King of Swords

His terror had flatlined into panicked resignation. He hoped for the best he could. That he'd go out quick and clean. No pain.

But something else was happening to him too. Inside.

The pains in his stomach were gone. He couldn't feel a thing.

And then he was drawn back to the man who'd come to kill him. He'd crossed the blades into an X and was drawing nearer. The light from the cross filled his eyes, warming them with its heat, blotting out his vision, until finally it was all he could see — pure white light.

His hearing faded. He could hear absolutely nothing.

He couldn't speak. He couldn't taste. He couldn't smell.

He couldn't touch. He couldn't see.

He wasn't sure he was still breathing.

Was this it? Was this death?

Although it was difficult for him to move, chant and pay attention to what was going on, Carmine caught a glimpse of Solomon rising out of the ground and heard the excited gasps and screams of the simple-minded idiots watching from the balcony. They didn't realize this was an act, exactly like the circus or a pantomime.

He saw flashes of Solomon doing his dance, twirling his two lethal razor-sharp blades through the air like propellers, slicing, coming closer and closer to Jean Assad, as he sat there facing death without being able to so much as blink or scream.

The drums rose and rose to a booming crescendo of roaring cannon strapped to the back of a herd of stampeding bulls, before suddenly and quite abruptiy dying back down to the same single, solitary heavy beat that had started the ceremony. The barons slowed their movements down one beat at a time, until, by the tenth, they were walking in step with the drummer.

At the twelfth beat Solomon swiftly raised and backhanded his swords across the middle of Assad's exposed throat, leaving a thin, dark, almost black line. By the fourteenth beat blood had geysered out of the veins and arteries, heavy jets and fine fountains, coating Solomon's painted face and white clothes.

Solomon then covered himself and the body with his cloak. Both were lowered down into the ground, prompting more screaming and shouting from the balcony.

Then the lights went out and the abattoir was plunged into darkness.

II

Carmine drove out to Miami Shores. There was a potential Heart working a bar off Park Drive which was popular with the rich old men who were members of the nearby country club. They'd go there after playing a few holes of golf.

Carmine didn't understand golf. It wasn't a sport to him but a status thing white folks did once they hit a certain age or income bracket or both. Hitting a ball around and taking a leisurely stroll to where it had landed so you could hit it again — what was the whole damn point of that?

He drove down a pitch-black street where the lights were busted and all the houses were derelict and boarded up.

Some had been demolished and were just piles of rubble surrounded by wire fencing. Desolate palm trees tilted over the road like drunks, their trunks hacked, drilled and graffitied, their leaves droopy and dirt-coated. He turned into another street where all the buildings had been levelled.

The road was coated with thick dust. It reminded him of a picture he'd seen of Hiroshima after the bomb had hit it, nothing standing. All over Miami construction companies were blowing up or knocking down old buildings and then just leaving the mess right there instead of clearing it up and reconstructing.

Suddenly a car pulled out in front of him and he hit the brakes. He wasn't wearing his belt so the jolt threw him hard against the steering wheel and he smacked his forehead on the windshield.

'Motherfucker!' he yelled and punched the horn. The offending car drove off regardless.

“You still drive like an idiot,' a familiar voice said behind

him. He turned around and saw the faint outline of someone in the back seat.

'Solomon!' Carmine hadn't noticed anyone when he'd got in the car after the ceremony, nor the whole time he'd been driving. 'How did you — how long you bin in here?'

'I get around,' he said. 'Keep driving.'

Carmine set off down the road.

'Put on your seatbelt,' Solomon said, his voice still the same, a clear, forced whisper, his words hollowed out and filled with silence.

Carmine plugged in the belt. He felt his boss's stare bouncing back at him from the rearview mirror, even though he couldn't see his eyes, let alone his face.

'Keep your eyes on the road. Concentrate,' Solomon said.

Where we goin'?'

'Wherever you are.'

'I'm workin'. Got a possible Heart lined up.'

'A Heart? That's good. We need more of the high-class ones, less of the low,' Solomon replied.

'I hear that,' Carmine said. 'I'm doin' my best out here, you know?'

'Your best at what?' Solomon asked.

'My best at what I do, Solomon,' Carmine answered, mouth drying, a little tremor in his voice. He hoped Solomon hadn't found out about his and Sam's side project. They'd been so damned careful.

'How's your mother?'