Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

My birth name and address were printed on it with neat, mechanical writing. ‘Jeong-Ho Park’.

“What in the…?” I tore it open, heart hammering, and painstakingly struggled through the five awful words no man under the age of twenty-six ever hopes to read. ‘Order to Report for Induction.’

My first reaction was bewilderment. There was no way this could be real. My immigrant parents had been enrolled on the Hostile Alien watchlist in the first years of the Total War, meaning that me and my brother both should have been exempt. We weren’t allowed to serve in the government or the armed forces, claim Social Security or Medicare, or anything. But there it was. This was a Draft Card. I’d been conscripted.

The second sensation was numb exhaustion. My sinuses were gluggy, my back was hurting after a long night on my feet, and the rest of the letter might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. The print was so small I couldn’t read it beyond the title, so I smoked a cigarette, went back to bed, and had one of my racing friends read it to me later that night. His voice shook as he dutifully recited the dry order for me to report to Camp Parks in two days’ time. When he was done, he threw it down on the ground, twisted it under his heel, and begged me to pack a bag. Told me to go to his house, lie low for a week in his basement. Told me to take my brand-new Ducati up the coast all the way to Canada. The only reason they would be drafting me was because they were scraping the bottom of the barrel… which meant the War was going badly.

I thought about it. I thought about it hard. But even as a metaphorical ten-ton bag of lead settled into my stomach, I shook my head.

“It is what it is, man,” I’d said, lighting another cigarette. “If I bug out to Canada, they’ll still find me. There’s just some kinds of shit you just can’t run away from.”

I heard the echo of my own words from all those years ago in myself now. Archemi wasn’t Earth, but as the months wore on, the line between the real life before and the virtual life felt very blurry. The mantle of the Voivode settled over me as heavily as the duty of the draft, and that same tired lead-in-the-guts feeling came roaring back.

While Istvan scrambled to get the Voivode’s throne room in order, I cleaned my battered Raven Suit, donned the Voivode’s crown – a simple spiked band of white-gold - and the crimson cloak that Ignas had given me. Then I looked at myself in the mirror, and saw… well. I saw a freak, to be honest. No matter how well I dressed or how nice my hair was, I had large, bird-like eyes with dark blueish sclera, unnaturally acute and piercingly bright in my face. My face was harder and I had a mouth full of sharp metal fangs courtesy of Ashur. In any other circumstance, I thought I looked pretty bad-ass. But now, with the pitchforks and torches bobbing up and down outside the walls of my defenseless castle, I felt the same quaking anxiety that had set in all those years ago when I’d rocked up to Camp Parks with my bag, my motorcycle, and a head full of bad noise.

“I’m sorry, Suri.” I sighed. “Hold on just a little while longer, okay?”

Chapter 4

Unfortunately, the Voivode’s Throne wasn’t a huge-ass fantasy chair with flaming skull torches or voluptuous women and-or panthers lounging around the base of it. It was a simple, well-made but worn chair of dark wood, green leather, and silver thread. The chair was up on a stage, so that I got a great view of the screaming mob surging through the doors of the Great Hall toward me.

The only thing between the throne and me was a line of guardsmen, soldiers who’d fought for me during the War for Myszno. They crossed their spears and the rush of people broke against them like a furious tide. Shouting, yelling, eyes flashing with rage, they rushed against the blockade in a furious boil of clanking armor and muddy silk.

“Order! Order!” Istvan shouted over them, sharp and authoritative. “This court WILL NOT proceed if you cannot gain order!”

“Fling your ‘order’ into the ocean, you overblown swamp rat! My citizens are starving!” One of the men in front, a lantern-jawed guy with a thick, drooping mustache and fine armor flung his arm out at me, pointing at my face. “Our crops are three weeks off from dying in the fields, and there's no one to harvest them! How’s THAT for order?!”

“…and the bandits have taken over Vyeshniki’s granary!”

“My village is overrun by scavengers!”

“Solonovka-!”

“Karhad is the ducal county! I demand to speak first!”

“-The refugees are returning-”

“-We've lost twenty children to plague in the last two weeks!”

The voices overlapped each other, building into a wall of noise that felt like it was crushing me back into Lord Bolza's old chair. My fingers tensed into claws on the armrests, until I finally couldn’t take it anymore.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” I shoved up from the seat and got to my feet.

It wasn't instantaneous, but the mosh pit at the front of the dais got the message enough to take a big step back, triggering those behind them to pay attention.

I fought the urge to jump down off the stage and start bouncing people out of the door, just like the old days. Instead, I balled my fists, then deliberately relaxed my hands and stretched my fingers. “Form a queue, all of you. Every person who wants an audience needs to introduce themselves, and then you get to talk. Anyone not willing to rein themselves in will be arrested and carried-or-dragged out of my goddamned castle!”

“Arrested!? This is outrageous!? Who is this foreign wretch? Where is Lord Bolza?” The bearded man ignored me, and turned to glare at