushes past Balastair.

“Gwennie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But maybe they won’t find us—”

“They’ll find us,” Balastair says. “Maybe not tonight, but soon enough. Only a few outlying homes here in the shadow of the mountains. It won’t take them long. Especially if the Empyrean join the hunt.”

Boyland catches her wrist. He looks deep in her eyes. “We can fight them. We can hold our own, hold ’em off—”

She wrenches her hand away. “Pack your own stuff. I’m done helping you. I’m done with you in every way. Won’t be any wedding. This is over. You’re a big, dumb, horrible boy.”

“Please. Don’t say those things.” His jaw works like a millstone, and she knows that he’s angry. But behind the anger is sadness, too, hanging there like a ghost hovering. “Let’s sit down. Godsdamnit, Gwennie. We can figure out a plan.”

“Oh, I have a plan.”

Both of the men look at her.

“We’re going to Pegasus City. To the Sleeping Dogs. And once we’re there, I’m gonna go back out and find Cael McAvoy. Because guess what?” She pushes past Boyland. “He’s alive.”

SWIFT FOX

THE
TALE
REACHES
Arthur’s ears over a drink. He’s in a small farmhouse just outside the town of Dooley, maybe five miles past Fort Calhoun—it’s a town where everybody’s scared. They’re scared of the raiders. Scared, too, that the Empyrean will come for them like they did so many other towns: first Tuttle’s Church, then others like Brickbriar, Dry Springs, Blanchard’s Hill. Here, folks have remained dutiful, working hard for the Empyrean to show that they don’t need to be taken over, no, sir, no thank you.

That’s on the outside.

On the inside, the fear that’s gathering is turning to something meaner. Like a hound slowly going feral because his owner has abandoned him.

He meets up with an old ex-raider there—big fella named Pressman. Arms like a couple of old-timey iron-shot cannons, like you’d find on pirate ships in old picture books. Pressman’s been out of the Sleeping Dogs for a long time, long as Arthur’s been. His wife, too—a woman earthy and round and dark like a clay pot. Pressman says, “Got too strange there. Didn’t like it when they turned from rebels to raiders. Became selfish and mean.” He chews on a root.

From the other room, his wife, Kallen, agrees: “I don’t cater much to violent people. I wanted to change things, not burn it all down.” Her words come alongside the sounds of dishes clanking as she scrapes food off them.

“I appreciate dinner,” Arthur says. He holds up the glass. “And the fixy.”

“Fixy’s mostly just piss, but that dinner.” Pressman whistles. “That’s on you. You brought us the vegetables. Empyrean figure out what you’re doing, they’re gonna bring the hammer down, Arthur.”

“They have bigger rats to catch,” Arthur says.

“Hear they got a boy in charge of that city.”