Sea of Chaos - Part One - Chapters 1, 2, and 3

"The product of an angel mating with a demon."

That's how I choose to answer the question of who, or what, is the main character of this story.

And that's all I'll give you as introduction. I'm including here the first three chapters of Part One. The last two will be posted as I edit them lightly throughout tonight and tomorrow.

As always, please offer feedback. I don't need you to look for what's wrong and tell me where I've failed as a writer; it's not at that stage yet. Just general thoughts and feelings.

Thanks.

-Neal

Sea of Chaos

Part I. Prelude

Chapter 1, “Heaven and Hell”

Roc wandered in the morning mist, through the city drenched in fog. The city was beginning to awaken. Minutes ago he had emerged from his little nest of newspaper and rags, a niche known only to him, where he lay protected from the fierce winds that swept through the city every night. One by one the other urchins roused from their sleep, crawling out from their cocoons of trash and starting anew their constant search for that day’s food, that day’s riches.

Roc lived near the Bridge. He liked to start his daily quest by passing that daunting structure of cement and steel. Daunting for its size, and daunting for the legion of mercenary soldiers that stood guarding it, cutting off the only possible exit from the artificial island city that did not involve willful death. Day after day the men stood there, entrenched in their positions as naturally as moss on stone, a permanent fixture of Oshana that no one ever thought to challenge.

Always would Roc let his imagination run free when his gaze met the rows of men and massive artillery atop the gates and towers. The Bridge itself stretched beyond the city, over the sea, and seemingly into the clouds. Roc would wonder what could possibly lay on the other side that could require such a heavy defense.

A land of treasure?

Of milk and honey?

Of immortality, and life eternal?

Heaven, most said. Those that had been born into the confines of the city, those who knew only conjectures of the outside world, those were the ones who called it heaven. But what was heaven? some argued. The smaller ones were content with the thought of milk and honey. The bigger ones wanted power, prestige, vengeance against those who had given them this life. But eventually all settled on the true answer: heaven was anywhere that wasn’t here. Anywhere that wasn’t hell.
Roc knew personally the fruits of the city, of Oshana. The bodies he came across, of men, women, and children---the bodies of all who failed in their quests---were routine finds. The ones with the protruding ribs and swollen bellies were the failures. The ones with bullets in their heads and blood pooled all around them were mostly just unlucky. Roc had survived for eight years because he was fittest---”and the wittiest,” he liked to say.

No one lived forever, and certainly not here, but that didn’t keep many from trying. It didn’t keep some of the inhabitants from trying to leave or sneak out undetected, either. Being caught was more than a certainty; those souls always ended up drowned or hung from the Bridge by cables, swaying in the wind as an example to the rest. If the legion of guards didn’t catch them in their makeshift rowboats, the great towering searchlight---once a lighthouse---always did.

The urchins, those byproducts of despair, of passion, or of unbridled brutality, knew better. They knew to stay in the world they had been born into, the world that perpetuated their state of being as all self-contained worlds and ecosystems do. Desperation ultimately led to death, and death to desperation across many generations. They were mere links in a chain; they understood their place, implicitly if not overtly. The inescapable darkness that hung over the city like a funeral shroud was just the way of things.

Watching the Bridge, Roc stood in the shadowy mouth of an alleyway on the Boulevard, the road that circled the city where mercenary foot soldiers patrolled regularly. Standing there, Roc didn’t see the mercenary guards anymore, like one sees a forest but not the trees; his small but perceptive eyes saw past those chess pieces and out into the clouds the Bridge stretched into, like a lateral tower to the gods.

With the attitude of waking from a dream, he turned his back on that sight and delved into the city, into his inheritance. He had heard about a cheese shop that was opening up near the docks and wanted to get there early, perhaps before...well, before others got to it first, whether it was his fellow urchins or the armed gunmen paid by the shop-owners to keep the urchins out. Roc gamboled through the backstreets and alleys, keeping out of sight of potential predators and protected from the frost-like winds that would easily bite through his rags. He poked his head out onto one particular street and immediately felt a cold draft blast through his uncut greasy dark hair.

“This wind is bound to get to me before the cheese does,” he mumbled as he rubbed his arms in the alley. He gave the winds a glare of annoyance.

But as he made a more careful glance at his surroundings, he noticed a perfectly good cloth cap on the ground, lying there, in his mind, in utter lack of utility. He frowned at the wasted article and promptly picked it up, and placed it upon his head, putting it to use.

“Huh!” he said with an approving nod. The only blemish was a small dark stain on one side. Also it was a bit large as caps go, but all the better, as it fit around the tops of his ears. “Golly. What a find.”

The clouds started dropping their burdens, suddenly and hard. To his peers the rain would mean shivering and wallowing, but Roc dismissed it and rejoiced in his fortunate, fortuitous find. A cap just before it started raining! The timing couldn’t have been better. To his colleagues on the streets, it might have meant a lot of shaking, of huddling under the nearest roof and being quite miserable; it might have meant illness or even death, but to Roc it was an opportunity. He would be willing to travel through the cold and rain to get to that cheese shop first. The cap would make him invincible, impervious to the elements.

He just started out into the street when he heard a sound behind him. Something had banged into a metal trash can, sending it flying. Roc spun around to see the garbage and waste pouring out of it as the sound of the metal reverberated between the buildings. An older boy, a youth no older than sixteen, had ducked into the alley and knocked over the can.

The youth’s appearance spiked Roc’s senses, for Roc didn’t see him as the young man he was. He saw him, and all older kids, as tyrants to cower before, as monsters to run from.

Roc turned to do just that, run away like a hare from a fox, when he heard another sound past the ringing of the trash can. Whimpering. Crying. Heaving sobs and shortness of breath.

The monster was afraid. The realization rooted Roc in place.

The crying youth got himself back on his feet, but stumbled over some of the rain-soaked garbage. He might have made it to the exit where Roc stood frozen like an unwilling sentinel, but with a short scream of pain the youth once more fell to the ground. His feet had landed on shattered pieces of green glass that had emptied out of the trash. His feet had been impaled, sliced up.

Again he tried to get up, but his hands, in pushing off the ground, were pressing on the glass, and he collapsed for the last time, trembling and quietly sobbing. To add to the injuries of the glass, Roc could see blood on his temples and left thigh. Whatever his quest was, it was going to end here, Roc knew. And he couldn’t quite look away.

Because part of him enjoyed it. Roc had never been terrorized by this particular bully, but there was no doubt the Monster, which is what they called the older teens, was not innocent.

But was anybody truly innocent, that lived in hell?

It was then that two new figures stepped into the scene, the dogs on the hunt for the fox. They blocked off the other side of the alley like a solar eclipse. The ominous cut of the men, in their lavish pinstriped suits and matching donned hats, was framed by the brick walls of the alley. Roc’s vision began to spin out of fear, and he saw their silhouettes at a harsh, surreal angle. Neither face could be seen beneath the brim of their hats. Their hands held machine guns near their hips, trained calmly but fiercely on their prey. The youth pleaded incoherently, but over the heavy rain, the gangsters, the pinstriped men, could not, would not hear his voice. They fired simultaneously and without a single word of prelude. The burst of gunfire exploded like thunder in Roc’s ears, and the older youth’s screams were soon silenced. Red was added to the black, white, and gray of the city. The rain could not wash it away.

Roc, chest pounding, swung around out of sight of the gangsters, facing the empty street with his back to the wall. Besides the obvious threat of death, he had noticed tattooed symbols on the hands of the pinstriped men, their left hands. It looked something like an X, or two waves crashing onto each other. The symbol of the Sea.

Unsure if they had seen him or not, Roc bolted across the street, then down it, taking every corner he came across and bounding like the hare he was.

He did not know who the youth was, or why he was killed. It didn’t matter in Oshana. Identity carried no weight here. Anyone could be killed at any time, for any number of reasons. It was inevitable. Only the strong survived, and even then not for very long.

Roc finally found refuge in the rubble of a bombed out building, a mansion destroyed long ago in the mysterious wars fought in, over, and outside Oshana decades previously. No one in today’s world really knew what had happened so very long ago, and like everything else, it didn’t matter. What was there meant everything in the quest for survival; why it was meant nothing.

After catching his breath and ensuring they did not follow him, Roc looked around to  again gauge his surroundings. The ground beneath him was black and ashen, and filled with broken pieces of cement and ancient remnants of crumbling walls. There were a myriad of little hiding holes to take shelter in, some bigger than others. Roc felt most comfortable in the smaller ones, where he wouldn’t have to keep watch on multiple sides to ensure his safety.

As he was about to settle into one to lay low for a few minutes, he heard the faint sound of a crackling fire. His cat-like curiosity was piqued, and he hesitantly ventured out of his nook to investigate. Many of the walls had been graffitied with strange but very definite symbols. Around a few corners he found, in the middle of a circular wall of crumbled stone, a trashcan fire, and around it four people, two men and two women, sleeping, strung out, and skeletal.

And sitting next to them, in plain sight, some food.

Roc’s gaze narrowed in on the hunk of meat they had evidently not finished before passing out. Meat was a far grander treasure than cheese. The sight of beef, though not in prime condition, filled Roc’s mouth with saliva, and made his tiny stomach grumble. As with the hit he had just witnessed, he gave no thought as to how these people got such a valuable commodity, or why they hadn’t finished it off, but now it was his for the taking. It might even be as easy as walking over there and picking it up. And by that right it was his. That was the nature of things in Oshana.

He started toward the druggies, pausing at interim points behind larger pieces of rubble to ensure they were all still out of it. But at the last pausing point, when he was so close he could even smell the scent of the meat, he stopped himself and looked closer.

They were all in various states of undress. Scattered between them on the ground were used needles and little unopened baggies filled with powder and crystals. A gruesome purple and blue spot on the closest man’s left forearm showed where a needle had penetrated many times. On the back of the same man’s right hand was tattooed an image of a rose with the thorny stem wrapped around the wrist. To top it all off, that right hand held a gun.

They were dealers. Irresponsible, idiotic, and addicted dealers, but dealers. They had connections to a gang, shown by the hand tattoo. Roc visualized those connections as strings a puppeteer uses to control the puppet. Then the movements of that puppet controlled another one below. He had watched an old Chinese man do a puppet show one time. The image came to him in a flash, then faded quickly as the scent of the meat once again filled his nostrils.

He would risk it. He had to. That was nothing new. Every choice he had ever made was a risk. It couldn’t be helped. He darted forward with soft steps over the scorched ground. He intended to grab the hunk of meat and run off, but as he took it in hand, he couldn’t help himself and bit into it.

One of the women, covered by a thin blanket, suddenly stirred. Roc didn’t notice at first. Not until she sat straight up, the blanket falling and revealing a bare chest and ghostly thin torso beneath. Roc looked up just as she let out a monstrous, screaming roar, as if in an acid-laced dream. It terrified him, and he dropped the meat onto the ground and started backing away. The woman, whose heartbeat Roc could hear, started shaking the sleeping man next to her.

“Nigel!” she screamed. “It’s a dirty turfing thief! Nigel! NIGEL!”

Nigel, the one with the gun, whose once-handsome face was now gaunt, hollow, and framed by long, black, greasy hair, roused from his sleep but reacted as if drunk, with a slur and a daze.

“What...what the hell?” he said, trying to orient himself as he sat up. He, too, was naked underneath his blanket. The other two sleepers were still totally unconscious beneath thin rags and blankets of their own.

“Go get him, Nigel! Shoot the little bastard!” shrieked the woman.

Roc let adrenaline fuel him as he once more snatched up the meat from the ground and started running. Nigel managed to get to his feet and fired at Roc. The shots weren’t even close to hitting him, but Roc didn’t know that, so he dove behind a mess of concrete and rebar. Nigel, lumbering forward, kept firing in his general direction, pinning him to where he was. Roc was prepared to throw the meat back, but just as he cocked his arm, he heard a click.

Nigel was out of ammunition.

Roc couldn’t believe his luck. After a few more frustrated clicks and curses from Nigel, Roc stood up where he was with something of a smile on his face. Nigel was about thirty feet away, and in no condition to chase down a little turfing thief like Roc. With a roar of rage and irrationality, Nigel threw the empty gun at the obnoxious kid. In that motion he lost his tenuous balance and fell to the ground with a grunt, where he lost most of the consciousness he had gained in the last twenty seconds. His throw turned out to be more accurate than his aim, so Roc simply collected the empty gun from the ground where it had landed just a few feet away. Cheerfully he turned to Nigel and his companion, tipped his cap to both of them.

“That’s a little sparrow for you!” he said, and scurried off.

---

Several blocks and thoughts later, Roc had uncovered a kernel of an idea in his brain. A flame, really, ignited by the two incidents of the morning. He knew that flame needed a bellows to fuel it and fan it higher, so he found a good place to think. Up some stairs, to the roof of an old apartment building. As he climbed through the fog, the sun poked through some clouds. The new light bounced off the surrounding mist and made it tough to look up without squinting.

Roc sat on the edge of the roof, his feet dangling over the side, examining the gun in his hand. He didn’t know anything about guns; had never fired or even held one before. He knew he needed ammunition, but even if he could get it, he wouldn’t know how to load it, and doubted anyone would ever show him how.

But he didn’t think he’d need that. The image of the gun might be enough to ward off a Tyrant, what the kids in his neighborhood called the burgeoning pubescent teens, the stage before becoming a Monster. That Monster back there in the alleyway, the one who had somehow incurred the wrath of the Sea...what was he afraid of? The guns, obviously, but there was something more than that. Some danger higher than just the menace of a gun.

Roc snapped his fingers---it was the Sea itself! The name alone was something to be afraid of. Why? he thought. Because, he answered himself, it represented something bigger. A group, a large group, of very dangerous people. Men with guns and power, who lorded over the city. Men with...connections.

So what if Roc could create his own little Sea? His own gang? Something greater and more threatening than himself alone. No way could a group of kids his age fight in the same arena as the Sea, but that wasn’t the goal. He wanted protection from Tyrants and Monsters. That the Sea gangsters were adults and therefore all the more formidable an enemy shouldn’t cut down the possibility of children banding together to protect themselves from those closer to their own age. Age shouldn’t matter in wanting, and creating...a family.

That’s what he needed. And below him, two floors beneath his dangling feet, he saw the beginning of that family. An incident springing up between two kids on the street below. Today had been blessed by the fickle gods that reigned over Oshana: a cap, a gun, and now this Tyrant laughing as he pushed and shoved another kid a few years younger, one closer to Roc’s age. The bully advanced on the younger boy with startling purpose.

Just as the younger kid fell against the wall and the older cocked his arm back, Roc intervened. “Hey!” he shouted from the rooftop. “HEY!”

He had to be bold. He had to be fierce. He had to be mean. He had to play it totally straight. No fear; total control.

The bully turned and looked up. He squinted into the fog-reflected sunlight to see Roc’s gun pointing directly at him. He drew back, then glanced at the long-necked boy he had been about to pummel.

“What is this?” he said, a slight fearfulness in his voice. But was it fear, or just annoyance at the interruption?

“What’s your name?” Roc said, still holding the gun on him but casually swinging his legs back and forth.

“Roya,” the boy said, playing along.

“How old are you?” Roc said.

“Don’t know, do I, squirt?” he spat.

“Why were you beating him up?”

Roya shrugged. “Wanted to. No reason. What’s it to you?”

Roc eyed Roya. “That kid’s my family,” he said. “I’m looking out for him.” Then Roc made a crucial play. “I can look out for you too, if you want.”

Roya snorted, and flashed his eyebrows in arrogance. “Do you think I really need it?”

“If you think you got kevlar on under that shirt, then sure.”

Roya was silent.

“Let me come down there, and we’ll talk,” Roc said, his gun still pointed casually down at Roya. Though he had never held a gun before, he was still plenty capable of imitating the many gun-flaunting poses he had witnessed in his short life.

Roya remained silent. He seemed to be...calculating.

No one, no thing, not a wind or a speck of rain swept through that street just then.

Then the silence broke, and Roya smiled widely.

“I would love to talk,” he said.

Roc, turning to the stairs, hesitated, and stared briefly into that face. Even from thirty feet up, Roc could make out thick, boomerang-shaped eyebrows that defined the rest of his surprisingly handsome features. After a moment he broke the stare and continued down, and all three talked. Mostly Roc and Roya, though. Roc helped the other boy to his feet and pronounced him Second, inducting him into the family as his number two man without even asking him. Second went along with it quietly, shyly, and never tried to offer his real name or even question Roc and his ways.

Roya was a little different. Contrary to expectations, he didn’t question Roc much either, and this made Roc uneasy. His charisma and gold-colored eyes, framed by those thick, sharp, devious eyebrows, never let Roc feel totally in control, as he had intended to be. Roya agreed to go along with Roc, even outwardly accepting Roc’s role as leader, and Second as number two. But Roc could hear violence in his voice, a musical, attractive violence, and while Roc never addressed them openly, he never forgot Roya’s words of explanation for beating up Second.

He had wanted to. No reason.

Chapter 2, “The Roc”

He called it the Roc. Not for himself, he told the other nine. For the comics hero, who he happened to be named after. The title united the little sparrows and ensured Roc’s place at their head. And under his observant leadership, they actually succeeded in accomplishing Roc’s original goal. They kept safe, and they kept fed.

They did this through shared labor. Roc divided the duties into three, and they each took a turn daily. Three of them were to find work in the markets, doing odd jobs or errands for shop owners or anyone with money, really. Three were set on circling duty, keeping watch on the streets around their turf for defense against Tyrants, Monsters, and Darks. The last three were on the sniff, searching out marks and fair games around town that the Roc could take advantage of---things like rich snobs they could con, soup kitchens they could claim, and, most significantly, older boys---the very ones who had once terrorized them---they could take vengeance on. This last one, this war on the Tyrants and Monsters of the city, proved especially fruitful and satisfying. It was also the one that mattered most in the end.

They established a strip from the Bridge to the Canal as their turf, and even some of the dock markets. They looked out for each other, almost always moving in groups. Roc made this law after he had to run away from a madman in an alley in the process of cutting off his own fingers. The empty gun Roc waved around had not proved a successful deterrent. Roya, an incidental witness to the scene, had laughed at him for that, and Roc consequently made teaming up the way of the family.

Roya was the mystery Roc both needed and did not want to look at.

Roya, easily oldest and a head higher than the tallest, stayed in the background. He watched more than anything. Always, like he was taking notes. None of the other kids questioned it because he acted dutifully, and did whatever Roc asked. But that was part of the game, the tension between the two. Roc guessed that Roya had caught on to the fact that every assignment he gave was a test of trust. Roya passed each one and fulfilled his obligations, but often made well-timed and carefully chosen comments in Roc’s presence that kept Roc on his toes. Every subtle strike was delivered with that same wide smile, those brow-shadowed golden eyes. To Roc it was strange that Roya never used his natural charisma to win over any of the others, which Roc assumed would be his goal. Whatever he was playing, it was deeper than Roc could guess, perhaps deeper than he could understand. But his ability to dance on the surface and block each blow kept him and his little family afloat. Roya wouldn’t be a problem.

The crux of the comments was the same thing that galvanized the gang in the first place.

“I’ve never seen you use that gun,” Roya would sometimes mention, standing there with a grin and his hands casually in his pockets. It was a striking pose and a grin Roc would never forget. One that he tried to ignore.

In truth, no one had seen Roc use his gun. Roc often kept it out and in his hand, even used it to intimidate potential threats, no-goods and all-bads and would-be thieves. But his bluff had never been called; he had never been forced to pull that trigger. And he still hadn’t found bullets or cartridges or magazines, or whatever kind of ammunition was meant to fill it. He knew he’d need to soon.

But even that thought scared him. Despite the death that swirled around the city like a storm, Roc seemed to be its eye---he was terrified of having to actually kill someone. His childish mind did not contemplate using the gun to wound; for him it represented murder only.

So he had to be careful around Roya.

And he had to find some ammo.

Chapter 3, “A Smith in Two Fashions”

Peter Smith, a man of about thirty, tried not to let the grime and chaos of the city mar him, not his shop and not his soul. He wore a dark green apron with tools and instruments filling all but two pockets. He ironed and pressed his shirt, pants, and apron nightly, using a metal pan filled with steaming hot water, and hung them up overnight. In the morning he rose with the sun, even though that celestial body was hardly ever visible, and swept the sidewalk out front with his makeshift straw broom. Afterwards he stood in front of his establishment and waited, hands in empty pockets.

He was never quite sure what he waited for. His line of business did not depend on public advertisements or bell-ringing or wooing customers in to buy one of his products impulsively. He relied on appointments and connections. He had no need to wait. But that was what he had seen his father do when he was a child. Wait outside, professionally, with dignity. The only way to escape the filth was to rise above it, even if his success relied on links to those very people he tried so hard not to be, those who epitomized the filth. Not the children, the starving orphans or the desperate, miserable ones forced to do what was necessary to survive---not these, who Peter acknowledged he might very well be one of---but the gangsters, the powerful ones, the rule-setters and soul-crushers. He could see the big picture, even if no one else could. But he was content to keep his civilized ways to himself and to his family.

After a time standing outside in the crisp, cool air, Peter retreated back into his store. With a sigh he examined the glass cases that displayed his products, noting some smudges on one that he had forgotten to clean yesterday. He took a rag, spat into it, and wiped away the fingerprints, making the glass practically invisible. He checked his watch, saw that he had about ten minutes till his first appointment, and went behind the counter to pick up a book. It was a book of poems, hardly still bound together, but one that his grandfather had passed down to his father, and now it was his. Special care was taken for this book; Peter handled it delicately and respectfully as he turned its pages. He finally landed on the one he wanted to read.

A Prayer

by Edgar A. Guest

God grant me kindly thought

And patience through the day

And in the things I’ve wrought

Let no man living say

That hate’s grim mark has stained

What little joy I’ve gained.

God keep my nature sweet,

Teach me to bear a blow,

Disaster and defeat,

And no resentment show.

If failure must be mine,

Sustain this soul of mine.

God grant me strength to face

Undaunted day or night

To stoop to no disgrace

To win my little fight;

Let me be, when it is o’er,

As manly as before.

He looked at the gold ring on his left hand, and smiled.

Just then the door to his shop opened and he checked his watch. Six minutes early. Unlike them. His customers usually arrived precisely on time. The only ones in Oshana who did mark the passage of time. Then Peter Smith saw just who had entered his shop.

A boy, roughly eight years old wearing a dirty old shirt emblazoned with a blue and red flag and an oversized brown cap to top it all off. He was the same height as many of the displays he was passing, no more than four feet tall. The boy made it to the counter before Peter could respond more actively. Only his nose and eyes were visible between the edge of the counter and the cap.

“Can I help you?” Peter said, somewhat amazed.

“I need bullets,” the boy said. “You sell bullets here, right?”

“I do,” said Peter, trying to analyze the kid. “I do sell them. Do you have money to pay?”

The boy nodded, then reached behind him and brought out something from his waistband. It was a gun. Peter’s eyes widened and he instinctively reached down beneath the counter to grab his shotgun. But he stopped when he realized a second later that the boy wasn’t pointing the gun at him.

“I need bullets for this,” the boy said, and placed it on the counter, seemingly unaware of the threatening gesture he had just made.

“A Mikan, huh?” Peter said, raising an eyebrow as he looked down at the gun and slowly put his hand over it. “Now what the hell are you doing with a semi-switching Mikan T5?”

“I have money,” the boy said, and lifted his over-large t-shirt to withdraw some bills from his trouser pocket. He set them on the counter, right next to the gun.

“Listen, kid,” Peter said with a snort, “I’m not going to give someone as young as you the power to kill. Your soul is still new. You’re fresh. Keep it that way.”

“You don’t want me to be able to defend myself?”

The kid had a point, but Peter wondered how true the sentiment of that statement was, if that’s why the kid actually wanted it. Children had the right to defend themselves, didn’t they? Ideally, they shouldn’t have to. But that wasn’t reality.

He’d never been confronted with such an issue. He didn’t want the kid corrupted. But he didn’t want him preyed upon, either. This conflict, the sad necessity of violence, lay at the heart of Oshana, and this kid was the face of it. It troubled Peter, but he didn’t quite have time to run the full gamut of contemplation. So he would have to ignore it. Put it out of his mind, like all his other demons of conscience.

“No deal, kid,” Peter finally said, his hand still loosely guarding the gun on the counter.

The boy’s scrunched up in anger and he huffed. “Then please give me back my gun,” he said, holding out his open hand.

Peter said nothing, and was still trying to decide whether or not to return the gun when the two people he had been expecting entered the shop.

“Quaint, clean, civilized violence!” said the leader of the two, looking around. “I like it already. Don’t you like it, Det?”

The two men wore rich suits; the leader all in white and the other with pinstripes. Both wore hats on their heads and rose boutonnieres in their lapels.
At their entrance the boy gasped and slyly slunk back into the shadows amidst the displays.

“We’ve got a kid here, too!” said the leader. “That yours, Mr. Smith?”

“No, no, just one from the streets,” Peter said, casually dragging the gun off the counter and placing it next to the shotgun on a shelf beneath. He then went around the counter to approach the two men. “My three sons are at home. We just had our third a few weeks ago. Selula is taking care of them. In any case, it is nice to meet you at last, Mr. Guthrie.”

“Call ‘im Terry,” said Terry Guthrie’s partner, whom he had called Det. Det was smaller, thicker, darker in tone, a bit more stodgy and with a face badly in need of shaving.

“Yeah, genealogically we’re old friends, aren’t we?” Terry said to Peter. He seemed to Peter to be in his thirties. His bright red tie stood out like fresh blood against the rest of his white apparel. Charming brown eyes matched by brown hair under the hat, and energy in his walk and in his talk: the classic look of an alpha male. “My pop knew your pop. That’s what they told me. Trusted him as a fine gunsmith. Ah, I suppose that’s why your name is Smith? Gunsmithing?”

“I don’t know. It could be that, or it could be coincidence,” Peter said meekly.

“You could say that about a lot of things that happen,” Terry said, casting a keen eye on Peter. “Doesn’t mean much. Now how about that gun of mine?”

“Oh, yes. It’s been repaired to perfect condition, and cleaned. But couldn’t I interest you in some of these other firearms while you’re here as well?”

“Listen, Mr. Smith, you’re too young for this formality. If you’re younger than me, you can talk like me. I give you that right. But now, I just want to see my old gun. She’s been with me a long time and I’d like to see her recovered again.”

“Bloody ridiculous, calling a gun a girl,” Det muttered.

“The only girl I’ll ever commit to,” Terry said, eyes sparkling. “And I’d like to see her again.” His sparkling eyes narrowed on Peter. “Now.”

The change in tone sent Peter hustling into the back room, his workshop where he cleaned, repaired, and built customized weaponry. At first he couldn’t find Terry Guthrie’s gun, and he searched every corner and cubby of the room in a bit of a panic. When at his most frantic point, he discovered it sitting on his counter in the most obvious spot possible. He breathed again, took it in hand, placed it in a small foam-padded briefcase, and returned to the counter.

“I have it... I have it here, Mr. Guthrie,” Peter said, setting the case down before Terry, who he was startled to find turning away from the kid. In addition to watching and listening this whole time, the kid had taken this opportunity to talk to this powerful man, unaware of his rank and reach.

And had apparently won him over.

“That’s all well and good, Mr. Smith,” Terry said, cracking open the case and taking only a cursory glance inside before raising his eyes back up to Peter. “And I thank you for that. I really do.” He wore only a mask of a smile on his face now. “But...this kid tells me you won’t sell him what he needs. Kid tells me he had money, and you denied him your services. Even took his gun.”

The boy stood there, innocent and dumb. Peter stuttered, but Terry spoke over it.

“I don’t know if we can pay you for fixing this gun and be fair to you if you aren’t going to be fair in your business,” he said.

“Terry, you damn softie,” Det said. “You’ll listen to every kid but mine.”

“Yours is different,” Terry said, brown eyes still on Peter. “He’s getting what he deserved for how he acts. Survival of the fittest.”

“Damn you to hell,” Det said.

Terry ignored Det. His attention was still fixated on Peter. “So what’s it gonna be, Pete? My custom and that boy’s, or none of it. What do you say?”

Peter sighed, smiled weakly, and called the boy over. With that same feigned cheer he brought out the boy’s empty Mikan and chose a certain small box from the supply cupboard behind him. He put both the gun and the ammunition on the counter and slid it across, into the boy’s waiting hands. Peter turned to Terry, reemphasizing the weak smile, but Terry was shaking his head.

“Ah, ah, ah!” he said. “You’ve forgotten to make a fair exchange. Kid, give him the money you owe him.”

Peter told him the price and the boy produced two bills and placed them on the counter. Peter took them graciously, and once more faced Terry, who was busy withdrawing some bills of his own out of his wallet. These represented more significant money; Terry didn’t even ask the price, just tossed them onto the counter and picked up the case.

“I believe we’re all square now,” Terry said. “Justice is a fine principle.” He nodded to Peter, then to the boy. “Good choice of weaponry,” he added. “The Mikan is standard use in our organization.”

The boy nodded, swallowed, and made to leave. But with the next words spoken, he froze right when he had his hand on the door. Peter noticed this, but not out loud.

“And speaking of standard use,” Det said, bellying his way up to the forefront of the conversation, “Terry didn’t get a chance to see what’s in all these displays between all those words he was talking, but I did, and I have to ask...Mr. Smith, you wouldn’t consider working for us on a regular basis, would you? A contract? I got a good look and I have to say, that’s damn fine workmanship. These are all custom-made, aren’t they?”

“Benedetto, is that really necessary right now?” Terry said with a sigh.

“Terry, you’re not paying attention to the signs!” he said. “We might have a war soon, depending on when my son shows up and in what condition he’s in, and a guy like this could supply us with the good stuff.”

“Gep isn’t the deciding factor,” Terry said, his face like stone, patience straining. “We’re not starting a war over him.” He turned to Peter. “Mr. Smith, we’re done. We appreciate your time and your talent.”

“I’m not done, Terry---”

“Then we’ll take a business card, if you have one,” said Terry tiredly.

“It is all right,” Peter said, looking from Terry to Det and back again. “I cannot commit to a contract with an organization anyway. But do please come back for special purchases, when you need them.”

“Wait...” said Terry, frowning. “You’re not already working for somebody else, are you?”

“No, no!” said Peter, purposefully avoiding addressing Terry by any name in case whichever name he chose to use was the wrong one. “It is just...my wife. She’s asked me not to take sides. I want to honor that and keep my independence.”

“But you’ll still take our money in individual business deals?” Terry said, eyebrow raised.

Peter nodded. “I will.”

“Looks like we’re all mercenary to something,” Terry said with a grin. “You go home tonight and make love to your wife. She deserves it.”

Terry stuck out his hand for Peter to shake. As Peter’s hand took Terry’s, Peter felt something different in the grip, an unusual placement of the fingers. He looked down and saw what decorated the back of Terry Guthrie’s right hand: a rose, its thorny stem wrapping all around the wrist.

“That’s a promise of business,” Terry said, his brown eyes lit with intensity. “The sign of the Rose.”

Peter was shaken loose from his trance with a cell phone ringing. It was Terry’s. He brought it out of his inside jacket pocket and answered.

“Yeah.”

The energy in his visage dissipated as he listened. He blinked twice, staring straight ahead.

“I’m giving you Det,” he said into the phone.

Det craned his neck up at Terry angrily as he took the phone. “What?!”

“They’ve found it,” Terry said simply.

“Found what?” Det said, putting the phone to his ear.

Seconds later, Det’s face drained of color.

“You’ve...you’ve found him?” he said into the phone.

“In an alley,” Terry whispered to no one in particular, barely audible to the room at large.

The boy in the over-large t-shirt finally pushed open the shop door and ran away.