Cheyschek feels sick. He looks around for help, wishing to knock, to call for someone, but there is someone or something in the halls with them, and he does not want to give away his location.
This can’t be happening. They were all supposed to be socialites, artists. …
Then he freezes. He listens carefully.
Is there a gagging sound coming from the northern hallway?
He readies his bolt-shot. His pulse pounds upon his ears. He stalks forward, rounds the corner, and sees …
One of his compatriots is standing in a doorway along the side of the hall, almost out of sight. His compatriot trembles slightly, jerking his shoulders with his hands at his sides, and there is something on his mask, something large and white-pink and rippled that extends outward, into the doorway, where Cheyschek cannot see.
As Cheyschek nears, he sees that the something on his compatriot’s face is actually somethings: a pair of huge hands grasps the sides of the man’s head, yet the thumbs have been shoved deep into the man’s eye sockets, all the way up to the second knuckle.
His compatriot gags, gurgles. Blood spurts around the thumbs, painting the wrists, the walls, the floor.
Cheyschek sees now.
There is a giant man standing in the shadows of the doorway, and he is murdering Cheyschek’s compatriot with his bare hands.
The giant looks up, his one eye burning with a pale fire.
Cheyschek screams, and blindly fires the bolt-shot. The giant man recoils, drops Cheyschek’s compatriot, and falls backward. Then the giant lies in the hallway, completely still.
Cheyschek, weeping freely, runs to his compatriot and rips his mask off. When he sees what is below, his screams turn to howls.
He holds his dead compatriot in his arms. See what befalls the honored sons of my country, he wishes to say. See what happens to the righteous in such sullied times. But he does not have the control for the words.
“At least I killed him,” he says to his dead friend, sobbing. “Please let that be enough. Please. At least I killed the man who did this to yo—”
There is an irritated grunt. Cheyschek, startled, stops and looks around.
With a curious determination, the big man slowly sits up and looks down at his hands in his lap.
He opens his left hand. Inside it, glimmering in the light of the gas lamps, is Cheyschek’s bolt—which was apparently snatched out of midair before it could ever find its mark.
The big man looks at the bolt with bemusement, as one would the strange toy of a child. Then he looks up at Cheyschek, and his one eye is filled with a cold, gray-blue calm, like the heart of an iceberg.
Cheyschek fumbles to reload the bolt-shot. There is a flurry of movement. Cheyschek feels fingers around his throat, blood battering the backs of his eyes, the floor lifting away, and the last thing he sees is a glass window flying at him, breaking around him, before he is embraced by the cold night and, almost directly after, the street below.
*
Shara is ready when the two men burst into the room: she is sitting perfectly still on the bed, hands raised. Vohannes, however, does not follow the advice she just gave him, but leaps to his feet, cane thrust forward like a rapier, damning them for this and that.
“Hands in the air!” shouts one of the men.
“Clearly I have done that,” says Shara.
“Get down on the ground!” bellows the other. They are dressed, she notes, in gray robes that have been tied tight around the joints and neck: it has the look of ceremonial wear, and they have strange, flat gray masks upon their faces.
“We will all sit down,” says Shara.
Vohannes is nothing so placid: “I will fuck the mouths of all your ancestors before I listen to one word you vandals have to say!”
“Vo,” says Shara calmly.
“Get down! Down!” the second attacker shouts. “Do it! Now!”
“Grab him!” says the first.
“Listen,” says Shara.
“Get fucked!” shouts Vohannes. He stabs at one of the men with his cane.
The man grunts. “Stop that!”
“Get down, damn you!” shouts the other attacker.
But Vohannes is already moving for another strike. One of the masked men grabs his cane: there is a brief struggle, Vohannes lets go of his cane, and both of them stumble back.
The attacker’s bolt-shot clicks, and Shara ducks slightly to the left as the bolt soars out, parting the air just where her neck was, before burying itself deep in the headboard of the bed.
The three men, startled, stare at her and the quivering bolt behind her.
Shara clears her throat. “Listen,” she says to the two attackers. “Listen to me now. You have made a terrible mistake.”
“Shut up and get down on the ground!” shouts one of them.
“You need to lay down your weapons,” says Shara, voice as smooth as fresh milk. “And surrender quietly.”
“Filthy shally,” growls one of them. “Shut up, and get down.”
“Why you—” Vohannes struggles to stand.
“Stop, Vo,” she says.
“Why?”
“We aren’t in danger.”
“Shut up!” shouts one of the attackers.
“They almost shot you in the face!” says Vohannes.