Kindle Edition
Download from Smashwords (eBook)
Amazon
Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: Jim LeMay
ISBN-10: 1549892266
Type: Fiction
Pages: 333
Copyright: Mar 31, 2017
ISBN-13: 9781549892264
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
In the 677th year of the Dark Age following a devastating pandemic Jack Mors turns 18. As the wily thief and prankster called the Shadow, he moves smoothly between the City’s criminals, slum folk and aristocracy, trying but failing to keep aloof from their affairs. He finds himself protecting conmen, seeking revenge for the murder of an aristocratic benefactor and finding wealth and security for a barmaid. Who just happens to be carrying his child.
The mysterious worldwide diseaseIn the 677th year of the Dark Age following a devastating pandemic Jack Mors turns 18. As the wily thief and prankster called the Shadow, he moves smoothly between the City’s criminals, slum folk and aristocracy, trying but failing to keep aloof from their affairs. He finds himself protecting conmen, seeking revenge for the murder of an aristocratic benefactor and finding wealth and security for a barmaid. Who just happens to be carrying his child. of 2072 kills nearly everyone. Civilization collapses and a brutal Dark Age follows. Most people blame scientists and engineers for developing the technology, which they call tek, that caused the pandemic and resulting chaos. The island city of Nelefer punishes the use of tek by death.
Orphan Jack Mors turns 18 in the 677th year after the pandemic. As the secretive thief and prankster called the Shadow he passes smoothly between the City’s criminals, slum dwellers and aristocratic Notables without owing allegiance to any. Though currently wanted by the police on a trumped-up charge Jack avoids them with little difficulty.
He lives by making nighttime depredations either alone or with his friend Flin and running errands for both a crime boss and Notables. He rescues farm girl turned barmaid Cristeen Hansen from gang members. For her safety he takes her to stay with friends in a secret series of tunnels and caverns below Nelefer’s streets called the Underground. Jack and Cristeen grow increasingly close.
Meanwhile the Notable Mistra Mikela Moer shows Jack how the murder of her cousin Juulyen Moer would benefit them both. Though repelled, Jack finally commits the crime. Mistra Mikela replaces Juulyen as the powerful Advisor and revokes the charges against Jack. Her new rank draws enemies, led by Chairman Tomlin Torralban, who try to depose her. She foils their plan, yet knows danger to her and Nelefer’s people remains.
Mistra Mikela’s brother Samyel, a bookish man and author, becomes enamored of Cristeen. Jack knows he will lose Cristeen to Samyel but realizes he could never fit the intellectual life she desires. Cristeen soon moves in with Samyel and Mikela but on a working relationship.
Jack meets itinerant merchant Vinni Como, wanted by the police for practicing tek. Since he, like Samyel, writes, Jack introduces them. Vinni and Mikela become lovers. Vinni shows the Moers and Cristeen the fabric he sells, silk, an unfamiliar material. Vinni promises Mikela that for a price he will give her the monopoly on the Nelefer silk trade.
Samyel fears Cristeen will reject him because of their age difference – he’s 37, she’s 21 – but finally makes his feelings known to her. She runs out of the house crying. Samyel asks Jack to find her and apologize to her for him. Jack finds her and discovers why she fled. She’s pregnant with Jack’s child. Though ashamed to face Samyel, she believes she could have lived happily with him. Jack convinces her to return to him. Mikela, delighted that Samyel will finally marry, starts planning the wedding.
Jack overhears Vinni and his men planning to leave town. And learns that they never intended to ship silk to Nelefer. He had promised other fabric manufacturers the monopoly on silk sales just as he had Mikela, all for a price of course. When Vinni tries to leave he finds himself stranded on Nelefer’s island. The police watch all access points. Jack finds a way to smuggle him out of town while regaining Mikela’s money and some for himself.
Mikela and Torralban have continued to plot and work against each other. Torralban and his conspirators plan to assassinate Mikela. At last she makes a mistake that seems to deliver her into their arms.
Samyel and Cristeen marry and the conflict between Mikela and Torralban and his conspirators reaches resolution.
Excerpt
Something about the night felt wrong. Not the heat; that was normal for July. Nor the quiet. The Warren was always quiet this late; danger kept most of its inhabitants indoors. Jack heard only the occasional scuttling of small feral creatures through the trash of the alleys. Not even his mission: talking a girl who disliked him – maybe even hated him – into leaving her boyfriend who openly hated him. Even Jack appearing in public held risks. His foes included the City’s two law enforcement agencies and its most powerful gang boss. Not to mention that he was within a few blocks of the stronghold of that gang’s boss.
No, none of that gave him the feeling. He had faced and gotten clear of worse. But the night felt unusual nevertheless. Maybe Flin’s superstition had rubbed off on him.
In any case, as usual, he traveled above ground level along the rooftops of the slum’s moldering buildings. Though people walking below seldom looked above eye level he went quietly, watching the streets and alleys. The sky was bright with stars and a half moon that seemed to float through the scudding clouds. Then he saw them...
Warren folk courageous or foolish enough to be abroad in the middle of the night moved in ones or twos, cautiously from shadow to shadow. These six figures walked two abreast down the center of the street, the way bulls walked in the Warren. Bulls never came to the slum unless they sought someone in particular and never in groups of less than six. Jack stopped in the shadow of a chimney and waited until they drew near enough for a good view. The moonlight turned their blue police department uniforms black. They continued along the street which curved to follow the contour of the hill until they disappeared from view.
An unusual night indeed…
Unfortunately, their street passed by the very apt building he needed to enter. After a few meanders it would take them to its front door. The alley he intended to take led a shorter distance to its rear. He could reach it in plenty of time to finish his talk with Elna, hear her refusal and leave before the bulls reached the building.
He had watched them from the end of a two-story building. After they passed he climbed down its rugged stone face to the sloping slate roof of an attached single story lean-to. He crossed it and dropped into a small yard. The lean-to and three high stone walls enclosed it. The ruins of hutches in the lean-to showed that it had once housed rabbits, raised either for food or their fur or wool or all three. Theft had probably forced the rabbitry to close. Even high stone walls hadn’t protected the rabbits from hungry Warreners.
Jack’s missions always included escape plans in case of emergency. The rabbitry served that purpose in this part of the Warren. At each end wall was a barred wooden gate. One led onto the street the bulls had just marched down, the other onto an alley. He kicked through the yard’s weeds and trash to the alley gate. Through a knot hole he scanned the alley. A short distance away it teed into a wider one. The moon lighted the alleys except when it briefly slid behind thin clouds. He saw no sign of life except a feral cat stalking something in the debris at the alleys’ intersection. A good sign: the cat’s presence meant no nearby people. He removed the bar, leaned it against the wall beside the door and went out. The cat, of course, had disappeared. He went to the intersection and looked both ways down the main alley. To his left it ran a short distance to the bulls’ street. In the other direction it curved, parallel with the street in front of the buildings toward his destination. He took it cautiously; its curvature kept him from seeing past more than a few buildings. But he soon reached the targeted building without incident.
He climbed the emergency ladder up its rear to the second floor door which was, as he expected, locked. He withdrew the tools from a pocket inside his shirt. He slipped the tension wrench inside the bottom of the key hole and gently applied pressure in the direction he would have turned the key, then inserted the pick at the lock’s top. While maintaining slight pressure with the wrench he scrubbed the pick back and forth in the lock, lifting up slightly on the return motion. The pins fit loosely in such an old lock. In short order he had them lifted far enough for the wrench to open the lock. He slipped inside the hallway.
Little light seeped in from outside so he found his way to Elna’s door mostly by feel, counting the doors as he went. When he reached it he knocked and called her name in a normal voice. He had seen Gomes leaving the Warren with a couple of his cronies which meant they would be out boozing for a while, probably a long while. Elna habitually lived with goons who beat her when they drank but he had promised her mother he’d try to talk her into coming home. Since he had little hope of convincing her he felt relieved when she failed to answer after his third try. He turned away.
Then stopped. What if Gomes had hurt her so badly before he left that she couldn’t answer? Or worse. He had to find out.
He picked the lock on Gomes’s door as easily as he had the outer one. Moonlight streaming through the room’s only window lighted it dimly. It was vacant. And a mess: littered with clothing, empty wine jugs, dirty dishes and junk less definable because of the darkness; bedding balled up on the bed. Quite out of character for neat, efficient Elna.
Suddenly, he heard the crashing sound a violated door made and muted shouts coming from the next building next door, probably the work of the bulls. Though they weren’t interested in his building they were too close to it for his comfort. He left the room, closed the door and ran down the hall. Soon he was descending the ladder.
“Hey, you! Stop right there!”
The voice came from the alley in the direction opposite of the rabbitry. He dropped a bone-jarring distance to the alley and landed running toward the rabbitry. A glance told him two bulls followed. Of course. When they raided the building next door they had posted two at its back in case their prey tried to escape that way. He should have thought of that.
|
