Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

“Maybe, but those bastards took huge losses yesterday,” Hive interjected. “If I were them, I wouldn’t be quite so anxious.”

Sobek’s crocodilian snout wrinkled, as if he were scowling. “They took losses, yes, but that will only anger them. They will come, and they will be crying for revenge.” Next to him, Taweret shifted her immense weight almost daintily. Sobek translated. “Taweret says we could retreat to Abu Simbel—we might still reach there.”

“They’ll just follow us out into the desert and kill us there, where we have no cover at all,” Fortune answered, and other voices murmured agreement. “At least here we know the ground, and we have the advantage of the river.”

“Then send a team to Aswan. Kill the Caliph,” Sobek told him. “It’s his army.”

“Yeah, there’s a great idea,” Hive grumbled. “Wasn’t killing the Caliph what started this shit in the first place?”

Taweret and Sobek both started to answer angrily, but Fortune’s voice rose over theirs. To Michael’s ears, it didn’t sound like Fortune at all. “Enough of this. There’s no other way for them to go, and we will make our stand here.” Fortune paused. No one spoke. “Good. Now—here’s the crux: we need to deal with the Righteous Djinn. He’s the real head of the beast, not Caliph Abdul—if the Djinn is removed, the loss would demoralize the army. They’d break. I’m certain of it.”

“And just how do you propose to do that?” Michael asked. Heads turned toward him. “Maybe some oracle told you about a fatal weakness? Maybe a poison arrow in the heel?”

Fortune scowled at Michael’s interruption. “We could start by making sure that people obey the orders they’re given,” Fortune answered. “We were lucky yesterday that the Djinn didn’t decide to cross here at the High Dam, because there wasn’t anyone to stop him if he had.”

Yeah, like I’d have been able to stop that guy , Michael wanted to retort. He wanted to rage and fume at Fortune, at his combined arrogance and hubris. Who the fuck elected you God? Michael swallowed the bile, and it burned all the way down. Fortune glared at him, but now there was a smirk hiding in the corners his mouth.

Lohengrin spoke before Michael had decided what to say. “If the Djinn touches you, you are lost. He will slay you and drink your powers. We all know that. But he can’t touch me . My ghost steel will protect me. The Djinn should be mine.”

Simoon gave a bitter laugh. “The Djinn is killing my people, Klaus. If he tries to grab me, I’ll rip the flesh and muscle right from his hands. Believe me, I can take him.”

“Look, none of you know what powers the Djinn has stolen from those he’s killed, what he can do, or what his vulnerabilities might be.” That was Fortune again.

Michael had heard enough. He turned and walked away as the debate went on.

He set the bottle down on the wall around the memorial. High above him, concrete petals held a ring encircling the half moon. Stepping back from the bottle into the center of the memorial, he pulled out the sticks he’d crammed into his back pocket and started to drum. The cadence was fast and rapid, the beat from his six hands so quick that it was difficult to hear the individual strokes at all. He ignored the painful objections from his wounded arm; instead, he focused the sound with his throat openings, shaping it until the bottle started to shiver. He tightened his throat, moving the sound up just a quarter step.

The bottle jumped an inch into the air and shattered. Glass shards sparkled jewel-like in the moonlight and rained down on the concrete with a sound like sand thrown against a window.

“Beer?”

Michael shook his head. “Water,” he answered. “Couldn’t find any beer.” He glanced over his shoulder. Kate was standing at the entrance to the memorial.

“Great talent you got there,” she said. “I thought only sopranos could do that.”

“I’m pretending it’s the Djinn’s head. Or maybe Fortune’s. I haven’t decided which yet.”

She didn’t laugh.

“How’s Ana?” he asked finally, when the silence threatened to swallow them both. “She gonna make it?”

“She’s stable, they tell me. But they need to get her to a real hospital soon.”

He nodded. He didn’t say how unlikely he thought that possibility to be.

“I talked to John,” she said.

Michael gave a bark of a laugh. “Did Beetle Boy give you my ‘assignment’? What am I doing tomorrow? Kitchen help? Bandage detail? Maybe I should sweep the sidewalks so no one dirties their sandals while running away from the Djinn?”

Kate let out her breath through her nose. She was wearing jeans and a tong-sleeved denim shirt with a large leather pouch around one shoulder, bulging with what Michael suspected were smooth, polished stones from around the riverbank, perfect for throwing. “You know what? John’s right about you, Michael,” she told him. “You refuse to listen to anything he has to say because you don’t like him, and that’s stupid. It really is. We can’t win here without taking out the Djinn, and we can’t take out the Djinn without everyone’s cooperation. Sobek, John, Lohengrin, and Bugsy are making those plans now; maybe you should be with them, helping.”

“The way you’ll be with Beetle Boy when he goes after the Djinn?”

Kate grimaced at the name, but only shrugged. “If that’s what he thinks is best,” she said, “yes, that’s where I’ll be.”

“Then that’s where I want to be, too.”

“Why?” she asked. “You think I can’t take care of myself, Michael? You think I need your protection?”

He walked over to where she stood. She watched his approach with near-defiance in the tilt of her head and the narrowing of her eyes. He towered over her as she looked up at him. “I want to be there because you’re there. No other reason. I’d think that would be obvious by now.”

“Michael—”

“No,” he said. His arms, moving, sent bars of shadows flowing over her body. “Listen to me. I can’t change what I did back in L.A., Kate. I was an asshole, I’ll admit it. It was a fucking game and I treated it that way. But there was something genuine between us, and I really craved the feeling I had when I was with you. You felt it too, at least at first; but that feeling’s never left me. Maybe what I did, being with Pop Tart and the others, killed it for you. I don’t know. But I can pray that something’s still there.”

When she didn’t answer, he allowed himself to hope. He hurried into the silence. “I can’t change what I’ve done, but I can change. I can. I have.”

She stopped him with a lifted hand that seemed to shake slightly against the moon-shimmer of Lake Nasser. “Michael, I really don’t know how I feel about any of this.” She stopped, shook her head again. “I can’t think about it now. I won’t. The truth is that it’s not important. Not here, not now. Maybe afterward, if …” She wouldn’t finish that sentence. “I’ve already told you: I’m not here for John, not at the core. And if you’re here for me, then you’re here for the wrong reasons. So why are you here, Michael? Tell me.”

Her eyes scanned his face, the question held in them waiting for his words like a knife. “ Maybe afterward… “ He clung to the words, playing them over and over in his mind.

He opened his mouth. He tapped his chest nervously, sending the sound of a low drum into the night. His arms flexed and broken glass ground under the soles of his sneakers, but the words wouldn’t come.