“Here is the court of the Ratel, gathered for their party,” the masked man says. “Think of me as your jester for the evening, providing the entertainment to you peons. Do you realize that for every tiny bit of money you get, the King gets over one hundred times more?”
He walks closer to the men and women lined up along the wall. “But for you, I’m not your jester. I’m your executioner.” He raises his gun and points it at the first woman. As soon as he aims, someone lets out a wail. The man is startled and lets out the shot, and the woman crumples. I shudder, hidden behind the curving white wall of the ramp. I can’t tell if she’s been hit or not.
Ensi—I’m pretty sure it’s Ensi—emerges from the shadows, knocking the gun from the leader’s hand. Nazarin, seeing that the situation has changed, jumps over a frightened member of the Ratel and grabs the gun out of another of the masked men’s hands. The rest of the Ratel realize the tide has turned and follow suit, wrestling the weapons from the other side’s grasp. A few more shots fire, but they all go wide.
A masked man or woman falls to the ground, the gun skittering across the floor, the person grabbling for it. Nobody else has noticed yet. After an agonizing moment of indecision, I dash from my hiding place and jump on top of the figure, holding my gun against the temple, praying I don’t have to fire. Nazarin sees me, but masked as I am, he thinks I’m one of the insurgents. I hold up my hand and call out “Wait!” He starts, recognizing my voice, and I pull off my hood, shaking the hair out of my face. Nazarin looks stricken. I nod at him.
It’s not over that easily. There’s a riot of people fighting, and guns blaring. More people fall. The perfect white walls are singed.
Only a few people in Kalar suits have fallen—bullets have to hit the right area of the body at the perfect angle to do any damage. But even in my Kalar suit, I don’t feel safe. A fair number of Ratel revelers have died. Blood smears the white floors. I clutch the gun against his forehead, but I don’t fire. I turn off the fear, watching everything with a sort of detached fascination. It’s that, or start screaming and never stop.
Ensi wades through it all, the bullets bouncing off his suit, wrestling the ringleader behind it all to the ground and ripping off his hood. It’s the young man I met at the beginning of the party: little more than a boy, with white-blond hair and black eyes. Leo.
My eyes dart to Nazarin. His mouth has twisted, and I can’t guess his thoughts. I’m still not sure he anticipated the coup.
Leo tries to say something, but Ensi doesn’t give him the chance. The King of the Ratel takes the gun, holds it to the younger man’s head, and fires. The boy goes limp, his head nothing but a mass of blood, bone and brain tissue. Ensi is splattered with gore. I stare at him, not blinking, until my eyes burn.
Ensi pulls off the hoods of all the other masked men and women who dared to rise up against him. Then he calls out a few other names. The Ratel Pawns and Knights bring the people forward. Nazarin holds one of the named men’s arms behind his back.
“You really thought I didn’t know exactly what you were trying to do?” Ensi asks.
He shoots the first person.
I flinch.
“You really thought that, in my own house, I wouldn’t sniff a rat?”
He shoots the next person.
“This is my house. You are mine.”
Another shot. Another fall.
“You should have learned this long ago. Most of you have.”
Bang.
“You cannot cross me and hope to live.”
Bang.
“Reward me with loyalty, and I will reward you.”
Bang.
“Cross me, and reap the consequences.”
All the men and women are dead, to join the other corpses on the ground.
“It’s simple, really.” He smiles at us all.
I look at all the bodies on the floor, numb. It feels like a warning. He’ll find out about me. And he’ll kill me. He’s walking toward me. Is he about to shoot me in the head?
He aims the gun. I squeeze my eyes shut. Better not to see it coming.
The gunshot is so loud my ears ring.
I’m not dead.
I open my eyes. Ensi has shot the man I captured. The blood spreads across the floor, a slow red tide. A woman’s crying, screaming, and I wish she’d shut up. More lines from the poem return to me. The paradise of Xanadu is ruined.
Then reached the caverns measureless to man
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Nazarin has a spray of blood on the left side of his face. He stands straight, at attention, his expression blank as a soldier’s.
Ensi stops in front of him. “Thank you,” he says. “Skel, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“You saved a lot of lives tonight. You’ll be rewarded. Speak to Malka about it.”
“Thank you, sir.” I almost wonder if Nazarin will salute.
Ensi looks around at the silent party. “Let this be a lesson to you all.”