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He might have gone on like that for hours if Khazerai’s body hadn’t risen from the chair behind him, grabbed the young man’s sword out of his hand, and lopped off his golden-haired head in one stroke. As the young man’s cranium bounced to the ground, Khazerai’s body kicked the shaking torso off the dais and strode to where his head lay. Everyone watched, aghast, as the body dropped the sword of the gods, picked up its head and set it on top of his neck again. As the men in the room stared, the flesh of Khazerai’s neck knitted together, drawing the wound closed until there was just a thin red line marking the injury, and in a few seconds, that was gone as well. The hideous gash on his chest had already closed up as well, leaving no trace that he had ever been cut at all. The men all knelt down on the floor, first his own, then the soldiers of the former enemy army, each one prostrating themselves before him.
He walked over to his lieutenant and motioned him up with one hand, then addressed the rest of the men in the room. “Go forth and let the rest of your people know that your leader is dead, and if they lay down their arms right now, I will be merciful. However, this is not negotiable, and they have, oh, about five minutes to decide. Now get out of here.”
The vanquished men wasted no time in scrambling out of the throne room, Khazerai’s intense gaze following them the entire way. Swiveling his head back and forth, he tested the muscles in his neck, feeling them stretch and pop as he moved. He rubbed his jaw, which throbbed when he touched it. That’s going to bruise nicely, he thought. Picking up the once shining sword, he wasn’t surprised to see that it was just an ordinary weapon, with no magic about it at all. Dropping it, he glanced over at the quivering body of the young warrior, blood now staining his once-gleaming armor a blackish-red, and shook his head.
“What part of ‘Khazerai the Undying’ didn’t you understand?”
ART THERAPY by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
My best friend Rusty and I used to hide out in an abandoned refrigeration unit in the middle of the junky vacant lot next door to our compartment building. We were in the lot when the fridge was dumped. We turned it sideways, then used our own locks to secure it outside and in, and covered it with so much noxious junk nobody else ever went near it, though there were lots of people in the vicinity who were looking for hideouts.
The fridge must have been used in an industrial kitchen; it had room enough for the carcasses of several butchered animals, and its perpetual internal light source still worked most of the time, even with the door shut. Aside from a few holes we punched through the superinsulation so we could breathe, it was soundproof. So what if it smelled like really old blood? It was bigger than both our sleeping niches put together.
It was inside that old fridge we swore our undying loyalty to each other and pledged to support whoever rose to power first, as long as the other was second in command. We swore with blood oaths.
Rusty knew all my secrets. If I had been following Ruthless Master protocols, I would have had him killed early in my career.
Now that I have achieved ultimate enough power to run things the way I like them, I am known as Darkblood, Incarnation of Exquisite Evil. Only Rusty ever calls me Spiff, and only when no one else can hear us.
In my current power hierarchy, Rusty is known as my trusted lieutenant, Shrike the Impaler, Purveyor of Irresistible Torture.
Rusty and I have been indispensable to each other in a series of country- and world-conquering power plays. We have ruled six countries and two planets, and would have settled into comfortable despotism several countries ago if only heroes weren’t so thick on the ground.
I really thought Ruritraya was going to be our retirement community. It had plenty of mineral wealth to exploit, a sturdy population of underlings and peasants with decent work ethics, a nice coast-line, constant small-scale wars with neighboring countries to keep any native thinkers distracted, and exquisite cuisine.
We kept watch for the various standard hero approaches, but no one had challenged us in a year.
Things were going too well.
I was lulled. Despite my determination never to relax my vigilance in all directions, I was lulled.
Betrayal came from a direction I never expected.
Rusty led the intervention on me. When I get out of Rehab, I’m going to spend some quality time with his head. I don’t care what happens to the rest of his body.
The rest of my top staff participated, though some of them wore masks. Masks could not hide their visages from my awful wrath. I know the name of everyone who conspired to humiliate me. At night, when I am strapped to the bed, I use the point of a loose screw to inscribe their names, one by one, into the patina. My bed stinks of fresh paint because the minions here are efficient and desire that everything remain pristine, so they paint over my list every day. I don’t care that my list disappears. I am really scribing the names in my memory while I try to erase the things my inferiors said to me.
The things they said to me!
“We caught you being nice to a random dog.”
“Your personal assistant used sarcasm on you, and you didn’t have him flogged.”
“You smiled in public, and it wasn’t the smile that sends small children screaming into the night.”
“You’re letting the intervention proceed without ordering us all killed immediately,” said Rusty. “Boss, you’re losing your edge. Trust me. You need help.”
Refocusing Personality Rehabilitation takes place in a satellite orbiting an u
I never even noticed Rusty putting a jump node to Rehab in our palace, another indication that the intervention was probably timely; I was slipping.
Most of the patients here have no living family. Family is what drove us to be evil dictators and ruthless overlords in the first place. We would have been better off without them in the begi
Nevertheless, there is a portion of our treatment called Family Therapy, a.k.a. “Group,” where those nearest to us participate in group sessions. This is when I see Rusty every week.
My roommate Bob, the Purveyor of Ultimate Misery, has four trusted lieutenants who come to Group, and a wife. She is not one of those trophy wives you marry just to ruin her life, foil the aims of her Hero, whoever that might be, and because you get off on humiliating her. Bob’s wife is dumpy, and she knits. Her major vice seems to be a love of large, inappropriately flashy jewelry. She wears a new and clashing assortment every week, which demonstrates that Bob has been overly generous in the past.
This is what’s good about Bob’s wife, Rose: she never says anything in group. Her sole virtue, as far as I can see. And yet, Bob envies me Rusty. That’s what he told me at breakfast, just before we headed in to another of those nightmare extended torture sessions called Group. “I wish someone cared about me the way Rusty cares about you,” Bob said.
I don’t think Bob has much of a future in this business, revealing a weakness like that to someone he doesn’t know well.
Or maybe he knows me too well. Because of all the things Rusty says during Group.
There are so many people I’m going to have to kill when I get out of here. For a while I’m going to have to risk looking like a Hero. I know their respective worlds will be happier places with these Multifarious Crushers of the Many Flavors of Joy removed, but I have to kill them anyway.