Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Day 123 - Queenie

 Queenie
 Matthew Ryan Fischer

 
Queenie waited. She knew trouble was brewing. Somewhere out there in the ether, the city stirred and the shadows crept in, and someone was making a plan. Queenie was a child when the agreements were made and truces declared. Her great uncle was boss then and he sold his family on the promise of peace, freedom from bloodshed, and unimaginable wealth through cooperation. Promises were like opinions, and as her father had once said, opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and they’re all full of shit. It was true that there was no all-out war, but she couldn’t remember a single year where there wasn’t some funeral to attend. And the money? Well, she couldn’t tell if her family was doing better or worse than when she was a child, but she knew the city and it was easy enough to look at the other families and see that her neighborhoods were left behind a long time ago.
No one ever renegotiated anything. Not really. Not in a significant way. One street versus another made little difference. A percentage here or there. Sometimes there was new tech or new drugs, legal or otherwise. But once the city was carved up, it was going to stay that way. Except now there was that feeling in the back of her neck, that trouble in the wind, something stirring. Someone had killed an Agent. That was new. That was different. Of course, Agents had died before, once when a rival gang foolishly came to town, one was thrown out a window but that was probably from a dispute over a woman. Usually, Agents grew injured and old and got to retire and sometimes helped trained their replacement. A few got sick. Most lived a long time. When Nine died, that had been an assassination. He had been in the middle of an investigation. Someone didn’t want that investigation continued.
Queenie was feeling her age. Never married, never had kids, she was her family matriarch, but only so long as she instilled fear in the next generation. She hated her cousins and hated her nieces and nephews. But she was keeping an eye on her second cousins and there was a grandniece that had potential. Queenie was one of six siblings and there were thirty-two full blooded relatives, not counting the bastards known or unknown. Queenie held on tight to her power and protected herself with hand picked warriors and advisors. She had private meetings with the second cousins she could trust and when her grandniece turned sixteen, Queenie planned to begin mentoring her.
None of that would matter if war was to come. Queenie’s plans were years in the future, and a return to bloodshed seemed imminent. When that came, brothers and sisters could become her fulltime enemy. The younglings would have to wait.
The real question was who was behind the recent challenges. Shipments late. Pirate hijacking and kidnappings at sea. There was, of course, the murder of Nine and the slow and possibly intentionally botched investigation. And perhaps most importantly, numbers seemed low. Just a little. Not enough to raise suspicions with most of the families, but Queenie had noticed. When you’re last at the trough, you’re the first to feel hungry.
There was talk of an outside arrangement, organizations from overseas, looking to expand. But in fifty years, there had never been simultaneous problems like these. Anyone looking to make landfall would need local assistance. And that could come from a friendly, a fool, or perhaps another hungry family looking for an extra bite.
She had to be sure. It wasn’t like she could just hold secret interviews and ask the other family heads. If she had been a potential ally, she would have already been asked. No, if she raised any suspicious, she and her family could be joining Nine in short order. Three was a third cousin, but Three was loyal to the Dragon’s Claw, not to her or the family name. Three would be no help. What she needed was her own outsider. One who could investigate. One who could ask the right questions on the streets, find the right clues and pull at the strings, without raising suspicions, and more importantly someone who would give Queenie total deniability.
Queenie had waited, perhaps too long. Now was the time to act, but her first step had to be precise and it had to be secure. Queenie sat and thought, trying to decide on a course of an action. There was a name she knew, someone from her past, someone she could perhaps call once and only once. But if not now, when? She needed to protect her family. She needed a better position. If war was on the rise, if change was coming, this was a once in a generational chance to change her family’s fortunes. There might be no better time to use a one-time debt. Queenie weighed her options, but deep down she knew she had already made her decision and the die had been cast.

No comments:

Post a Comment