by Alaric DeArment
Finally, we went through a set of double doors to another wing, where he took me into what looked like some kind of lab for making pharmaceuticals, with more technicians dumping buckets of dissolved human remains into a vat. He handed me a wooden box.
“Made fresh today, Mio Signore,” he mumbled, shaking my hand with a bow of his head.
Returning to my car and opening the box, I found 30 vials of the little black pellets. I drove back through the gate, but didn’t get more than half a mile before I had to pull over and vomit.
Fortunately, there was nobody home when I returned, and I pulled out a vial before hiding the box under my bed. I stared at and the little black pellets, shining in the light like peas made of onyx, trying to expel from my mind the image of Amadeo swallowing these. Everything Amadeo told me – his promises of freedom and democracy, his desire to make Stagno better, his concern for the well-being of other human beings, every word from his mouth – was a lie.
I sat silently at the cabinet meeting Monday, not reacting to anything but also hoping not to draw any attention, feeling nauseated every time I looked at Amadeo. After work, I grabbed a publicity photograph of Amadeo and brought it home in my briefcase. That night, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I drew a crude sigil, lit a couple of candles and cut my hand, smearing the blood on the photograph. I had to keep myself from gagging as I swallowed one of the pellets, all the while visualizing his government falling, telling myself what I was doing was different from Amadeo, that wading into the sludge of discarded flesh and blood was the only way, a sacrifice of everything except my physical form.
A couple of days later, Amadeo had another rally, where after his ritual with the sigil and pellets, he ascended the stage beaming and again made his promises of democracy and freedom while touting his public investments that would never happen. But where an enormous crowd filled the Stradun for the first rally, this time there was a fraction of that. And save for scattered and halfhearted claps and cheers, what I heard more of this time was people angrily asking questions, which soon grew to a chorus of jeers. We all looked at each other nervously before I saw a glass bottle fly by my head. The guards stuck their halberds out as two of them climbed the stage and ushered us away. I heard a machine gun and people screaming.
We sped away in the San Giorgio, flanked by police cars. On the radio, there was something about protests breaking out all over Ragusa and in other cities as well.
Since Amadeo was monitoring my bank account, he would see an unusually large cash withdrawal from the ATM, so early next morning, before sunrise, I got a cab into the city with my double eagles in my jacket pocket, as well as a hat and sunglasses so people wouldn’t recognize me, visiting a pawnbroker who had agreed to open his shop early for me. Their numismatic value would be negligible here, but their value as gold coins had to be enough for a plane ticket. It would only be a matter of time before Amadeo discovered my trip to his secret pellet factory, not to mention the box under my bed with one vial missing. That seemed like the type of offense that could lead to a kerosene bath at a metal pole. Thankfully, one of the coins netted 3,000 grossetti.
When I got back to the house, the San Giorgio was still in the driveway. I quietly stepped inside, but noticed that a glass was on the bar that hadn’t been when I left. Looking up the stairs leading to the office, I saw that the door was ajar and the light was on. Figuring Amadeo was up early, I crept back into my room and changed back into my pajamas so as not to arouse suspicion and then went upstairs, hoping to tell him I wasn’t feeling well so that I could take the day off and leave. But when I looked inside, nobody was there, and a safe in the wall hung open, emptied of its contents.
I tried calling Ginevra and some of the other ministers on the phone, but nobody answered. I changed back into my regular clothes, packed my clothing and the piece of eight coin, along with a couple unopened bottles of Lavachia, for which I had admittedly developed a taste. The money from the double eagle was more than enough for a flight leaving that afternoon to Lekawaka – a massive city in the northeast of the Atlantic Republic, where New York would be – with a connection to Dzidzelalich, where I would be able to return to Seattle and the same time that I left.
As the airplane waited at the gate and even as it taxied, I stared out the window, expecting to see a fleet of police cars coming for me, but none did. My sigh of relief as the airplane left Stagnese airspace must have been rather audible, as the woman sitting next to me looked over with a mix of concern and irritation.
It was late evening when my flight arrived in Lekawaka, the Atlantic Republic’s largest city. People spoke English here, and I had an hour to while away before my connecting flight to Dzidzelalich, so I bought some newspapers and magazines that I pored over after boarding the plane.
Below the fold on the front page of the Lekawaka Courant, next to a story announcing the death at age 100 of some famed reporter for the paper named Antonia Bedrosi, was a story reporting that the government of Stagno was overthrown. The Rector, ministers and all surviving members of the Darsa family were believed to have fled across the Atlantic Ocean to Holtland or north to Lotharingia, wanted criminals after the discovery of a mass-murder campaign associated with the illicit production of “swartstans,” black pellets used to ensure the effectiveness of ritual magic. A new provisional government had taken over, the woman who led it being Stagno’s first leader in more than 370 years to not come from the Darsa family. She pledged to end corruption and said free elections for the Signoria would take place within a month.
Around six hours later, I landed in Dzidzelalich. “Come on, come on, come on,” I whispered to myself as I waited for my suitcase to emerge onto the belt in the baggage claim. My unchanged clothes wrinkled and sweaty, it was already dark as I boarded the metro train to what was thankfully the end of the line, as I couldn’t read any of the signs, and there were no translations into English. Emerging from the station, I made a bee line to the same spot on the waterfront where I had arrived, my hand quaking so fiercely that the piece of eight coin nearly fell through my fingers as I pulled it from my pocket. I placed my suitcase between my feet on the ground, cupping the coin between my two palms and closing my eyes.
The sound of cars going by gave way to dead silence. I couldn’t open my eyes but knew there was only black in front of them. Finally, I heard the rushing white noise of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. When I opened my eyes, the fire truck going by turned on its siren, and the departing ferry blew its horn.
I looked to my left and smiled when I saw nobody standing next to me.
