Blind Shrike

TWENTY ONE Jubilee

At the far end of Fisherman’s Wharf, past the eager early morning tourists and their bleary children, a jeweled airship hung in the air.

The balloon portion resembled an enormous, ruby-colored seahorse. Below this was a comfortable looking gondola of a dark, lacquered wood with gold filigree. Spyder saw the seahorse blocks away, but wasn’t worried. By now he knew that no one else could see the thing or would remember it for more than a few seconds if they did.

Spyder parked the Dead Man’s Ducati by a clam chowder stand in front of Fisherman’s Wharf and left the keys in the ignition. Taking Lulu by the hand, he led her down the long wooden walkway connected to the piers. Long before Fisherman’s Wharf had been transformed into a video game and fried fish tourist trap, the place had been a working pier for fishing boats coming in from beyond the Golden Gate. Even weekend sailors avoided the place now, however. It wasn’t just the tourists. The few places left to tie up had been staked out by hundreds of growling and extremely territorial sea lions. Mostly, the animals used the piers to sun themselves, so in the cool morning air there weren’t more than a dozen or so sacked out on the deck. Spyder walked Lulu carefully around the sea lions to the airship.

Primo waved to them from the end of the pier. Shrike was sitting on one of the pilings, her face to the sun. Her pale skin was outlined in the orange and pinks of dawn light. Spyder stood behind her. She got to her feet, put a hand on his chest and smiled at him. “I never doubted you for a moment, even if you doubted yourself,” Shrike said and pecked him on the cheek. She went to the balloon and Primo helped her into the gondola, then Lulu. Spyder followed them inside as Primo cast off the rope that tethered them to the wharf. For a second, it seemed as if nothing was happening. Then, they rose straight into the chill morning sky. Spyder’s stomach dropped with the nauseous sensation of riding in a freight elevator.

Shrike was passing around cups and a thermos full of hot coffee. Spyder poured some and watched Primo at the front of the gondola operating a spider web of lines and pulleys, positioning the airship to catch the bay winds. Spyder took his cup and went to little man.

“Want some coffee?” Spyder asked.

“I don’t drink stimulants, sir.”

“Need any help with the ropes?”

Primo grinned. “Oh, no thank you. I’m fine.” He pulled enthusiastically on one line and let another slide through his hand as they turned away from the coast and drifted toward the Golden Gate Bridge, steadily gaining altitude as they went.

“You look like the cat who ate the canary, after fucking it,” said Spyder.

The little man nodded. “I’m doing what I love,” he said. “I serve Madame Cinders because that is my duty. She gave my clan sanctuary centuries ago and we always honor our debts. But living sedentary in her palace isn’t the happiest life for me.”

“A ramblin’, gamblin’ man.”

Primo laughed. “We Gytrash are travelers both by profession and by disposition. I grew up on horseback, in trading ships clad in gold and on endless overland treks through all three Spheres.

“This airship reminds me of one I was on many years ago. My clan landed on the island of Montes Lunae to make repairs on take on supplies. Montes Lunae is a rich, green island in the second Sphere which, back then, was ruled by Chashash, the Raven King. It was the hundred and fiftieth year of Chashash’s rein and in keeping with Lunae tradition, he’d declared Jubilee.”

“That some kind of party?” asked Spyder.

“It’s much, much more than that, sir. During Jubilee, all laws are suspended, all slaves freed, all the lands won in battle are returned to their original owners. Jubilee is a time of renewal and madness. A time to burn the fields—both physical and metaphysical. Prisons became art galleries. Art galleries became bordellos. Bordellos became court houses. Then it all changes again over night.

“As time goes on, the laws of physics begin to fall apart. Mortals can fly…badly, in my experience. On Montes Lunae, many aeronauts cracked their skulls before they got the hang of it. And when they did learn the basics of flying, they’d still get air sick. It was a bad idea to enter some neighborhoods without an umbrella.

“There was a method to all this madness. Everyone who lived on the island, including visitors like us, were given tattoos with colored shapes—circles, triangles or squares, along with alchemical symbols. This complex combination of colors and symbols told you who you were in relation to everyone else on any given day. On my chest, I received an inverted red triangle with the symbol for quicksilver.

“The night my clan received its tattoos (each of us received a different combination of symbols), we had no idea of our place among the islanders or to each other anymore. We were saved when I saw a Captain from the Raven King’s army. I had met the man earlier, but that night he prostrated himself before me. He was a slave, he told me, the lowest off the low in relation to those who carried my symbol. I had him explain the pecking order to my whole clan, so that we might fit in with the celebrations. When I saw the captain again a few days later, he was the lord and I was the slave. This is how it was during Jubilee. Anyone could be anyone else on any given night. Even the Raven King himself was, on occasion, both a prisoner and a slave. I know this because I, Primo Kosinski, of the Black Iron Gytrash, for three full days became king of the second Sphere.

“I was in prison when it happened. Everyone ends up prison during Jubilee. What I didn’t know was that the Jubilee kings and queens were chosen in prison by a lottery. My lottery card bore the outline of a wolf’s paw. This meant nothing to me since a number of other prisoners had similar symbol on their lots. But through a combination of the wolf, the configuration of the stars in the sky and my tattoos, I was declared king and taken to the royal palace high atop the World Poplar.

“I loved being king. Pretty girls—exotic dancers who were now the legislature—would bring me fruit and legal documents. I often signed the document without reading them, assuming I would learn what they were eventually.

“We passed new Jubilee laws constantly, then would make it illegal to enforce them. The laws were often deliberately ludicrous. It became illegal to carry an small dog while smoking a pipe. It was further illegal to attempt sexual relations with an animal while either party was on fire. No one could smile while wearing white, or frown while in the presence of a man in stripes. Those found guilty of these charges might find themselves banished to the sewers with nothing but a candle and a baseball bat. Or they might be made Archbishop.

“The only law that remained constant and coldly rational throughout Jubilee was simple: Everyone on Montes Lunae, resident or guest, must participate in Jubilee wholeheartedly while he or she was there. This was a hard thing for some people. It was a hard thing for my family.

“Eventually, my mother found herself subordinate to a man she didn’t like, a marriage broker who was also a card cheat and a libertine—two things my mother couldn’t abide. She refused to serve the man when it was her time. When the broker insisted, my father and brothers beat him. My family was arrested and bought before me. I was King. I had no choice. They had broken the most basic law of Jubilee.

“I executed them.”

Spyder looked at Primo hard as the little man made subtle adjustments on the lines that controlled the airship’s progress.

“But this isn’t a sad story,” Primo continued. “To honor my family’s death, I prepared their bodies as a great feast on my last night as king. I invited all the citizens of the island to dine with me. Everyone ate and through the citizens’ digestive tracts, my family became a part of every person on Montes Lunae. When those citizens had children, a tiny piece of my family was passed on to them. To this day, I am welcome in any home on the island, from the highest to the lowest, because, in a sense, every person on Montes Lunae is a blood relation.”