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.
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