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Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: Jim LeMay
ISBN-10: 1549750380
Type: Fiction
Pages: 338
Copyright: Mar 23, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781549750380
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
A long brutal Dark Age follows a devastating pandemic. Orphan boy Jack makes a precarious living as the mysterious thief called the Shadow. More danger awaits him as he is drawn inexorably into the centuries-old search for a cache of gold.
The mysterious worldwide disease of 2072 kills nearly everyone. Civilization collapses and a long Dark Age ensues. In the 676th year after the pandemic the orphan boy Jack makes a precarious living in the city of Nelefer as the mysterious thief called the Shadow. At the same time wealthy brother and sister Samyel and Mikela Moer search for a cache of gold lost shortly after the pandemic. They believe their collection of ceramic hawk statuettes hide the clues to finding it.
Potter Allegra Haas had made the statuettes in the 120th year after the pandemic. John Moore II, leader of Clan Moer and Samyel and Mikela’s ancestor, hated her because he thought she knew the lost gold’s location. Yet, because of Allegra’s skill he commissioned her to make 100 of the statuettes for a dinner party. Allegra left a letter to John Moore to be opened after her death, admitting she knew the gold’s whereabouts and that the statuettes held clues to finding it.
Now, centuries after Allegra’s death, Samyel and Mikela have 66 of the statuettes. No one has yet deciphered the clues.
Working as a message runner, Jack delivers one of the missing statuettes to Samyel, who promises to reward Jack if he finds more of them. Jack knows of one perched in the window of the Gallows Bird Tavern. In a manner that adds to the Shadow’s notoriety, he steals the statuette from the tavern. About that time a prank Jack plays on a policeman named Mucfeerz creates a deadly enemy and costs him his job.
Jack gives the statuette to Samyel, who eventually figures out that Jack is the Shadow. Jack’s life becomes complicated but more comfortable. Samyel hires him to run errands and recommends him to other aristocrats. At the same time, crime boss Boss Blunt, pays him for information about upper class activities. The salacious Mikela pays him for services of her own.
Nelefer folk believe scientists somehow caused the pandemic with arcane skills that they call tek. Fearing its resurgence will bring about their destruction, anyone suspected of practicing it can face torture and death. Some citizens of the City, including Samyel and his friend Saul Berg, secretly preserve scientific knowledge. Saul even conducts scientific experiments. Saul’s vindictive former lover Tildee steals information she believes to be tek from Saul’s office and takes it to the agency that investigates such activities, the Anti-Tek Table.
Jack has continued his illicit activities. On one nighttime venture he and a partner witness Saul’s arrest by Anti-Tek. Jack and his friend race to the Moers’ Great House and tell Samyel. Saul has been incarcerated in the City’s dungeon, the infamous Black Box. Samyel and Mikela try but fail to obtain his release by legal means.
Because of the great respect Jack holds for Samyel he invades the Black Box to rescue Saul. Jack fails, is caught and tortured. Anti-Tek agents have already spent a day torturing Saul to extract the names of others involved teknal “heresies.” Saul, fearing he’ll give up Samyel’s and other names during the next torture session, commits suicide.
During Jack’s captivity his enemy Mucfeerz visits him to tell how he intends to disfigure a girl he believes is Jack’s girlfriend. Jack finds a way to kill a guard and escape. Though suffering from his injuries he confronts Mucfeerz and, after finding the cop has not yet harmed the girl, kills him. Then Jack retreats to a place no one can find him to fully recuperate.
At last Samyel and Mikela learn the gold’s location and retrieve it.
Excerpt
The deep door well mostly protected the little boy from the sleet. He knew he must lie absolutely still – movement might attract a wanderer looking for a haven like his – but he shivered uncontrollably every time a vagrant icy blast pelted him. He would surely die if ejected back into the rain.
Then the impossible happened. The splintered wooden door he huddled against opened, dumping him into brazen light and the most wonderful heat he had ever felt. Perhaps he had died and this was the heaven the Christers talked about. Rough hands immediately grasped him, shouted harshly at him and to each other. He heard only isolated phrases: “What is this ...” “... tryin t’ burgle ...” “... lidl thief ...” They handled him roughly. No, this wasn’t heaven but he was, more than likely, dead.
The hands roughly thrust him back into the rain and darkness. He bumped and slid down the rain-slick cobbles. He knew he should hurt but felt nothing. The heat and light must’ve been a dream, the rough handling, talk and return to the rain, a nightmare. Just like the rest of life: mostly bad mixed with a little bit of good.
... and then he felt nothing.
More dreams: Of being carried, or was he floating? Swaddled tightly. Strange voices. Shadows leaping against a wall. Instead of the cold and wet it was now only cold but somehow he knew it was all right to shiver. After some interminable period he awakened coughing, very cold. One thing he knew for sure: he wasn’t dead. His throat was too sore and he had a terrible headache. The world seemed to blink on and off in an uncomfortable way. He felt a blanket wrapped tightly about him. Where had it come from, a dry one at that?
He slept; coughing again awakened him. Now, he felt so hot he disentangled himself from the blanket and cast it off. Faint light illuminated a small square: dawn light coming through a window. He must be inside somewhere. How had that happened?
“Ah, yor awake.” A woman’s quiet voice. “Drink this.” A hand behind his head gently lifted it so he could gulp a warm, bitter liquid from a cup. “It’s salix mixed with tea. It’ll ease the sore throat an help the fever.” She gently lowered his head and tucked the blanket firmly around him. “Don keep kickin this off. Y’ need t’ stay warm.” She continued to talk quietly but he was too tired to concentrate, or even care what she said.
He awoke much later. His head ached fiercely and he was cold again, shivering under several blankets though he lay near a blazing fireplace. Full day, albeit a gloomy, overcast one, shone through the little
window. A pretty girl, a few years older than him and dark like the woman, appeared.
“Where’s ... how ...” A fit of coughing interrupted him. After it ended he asked, “How’d I git here?”
“Ed Hanrahan found y’ an lugged y’ here,” said the girl. She disappeared from his view and returned holding a cup. “Mum said for y’ t’ drink this when y’ woke up.” She raised his head, not as gently as the woman had done, and placed a second pillow under it. She held the cup to his lips and he drank more of the bitter liquid. She held it at such an angle that it gushed into his throat. He turned away to avoid gagging and coughed again.
“Mum says y’ gotta drink it all. It’s got medicine in it.”
Used to doing things for himself, he took the cup from her in hands shaking so badly he almost spilled it.
“If y’ spill it, y’ lidl shit, I’ll make another cup an y’ll hafta drink it all.”
Her imperious tone stiffened his determination to drink the tea without her help. As soon as he finished he lay back as exhausted as if he had run across the entire Warren.
“I can’t keep callin y’ lidl shit. What’s yor name?” she demanded.
“Jack.”
“I’m Lilliyaana. My mum’s Amelya. Amelya Moritz. She’s workin so I’m stuck with y’.” He dozed fitfully, sometimes dreamed weird dreams that he barely remembered later. The headache gradually waned but not the cough or sore throat. The girl frequently changed the damp cloth she had put over his forehead as his fever dried it out. She sometimes spoke to him, but he found it hard to concentrate and didn’t try to answer her. Sometimes she brought him water or more tea.
Voices awakened him in the evening. He saw the woman and girl talking quietly. When he coughed they looked at him and the woman came over. He recognized her as the woman who trundled the little cooking cart across Gallows Square every morning. She felt his forehead with her palm and in the same quiet tone of the morning asked how he felt.
“All right.” He coughed again. No one had ever before asked how he felt.
She smiled a little. “I wouldn go that far but yor fever feels like it’s down a bit. Is the tea ready, Lilli?”
The girl said yes and brought a cup to the woman. After she helped him drink it she brought out a small vial, opened the lid and poured a viscous fluid into a spoon.
“I got this today for yor cough,” she said as he took the spoon. “Drink it.”
Later, when the woman tried to feed him some soup he took the bowl and spoon from her and fed himself. Help from others made him uncomfortable. After he finished the woman gave him more of the thick bitter liquid. Eating had exhausted him so much he fell asleep immediately. When coughing awakened him in the night the woman gave him more of the cough medicine.
The girl replacing the damp cloth on his forehead awakened him the next morning.
“Yor fever’s down a lidl,” said the girl. “How d’ y’ feel?”
“Better.” He did. He no longer had chills though his throat was sore and he felt very weak.
“Well, y’ll soon be well nough t’ git outta here so I can git my bed back. See, I usually sleep where yor sleepin. Mum don want me in the same room with y’ cause I might git yor sickness so I’m stuck sleepin with her.” She jerked her thumb toward the door beside the fireplace. “Course yor bein here ent all bad. I git t’ miss my lessons with ol Bumsuck.” She grinned. “His real name’s Brunswik.”
Brunswik ran the only school in the Warren. On days too hot to hold class inside, Jack had seen him seated on his stool in Gallows Square, his students squatting on the paving stones in a semicircle around him.
She stood up and turned to the fireplace. “Mum said y’ need more tea an cough stuff.”
He drank the tea eagerly and a glass of water. He had gotten used to the tea’s bitterness and was very thirsty.
She talked as he drank it. “Bumsuck charges mum for teachin. I don see why I need im. Mum don read an she gits by jus fine.”
Jack, too, had wondered why some people valued reading and writing when just staying alive took so much work.
The next day Amelya pronounced him well enough for Lilliyaana to return to school. When Lilliyaana returned she made tea for him and gave him cough syrup. When he once tried to stammer out his gratitude she interrupted him in her usual brusque manner.
“I ent doin this just for yor sake, y’ lidl shit. I want my bed back.”
The next day Jack felt even better though still weak. His fever was gone. The cough had diminished and with it the soreness of his throat. The bright daylight peering through the tiny window cheered him. For the first time since the onset of the illness he was hungry. Amelya gave him solid food that evening, pickled cabbage with a few shreds of salt pork in it and potatoes. The next evening he felt well enough to eat at the table with Amelya and Lilliyaana. Amelya made all three of them bow their heads before the meal while she said something called a prayer. They couldn’t eat until she finished which annoyed him a little because of his hunger until he remembered that if not for her he wouldn’t have survived the night of the storm. And, of course, he was used to being hungry.
“Where do y’ live anyhow?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Nowhere.”
“A orphan. I figgered so when I seen y’ round Gallows Square. That’s why yor clothes is such rags. I got sunthin for y’.” She went into her other room and brought back something rolled under her arm. “See how this fits.” She shook out the bundle.
A jacket, used but in good condition! His was too small and so full of holes he often had trouble finding the ones that led to the sleeves.
“Well,” said Lilliyaana, “try it on, y’ lidl shit.”
“Watch yor mouth, lidl girl,” Amelya said mechanically.
He reached for the jacket and slowly pulled it on. It was lined with wool. So warm. An uncomfortable emotion he had not felt for a long time threatened him.
“Amelya, I – I ...” His throat closed so that he couldn’t speak.
“Yor welcome, Jack. I know it’s a lidl big but y’ll grow in t’ it.”
She showed him how to clean his teeth and made him bathe every other day. She told him to continue these things after he left.
“Y’ want t’ keep yor teeth healthy. Y’ don wanta look like ol Naddick do y’?” Naddick was a crippled, toothless beggar who slept in Gallows Square. “Ent no girl ’d have y’ then.” When he said, rather sullenly, that he didn’t care what any old girls thought of him she laughed and shook her head.
Part of him would have liked to stay in the warm comfort of the house forever but both Amelya and, less subtly, Lilliyaana, let him know that was not to be. Most of him though missed the streets and freedom from Amelya’s regimens of physical and spiritual hygiene.
Because of the uncomfortable feeling connected to the jacket, saying good-by seemed awkward so one day while Amelya was at work and Lilliyaana at school, Jack left wearing his warm jacket.
He usually remembered always being an orphan. Occasionally, though, a vague feeling, too amorphous to call a memory, tugged at him: of someone (he was certain it was a her) holding him lovingly. When very young, while waiting for sleep, he had allowed the quasi-memory to become real enough to banish all fear, loneliness and other longings he couldn’t name just long enough to fall asleep. Upon awakening, however, he was again alone and scared and as often as not, hungry. Sometimes a tightness clutched his throat and his eyes misted. Angry at what he considered a weakness Jack always cleared his throat and blinked away the moisture before it could turn to tears. Gradually, with difficulty, he had forced the tender woman fantasy out of his mind. In time it became less than a memory of a feeling. When it threatened to reemerge he destroyed it with strenuous activity like running.
The uncomfortable emotion threatened to return as he left Amelya’s house. If the tender woman had been real, he thought, she would have been someone like Amelya, though not her of course. Amelya would never have abandoned him.
Less than a block from Amelya’s house he began to run. The few people about in the Warren looked curiously at the little boy racing up and down its streets and alleys.
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