New Memphis Blues

Part 1

I had gotten the call. In my line of work something was always going wrong, always some crisis in need of my special brand of troubleshooting, and when your line of work was running dayshine under the noses of the jack-booted constabulary of New Memphis, a crisis was usually a matter of life and death. That was why I was riding an elevator up to the 198th floor of a building I had been in hundreds of times but had no memory of, having received clipped directions and a specific code phrase twenty-three minutes ago from my organization’s operator.  As my floor approached I made some minute adjustments to my tie and checked my neatly oiled-back dark hair under my fedora before replacing it, knowing full well they were as immaculate as when I had left my flat. It wouldn’t do to look disheveled in front of the boss, especially if your boss happened to be a god.

The gold elevator doors parted and I stepped out, nodding to my right in greeting to the guard with the street sweeper tucked under his suit jacket. “Deliquia,” he responded with dry respect, addressing me by the name that, like many things in my life, my boss had given me.

My patent leather shoes passed silently over the blue pile carpeting, the cool elegance of the azure, gold and frosted white of the hallway décor reflected in my suit, cufflinks and hatband like I was an extension of it. I didn’t remember this building, but clearly it had left an impression on me.

The call hadn’t been a surprise, and indeed I had anticipated it like a tongue anticipates the first drop of liquor from a tilted glass. I wasn’t me pent up in the three room cell of my flat, waiting for that call that only came from one place. I was a hammer without a nail, a chamber without a round, a glove without a hand in those quiet moments. Thank Amon for that glorious ringing.

As I rounded the corner I saw that Mattie had beaten me here and her energy was even higher than my own, pacing like a caged tiger before the double doors with the gold-inlaid sunburst design. She was smoking heavily, pacing in a cloud of cigarillo smoke while still studiously flicking the ash into the tray she carried in her off-hand. Mattie Oliver feared nothing this side of Duat but being stared down by a deity and being politely reminded to dispose of her trash in a civilized manner had been a humbling experience.

While I blended with the décor my fellow enforcer stood out like a roman candle at a funeral, the rich burgundy of her custom tailored pin-striped suit with its deeply nipped jacket to accentuate her hips and unfashionably tight slacks screamed where most women’s fashion quietly murmured. Amber cat-slit eyes peered out from beneath the brim of the snow white Panama hat that topped her strawberry blonde curls and she smiled broadly, flashing pearly, elongated canines. “Rex,” she greeted with the other half of my loaned name, “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

“Ms. Oliver. Perhaps I figure I don’t have to work so hard to impress the boss,” I replied, nonplussed as I gripped the lapels of my jacket and craned my neck until a series of pops sounded.

“Get complacent then. The graveyards of the world are filled with indispensable men,” she quoted, taking one last long draw from her cigarillo and crushing it into the glass ashtray with a fingernail of gleaming cinnamon.

Any more of our good-natured sniping was cut short as the double doors slid open under their own power, a warm breeze that smelled of myrrh and other spices wafting past us to spill out into the hallway. The men on guard farther down the hall stood a little straighter and my pulse quickened at the electric thrill that coursed through the air like a storm about to break. Mattie’s smile had grown even wider, her nostrils twitching as she drew in the scent and the power that rode along with it. No further invitation was necessary and pausing only long enough for my partner to deposit the tray on a nearby marble console we entered in lock-step while the doors swung closed behind us.

Potted palms towered above us, making the most of the arched twenty foot ceilings while the rich blue carpeting temporarily yielded to white marble tile shot through with veins of black and gold that rimmed a reflecting pool, the under-lit water creating a shifting web of blue luminescence against the ribbed contours of the distant ceiling and the walls papered in a repeating pattern of golden fronds against black. A bronze statue of Anuket knelt at the edge of the pool, the steady trickle of water pouring from a humble urn setting a tranquil mood.

We passed through an archway strung with a sparse beaded curtain of tumbled amber and golden chain into another short hallway, the time-worn bust of a pharaoh watching our progress at the other end of the hall under the glare of a pot light.  A pair of French doors with frosted glass etched with images of temples along a great river with a rising sun coming over the horizon stood to our right, the last barrier between us and our destination.  We paused then, just long enough to be respectful as the outline of our bodies in the glass and the sound of our footwear on the tiles had announced our presence long before we had arrived there.

“Come,” a brusque voice ordered from beyond the door, as deep and resonate as a gong. My fellow enforcer and I both grasped a handle and opened the doors as one, closing them behind ourselves and removing our hats and advancing towards the massive desk at the other end of the room.

The walls of the office were papered in broad vertical stripes of gold and lapis blue that drew the eyes up to the coffered ceiling with its neat squares of ivory and gold. A mated pair of Louis XVI style gilded chairs kept a matching sofa company while a coffee table of tawny teak gleamed in amongst them while supporting a fan of current newspapers and another ash tray.

The desk, its edges and front adorned with graceful images of birds of prey on the hunt, was a full eight feet wide if it was an inch, and was so massive that I had found myself wondering if the rest of the office had been built around it, and yet considering the being seated behind it, it scarcely seemed adequate. Fedora held respectfully to my chest I paused just before the two chairs set before the desk like wooden penitents I bowed, casting my eyes to the floor for a count of two before raising them to once again gaze upon what was both my employer and my surrogate father.

The tall-backed leather chair he sat in framed his powerful build, the chocolate leather sharply defining the lines of the ivory suit he wore while the clasped fingers nestled in dove grey suede was reflected in the silver silk of his tie and kerchief. From the shoulders up, however, his appearance shifted from the merely extraordinary to the uncanny. His head, if could be called such, was that of a great falcon made from beaten and burnished gold and enameled in white along the throat and brow with a thick band of black along the eyes and dipping down the cheeks. All of this was flanked by a nemes headdress made of alternating bands of gold and lapis lazuli, and on the peak of his head a great disk of rose quartz sat, held in place by a double-headed snake.

“My lord Horus, we come as you bid,” I greeted him as I always had, keeping my gaze respectfully lowered, noting the cigarette that smoldered in an ash tray at his side. I had never seen him smoke, nor was I even certain he was capable of such a thing and a part of me suspected that it was an affectation that made him appear more human to his subordinates, one solely for Mattie’s benefit in this instance, not that she was a stranger to serving gods.

“Please, be seated,” came the deep bass voice from the seated divine. “Would you care for some water, something to eat, perhaps?” he asked, freeing his right hand to gesture off to where a sideboard of black marble held a bronze ewer, several goblets and a tray heaped with fresh fruit. This too, was a formality. Mattie and I both declined politely as we took our seats, resting our hats on our bent knees. While I knew the water to be refreshing and the fruit to be of perfect ripeness we were here to sate a different appetite.

“Very well then, to business.  I have managed to secure the first in what I hope to be many shipments to Fariq Abadi’s establishment, The Opal Oasis. This is quite a coup for us, Set having all but sewn up the East End, but after some careful negotiations I have convinced him to purchase a small keg at a premium and to dole it out this evening during the party for his daughter’s birthday.”

Mattie and I exchanged a glance as our lord spoke. This was indeed a big deal; having eked out a living selling to rough speakeasies and small bottles to some of the more daring private connoisseurs of the precious dayshine this was an opportunity for Horus to finally come into his own and be taken seriously as an option for the high society of New Memphis. It had been tough going, some months his
offerings barely enough to allow him to remain out of Duat, but they had persevered and now stood on the cusp of better times.

“As you can well imagine I have a keen interest in making sure that Mr. Abadi gets his shipment on time and intact. I want you tailing the couriers the whole way. Set will have caught wind of this transaction and will do everything in his considerable power to make sure that it does not go through, including tipping off the jackals,” the god outlined, his already deep voice dropping even lower as he spoke those final few words.

It made sense, of course. Set had the resources and more importantly the money to have both his own men and what passed for the police force scouring the streets for Horus’s couriers to stop this sale. As Ra’s son, my lord had suffered more than his fair share of scrutiny from Anubis’s enforcers since his esteemed sire and Set had worked together to bring Anubis low in the most devastating way for a god living on the earth realm. Now the jackal-headed deity lived only for revenge and there were few things as terrifying or dedicated as a vengeful god.

“It’ll be the Rusty Quartet, then? Or a blind zeffer? Not via the Downside, certainly,” I asked, leaning forward intensely, hungry for the details.

“It will be the Quartet. I need it to be low-key and mobile, and since it is happening tonight a Downside transfer would take too long so no fear of returning there any time soon,” Horus assured me, knowing all too well my disdain for the distant streets lurking below The Grey. “They will be leaving by the west exit at six sharp and heading out along Scarab until they hit forty-ninth and then it is a straight shot to The Opal. They’ll only deviate if they pick up a tail, just like usual.”

“Rusty Quartet then. The jackals still haven’t fingered them after all these months but you think that’s going to change now?” Mattie chimed in, fidgeting with her hat and jumping on information as eagerly as I was.

“I am just hedging my bets on this one. I do not have to impress upon you both the importance of this job. The rent is almost due and I am growing tired of having to empty the vault every new moon,” he explained, the frustration in his voice making my jaw clench in sympathy. While I didn’t much care for the reason he left his father’s side, his success was my success and I was likewise getting tried with scraping by.

“Of course you do not, my lord. Mattie and I will be hitting on all eight for this, just like we do on every job you send us on,” I replied hastily with a bob of my head then silently cursing how much I sounded like a yes man to my own ears, something I knew Mattie would rib me about later. I couldn’t help it; you don’t work for someone for fifty years and not get a feel for their moods, not get your feathers ruffled when you hear a strain in their voice. I’d been with him since the beginning, longer than anyone and I was going to see this through no matter the gods or men that stood in my way.

“If someone does try and queer this, how bloody can we make them?” Mattie asked, baring her teeth in anticipation.

“I don’t want a war, Ms. Oliver, but this deal will go through,” Horus answered, tapping his finger against the desk like a hammer nailing a coffin shut.

“Understood, boss,” she acknowledged, turning her manic leer to me. I could almost smell the cordite and blood already.
“You are my top soldiers, my will on the streets, my ka. All eyes will be looking for you, so stay low, so low even our own men will not see you. Not even having to quicken your pace through the whole delivery would be ideal. Now, if you have no more questions I think a toast to the success of this venture is in order?” he said, leaving the question hanging in the air while he reached down to slide open the lowest right hand drawer. The resultant golden glow that washed over my lord’s arm and lower torso from this action had me swallow reflexively, my body already anticipating that familiar rush.

I honestly had no more questions, but even if I had I’m not certain I would have been able to articulate them as the cut glass decanter rose into view, held with great care by those mighty, suede-covered fingers before coming to a rest on the desk top. The luminescent fluid within was what made New Memphis run, the pursuit of which had killed more men than tuberculosis and could only be provided by the gods: dayshine.

My eyes moved from the liquid sunshine to the glass doors behind my boss, nearly identical to the ones we had entered through, only grander in scale and artistry. The faint glow from there pulsed like a living heart, the frosted glass reducing the silver-barked, gracefully curving branches of what grew there to a hazy gleam. Each god had a tree, and it was the sap from that tree that was dayshine. If the copper-leafed tree was killed, touched by any but the god from whom it was connected, then they would be banished back to Duat for a millennia; this had almost been the fate of Anubis, and the constant worry of the six remaining deities.

My attention snapped back as with practiced care Horus prepared the drinks for Mattie and me. I received a shot glass with a splash of bourbon and the rest of the glass reserved for the syrupy, radiant elixir; For Mattie, two fingers of gin and one of dayshine, reducing the glow to a mellow luster. After pouring himself a tumbler of bourbon out of politeness Horus returned the bottles to the drawer and pushed our respective cocktails to us. I nodded my thanks as I reached out and held the golden-suffused receptacle in my fingers, letting my eyes trace over the faint swirl that came as the two liquids co-mingled in the glass. The small amount here was worth more than what an honest laborer made in a year and I was going to down it in a single shot.

“To the dawn of a new era of prosperity for all,” Horus toasted, raising his glass to us and giving us the faintest of nods.

“To a well-deserved change in fortune,” I said, holding my own glass aloft.

“And to kicking anyone in the teeth who tries to mess with it hard enough they’ll be shitting smiles,” Mattie declared boldly, drawing an incredulous cough of a laugh from myself before we imbibed our rewards.

I took it all in one shot, but it wasn’t some slug to the back of the throat, no. I tipped the glass back and bathed my tongue in the mixture, letting it leech into my palette before gracefully swallowing it down. It was like Ra’s in many respects; sophisticated with a smoky, rich beginning before trailing off with a hint honey and citrus. Horus’s had a sharper, more robust flavor profile than his father, standing front and center amongst the bourbon while Ra’s would have mingled comfortably in the carefully aged liquor.

I all but clutched the empty glass as the wallpaper began to distend and bulge before finally rupturing, fine yellow sand pouring into the room through the great rents in the walls while the roof peeled away like the tin lid on a can of sardines. The walls melted and fell away entirely into vast waves of dunes under a pre-dawn sky stretching as far as the eye could see, while a gust of moist air drew my attention to the vast river that was now coursing by inches from the legs of my chair. I watched it stretch out like a hurled ribbon of blue-green until it touched the now distant horizon, wherever it touched palm trees erupted from the ground until at its terminus it met with a sapphire sliver of the ocean where a great city of clean white plaster rose up, resplendent with towering statues, obelisks and the sharp angles of great pyramids. A sunrise of amber and pink blossomed over the whole scene, the great burning disk of the sun strangely flanked by two curling golden serpents until reality came crashing back in, the room around me folding back into place like a box around a cake leaving me staring blankly at my lord’s face and licking the last of that wondrous nectar from my lips.

That was, as the common parlance dubbed it, ‘kissing the desert’. Based on the potency of the mixture drinking dayshine could bring hallucinations ranging from what I had just experienced to merely the sound of sand hissing in the wind, or the smell of running river water. Too strong a dose would bring about convulsions and an ugly death and it was a testament to my time serving Horus that I could stand so strong a concentration.

I glanced over to where my partner pressed the cool glass of her tumbler to her brow and panted, giggling girlishly before running her tongue along the inside rim. While his golden countenance did not, could not change, I could almost swear Horus was smiling quietly to himself. “You can stop watering this stuff down so much for me, you know,” Mattie pointed out, setting her tumbler down on the desk with a satisfied thump.

“Of course, Ms. Oliver, it just takes time for one such as you to adjust to the differences between my own dayshine and that of your former patron,” Horus assured her. The mention of Bastet sobered my partner’s mood and she sat back in her chair, smile still on her face but it seemed brittle somehow. She would likely take the reason of why she was no longer counted amongst the leonine goddess’s elite, the Kats, to her grave, even while she still bore the animalistic traits of a long-time imbiber of Bastet’s dayshine.

“It is four-forty-eight,” the falcon-headed god noted upon retrieving his pocket watch and flipping open the sun-etched face of it. “I trust you can make whatever preparations you need to in the time you have remaining. Six o’clock, on the dot.”

“Understood my lord. Abadi and his guests will be sampling your fine product and spreading the word this very evening,” I assured him, getting to my feet and gently setting the empty shot glass on the desk. Replacing our hats my partner and I strode from Horus’s sanctum, pausing only when the final set of doors had us back in the hallway.

“Like an eager little puppy,” Mattie noted dredging up my earlier prolific assurances to our mutual employer.

“And you all but purred downing that dayshine, Ms. Oliver. When you’re old enough you’ll find out how good the undiluted stuff is,” I rejoined mildly, checking my wristwatch and letting my eyes pass over the gleaming gold cufflinks that had also been a gift from my surrogate father.

“And when I’m old enough, you’ll still be that much older. Another thing; all this ‘Ms.Oliver’ shit makes me sound like a damned orphanage matron. Call me Mattie like a normal human being,” she groused, flicking her hair over her shoulder in irritation.
“Shall we get started, Ms. Mattie?” I offered, extending a hand down the hall.

“Not even worth my goddamn time,” my fellow enforcer muttered under her breath as she stormed off with me in tow.

Six sounded on the great Karnak Trade Center clock, with its 150 foot diameter face and gleaming bronze hands looking molten as they caught the rays of the setting sun. Scarab was a major artery in New Memphis, running parallel with its sister street Papyrus and book ended by two suspension bridges. Numerous smaller pedestrian bridges spanned the empty gulf between the two streets, caged affairs that swung out to connect to their twin on the opposite side at scheduled times to allow for the zeffs to ply their trade along the skyway, from the small taxis that ferried those too rich or impatient for the swing bridges to the massive freighters or cruise ships that lumbered their way through the middle of New Memphis on their way across the sea. Conventional automobiles shared the two lanes in the middle of the skyway while pedestrians kept to the wide sidewalks and foot bridges and below that a Metro tramway rattled and hissed on its endless circuit of the Scarab/Papyrus line. I watched as one of the zeff’s, a small one with its rigid, bullet-shaped balloon painted the yellow and black of a taxi take on a fare before rumbling off into the ether.

Below all that The Grey shifted and churned, an impenetrable cloud cover over the lowest reaches of the city and the ground itself. I shuddered and averted my eyes at the thought of the grim, sunless streets of Downside huddled under the artificial ceiling of smog, holding in all the smells and desperation and… Biting my knuckle I managed to yank my mind back to the here and now, nearly missing the exit of the Rusty Quartet half a block ahead of me.

Drawing in a steadying breath I adjusted the briefcase in my hand—an empty prop—and began to walk, merging with the pedestrians who had just been released from work. The Rusty Quartet were easy to pick out, but hard to finger as couriers running dayshine. They were four of Horus’s ka dressed in threadbare suits and bearing slightly battered and careworn instrument cases; a cello, two horns and a drummer. The cellist carried the keg of dayshine, the trumpeters with .45’s and the drummer with a pair of metal batons. To anyone walking the streets they were a foursome of barely-respectable musicians on their way to a gig, frequently joking and turning around to speak with each other while doing tail checks. Decent facades of instruments inside the cases would deter casual observation but if really pressed they would split into two, the horn-blowers acting as interference while drummer and cellist legged it. It hadn’t happened yet, but Horus had seemed to think that the trick’s life was nearing its end and we didn’t have the resources to give away dayshine to the jackals.

I adjusted my hat’s brim and swept the crowds, spotting Mattie across the street after a few moments, wielding a folded-up newspaper and with round-rimmed spectacles of smoked glass to conceal her unusual eyes. Both Mattie and I knew the Quartet’s mannerisms and the timing of their tail checks so dodging their eyes wouldn’t be too much of a problem. We just had to worry about Set’s own ka lurking about and if any jackals had been given an anonymous tip to be on the lookout for a group of musicians.

So Mattie and I danced the tailing dance, altering our speed, our focus, at times I even moved ahead of the Quartet, repeatedly looking at my watch as if heading somewhere important. It seemed to work, as they didn’t alter their path like they would have if they had detected they were being followed.

They turned down forty-ninth like they were supposed to, into the neat rows of buildings interconnected with a network of streets and alleys like an earthborn city. Mattie kept after them while I jogged over the pedestrian bridge and rejoined the operation, noting instantly a pair of New Memphis’s finest pushing through the crowd like sharks through a school of fish. They were on the opposite side of the street and moving counter to our direction, but they were always on the lookout for a target, scowling faces swiveling atop their bullish necks. Anubis gave the meanest, scariest convicts uniforms, batons and hand cannons and set them loose on the public, telling them to fuck up anything that even smelled of the other god’s operations. They ostensibly kept the peace as well, though most crimes carried stiff fines rather than jail time since Anubis needed the money to pay rent. It was improper to say the jackals were dirty cops because that was suggesting that any of them were clean in the first place.

The Quartet noticed them a second after me and managed to keep most of the hitch out of their step as they did, their joking stopped cold. My heart skipped a beat as the black-uniformed men spotted the Quartet, and I could almost see the gears turning behind their eyes as they did some quick calculations. Some jackals were in it for the money, but some just liked to hold their power over others and make their lives a living hell and poor musicians would make good targets. Pitching people over the edge was called the one-way express, and it was a favorite amongst the mooks of the underworld since it took care of the murder and the body all in one go.

I was prepared to begin to intercept them, give them a new target for their abuse but I saw Mattie had already beaten me to it, sauntering up to the two officers and flashing a big smile and playfully running her fingers along the lapels of one of the pair. With a few more words and an extra sway in her walk my partner lead the two down an alley between a Laundromat and a diner. I paused, conflicted between loitering around waiting for her, or going after the Quartet, but in the end I kept moving. The Mattie Oliver I knew could handle two jackals with a blindfold on and both arms tied behind her back. My confidence was rewarded as I paused to check the time on my watch against that in a clock maker’s window to see the blonde walking quickly to catch up, shaking her hand after no doubt having played a chin music lullaby to keep them out of our hair for a good long while.

Clearly shaken by the close call the Quartet engaged in a brief discussion about altering their route under the auspice of pooling their money before eventually continuing on down forty-ninth, determined to stay to the public streets which would at least shield them from Set’s ka acting openly against them.

With the Quartet all jittery Mattie and I were forced to hang back even further, melding with the commuters and having to be content with the occasional glimpse of our marks. We walked until the crowds began to thin and the street lights flickered to life, the setting sun little more than a ruddy memory to our left. It was a second pair of patrolling jackals heading their way that finally made the Quartet deviate, ducking smoothly down a side street and out of view. I couldn’t blame them; this second pair were walking like they were headed somewhere and their eyes scoured the streets like they were hunting for something—or someone—specific. I would have bugged out too.

I was stuck. Either I let the couriers continue on out of sight and catch them again where the back alley would meet Ibis or slip after them down the alley and take my chances with getting spotted. A second later I was pacing down after the Quartet. Mattie could take the long way round and catch up since she was on the other side of the street already. My move to follow them was obvious to the Quartet and they were half-way to pulling out their hidden gats before recognition bloomed on their faces. I waved them on, shoulder-checking to see if the jackals had noticed either me or the Quartet avoiding them but I saw nothing of them or of Mattie.

I didn’t want the Quartet to think they were safe and sound with me watching over them, the reason why Horus didn’t want them to know we were tailing them in the first place lest they get cocky, but when the stakes were this high I couldn’t afford to be a perfectionist. The Quartet disappeared around a corner, heading along a back lane used for deliveries to the various shops and business along forty-ninth and forty-eighth and after one last shoulder check I followed them.

They were scarcely a dozen steps ahead of me when I passed the corner myself, but the sound of every back door in the lane bursting open nearly at once had the predictable effect of scaring the living shit out of the Quartet and sent me sidestepping back to the cover of the alley. My fellow ka tightened up into a protective circle around the cellist, bugle cases opening and .45 automatics drawn while the drummer drew his metal batons and tossed the cloth bag they had been in to the pavement. This was almost military in coordination, a full ten men in suits and scowls exiting the buildings and quickly cutting off all means of escape. They hadn’t noticed me yet, and that was my only saving grace at the moment.

One of the lot, a head taller and in a nicer suit of deep green with a black undershirt and white tie stepped into the lane like he had all the time in the world to do so. Silver flashed on his fingers, his cufflinks, his tie pin, and the teeth that were exposed in an ugly smile that matched his face. I knew his mug, I knew his crew, and I knew how this was going to end if I didn’t intervene. Adofo Silver was Set’s best knee breaker and that was the nicest thing anybody had to say about him. While most gifted with the ancient sand-skinned bloodlines that marked most of the city’s elite somehow in Adofo it was exaggerated to the point of being grotesque. Mar the mahogany skin of his face with scars and plate crooked teeth in a silver alloy and you had a pan that sent shivers down the backs of even hardened enforcers. I could have gone on listing his charms, but the goon opened his trap and began to speak, the words hissing out past teeth like a crushed fender.

“Well, well, well boys, either we’re the smartest sumbitches in all New Memphis, or our friends here aren’t as clever as they thought. Got some funny lookin’ trumpets too, don’t they? Gonna play us a tune? You think two horns can drown out the big band sound I can bring down on your heads, hmmm?” Adofo taunted, dancing a graceless little jig before snapping his fingers, every man on his chopper squad drawing iron and focusing it on my surrounded compatriots. “Get wise, my little chicks of Horus. Hand over the syrup and we’ll leave you enough limbs unbroken to crawl back to your boss.”

I had to act and act fast; Adofo’s second warnings were usually delivered after a hail of gunfire. “This a private session, or can anyone join in?” I called from behind the three men blocking escape to the rear, stepping out into the alleyway and causing them to part. I stood with all the bluster I could summon up, apparently weaponless and eyes barely visible beneath the tilt of my hat’s brim. I stared down mad dogs before but not with such odds against me. I had to stall for Mattie to realize something was up and come running or this was going to get very bloody very quick.

“Oh ho! We have in our presence the very best Horus can call his own; a nameless mongrel standing in the shadow of his predecessor. How’s ol’ Eddie Blaise enjoying his retirement, by-the-by? Heard the jackals sent him down the one way express. Didja ever find enough of him left to send upstate?” Adofo snickered, a sound not unlike a punctured lung.

“He’s spared the double indignity of looking at your face and listening to your wit, Silver, so I still envy him in some things. You boys just luck out tonight or did some wagging tongue make it easy for you?” I shot back, eyeing the edges of my fingernails like they were the only things worth looking at for the moment. 

“Well that’s just something you’re going to have to live with not knowing. Now, if you want to live you’ll let us go about our business tonight and we won’t send you down on a quick trip back where you came from, savvy?” came his response. I needed to stall him a little longer. Come on, Mattie, hurry up.

“As tempting as the offer of getting away from you as fast as possible is, I’m going to have to decline. Nothing business, please take it personally,” I sighed, flicking my hands out to the sides like I were throwing something away. In a flash of yellow light I felt the cool grips of the Wings of the Sun sitting in my palms, the golden blades of each khopesh sword etched with a delicate feather pattern. A short chain of two inches affixed to the pommel of each sword links to where my cufflinks once sat, where they had remained hidden until the time that I needed them. Guns wavered and the goons looked to Adofo for direction at this new development.

He laughed. He kept laughing when in a flash of argent light a pair of silver Lugers materialized into his hands, gleaming even in the dim light. He laughed around his next words, spoken to me over the iron sights of the same Lugers, one aimed at each lung if I were to guess.

“Oh my poor deluded mutt, you don’t know how happy you’ve made me. I was told to let you live so you could watch your patron fail to pay rent and get sucked down to Duat and let you once again become a useless nobody, but only if you didn’t interfere. Now I get to kill you, and your boys, and still take the syrup on top of it all. Ain’t life grand?” he chuckled, his laughter dying away in his throat as he face became deadly serious.

“My life will be pretty good if I get to keep looking at the back of that hairy potato you call a head and not the front, snake,” came a clarion female voice from behind him. Shoe heels crunched on concrete and gun barrels shifted as Mattie walked onto the scene, her gold-plated, pearl-handled .45’s in her hands and pointed at Adofo’s back.

Set’s head ka turned his body sideways, keeping one barrel on me and the other on the new arrival. “Amon dammit boys, nobody had eyes on this dame until she walked right up and fondled my ass with her guns? Seriously? Now I am right pissed,” Adofo complained, his voice losing all pretense at humor as the odds repeatedly shifted away from where he wanted them.

Mattie’s arrival was perfectly timed, but Adofo wasn’t going to back down, and neither were his boys. The Quartet edged slowly towards the building to the right of me, desperate for any sort of cover once the shooting started. Set’s men shifted their aim from them to me to Mattie, trying to determine the biggest threat. Tense seconds passed. I shifted my feet on the pavement, widening my stance and bringing up one sword before me while the other fell behind my back, just like Eddie had taught me what felt like a lifetime ago. My heart began to pound, pulse roaring in my ears, my eyes dancing from target to target while my blades quivered with potential violence.
There was a sound then, once that seemed in time with the thudding of my heart but was coming from all around us, from the alleys, the side streets, everywhere. Short cries of alarm sounded as Adofo’s men spotted something approaching  from the rear and shuffled away, guns waving all over the place in confusion. Booted feet clomping on pavement echoed and buzzed around our ears and it wasn’t long before the source became excruciatingly clear to all of those in the alleyway; jackals, and lots of them.

They pushed Adofo’s men from the doorways and the side streets like a black tide, revolvers in one hand, truncheons in the other. The ambush of the Quartet in the alley was a stroke of bad fortune; the arrival of this many jackals was gods-damned divine intervention. Rather than just lay in cracking skulls and shooting anything their batons couldn’t reach the black-uniformed police just blocked off all escape, currently satisfied with just tracing their thumbs over the hammer on their shooters and glowering beneath the short leather bill of their hats. The Quartet, Adofo and his men, Mattie and I all formed a confused knot in the middle of the lane, too few weapons for too many targets.