“But it’s all connected?”

  “It is,” Amayas said.

  “And you’re not gonna tell me how?”

  “Not today. Be satisfied with the keys to the future.”

  “I know that look, Amayas. There’s something you want to ask, but you’re afraid.”

  “Am I?”

  “You know everything about me.”

  “Do I?”

  “You know my story.”

  “Some.”

  “You know what gives me the greatest satisfaction.”

  “Killing.”

  “See? You know me, just like that fucking Scroll knew me. So what’s got your belly tied in knots?”

  Amayas finished his water.

  “I want to ask about Exeter.”

  “Why?”

  “He was horribly abused for many years. I never laid a hand on him, but I did use him in my long game. He trusted me, and I threw him across the divide into a new set of horrors.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s my one regret. Tell me, Royal. Did you love him?”

  He didn’t see that one coming.

  “You don’t want to know the answer.”

  “I do.”

  “It’s not important anymore.”

  “It may yet be.”

  “Can I ask how?”

  “No.”

  “Then here’s your answer, for what it’s worth. Exeter was a stupid boy when I found him. Just as trusting as he was when he lived with the Caribs. I made a man of him and I left my mark. But I never loved him. Listen, Amayas. I loved one man in my life. Just one. Nowadays, I do respect, loyalty, and brotherhood. I don’t do love.”

  “It’s inconvenient for a killer, I suppose.”

  “A pain in the ass.”

  Amayas pushed back his chair.

  “I understand, Royal. Would you like to see your quarters?”

  4

  R EADING THE FUTURE proved more difficult than Royal expected. The mirrors were intoxicating, easy to lose oneself in their continuously shifting patterns. The greatest challenge lay in deciphering the most likely future from its variants, which might number in the millions.

  Amayas chose a concave mirror from the crystalline forest and nestled it gently between the teacher and student, who sat beside each other. As the mirror’s colors shifted, a steady stream of life moments came briefly into view. The actions, words, and deeds from people in disparate locations took on tangible form. The script of their lives was in constant flux. Amayas called each of these lives – a tiny piece of causality’s product – a future subset.

  “Think of a subset of the future like a field of grass,” Amayas told him on the seventh day of training. “From a distance, you see a mass of green. You can’t distinguish the blades for height or width. Yet each individual blade has the chance to produce the finished product. That would be the unsettled future, where countless choices will be made.”

  “How do I know when to narrow subsets to find the true future?”

  “That depends on context. For instance, what do these countless machinations have in common?”

  As he peered close, underlying whispers divulged critical details. He wasn’t just seeing the future. As Amayas instructed, he needed to hear the rhythm of life. He assessed what these subsets had in common.

  “There’s a conflict brewing between two clans in the south islands of Trimore on New Caledonia. It has to do with fishing grounds.”

  “Excellent, Royal. I didn’t read an individual mirror so efficiently for weeks. This particular future will have lasting consequence for the people of those islands but few others.”

  “Which means those people don’t matter.”

  “They will if the Swarm and Talons invade. What you must do is decide whether the subset should be followed down to the individual blades, either for academic or strategic value. The relevance factor.”

  Royal shrugged. “Academic? Who has time for research? I want to find the good bits that matter. We’re fighting the damn future. We’re not writing thesis papers.”

  “And yet, I’ve spent hours entranced in far-flung subsets involving individual families on planets I’ve never visited. Why? Because the future is a drug. To watch insignificant individuals spiral toward doom is peak voyeurism.”

  “Makes you feel like a god?”

  “It does. That’s why I’ve brought you along slowly. If you become too enraptured, you’ll lose yourself. Now, back to these islands. You’ve assessed the broad implications. If you decide they offer a relevant future, you must now consider the individual blades of grass. These represent people, their deeds, and the constant tug of causality. This part can be fraught with trouble.”

  “How so?”

  “Choose one – any blade will do.”

  He isolated on a specific individual and tapped at the mirror. The image of an angry man expanded, followed by a series of events in the man’s immediate future.

  “Read it, Royal.”

  “His name is Luma. He’s poor. He’s pissed. He’s going after his cousin. Intends to kill him. The fight’s gonna be nasty. Luma’s gonna end up with a hole in his head, face down beside that drain pipe.”

  “Why will they fight?”

  “The cousin defected to the other clan. Then he started recruiting people in the village.”

  Amayas wagged a finger.

  “Now we see the intertwining of multiple blades. Read the aftermath of their fight.”

  “The villagers walk past Luma’s body for hours. His parents claim him after dark. There’s no more violence. People line up at Luma’s house and pay tributes to the parents. I don’t see any reprisals against the cousin. He walks the street like nothing happened. Guess we know who’s running that village.”

  “For now.” Amayas turned Royal away from the mirror. “Look at me. Royal, you focused on one blade and soon expanded to all those in the vicinity. Their actions – or inactions – will form a tapestry. Perhaps this will be the flashpoint where the greater conflict escalates. Most likely, it will be isolated. As the reader, your next choice will be critical: Stay with this variant of the subset, choose another, or disregard the subset altogether. In order to master these mirrors, you must know how to make the correct choice in the blink of an eye. There are billions of subsets in this forest.”

  Royal looked at the fantastical setting. It still seemed like so much to take on, even after a week of visits and training. And yet …

  “In other words, you need to be a god.”

  “You’re searching for intersections in the future that have all but rounded into fixed points yet still leave flexibility for you to interfere and adjust the outcome. If you call that being a god, well …”

  “I’m immortal, so I’m pretty much halfway up the mountain.”

  “Perhaps. Do you understand the lesson, Royal?”

  “Got it.”

  “Then it’s time to practice. I’ll give you twenty minutes. I want to see how many subsets you can read and disregard as irrelevant while finding at least one which has short-term bearing on Alliance worlds. I’ll isolate you to the cluster of mirrors over here.”

  “What’s a good number?”

  “I can read half a million in that amount of time. I’ll be satisfied if you reach two thousand.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. That’s almost two per second.”

  “Yes. Very slow. There are thirty-five billion humans in this universe, and more than two hundred billion across the nine. The Splinters are bonded to them all, and the mirrors calculate what the Splinters see. Almost none of it is relevant to us, but we must find that which is.”

  “How do I read so fast?”

  “Listen for the whispers. They can come across as a cacophony of the present and the future, but some will seem to ride on the wind. Their voice is raised. You will hear intonations similar to your name. This is when you will shift your focus. It’s like listening to a symphony and hearing the instrument of least personality stand out above the horns, the drums, and the violins.”

  “I don’t do symphonies.”

  “You will. Let’s begin.”

  It was easier than he thought, yet Royal failed the first practice. He discarded fourteen hundred subsets and found none connected to the ten Alliance worlds. Amayas supervised two more rounds. By the third, Royal rejected nineteen hundred but found three subsets of relevance inside the Alliance. How relevant? Amayas analyzed all three but offered no commentary afterward.

  “This shit’s hard, Amayas.”

  “You’re trying to find order from disorder. Repetition will bear fruit. In several weeks, if all proceeds well, you’ll be able to walk through here like a man enjoying his own garden, absorbing every detail without slowing down. You’ll identify relevant futures, determine a course of action, and travel tethered into their midst as those futures become the present. When needed, you’ll select men under your command to join you.”

  “My command? When does that begin?”

  “When you say the word.”

  “Wait. It’s my decision?”

  “When the men are ready to follow your lead, let me know. Shin will discuss terms then hand over command. But be certain, Royal. These men are a different breed. To the point, they are not Talons.”

  Royal learned that lesson in the first days. The twenty-six men who escorted Amayas and Shin around the galaxy seemed ill-chosen for an elite guard. They lacked the polish of finely-honed soldiers, the refined Engleshe of the well-educated, and displayed little interest in the approaching struggle. That is not to say they weren’t loyal to their masters or didn’t take seriously their role as protectors. They shined their armor, maintained their weapons with the care of doting fathers, and reported for duty when called.

  Shin found these men on six worlds, two of which weren’t in the Alliance. He focused on those who served no real purpose. Criminals and outcasts. Poor and uneducated. Loners. Nomads. Deviants. Yet one look into a Splinter and a tour through The Hold bought their loyalty. They might not have understood what they were fighting for, but they knew this was the best deal they’d ever receive.

  Eleven timber-thick black men from Boer and Mauritania bunked with five chiseled, bald-headed toughs from Kyriokos and Catalan. Five with copper tones hailed from New Riyadh, and the remaining eight – heavily-tattooed – grew up among the refuse of G’hladi.

  They rarely raised their voices or laid fists into each other during off-duty hours, though they sipped liquor at a steady pace. The Hold’s “continuum” proved to be an effective tool for submissive behavior. Or was it? Royal thought there might be something else at play.

  Royal made himself at home among them. As long as he smoked and drank and participated in their games of cards and chips, they didn’t question his presence. No one showed a flicker of envy or disdain for the man given a room of his own. It would have been easy to act upon such resentment – they were bigger than Royal, carrying muscles born through hours of daily sessions with phasic weights.

  Meandering, simple-minded chatter showed disinterest toward anything not centered in the present. No ambition, no curiosity. They asked no personal questions of Royal beyond the name of his home world. Would they have cared to know he was immortal? Would they have been impressed by his extraordinary body count? He thought it better to save those tidbits for the proper time.

  They did, however, tell the same jokes over and over to the same muffled laughter. Was it a boredom they couldn’t – or wouldn’t – shake? Was it the protection of The Hold plus a dependable supply of good food, liquor, and leaf? Perhaps the guaranteed routine proved settling, much like with dogs. They did not wake to the sun or fall asleep to the stars. Inside this rock, days and nights meant nothing. In the most ironic twist, time meant even less.

  That, perhaps, was the real key, Royal concluded. They’d been so far and long removed from the steady turn of the clock, these men didn’t know how to calibrate for life’s twists and turns. They’d be the sort to grow old and die slowly here, oblivious to approaching death and the pain waiting for them in the abyss.

  Amayas expected Royal to command these men? Muscles without brains or compass? They neither bonded with the men of their own world nor spoke like brothers to the rest. They were free agents. This more than any discovery bothered Royal. The Twenty Talons drew from across their universe, but soldiers cemented their loyalty with a common creed and a common enemy.

  This motley collection needed the same. Royal made it his mission to ensure both. Until then, he wasn’t ready to command them. He found a few free moments with each man, learning enough to compile a few notes and decide who needed to be his test subject. He made his move on day eight.

  He chose Ismail, a rock-hard castoff from G’hladi who spent his former life in sewage – human or otherwise. Drug dealer, addict, thief, pervert. The last part Ismail never confirmed, but Royal knew it through the eyes. He saw them often enough while living on the streets of Zozo and Umkau. Always hungry, those eyes. The same kind of filth that might have preyed on kids like Exeter.

  Ismail considered himself respectable, claiming to be one of Shin Wain’s three favorites. Though Ismail did regularly escort Shin across the galaxy, Royal doubted Shin thought of these men as any more than necessary meat to stand between him and trouble.

  Like the other G’hladis, Ismail decorated his body in tattoos, the most prominent one covering a skull that he shaved daily. The red wolf of the Tiagras Mountains had lethal claws, a thin coat of auburn fur, and eyes that glowed amber. The wolf’s predatory essence dominated from the creases above Ismail’s brows to the nape of his neck. Royal focused on this blatant act of narcissism as his entry point.

  “How are you like the wolf?” He asked during a card game.

  Ismail spoke through cloudlets of smoke.

  “What you mean?”

  “I heard the red wolf is a predator. It kills weaker animals to claim its territory.”

  “It must to survive.”

  “Don’t know much about wolves – weren’t any where I grew up – but I read they’re pack animals.”

  “Not red wolf. Is set free by mother to find its own place.”

  Royal pulled on the little cigar between his teeth. Strange feeling to press into soft rolled leaf after a lifetime of digipipes. The G’hladi product derived from tobacco, which grew on few worlds.

  “A loner and a killer. How are you like the wolf, Ismail?”

  “I follow no man’s road.”

  “Until now. You have a pack and a commander.”

  “Shin Wain gave me choice.”

  “Of course he did. You don’t go off snatching folks then trust them to protect your life. But it sure does look like you followed another man’s road. Just saying.”

  Ismail eyed Royal with appropriate suspicion and scanned the table, where two other G’hladis and a Mauri followed the conversation with interest. He studied Royal’s taller stack of chips.

  “No more stall. Play your cards. You owe two.”

  Royal dropped a pair from the end. They were worthless; he was happy to be rid of them.

  “What about the predator? You ever killed a man, Ismail?”

  Ismail grabbed one of the discards and smiled.

  “Many.”

  “Define many. Three? Eight? Fifty-nine?”

  “Why do you care about number?”

  “Just trying to understand. You walk in a room, and everybody takes one look, says, ‘He’s a wolf. Watch out. He’ll kill you.’”

  Ismail discarded.

  “I earned right to wear wolf.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “I killed one with bare hands.”

  “Damn. No weapon?”

  “I am good fighter. And strong.”

  “So that wolf must not have been very big.”

  “I lured it into trap.”

  “You stalked it?”

  “I knew its territory. I knew what it desired.”

  “So, you did have a weapon. You caught it in a trap. A cage? Maybe it couldn’t fight back?”

  Ismail narrowed his eyes into slits.

  “Few men have killed red wolf.” He pointed to his skull. “I earned the right.”

  “If that’s your tradition, who the cud am I to question? I guess I’m just wondering how you’re like the wolf. You see, an animal can’t build a cage. You ever kill an animal straight-up? A fair fight?”

  “I have many scars, Royal.”

  “How about a man? A real predator doesn’t save his skill for dumb animals. He goes after the good prey. How many you killed?”

  Ismail reached for his whiskey.

  “My past is no business to you.”

  Royal saw truth when the man’s eyes averted Royal’s gaze.

  “Don’t tell us you’re a wolf if you haven’t killed other men.”

  “Your lips move too much, Royal. Who have you killed?”

  “Enough to justify stamping the red wolf over my whole cudfrucking body, including my special parts.”

  Royal set down his cigar, rose from the table, and took off his shirt.

  “See this?”

  The tattoo of a green sun with fifty-seven red rays, now more than ten years old, dominated his chest.

  “I started killing for this group when I was sixteen. We went after humans. Illegal immigrants to our island. Men. Women. Some kids. Hunted them down. Shot them in the head. Sent a message about staying away from our territory. They kept coming, so we kept killing.

  “It was never a fair fight, though. I suppose that’s why we kept our tattoo hidden. Nobody was supposed to know who we were. The immos were like those wolves in your cage. It’s OK to start out small, Ismail. But you have to upgrade from cages. You gotta make it a fair fight. I practiced. One day, I found myself in a war. Now that was a fair fight. Any idea how many more men I’ve killed than you?”

  The room went silent. Other guards gathered near the table.

  “How do I know such things?” Ismail said.

  “It’s easy. It’s the number minus zero. You never killed anyone.”

  “You speak like to kill is badge of honor. You kill children. You have no honor.”