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Duke of Two Cities Chapter 39
Ali wanted to throw up. He had really done it this time. Coming on this trip was his escape from royal life. He picked a spot nearly across the world from his Father’s City, the Zhabaiye Household, and all that came with it. No sneaking, no humiliation, no family secrets whispered about by maids and waiting staff. New Hudson, the gritty paradise, was free of such things. Here, Ali could be himself—or even find what ‘himself’ meant — with treasured friends who would like him and respect him for who he was. Was royal life so inescapable? He sat ruminating as the writer Julio Vasquez talked easily of his family to a complete stranger. The writer was wrong, of course—or rather incomplete. True, his grandfather had been a television producer and from that humble position made himself a kingdom. He did not know the grip of utter fear that Grandfather held over Ali’s family. This stranger spoke of Ali’s grandfather as though he were some sort of magician—a creator who had come out
Duke of Two Cities Chapter 40
“I am fine,” Ali did his best to force a smile. “Perhaps I eat too much.”Ali quietly sighed in relief. His secret held. The three of them took that as their cue to part ways. Devon thanked Julio Vasquez for sitting down with them. It was just as well; clock already read 5:30, and the stall owners were preparing for the dinner rush. Cooks and chefs streamed in and began unloading boxes of brined meats and jarred sauces. Neither Devon nor Ali were feeling particularly hungry. Before they left, Julio Vasquez reached into a knapsack and pulled out two copies of Six String Elegy. He signed both Devon and Ali signed copies and shook their hands. “It was a pleasure,” said Julio Vasquez. “Hopefully we shall meet again someday.” With that, he hoisted his knapsack with a grunt over her shoulder and walked, grumbling about panels and cyborgs. Devon opened his copy and looked at the inscription beneath:For Devon—Strength and Courage! New Hudson needs more people like you.J.J.S. Vasquez Dev
Duke of Two Cities Chapter 41
Devon’s wallet yawned in hunger, its leather mouth hungering, almost pleading ‘don’t take what I cannot give’. He would need to be careful—it was all the money he would have for a while. Slowly, as though handling a fragile teacup, he put his wallet away lest the money fly out on its own and poof into nothing. As he finished his own money business with care, Ali came back with an enormous grin plastered on his face. In his hands at least half a dozen shopping bags loaded with toys. “Look!” Devon smiled. “Looks like a good haul, man.” Ali blinked. “ ‘Good haul’ means what?” “Oh…when you get a lot of nice things, we call it a ‘good haul’.” Ali, suddenly a patient and eager student, nodded. “Yes. A good haul for me. And a good haul for you.” Devon shook his head. “No, I didn’t get nothing. I…uh…these things are real expensive, you know? I’ll just…I’ll get my haul another time. But Ali was busy searching through one of his bags. Plastic and cardboard clinked as pleasantly as t
Duke of Two Cities Chapter 42
After what seemed like two hours, Ali found what he was looking for. Buried beneath the knickknacks and memorabilia were two small printed cardboard boxes, each the size of a football. With an enormous grin, Ali took out the two boxes. Devon’s eyes widened. His hand went to his mouth. “Dude…”In Ali’s hands were two figures from Warriors of The Endless Road (WotER), an anime series of some popularity. Devon had watched a few seasons—it was a good show by any measure, but not one of his favorites. Still the show commanded a large fan base, with some bordering on zealous fanaticism. Fans of the show were famous for their heated arguments around small details in the show, and amongst the anime-crowd they had become something of a meme. Much of the show followed a typical format—struggling warriors forge difficult friendships under the specter of war, and through their growing bond become stronger. Devon was absolutely not surprised to discover that’s Ali’s was a fan. He was surprised
Duke of Two Cities Chapter 43
“Are you serious?” Devon put a hand to his mouth. “You don’t like?” Ali’s face suddenly became crestfallen. “No! I mean yes! I mean—“ Devon had become flustered. This was not something that he had expected, and certainly not in front of a crowd of salivating nerds. Here was Ali, a stranger that he had met only today, offering him his pick of a nearly $1800 limited edition collectible action figure. People in New Hudson killed for that kind of money. They killed for far less money, in fact. A good pair of sneakers worth $300 could make an innocent jogger into a juicy target. Life was cheap in Devon’s part of New Hudson—a steady influx of the desperate poor from other parts of the country, and from other countries were things were even worse, kept a steady glut of bodies for the city’s industries. Fast food, low income retail, cheap electronics filled with intrusive advertisements and sneaky fees to leech off the destitute and the outcast. Those $300 sneakers could be resold at a f
Duke of Two Cities Chapter 44
“Of course it would be you,” Tamyra snarled. “Who else would be so entitled? All I needed to finish my was going to finish my Warriors of the Endless Road collection was that Dashu. And you took it.”Tamyra’s face had flushed past crimson and was on its way to purpose. Her princess wand was quavering in her hand. At the slightest provocation, Devon feared she might actually use it. He held up his hands as though the wand were about to shoot lightning from its glittery points. “Look,” Devon began, “I’m sorry about your collection, but like—how are any of us supposed to know that? We can’t read minds or anything.”“You took it,” Tamyra intoned. Devon’s logic had no place amidst her anger. And there was much to be angry about—between the incident at the entrance, the horrible mess in the Fantasy writer’s panel, and now this. Just over the past two days, Ali and Devon had been a thorn in her slippers. and she had just about enough. “And it’s not enough that you have the nerve to troll in
Duke of Two Cities Chapter 45
It began with a push. Once again, Ali was surrounded by an angry crowd, with someone screaming at him in a language that was not his mother tongue. In Al-Zhabai, nobody would dare speak to him in such a way—even the cousins who looked upon him with contempt would never stoop to such behavior. In the moment, Ali felt the most curious sensation—that his soul was leaving his body, watching it from above. Perhaps the shock of the push had killed him, he thought. Curiously, in this dissociated state, he didn’t seem to have any feelings at all, though his body was nearly convulsing in terror. Time seemed to lose its smooth passing. Suddenly everything became terribly slow, as if the convention and everything in it was moving through thick honey. Down from above his own body, Ali gazed as Tamyra, whose face had become a terrible mask of vindictive rage. She lunged at Ali— to snatch Devon’s gift, he thought. But Tamyra’s dexterity had vanished before the heat of her own anger, and whom m
Duke of Two Cities Chapter 46
Far away from the chaos of New Hudson, in the Golden City of Al-Zhabai, King Ibrahim al-Zhabai stood on his private balcony, thinking of a joke. Once, the land that his Kingdom sat upon was a flat cropping of rock surrounded by a lake of sand. No trees, no oil or minerals, or any of the other resources that make a city worth building existed there. A hundred years before King Ibrahim’s time, this useless plot of land was gifted to his great-grandfather, Usman al-Zhabai, Founder of the Kingdom, as the world’s most expensive prank. It was a little known truth. Very few people beyond the deepest circle of the royal family knew this story. Not even foreign websites could publish it, for the instant they did al-Zhabai’s Ministry of Communications used every means at their disposal to take it down. Family lore said that when Founder Usman, talented and overlooked, was finally gifted the land he had worked for all his life. When the empty plot of land was finally revealed, his “benefac