(This is the prologue of Book 1 of the Tides Trilogy, originally picked up by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. Unfortunately I was forced to part ways with them, and so am looking for a new home. In the meantime, it can live here, a little bit at a time.)
Prologue: The Death of Xereks Lees
Calveeni’s dangled from the biggest mangrove tree at the western tip of Maresg, Its wooden beams dappled a reddish brown by the sun squatting on the hills behind it. Whitecaps dotted the surf on the ocean and sighed up to blend their murmur with the hum of conversation. The emerald hills, like Calveeni’s famed balcony, were dulled to rust in the bloody light cast between the remnants of a roiling storm that trundled out of sight to the east.
The restaurant was three stories tall and as shapeless as the rest of the buildings of Maresg, built at an angle in the fork where the trunk of the tree split into two great branches. The top floor leaned over the water, supported by more giant limbs, and the balcony jutted out even further, held aloft by a snarl of frayed ropes and wooden chains tied higher up in the tree.
Xereks Lees, once one of the most powerful low merchants in Skalkaad, now one refugee among thousands that hid among the branches of the tree city, entered from the Walk with his five bodyguards trailing behind him, and pushed his way to the front of the queue waiting to be seated on the Balcony, amid curses and complaints. He was broad without being fat, and jowly. His silver-grey hair was pulled back in a taut, slick ponytail. His beard was a wiry, dull grey, trimmed to a point, and a little unkempt.
“My table, if you please,” he said to the frowning host in a pleasant voice that didn’t touch his eyes.
The host, a gaunt, clean shaven man with a handsome, middle-aged face, pressed his lips together and glanced at the grumbling queue behind Lees.
“It’s fine today,” Calveeni’s tired voice called through the closed kitchen door a moment before the proprietor himself appeared with a slight bow to Lees. He was a lean, balding man with a black mustache that drooped to his chest, almost a full head taller than the host he stood behind. He wore a long white chef’s coat, rumpled and stained with brown blotches. “Please have a table brought up from the dining room for Mr. Lees.” He turned toward the former merchant. “You prefer the south side of the Balcony, do you not?”
Lees gave a little smile and nodded. “Indeed. Along the rail, if you please.”
Calveeni tapped the host on the shoulder. “You heard the man. Don’t keep him waiting.” He gave Lees another bow. “Thank you for joining us again, Mr. Lees. I apologize for the delay. I hope you enjoy your meal.” He smiled slightly behind his mustache and turned to walk back through the open door to the kitchen.
Lees pressed his lips together–an expression of thanks–and followed the host up the spiral stairs to the upper dining room and the balcony beyond.
The Balcony was always crowded, but a small table was quickly carried up and placed in Lees’ preferred spot on the southern corner with mumbled apologies to the patrons that needed to move their chairs to make space. The busboy set it down near the low railing and waited for Lees’ curt nod of approval before scurrying back inside. When Lees looked out, it was as if he were suspended above nothing but a few stunted mangrove trees and the dark, ever changing nothingness of the Expanse, seven hundred hands below.
Free. When Lees sat here, he was free of Maresg.
He moved his chair so his back was to the sea, where he had the best view of the sunset without suffering its light directly in his eyes. Two of his bodyguards and his valet, Orvaan, took their places around him, careful not to block his view, while the other two stayed behind to hover by the door that led inside.
He stared into the horizon for a while, lost in his thoughts, letting them mingle with the shifting-static sound of the distant water. He thought of his home–his real home, away north in Eheene, and he wondered for the thousandth time if he was a coward for hiding here. Maybe that’s what they all called him now, and maybe they were right.
That was the thing about being a fugitive, he decided. Too much time to think about everything he’d lost. Too much time to think about everything.
The breeze grew cool. As the sun dipped lower into the Upper Peninsula and the ruddy green of the mountains on the horizon deepened to a black silhouette, a pair of Calveeni’s errand boys emerged from the kitchen and began lighting the oil lamps that ringed the balcony with long candles. Lees realized he’d been sitting there for nearly a half an hour without being served so much as a glass of wine.
Several patrons in his immediate vicinity had cleared out, leaving him in the center of a ring of empty tables. There were probably still a dozen people downstairs seething to get a seat, but Calveeni had apparently finally learned when to give Lees his space. Too much space, for that matter. Lees was hungry, and more than that, he needed a drink.
He saw one of his usual serving girls–a tall, pretty, black-haired woman with a hint of the desert folk around her eyes–bring a round of cheap beer to a table of N’naradin merchant marines on the far side of the balustrade.
Lees’ scowl deepened. He was just about to tell Orvaan to get her attention when another girl he’d never seen before emerged from the swinging door and headed his direction. She had a pitted complexion and a round, flat face. She was so short she was only a head taller than him while he sat, and her body was lumpy and shapeless under the tight yellow and black dress Calveeni made all his girls wear. A portly, pocked-faced bee. He grimaced in disgust. Her left hand was a mangled claw, the index and middle finger torn away, the rest rutted and twisted with burns. She was altogether too grotesque to be working the balcony, except for maybe her eyes, which were large and brilliant green, and too sharp for Lees’ liking. He would make a point to say something to the owner on his way out. Even in Maresg there had to be standards.
“The usual,” he told her bluntly before she had a chance to say anything. He turned his attention back to the view. The sun was completely behind the Peninsula now, the sky above a blazing pink, easing first to red, then to violet directly overhead. To the east a few stars began to twinkle.
She laughed a nervous little laugh she probably thought was charming. “And what would that be?”
His scowl grew, and he turned back to her with an exaggerated sigh. “It would be what I’ve had the past twenty times I’ve come here. Exactly the same thing. If you’re too incompetent to know what that is, I’m sure there’s someone here who can help you.”
She seemed unfazed and blinked down at him with a condescending smile. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to just tell me what you want, rather than going and being a pain in the ass about it?”
Lees’ expression darkened. “I’m being patient because you’re new,” he said in a low voice. “Everyone should be given a chance. I am, you will find, nothing if not fair-minded. I am an important man, however, that should be treated with respect, and I don’t–”
“I know exactly what kind of ‘man’ you are,” she cut him off, her voice dropping to match his, tone etched with sarcasm. Her blank smile had completed its transformation into a sneer. The bodyguards grew tense. “Yeah, I’m new at Calveeni’s, but I’ve been in Maresg long enough to know your type. You were important, once. Skalkaad, if I know accents. Probably Eheene. You’re the city sort. A real citizen. Some big-shot until you pissed someone off. You came here. You think you’re unique? You’re not. Half the people in this city are hiding from someone else. People like you never learn: here, you’re nothing, and as long as you’re hiding here that’s all you’ll ever be.”
Lees made a last look around the balcony for Calveeni to reign in his girl, but it had mostly cleared except for three or four tables on the north side and the drunk merchant marines along the opposite rail. Everyone was pointedly not watching whatever was going on at his table, and in his anger, it didn’t occur to him that the Balcony was never this empty.
He sighed, inclined his head slightly to the right and said, “Orvaan. Please.” The man on that side, balding and pear-shaped, moved more gracefully than it looked like his body would allow. He took one step forward and grabbed the girl by the wrist.
“Take this whore down to the bridge and educate her,” Lees said.
The girl’s eyes grew wide. She screamed and bent her knees, dropping slightly, struggling to wrench her arm from the big man’s grasp. Her panic made her stronger than Orvaan was expecting and he barely held onto her, knocking over an empty chair as they grappled, spinning around until her back was to Lees and she stood between him and his bodyguards.
Lees stood, his chair clattering back into the polished wood of the waist-high balustrade. His face was white with anger, painted pinkish-red by the evening twilight. His bodyguards by the door took their first step towards the scuffle.
The waitress finally managed to wrench her wrist free from Orvaan and she staggered backwards, off balance. Her flailing arms landed hard into Lees’ stomach and he doubled over with a grunted cough.
She tried to straighten, holding her bruised wrist with tears in her eyes, but the back of her head collided with Lees’ face. The girl cried out in pain and tripped over her own feet, lurching into Lees again, who was already off balance, now grasping his broken nose. Her fall knocked him further back, and he tumbled over the guardrail with a high-pitched yelp of surprise.
The girl screamed again and spun to peer over the edge of the railing, sobbing, rubbing the back of her head. Lees plummeted through the dim, pink light. He yelled something that was lost in the sound of the sea, then cut off as he smashed into a knot of mangrove roots exposed by the retreating tide. The body lay, broken and motionless for a moment, then slowly slid into the Expanse and vanished into the black water.
“Heaven forgive me Heaven forgive me Heaven forgive me…” She began to mutter through choking sobs, backing away from the railing. Orvaan and the other bodyguards tried to grab her, but they were slow with shock. She shrieked and darted away toward the kitchen, dodging easily around the two who’d stood by the door, now halfway to the table.
The whole incident began and finished in a few seconds, and heads on the other side of the balcony were only now turning, curiosity overcoming empathetic embarrassment.
The Eye was up, nearly full and filling the sky overhead, flooding the bridges of Maresg with reddish purple light. The rusty, angry oval of its pupil was wide tonight, looking off somewhere beyond the western horizon.
It wasn’t late, but Calveeni had closed up early. Too much excitement today; he needed to go to bed. He was latching up the cash box under the boards beneath his desk when there was a soft knock. He froze. He’d locked up everything before retreating to his office. Even the balcony. He stood, smoothed the small rug over the hatch in the floor, and went to the door.
It was the flat-faced serving girl, Nola, still wearing her black and yellow dress, now with a light leather jacket buttoned against the night breeze. Her large green eyes were rimmed red, but she wasn’t crying.
Calveeni nodded and pushed the door open wider. She ducked under his arm into the office.
He slid the bolt closed behind her. “I guess Lees’ people didn’t find you.”
She smiled, a little nervous, and produced a grey velvet bag. It was small enough to fit under her jacket, but big enough that Calveeni was surprised it hadn’t bulged more while it was hidden there. She dropped it on the desk, where it settled with a metallic clatter. “Thanks for the job.”
He frowned at the sack, chewing on one end of his mustache, and shook his head. “Lees was a bastard and in the month you were here you did a better job serving tables than half the girls that’ve worked here for years. Keep your tin.”
It was Nola’s turn to shake her head. “It’s not my tin.”
He looked at the sack again and opened his mouth like he might protest further, but then he nodded. “I guess I won’t see you around here again.”
“Nope,” she said, and she turned and left, unlatching the lock and closing the door softly behind her.
It was one of those jobs. The kind where the actual job was the easiest part. In fact, killing Xereks Lees might have been the one of the easiest rubs she’d ever needed to do, once she finally got around to it. Maybe the last easy rub, since these days the knot in her stomach twisted a little tighter, the dreams grew a little darker, with every job she finished.
With Lees she got lucky. Lucky even for her. Calveeni had been one of Ormo’s, even if the chef didn’t know it. Nothing unusual about that. Lots of people from Skalkaad didn’t know where their tin was coming from. It was safer that way, and the smart ones knew not to ask.
Of all the places Lees could have chosen to spend his time, he picked the one spot in Maresg where Ormo was going to find him without even trying. All she’d needed to do was show up with a big sack of money and wait. Then again, someone could probably make a pretty good case for lot of things working out that way.
Ironically, it turned out that the most insignificant part of the job of killing Lees was killing Lees. Weird, looking back, on how things work out sometimes.
Weird that something as mundane as an accounting problem could turn her into whatever she had become.