The Lady's Champion Read online

  the disgraced martyr trilogy

  book iii

  THE LADY’S CHAMPION

  THE LADY’S CHAMPION

  m. f. sullivan

  CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  APPENDIX

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY M. F. SULLIVAN

  COPYRIGHT

  The Lady’s Champion

  © 2019 M. F. Sullivan

  ISBN: 978-1-7326691-4-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written consent of M. F. Sullivan.

  Text: M. F. Sullivan

  Editing: Michelle Hope

  Cover Design: Nuno Moreira

  Typesetting: Jennifer Cant

  www.paintedblindpublishing.com

  [email protected]

  FIRST EDITION

  Come to me once more, and abate my torment;

  Take the bitter care from my mind, and give me

  All I long for; Lady, in all my battles

  Fight as my comrade.

  —Sappho, “Ode to Aphrodite”

  I

  The Flight of the Governor

  Would Governor Theodore del Medico go down fighting? Probably not. Look at him there, his chestnut head sometimes bobbing with shrill laughter above the crowd. Oblivious to eyes on him outside of those he paid, befriended, or paid to befriend. Teddy had no more chance of escaping fate than he did of noticing that teashaded individual who studied him from across the bustling restaurant of eight hundred customers.

  Also oblivious to this predatory focus, though it came from a member of his own table, the Franco-Japanese professor of English whose name was René Ichigawa overexplained to a dreadlocked woman called Gethsemane, “You can hardly find good dim sum in the United Front anymore. It’s only going to get rarer if the military keeps rounding up humans on the West Coast! Lucky thing New Elsinore has a strong base of hardworking, hard-eating immigrants who’ve been here too long to throw out. That’s true of the whole nation, though. We can thank all those second-generation migrants. Especially after the war with Mexico! The coastal regions lost a lot of families when the militias were called to account in the aftermath, and most of them had already sent their healthy young men south to die in the war against—” He coughed a little and cracked his neck in the direction of their silent friend, who spared him a resentful glance even as René carried on.

  “What the Midwest doesn’t understand is it’s all immigrants now. West Coast, and East. They don’t understand that when they let their government act this way, it’s their neighbors being taken. And they always seem to forget that their families were immigrants, too!” The pedantic Berkley professor, caught up in his own rant, turned to the disguised individual—the only other UF expat at the table. “When was the last time you met an actual Native American?”

  “Why doesn’t the Hierophant have his men shut these places down, or use them to trap big quantities of humans? Especially if they’re focused on Asian populations.” This was asked by René’s cousin Tenchi, who sat another small plate atop his growing pile. “Seems like an irresistible lure to me!”

  Their disguised member studied the portly man, mustache quivering into a frown. The place was packed, and loud, and Governor Theodore, along with anybody who cared, was far across the ballroom-size restaurant—but did they need to reference the Holy Father? Any mention perked ears in a martyr hangout. In a human establishment? Bad idea.

  Gethsemane sensed this displeasure and refilled the teacup of that most important, silent member as René explained, “I’m sure he does use a few of them as traps, but he has to leave some for the legitimate populace. People would be incensed if he just started shutting down Asian businesses. Overnight change hasn’t been tried since the Black Night. There’s a complicated licensing procedure— Xièxiè.” Sweet relief! The professor paused to show off another of his many languages by addressing the businesslike, hairnetted woman who swept up their plates. Her partner in crime, stopping her cart, interjected, “Pork schaomai? Chicken schaomai? Shrimp dumpling? Chicken feet?”

  “Ooh,” sang Tenchi, pointing at the cart, “chicken feet, please!”

  “Can we hurry this up,” the mustached member said with a sharp glance over the shades. Tenchi turned guilty doe eyes on their leader as the waitress, uncaring for any inter-table conflict, further stamped the well-marked card and thrust a small basket of fried chicken parts before her fellow human. Organic chicken, too—none of the lab-grown stuff. This place could have been raided on that ground alone if they didn’t have all the proper licenses.

  “There’s no reason to rush,” said René, reaching over for one of the greasy feet. This, he stuck into his mouth to suck tiny bones free of flesh even as he spoke. Gethsemane did not bother hiding her disgust as the professor continued through smacking lips, “Our— appointment’s having a good time, so we’d ought to, too. I mean, look at him over there!”

  Too true. Theodore’s piercing laughter was audible beyond almost a thousand patrons chatting and laughing in a wider variety of languages than one could learn in a single human lifetime. Every time he laughed, so did his party of twelve, and so did a few of the guards hovering around him. Guards, hah. What kind of martyr needed a security detail?

  One who had been warned what might happen to him. The mustached infiltrator sipped tea filled by Gethsemane and watched the Governor of the United Front yuck along with his cronies. Tenchi insisted, “See, dim sum is great because everyone can have fun! Chicken foot?” He offered the basket to their quietest member, for whom Gethsemane took on the burden of shaking her head.

  “No: we’re”—she waved a finger between herself and the mustached individual—“trying to be ready for action.”

  “We’ll be ready to act, Mom,” said René with a sigh and a roll of his eyes. “Anyway, we’re serving good purpose. How weird would it be if it was just a couple of intense-looking gweilos, not eating and not having fun, staring at the Governor from across the room? Alarm bells.”

  “That’s a racist thing to say, René,” chided Tenchi.

  “Oh, so you know that one! I was going to say ‘a couple of intense-looking gaijin,’ but you’d obviously know and complain about that one.”

  Gethsemane shared a withering glance with her shaded friend at the cousins’ instant argument. She seemed just about to ask something of her martyr companion when Theodore, with a hand upon the shoulder of a friend, pushed himself up from his table. The disguised member of their party stood in the same instant, unnoticed in a packed room where people perpetually stood up and sat down while jabbering waitresses pushed fragrant carts to and fro. This near-invisible figure cut a calm, smooth path in the direction of the bathrooms where Theodore had gone with a guard.

  René sucked a tooth. “Guess we’d ought to settle up.”

  The dimly lit men’s room already seemed something out of a horror movie, with limitless stalls and too few people coming in and out to jive with the size of the restaurant. The guard who had accompanied Theodore like a parent taking his child to go potty stood daydreaming as five men urinated and left without washing their hands. More filtered in one by one. Teddy, naturally, had shut himself in the stall to pee, and yammered to his guard even as he did.

  “Don’t you just love how they know me here,” the Governor prattled over the sound of his urine. Having tarried a second too long and drawn a glance from the guard, their observer hurried into a stall near Theodore’s. The preening martyr continued. “The best thing we did this year was move my offices from San Valentino to New Elsinore. It’s nice to be appreciated by the ci
tizens—nice when people, even humans, can see reason. Those San Valentino people, it’s just too close to home for them! I had a waitress actually thank me tonight for the work we’ve done in getting the riffraff out of our country. Would you believe that? Scrap the bit about ‘this last year’—it was the best decision I’ve ever made, moving the capital from San Valentino to New Elsinore. And the people agree. The West Coast has gotten all the attention since Trimalchio had his paranoid little power trip before Dominia’s control, while out East it’s nothing but neglect! No more, I say.”

  With his toilet’s flush, Theodore zipped his trousers. The hidden observer, pulse raising, prepared to be known. A second flush followed the Governor’s and their doors swung open in time. “It’s sort of like being a celebrity. Really a celebrity, instead of just being part of a famous Family. Like I’ve finally done something that I can be proud—”

  This pair of flushes covered the sound of the electrodart gun’s safety being released, but the guard was still quick to see the pistol and shout, “Sir,” over the sound of Theodore’s mindless blather. Sad to say, it didn’t muffle Teddy’s feminine shriek to see the drug-laced electric dart crumple his bull of a security man upon the bathroom floor. Always too bad to leave a fellow martyr in that condition, but it would be bloody chaos whatever happened. The General needed get the drop on the violence now, before the violence got the drop on her.

  “Frederico,” the Governor shrieked. The two unlucky humans in the bathroom reacted with shrill cries and swift departures while the single most useless member of the Holy Family reeled toward his assailant and recognized her with prompt horror.

  “You! Oh, no—oh, no, no!”

  “Just shut up, Teddy.” Dominia jammed the pistol into his back and, with every shift of the toy in her hand, missed her relic .44 Magnum. Lost for over a year! Poor old friend. It would send a sterner message than the non-lethal weapon she held. “We’re not going to hurt you, but I would appreciate it if you were compliant.”

  “You just shot a man in front of me, you’re sticking a gun in my back, and you say you’re not going to hurt me?” As voices rose outside the bathroom, tears formed in the corners of the Governor’s eyes. “And I’ve told you a thousand times, my name is ‘Theo’!”

  She was going to throw up. “Will you please come along with me, ‘Theo,’ so I don’t have to pistol-whip you unconscious and carry your sorry ass all the way to Jerusalem?”

  “Jerusalem! I can’t—” Eyes darting to the door, Teddy laughed in an unsteady pitch and said, “I can’t go to Jerusalem, Dominia, please! It’s a war zone! Father’s been bombing it looking for you! Haven’t his forces been actively clearing neighborhoods? I can’t go there—not with you! He’ll think I’m—with you, you know. What do you want from me? What good could I possibly be to you?”

  “Are you in there, sir?” called a guard outside the door. “Are you alive?”

  “Yes,” the sweaty Governor responded, prompted by the jut of Dominia’s gun in his back. “Yes, yes, I’m here! I’m alive, I’m fine. Frederico—”

  “I am the General Dominia di Mephitoli, and I have incapacitated your man. If you do not relieve yourselves of your weapons and make way for me to exit with the Governor, I will kill him, and you will all be similarly disposed of.” After a second of thought, she added some old-fashioned Bitch of Europa menace. “I don’t wish to do that to your families.”

  The men outside were silent. Theodore gave a soppy exhalation, his hands held high on either side of his head. “She really means it. She means it, please, I can’t die! Or—God, she could shoot me in the spine. I could be paralyzed! Please, believe her!”

  For God’s sake! The idiot didn’t know the difference between a regular gun and an electrodart gun. It was as if he weren’t a martyr—couldn’t be healed from even a real shot in the spine with a little surgery and a month of physical therapy! Were these not dire circumstances, she might have given him a clout of annoyance, both for Theodore’s nature (could one even damage the spine of a spineless man?) and his belief that Dominia would hurt him. Almost seventy years they’d known each other, and still he bought this. Perhaps that was her issue: why the world had listed her public enemy number one for a year. Her acting was just too good.

  If not hers, certainly the Hierophant’s, whom she was braced to see at any second. When would he appear, chiding and clucking like the old hen he was? She had to get this show on the road.

  “I need my brother for a chat,” Dominia said through the door. “Let us leave and no further harm will come to anyone.”

  Silence resounded until another scream rose from the dining room, and Dominia tried to stifle her annoyance. “What is it?” asked Theodore. Outside, shots were fired. “What’s going on?”

  “Just wait.” She closed her eyes and tried to remember how many times this plan was discussed with her so-called assistants. How many times was René told to leave the building as soon as she got up? How many times had he said, “Sure, I’ll take Tenchi right out”? How many times did she stress a minimal body count to Gethsemane? She didn’t want any conflict, let alone bodies, whether dead or incapacitated.

  Dominia glanced at Frederico. Not that she was one to criticize on that account.

  After a few seconds’ squabbling and more silence filled by the whimpering of Teddy, the bathroom door opened. She relaxed to see blood-spattered Gethsemane, calmer than the Dominia. “I apologize. Things did not go according to plan.”

  “So I heard.” The General caught Theodore by the collar of his sports coat to drag him out of the bathroom. “The police will be here any minute, along with the military and special investigators.”

  The difference in the room was a startling one, because those eight hundred people had flooded for the exits and still pushed through. Fewer were left than one might anticipate. This ease of escape was largely due to the kind waitresses, who had parked their carts along the perimeter of the massive room before fishing weapons from their aprons. Only a handful of customers yet hovered near the escapee-crowded doors to film the proceedings from their phones, watches, or DIOX-Is. At this stage in her “career”, Dominia felt the recordings were a good thing, and allowed them to proceed.

  There was a lot to be shown. It was impossible to know who had made the first move—René, or one of the Red Market girls masquerading as waitresses, or maybe Gethsemane—but the end result was that the security detail hired to protect Theodore now amounted to a pile of corpses. The Lady’s women did not abide by the General’s new nonlethal preference. Theodore’s personal friends had fled at the first sign of trouble, judging by the bodies, but the Governor still uttered a womanly shriek on seeing the remains of his staff.

  “Please shut up.” The picture of barely repressed impatience, the General thrust her little brother toward her human lieutenant as though holding a kitten. “The collar, now, quickly.”

  Before Theodore could ask, “What collar?” Gethsemane slapped the device around his neck. As Dominia tugged the fabric of his shirt to obscure the silver choker of the brand that once she’d worn, herself, her human companion bowed toward the nearest waitress.

  “You’ve done good work tonight,” said Gethsemane, and the General nodded her superficial agreement as the waitress put her gun back into her apron, then fixed the plastic of her gloves.

  “Anything for the Lady,” answered the woman, who waved her colleagues into the removal of the bodies. “And anything to get rid of that boneheaded bigot of a Governor.”

  “Weren’t you the one who thanked me?” asked pathetic Theodore. He’d barely finished his question before the General and the earthbound nymph were dragging him through the vacated kitchen still so cluttered with utensils, in-progress dumplings, hanging ducks, and half-carved chickens that it was no less of a tahgmahr to navigate than were it full of chefs. Dominia filtered out her brother’s whining tone of voice with a well-practiced ear and turned her attention toward Gethsemane.

  “What
’s the ETA to the tarmac?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Followed by an easy, breezy three-hour flight into the middle of the Atlantic. Why aren’t we just making the whole trip that way, again?”

  “Flying?” asked queasy Theodore as the women continued speaking.

  “It’s true that the E4 is risky, but if we can make it to the extraction point, our journey will be cut in half.”

  “And if we can’t, or if it fails, we might crash into the sea instead of flying straight across, which would have been the easiest and safest.” The wonders of prototype technology developed by the labs of terrorist organizations! “It’s not so much that we’re hitting a moving target as it is that our target is an incredibly small and specific region of space-time. There’s too much opportunity to be shot down between takeoff and extraction. I appreciate that they couldn’t smuggle the components for a whole new teleporter into the Front, and that the jet is ultimately faster than walking the Void the whole way, but I still don’t like using the E4 to maybe, possibly, show up in Tangiers just to take the teleporter to Jerusalem.”

  No talk of teleporters and interdimensional jets could transmute Teddy’s terror to curiosity. “I can’t go on a plane, Dominia, please.”

  “You have voiced this opinion many times, General, but it is nonetheless the option we have taken. Strictly speaking, your Father could dispatch drones anywhere across the globe to strike our plane. No flight route is truly safe.”

  “But some are safer than others. And some would keep us from risking you.” She studied the beautiful human, who kept her gentle features turned ever forward, and resembled only in her boldness that nymph with which the Lady’s servant was linked. “If the E4 doesn’t fail, and doesn’t crash, it could end up stuck in the Ergosphere.”

  “Then I will fight to remain myself, while knowing my sacrifice was a worthy one.”

  The Governor hadn’t finished. “I understand you want to take me to Jerusalem, but can’t we—take a ship, maybe, like a respectable—”