Building Dynasties

[Warpath]

The Skin District was lively tonight, its wooden docks, decks, and rope bridges teeming with drunken dock workers, fishermen, sailors, and merchants. But Flint Skovik avoided the river, where the illicit houses were safer and better lit. He was more at home back here, in the dim alleyways, illuminated severely by a single red paper lantern full of lazy firebugs.

The big gaijin was leaning on the corner of a stout flophouse, sharpening his seax with long, slow drags along the blade. It was the loudest noise in the immediate vicinity, easily overcome by the distant cries of revelry from the river, but beneath it he could hear furtive whispering and giggling and other scandalous sounds from the surrounding houses.

There were harsh whispers behind him, and the whetstone paused on the blade as he listened. An argument? Something thumped and a man groaned, so Flint returned the seax to its sheath and pushed the sliding door open to step inside.

In the gloom he made out the tiny figure of an Akashiman woman, shifting unsurely in the center of the room with a blade in her right hand. Her eyes glinted in the half-light as she glanced up at Flint, and then down at a body lying on the cushioned mat. It wasn’t moving, and after a moment passed and his eyes adjusted to the dark, Flint saw that the man’s throat was cut from ear to ear.

“Have you changed careers?” Flint said evenly, as if honestly curious.

“What?” Satsuki said.

“He is dead,” Flint said, pointing at the body. “I understood that you, as a prostitute, were being paid to sleep with him. Now it seems you are an assassin, and that you’re being paid to kill him.”

“I’m not,” Satsuki hissed.

“I’m confused then,” Flint said, though it was clear he was not, “as to how you intend to pay me.”

Satsuki stared at him in disbelief for a long moment, then sneered and spat curses in her native tongue as she dropped down to her knees and began to paw roughly at the corpse between them.

“The window of opportunity to switch back to your first career has passed, I fear.”

“Fuck you, Dawei,” she spat.

She had taken to calling him that. It was a name, he gathered, but he was sure it did not translate to anything flattering. She found something in the dead man’s kimono and tossed it to him, and when he caught it he weighed it carefully in his palm. A purse, full of coins. Satsuki hadn’t taken her due, which either meant she hadn’t done her job and couldn’t in good conscience take pay, or that she was expanding his job parameters beyond simple protection.

“Do you want to take anything else off the body before I dump it in the river?” he said.

“The river? No, don’t you see who this is?”

Flint grunted and tilted his head, taking a closer look at the blood-spattered face. The eyes were stuck wide open and that made it difficult to say. “Perhaps I’ve seen him. Does it matter?”

“He’s the magistrate’s son. If he washes up with his throat slit, the lawkeepers will ask questions. Many saw me with him tonight,” Satsuki said. She was doing well to keep her breathing under control, but her hands were shaking and tears were welling at the corners of her eyes.

Flint fingered the coins individually through the material of the purse and considered it. “They will find him underneath Shin Bridge beside an opium pipe,” Skovik said, and shrugged. “The magistrate will be more interested in hiding secrets than uncovering them.”

“What about the people that saw me with him? They could talk, rumors could spread…”

Flint shrugged one big shoulder. “If you want that much silence,” he said, “you’re going to need more coins.”

[Warpath]

Satsuki sat alone, staring at the thin paper wall of her quarters. Her hands were pink from the scrubbing she’d given them, and from the corner of her eye they still looked bloody. She let herself glance down, and sighed at her fingernails. There had been blood underneath them, so she had trimmed them short, so short the ends of her fingers ached.

The sun was freshly risen, and she heard her neighbors stirring and finding food and arguing with one another. Her quarters were clean and organized, but that belied the part of the city she lived in. These were small, cramped, and unsafe quarters in a bad neighborhood – the only place she could afford as a low class whore on her own.

She was only breathing because she’d found the gaijin before anybody else could hire him, and he was loyal as long as she kept finding coin to pay him with. It didn’t seem to matter how much coin, just as long as it was more than she could afford. Still, when men offered him more to go away or to turn on her, he only stared. She often wondered why that was – did he love her?

She had always been a pretty girl with the misfortune of being born last among too many siblings, to parents who loved her but were too inept to honestly care for themselves, much less a child. With no protection, she’d been easy prey for predators of the human sort, and so she grew up fast. She turned her head just enough to regard herself in the looking glass from the corner of her eye, but immediately looked away. She was afraid she’d see blood on her cheeks.

In public, men called her wanton, and indeed she had fuller features than were chic. Her hips were too wide, they’d say, her lips too plump, her breasts too full, and if she would not cinch and bind herself like a decent woman, surely she was destined for this life. Surely she liked it. The truth was that she hadn’t had a choice. Society liked her for this life, so it was the life she had, regardless of her wishes.

No Akashiman would say she was attractive, but to a gaijin? Maybe. Satsuki heard that their women were not demure, that they flaunted their immodest bodies and lascivious curves. Maybe Satsuki reminded him of the women at home. She tried to imagine lying with him and scrunched up her nose. It would be like sleeping with a bald gorilla.

She heard heavy footfalls on the stairs leading up into the flophouse, and lifted her chin. The gaijin was returned and the job was done. She let herself breathe a little easier – just a little – and began compiling a list of questions for him. She had to be sure he did the job right.

There was a second set of footfalls then, and a third, and then a raucous explosion of laughter and chatter in Akashiman. Her brow furrowed, and she began to wring her hands.

“Wake up!” a man shouted, and she heard a panel door rattle violently.

“Stupid!” a second shouted, “that’s not her. It’s the next one.”

She saw their silhouettes through the paper wall, and began searching for her knife. It wasn’t there, where was it? Then she remembered throwing it into the river this morning, and she felt her heart flutter. Stupid, stupid. She began looking for something, anything she could use as a weapon.

They yanked on the panel but the lock held for the moment.

“Go away!” she shouted.

“Hey,” the man said. “Open the door, or I’ll break in. Don’t piss me off.”

She began digging through her possessions, looking for anything sharp.

“Open it, Heii.”

A second silhouette stepped forward, and the man wedged his fingers in between the door and the frame and yanked hard. The lock held for awhile, but eventually snapped off the wood. Satsuki got to her feet and clenched her fists, and willed her heart to slow. She couldn’t show weakness now.

“There you are,” the leader said. “The boss told me you were stubborn. You never met me though.”

“Go. Away.”

There were three of them, and they turned to one another and laughed too loud. “He said you were dumb too,” the leader said. “Now shut up and get packed. You work for Mister Ly Bi now.”

“No I don’t,” Satsuki said, raising her chin defiantly. “I don’t work for anyone and I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Unless he pays, eh?” the one called Heii said from the back.

“Not even Lady Akashima could pay me enough,” Satsuki said.

Where are you, Dawei?

“You’re funny,” the leader said. “I’m Ly Bi’s man, though. I don’t have to pay anything. You’ll learn to do what I say.”

He stepped into the room and adjusted his knife on his belt, kicking her things out of the way.

“Don’t hit her in the face,” Heii said, grinning.

“I’m not going to hurt her anywhere you can see,” the leader said.

“I’ll cut it off,” Satsuki said. She was backed into a corner and she hated the way her voice wavered.

“I tried to be nice to you,” the leader said. “You remember that. I have to teach you how to be polite.”

“Boss,” the third man said, speaking for the first time, a little too quietly.

“Watch the door,” the leader said over his shoulder.

“Boss.”

The leader and Heii turned around. There was a fourth man now, standing with his hand on the third’s shoulder. He wore a kimono, which was long enough but too tight across the chest and shoulders, and he stood a full head above any of them.

“Hello,” Skovik said in Trade.

“Who the hell are you?” the leader said. “Go away, gaijin, before you make me mad.”

Flint tilted his head, and turned his eyes to Satsuki.

“He wants you to go away so he can rape me,” Satsuki said. “I’ll pay you double if you kill him.”

“Interesting,” Flint said, turning his eye back to Ly Bi’s man. “Whose son is this? How far am I going to have to drag this body? I don’t think you have enough.”

“He’s nobody,” Satsuki said. “I have enough.”

“Shut up,” the lead thug said in Akashiman. He clearly did not understand Trade. “Tell the ape to go away, or I’ll kill him.”

“He says you should go away or he’ll kill you,” Satsuki said. “He called you an ape, as well.”

She figured making the gaijin angry could only help her situation.

“Ask him how much he’ll pay me to go away,” Flint said.

“He says your mother called him an ape too,” Satsuki said, “while he was fucking her.”

“Kill him,” the gangster said. “Cut his fucking head off.”

Heii threw the first punch and it landed, but the gaijin took the blow unflinchingly to the jaw. He turned his face to regard his attacker and his eyelids drew back, but otherwise the blow didn’t seem to faze him. Heii drew his fist back to try again, but Flint shoved his forehead forward and shattered the Akashiman’s nose, and he went down choking on a gush of blood.

The third man began to struggle to get away, but Flint clamped his hand on his shoulder hard, so hard that he yelped. The big gaijin raised his arm and twisted sharply at the torso, throwing his arm brutally forward. When the captive gangster’s head met Flint’s arm, the head gave way with a sickening crack, and the body went out from under it before falling limp and heavy to the floorboards.

The remaining gangster had no one left to command, so he drew his knife and lunged forward. Flint caught his arm at the wrist and twisted, and then caught the knife when the gangster dropped it with a strangled cry. He casually shoved the blade into the man’s throat, and then clasped his hand over the gangster’s mouth and held him upright by the head, staring into his eyes as the life drained out of him. Only when the soul was gone and the fear turned into a vacant stare did Skovik drop the body. He did not seem to notice the blood on his hand. When they turned to find Heii, he was gone.

“Disappointing,” Flint said. “I suppose you only owe me for two, then.”

[Warpath]

Satsuki did not own much, but she was not happy about leaving behind what little she did have. She wasn’t sure where she’d stay now, but her flat was patently unsafe.

“Simple curiosity,” Flint was saying dismissively. This was the first time he’d deigned to defend himself.

“Curiosity?” Satsuki hissed, clutching her tea cup so tight it rattled. “How much does a man have to quote for you to betray me?”

“You agree then!” Flint said. “It will be interesting to find out.”

She tried to find the humor in his eyes or in his lips, but there wasn’t a trace beyond the words themselves. She forced herself to loosen her grip on the tea cup and lowered her eyes with a sigh. Her only friend was a brutish sociopath she couldn’t trust, but he was literally all she had left in the world. What was the use of being angry with him? If he abandoned her, she was doomed. Especially now.

They’d left her quarters in a hurry, leaving the bodies where they’d fallen. There was little doubt in Satsuki’s mind that Heii would quickly return with help, so they’d gone across town to a restaurant a little richer than she could afford. Ly Bi would not search for her here. Soon they would be asked to leave though, especially if Dawei continued to refuse to sit properly and drink in a civilized manner.

“This man Ly Bi,” Flint said, “what are you to him?”

Satsuki raised her eyes, surprised. At first she couldn’t figure out what was unnerving her, and then she realized he’d never asked her a serious question before. Nothing seemed to matter to him enough to ask about.

“An employee,” she said. “Or that’s what he’d like, anyway. He’s been bullying all the streetwalkers, forcing them to work in one of his gambling houses or brothels. He never used to care what happened near the docks, though. I guess he’s expanding.”

“Your lawkeepers ignore this?”

“Not usually,” Satsuki said. “Things began to get strange a few months ago. I used to stay with two other girls, but Ly Bi’s men began harassing them. I heard they found one in the river, and the other left for Yanbo Harbor not long after. I might have gone with her, but I met you.”

She shook her head. “You must understand,” she continued, “that all things in Akashima are balanced, and even the underworld fits into that balance. People like Ly Bi and his family control the gambling houses and the opium dens, people like Luen Yun control the docks and harbors and warehouses, and the lawkeepers keep each from becoming too greedy and disrupting the balance. It’s a cycle.”

“But Ly Bi is becoming greedy,” Flint said.

Satsuki nodded. “I suspect it's because the lawkeepers are doing nothing to curb him.”

“Perhaps they are busy keeping track of the magistrate’s son,” Flint mused. “Or rather, they were.”

“He refused to pay,” Satsuki murmured, brushing the pad of her thumb on the edge of her teacup. After a moment her brow furrowed. “It's strange that the magistrate’s son has been so frequently seen on the docks lately. Normally such a place would not be safe for him.”

Flint stared at her for a long moment, and the realization slowly dawned on her. “…unless the magistrate has been overlooking Ly Bi’s expansion,” she said.

The big gaijin went on staring, unblinking and unmoving as Satsuki considered the ramifications. If the lawkeepers began turning a blind eye to the underworld for personal gain, the streets would soon cease to be safe for everyone. Ly Bi’s men would roam unchecked, taking what they pleased and peddling their illicit wares indiscriminately. Violence would surge, prices would skyrocket, girls would be forced into the brothels, and the opium dens would flourish. The money would fall into the hands of a select few, and the rest would spend their meager wages on protection and substances to numb them.

“Dawei,” Satsuki said, “I need your help.”

Skovik narrowed his eyes. “You have no money.”

“You’re right,” she said, “I don’t have enough to pay you. Not nearly enough for this. But if you help me, I can promise you something else.”

“You have nothing else I want.”

“Not that,” she said, and she actually blushed. “No, I mean something simpler. Something I think you will appreciate as much as you appreciate coin.”

“Ah,” the big man said, and he nodded his naked head. “You mean pain. You mean there will be people to break. You will give me a war.”

Satsuki’s full lips curled into the tiniest smile, and it finally made sense.

“You don’t love me,” she said, shaking her head. “You love the trouble that follows me. I am the light, but you are the flame.”

“Find me a moth,” he said.

[Warpath]

The night was middle-aged and tired, promising nothing exciting and sending all but the most determined and dutiful to their beds. The paper lanterns on the docks were dimming as the firebugs expired, gathering in little piles at the bottom of the lanterns and giving off a light not unlike fading embers.

Flint Skovik walked the dockside casually, as if out for an afternoon stroll. The night did not concern him. The only thing lurking in the shadows were men like him, and he had every reason to believe he was the greatest of them. What does a lion fear from the hyenas?

He veered to the left and ducked into a cramped space between two warehouses as a lawkeeper rounded the corner, holding his firebug lamp high and peering suspiciously into the shadows. When he passed the alley, a brawny arm snaked out and wound itself around his neck. Flint strangled the scream down first, then lifted the lawkeeper by the neck and twisted once, violently. The sound of snapping vertebrae was immensely satisfying to him, the way the sound of a turning lock pleases a thief. He dropped the lawkeeper to the ground, moaning and drooling as he died, and stole his whistle and beat-stick. The whistle went into the bay, the beat-stick he kept.

The thug’s stroll took him to the doors of a large warehouse directly across from a pair of long loading docks, which were still occupied but closed off from the docks with large iron gates. These were whaling boats, fully unloaded, washed, and prepared to resume their hunts. Given the size of their unique prey, the processing house and storage warehouse needed to be close to where the ships were unloaded. This made Flint’s job easy.

He brought the beat-stick down on the iron padlock repeatedly and fiercely. The iron didn’t give, but the wood did, and then he was inside the warehouse. He did not express the urge to gag once he was inside, but he didn’t deny that the instinct was there. Whale butchery was apparently a messy and unpleasant business, somehow combining everything unpleasant about normal butchery with the worst fishery odors. Flint never saw so much blood, not even in the pit.

He loaded five barrels of whale oil onto a dray, and then tied a rope across the drag posts. There were no horses, but the dray wasn’t fully loaded so he figured he could handle it. He was right, but the wagon itself was heavier than he expected, so the whole thing took longer than he liked. By the time he dragged the dray across the docks, he was drenched in sweat and displeased with his lot in life. The horizon was beginning to lighten, and he couldn’t be seen here after sunup.

He came upon the granary eventually, and dropped the drag posts with a growl. There weren’t any locks on the doors here – who would steal rice? - so opening the warehouse up was not time consuming. Unfortunately the building was on stilts rising up directly from the bay, which meant the dray had to go up a ramp to go inside. Dragging a wagon loaded with whale oil uphill was time consuming.

Skovik sneered as he looked out over the bay, where the first splashes of light were beginning to appear, reflected on the clouds in the horizon. He was just able to make out the darkling shapes of battle arks lazily riding the waves like sleeping dragons, and knew he didn’t have the time to do the job right.

He clambered up onto the wagon and cracked open one of the barrels and turned his nose away until the worst of the smell dissipated, and then he hoisted the barrel up and tossed the foul stuff out onto the grain like paint. When the barrel was two thirds empty, he tossed it back toward the doorway and let the barrel roll down the ramp and down onto the docks proper until it cracked against the guard posts, vomiting up a trail of gleaming oil as it went. He cracked open the remaining barrels and tipped them over in the wagon, and then he dropped down and followed the trail out.

He snuffed as he walked – the reek was unbelievable – and when he reached the discarded barrel he bent down beside it and produced his seax and whetstone. He struck the blade on the stone three or four times before a spray of sparks struck the oil, and the fire caught immediately. Flint stepped back and watched as the fire followed the trail of oil up into the warehouse, and then instantly and horrifyingly spread out onto the grain, and the dray burst into a blinding inferno.

Skovik looked out over the bay and narrowed his eyes, letting them adjust as the fire grew behind him. The sun would be up in less than an hour, and Satsuki had made it abundantly clear that he was not to be seen in the light of the day.

“Come, little moths,” he muttered to himself.

The words were hardly out of his lips before a man came sprinting up the docks from the far side, gaping at the blaze. Flint allowed himself the slightest smile, but that quickly faded when eleven more men joined the first, and it didn’t take long for them to spot him – the lone figure illuminated by the fire he’d started.

It was time to go.