Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (34 page)

“
Funny,” I said. “I paid off my old man’s debt, but I still feel like I owe Roth something.”

“
Yeah,” he said. Took a sip of his drink. “That kind of thing, it’s about more than money. Roth and Adams both stood behind me when I needed it. You can’t ask more than that from a boss.” I looked my question at him. He made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “What,” he said, “you don’t know? Well, it’s not like it’s some kind of secret. It was all over the newsfeeds at the time.”

30. AUDEN

My Da was a guardsman, back in the day. You probably know the guard were divided over the Takeover. Lots of ’em had had their fill of Wendell Crichton. Anton Robles, George Adams, and my Da among ’em. This bunch of buds fought alongside Roth and his people. When the fighting was over they formed the core of the new city guard. Da retired from the guard not long after that. Wasn’t a long retirement. His heart got him within a couple of years.

My younger brother, Clay, he was always a heartache to Da. All kids go through that rebellious shit, but Clay never grew out of it. Ran with a rough crowd—Bar of Gold, Danny’s Place, that sort of thing. In the days after the Takeover, the loyalists who stayed in the city gravitated to the rougher streets, so Clay ended up hanging with that sort, too. Said some harsh things about our Da, and the guards, and Roth now and then. ’Course, that was other people talking through him, I knew that. Clay wasn’t ever a thinker, a reader, the type to make speeches. He just memorized bits and pieces of his favorite loudmouth’s screed. He was like one of them guys chop up bits of other people’s music and make a song out of it. But then, some of them guys actually come out with some cool stuff. They apply some creativity, where with Clay, it was just regurgitated pap, y’know?

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Kid had a good heart. But he lost it somewhere along the way. There was this loyalist cell, called themselves the Bay City Traditionalist Wing—most called ’em the City Trads—that Clay got involved with. Jeff Coltrin, they called him Fariff, the leader of the City Trads, he’d turned them from being a fringe political party into practically a religious cult. He used hypnotic indoctrination, drugs, sex, whatever worked best for the mark he was brainwashing. He got Clay hooked on crackers. I knew the kid was doing them; you can’t miss the shakes crackers give you. But what could I do? Give him a talking-to as his older brother? Like he was gonna listen to that, right? Don’t think I didn’t try.

Long story short, one afternoon, we got a tip-off. The Trads were planning to assassinate Mears. He was a famous Labor leader who was about to set off on a five city-state tour. I got the call; I went out with a squad, met with Mears’s people as they were about to set out. It was our responsibility to escort him to the intercity train station. After that he was somebody else’s problem, right?

The City Trads, they decided to take him at the station.

There was a Railwalker in town about that time... I think he did the Mayday Ceremony. Big strapping blond guy named Baze. Kinda full of himself. Either he had Chief Adams convinced he was hot shit, or Adams let him think he had. Either way, he was with us when our people arrived at the station.

When the hit came down, the City Trads had maybe a half dozen in the field. Real amateurs. They tried to look like regular travelers, but they were sending off signals like they might as well have carried neon signs. My guys took ’em down, no problem. Except one of ’em, he grabbed a hostage, this six-year-old girl. He was holding a gun to her head. And as I got a little closer, I could see it was Clay.

Now, I was thinking like Clay was still in there somewhere. If I could talk to him, I could get him to see how he shouldn’t be doing this, how this little girl is innocent. She has nothing to do with his fight; he’s gonna be betraying his own cause if he hurts her, right? I mean, can the cause really call itself righteous if they murder innocent kids? I still think I might have stood a chance to talk him down.

But before I could even move, Railwalker Baze stepped up, and he walked toward Clay and the kid, talking to him the whole time, putting a Force in his voice, working on Clay, trying to get him to stand down. What he didn’t realize is, that kind of voice trick, it wasn’t gonna work on this kid, ’cause he’d already been brainwashed. Fariff had got his mind in a steel trap, and nobody else was getting a finger between those jaws. Not with fancy esoteric mind tricks, anyway. All Baze did was piss him off.

I looked at my brother’s face, holding his gun on this girl, and our eyes met. And I saw my brother wasn’t there any more. I wasn’t looking into Clay’s eyes, I was looking into the eyes of a disease, an addiction, a sickness. And I knew that that sickness meant he was not getting out of there alive. And I knew, I absolutely knew, that he was going to take that little girl with him when he went.

He raised the gun and capped off a shot at the Railwalker, which knocked him down.

Before he could bring the weapon to bear on the kid again, I shot him through the forehead.

Clay wasn’t really a good shot, so he had only winged the Railwalker. The kid was fine. Mears came out of it with his hair barely ruffled. Newsfeeds had a field day with it, of course. Most called me a hero, and some—the more loyalist-oriented—made a lot out of the fact he was my brother.

Auden was silent for a while.

Finally, I said, “I’m sorry about your brother. And I’m sorry one of our order interfered.”

“
Baze was a dickhead,” said Auden.

“
Yeah, probably,” I said. “The order isn’t perfect. We can’t avoid that entirely.”

“
Avoid what?”

“
A few dickheads taking the tats now and then.”

Auden snorted. “I guess you can’t. The guard has our share of dickheads, too. As you discovered.”

“
I won’t hold that against you, if you won’t hold it against me.”

“
Fair enough.”

We were both silent for a while, wrapped in our own thoughts.

“
Y’know,” said Auden finally, “I tell myself that my brother died long before that day. That what I killed was a disease, a monster. But even if he was really my brother at his core, the monster was gonna make him kill that kid. I couldn’t let him do that, could I?

“
No, you couldn’t.”

“
Don’t change the fact that I killed my own kin.”

There wasn’t anything I could say to that.

31. BAY CITY

Nita Robles stood in the door of the locker room, looking into the gym, watching the female Railwalker, Morgan, work out. She had been doing sword work. She didn’t work with the wooden bokkan or shinai that were racked on the wall, but Iado-style, with her own steel sword. Robles admired her moves. She was fast and slick, faster than most swordsmen or women Robles had seen. The city guard were drilled in sword work, and wore swords with their dress uniforms. It was one of the weapons they had to qualify with, but it wasn’t a preferred weapon. Most guards carried batons and guns, and trained most heavily at baton and hand-to-hand. Robles was the odds-on favorite in the inter-city competitions coming up this fall.

After a while Morgan set her sword aside and began her empty-hand kata. Robles watched with interest. The woman had power, no doubt about that, a lithe strength. Her moves showed some influence of Baritsu, but were mostly derived from a hard style: Shotokan, Nita thought, or perhaps Kyoku. After watching for a while, as the Railwalker finished one set of kata, Robles walked into the gym and to the edge of the mat. The Railwalker nodded with an inviting gesture. The guardswoman stepped onto the mat and the two bowed again and squared off.

Robles let the woman come to her. Since the Railwalker’s kata had been hard style, Robles stayed soft, avoiding, circling, redirecting attacks. ’Kido and wado moves mostly, the adjustment of vectors, use of the opponent’s strength and energy against them. When she thought she’d taken the Railwalker’s measure, gotten a sense of her personal style, Nita shifted to offense and moved in on her. Kicking, punching, blocking, the two women pursued each other across the mat. Nita moved in for a one-two combination and Morgan stepped inside it. There was a flurry of knees and elbows, stunning blows, and Robles was slammed to the mat. Morgan knelt above her, poised for a killing stroke, as the guardswoman slapped out.

They stayed frozen for a moment, Nita Robles glaring up at Railwalker Morgan. Since she’d won her first black belt at eighteen, no one had ever taken Robles down that easily. The Railwalker’s eyes were steady and level, revealing no emotion.

Nita Robles began to laugh. “That,” she said, “was cool. Show me.”

Morgan smiled, stood, and handed the guardswoman up. “The close-in stuff comes mostly from the later pre-Crash street systems like Keysi and Bakbakan,” she said. “You want to really learn that style, you should talk to Rok. He’s amazing with it. But yeah, I can show you a few things.”

They spent the next half hour with Morgan coaching Robles through some of the moves she’d used, and some other techniques. Robles was a fast learner, and despite the fact that much of what Morgan showed her was very different from the fighting styles she was used to, she took to it instinctively.

Later, their hair damp from the showers, Robles and Morgan stood in the locker room dressing, the Railwalker in her tunic with the crow patch on the shoulder, Robles into civvies for her lit class.

“
So,” Robles asked, “you’re married to Railwalker Rok?”

“
Uh-huh,” Morgan confirmed.

“
How long?”

“
Twelve years.”

“
You must have still been at the Academy when you married.”

Morgan nodded. “Yep.”

Nita sighed inwardly. After the workout session, she’d thought she might be able to establish a connection, get some friendly camaraderie going with Morgan. That might still be possible, but she could see the Railwalker was going to make her work for it. “Are there many married Railwalker couples?”

“
A few.” Morgan looked at the guardswoman, then sat on the bench stuffing her workout clothes into a small duffle. “Not many of them are out on the routes, though.”

“
So how’s it happen you guys get lucky?”

The look the Railwalker shot her suggested Nita was on the verge of prying, but after a moment she answered. “I was a couple of years behind Rok and Wolf at the Academy. We got married just before the two of them took over the north shore route, with another Prof, a guy named Sparks. A year or so later they lost Sparks in a firefight outside Redmond. You probably know, numbers are down in the order these days...”

“
Yeah,” said Robles, “you don’t see Railwalkers around that much. Not like in my Dad’s day.”

“
Right. There’s not many full teams left, and the order doesn’t pressure a team to replace a lost member.”

“
They don’t get assigned by the order?”

“
The order makes recommendations, but it’s up to the team to make a final decision. Wolf and Rok waited until they could request me.”

“
So, the other guy, Wolf, what’s his story?”

Morgan chuckled and raised an eyebrow. “Depends on what you’re looking for.”

Robles looked away, embarrassed in spite of herself. She hadn’t thought she was being that transparent, but she should have known better.

“
You’re not exactly his usual type, but I’m sure you could catch his eye if you put your mind to it. Question is, do you really want that?”

“
Why? What’s his usual type?”

“
Blond, busty, and brainless. Disposable. He likes to fuck ’em and forget ’em.”

Robles’ chin went up. “Yeah? Well, that gives us something in common, I guess.”

“
Really?” Morgan looked at the other woman with a question in her eyes.

“
Well, you must know how it is,” Robles said. “Career guards don’t usually do too well with marriage. I forget the exact numbers, but something like eighty, ninety percent end up in divorce. No surprise, really. It’s gotta suck, being married to a guard. Civilians never understand us, no matter how hard they try. They don’t know what it’s like, being in this life. And it’s the same thing with us as with you. It could all end in a second. With you, married to your partner, at least the chances are you’ll be with him when it happens. Could you stand it if you were sitting at home, never knowing when you’re gonna get that call, knowing you could be going to a funeral tomorrow?

“
Anyway, I figure the odds are against me. No percentage in looking for Mr. Right. If I did find him, it would probably end up a disaster. So I became the queen of one night stands.”

“
Yeah,” Morgan said. “I guess that’s one way to deal with it.”

“
Ooh,” said Robles. “Do I detect a tone of bitterness there?”

Morgan’s eyes snapped at the other woman, but her voice was calm. “Probably.” Her tone said, you got a problem with that?