House Immortal

  “Saved you a seat at the game, Bram, my friend,” he said, “and I plan to rob you blind.”

  “How did that plan go last year?” Abraham asked.

  “Poorly. You cheated.”

  “You couldn’t prove that.”

  “This year,” Welton said, “I will be winning back my money. Plus interest.”

  Abraham must have noticed my discomfort. He reached over and gently squeezed my arm. “He’s family.”

  “Mostly because we can’t get rid of him,” Dotty said, setting a plate of pie and a mug of tea down on the kitchen counter for me. “Annoying boy that he is.”

  “Please,” Welton said. “You love me most of all.”

  “Well, you have your moments. Like when you’re losing at poker.”

  Welton’s gave her a self-satisfied smile, then looked back at me. “Matilda Case. How was the coffee at Jangle?”

  “Fine, thank you, sir.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up and he leaned forward, resting his elbow on the table, his smooth dark bangs falling to the edge of his heavily lidded eyes. “Here I’m a friend. I suppose you should address me by sir anywhere else. But not here. Not at all.”

  “All right, thank you . . .” I didn’t know if I should use his first name.

  “Welton,” he said slowly, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time. “And you . . . you are the mysterious new old. The modern stitched. I’ve heard more than a few things about you. Come”—he patted the table—“have a sit. Let’s talk.”

  “I promised Abraham a game,” I said.

  “No rush,” Abraham said.

  Manners, Matilda, I reminded myself.

  I picked up the pie and tea and walked over to the table. I took a seat across from Welton. At the other end of the table, Helen was shuffling cards, but not dealing, and watching me like I was something she might need to tackle.

  Vance and Bede were curled up on a couch, talking quietly and Clara, January, and Wila sat on the other couches, rolling dice and scribbling on paper. Beyond them, Buck and Loy were arguing over something that involved throwing coins into shot glasses.

  But the figure who drew my eye was Foster First, who moved to stand at the far side of the room, his back to the window, staring at me, or maybe at Welton’s back.

  Even in this large space, he towered over everyone. From his complete stillness, one might just assume he was dead. But his eyes flicked as he took in all those in front of him, his stony expression unchanging.

  “If House Gray hadn’t found you first, I would have offered you a place at House Yellow, you know,” Welton said.

  I drew my gaze away from Foster. “Oh?” I took a bite of pie: apple, cinnamon. Delicious. “I am happy to be with House Gray.”

  “Why?”

  “It seems like a good choice.”

  “So you can find your brother?”

  I was surprised he knew about that. But, then, he was Technology. If anyone could find information, it would be him.

  “I saw the message he sent,” he continued a little quieter. “We’re working on tracking it back. Oscar Gray is a personal friend of mine. I am helping find your brother as a personal favor. You won’t owe my House anything.”

  “There are always debts,” I said.

  “True,” he said. “Some debts are worth getting into, don’t you think?”

  “Do you have any idea how long it will be before you find something?”

  “If we don’t have it cracked before the gathering, I’ll hang up my hat and hand the House over to my cousin.”

  “Which one?” Dotty asked, sliding pie down for him, herself, and an extra, then sitting at the table. “Libra?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are a terrible man, Welton,” she said as she scooped up a bite of pie.

  “Come on, now,” he protested. “She has a set of morals. More or less. And her utter love of chaos would make things a little less . . . boring.” He grinned at me, and I got the impression he was always on the lookout for things that would keep his life interesting.

  “As for settling any debt between us, personally,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. Is it true you have sensation of touch?”

  “Yes.”

  Abraham had walked over to Foster and offered him a mug with what looked like marshmallows floating on top of it. I caught a whiff of rich chocolate. He was giving Foster hot cocoa.

  Foster took the mug and his mouth hooked up into a smile. “Thank you, Abraham.”

  His voice was gravel down a canyon, but his smile contained a humanity I had glimpsed only briefly in him.

  “I am curious about the thread that’s holding you together,” Welton said around a bite of pie. “And most everything else about how you came to be.”

  Abraham smiled and shook his head. “I thought you wanted to lose some money.” He crossed over to the table. “Not grill Matilda on private matters.”

  “Are these details you don’t want to share?” Welton asked.

  “No, it’s fine. Truth is, I don’t know much about the thread. I think my father invented it.”

  “May I?” he asked, wiping his fingers on his pants then holding out his hand to touch the stitches across my left wrist.

  I hesitated. Then put my hand in his.

  He gently drew his finger across my stitches and a shiver of goose bumps rippled up my arm.

  “Amazing work,” he said. “Do you know who made you?”

  Here it was, the question of where I’d come from. I’d told Oscar, but I didn’t know if he’d told Welton.

  If I lied, would it put my claim to House Gray in danger? If I told him Quinten had stitched me together and saved my life, would it put my brother in more danger than he might already be in?

  “I don’t really know.”

  Welton tipped his head to one side. “You don’t remember?”

  “I was young.”

  “When you were stitched?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s . . . unusual. Very unusual,” he said. “There is another thing I’d like to know. Abraham tells me when you touch him, his sense of touch is restored.”

  “He’s told me the same.”

  “Would you please touch Foster? I’d like to know if certain . . . modifications I’ve implemented are as pain-free as I’d intended them to be.”

  “That is not necessary,” Foster said in that low growl of his. “I have no complaints.”

  “For me,” Welton asked. Then, with all the maturity of a seven-year-old: “Please?”

  Foster sighed and walked over to me, his boots loud and heavy on the floor. He stood in front of me, and I had to tip my head up to meet his gaze.

  “Thank you, Matilda Case,” he said. He offered his hand, and I took it.

  His shoulders stiffened and he sucked in a hard breath. The skin around his neck pulled against the thick yellow threads there, and he moaned softly.

  I quickly drew my hand back.

  “Does it hurt?” Welton asked, immediately on his feet and moving toward him.

  “Not pain,” Foster said, as Welton pressed his fingers at different points on Foster’s hand, arm, chest, and back. Foster caught the slighter man’s hand in the ham fist of his own. “Peace.”

  “I might ask you to do that again, Matilda,” Welton said, not looking away from Foster. “Maybe after the gathering and under more controlled conditions.”

  “Unnecessary,” Foster rumbled.

  “That regulator shouldn’t be popping like that,” Welton said. “And it’s something easily adjusted so it won’t cause you pain, whether you feel it or not. After the gathering, we will see to it. Please,” he added kindly. “For me.”

  “You are my House,” Foster said. “If it is your wish.”

  “
It is my wish.” He patted Foster’s arm.

  “So, what do you think this means, Welton?” Dotty asked. “I suppose a genius such as yourself has more than one theory on Matilda’s effect on us.”

  “And you would be right,” he said. “We know each of you lived at the same time, in the same area, before the Wings of Mercury event occurred.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” I said. “Wings of Mercury. Abraham mentioned it.”

  Welton nodded. “We have stories passed down from person to person, town to town, or the occasional line in a diary or footnote in a published journal. A scientist searching for the secrets of immortality built a great machine to control time. When that machine was engaged, every living creature in a fifty-mile swath was struck down dead.

  “Except for twelve people. Six men, six women. They still breathed, though it was as if they had been sent into a deep sleep. There was also rumor of one child who never woke from that sleep and did not age.”

  He stopped and watched my reaction. Everyone in the room was watching me.

  “I’m that child, aren’t I?”

  “We can’t be sure,” he said. “We don’t know where any of the pieces of you came from. But all signs point to yes.

  “If, however,” he went on, “the event was an experiment to control time, the theory goes that it is the reason galvanized brains have survived all these years. Only galvanized brains resist every strain of disease on earth; feel no pain; and are inhumanly strong, adaptive, and infinitely repairable. Only galvanized brains show no sign of aging or decline. Only galvanized are immortal—cheaters of time.”

  He spread his hands. “The experiment was a story, a legend. The sleeping immortals who would rise and bring about great change. Save the world. Or end it, depending on which story you preferred. Monsters. Saviors. And like all good legends, it had just enough clues and small truths to lead curious people to concoct theories and exhaustive hunts.

  “Eventually, the sleeping immortals were found. Taken in by the scientists of the early twentieth century, and the experiments began.”

  Foster First made a low, quiet sound that was almost a moan.

  Welton shifted in his chair and patted the big guy’s arm fondly. “Things that will never happen again. Great mistakes were made. But galvanized are strong. The First endured, survived, and eventually fell into much kinder hands.”

  Foster First turned his head to stare down at Welton, and his expression was grateful. It made me rethink their relationship. Maybe Foster was happy to be with House Technology. If there were any advancements that could make being galvanized more tolerable, House Technology would be on the leading edge of it. And it did not look like Welton wanted Foster to suffer.

  Welton pointed at Foster’s face. “Cocoa on your cheek.”

  Foster lifted his huge hand and wiped at the side of his face.

  “Right.” Welton turned back to me. “The galvanized were brought in, reawakened sometimes decades apart, since there was some shuffling of who really had the claims to the brains and bodies, who had power to do certain procedures, a rise and fall of medical and technological advances, and, of course, the Restructure that set the world under House rule, kicked off the downfall, the Uprising. History—blah, blah, blah.

  “But the machine that created the galvanized, if there ever was a machine that altered time, was never found. It has long been assumed the records were destroyed, lost. They’ve certainly never turned up. And once certain people saw the value in having such powerful creatures on their side”—he lifted his hands to indicate all of us in the room—“everything that could be done to figure out how they were made or how to re-create them was done.”

  He tipped his head down. “Unsuccessfully. No one has been able to immortalize a brain, nor come up with a fully repairable body. No one. Or so we’ve thought for many, many years.”

  He glanced around. “Did I cover it pretty well?”

  Dotty tapped the edge of a deck of cards on the table. “Not bad for a kid.”

  He slid her a grin. “Now do you understand why you are so sought after, Matilda? No one has made a galvanized or discovered a galvanized in a couple hundred years. And if Abraham hadn’t pulled you in when he did, you would have had more than one House at your door, claiming you as their own.”

  “Including you,” Loy muttered, as he walked over and took a seat at the table.

  “Of course including me,” Welton said, his eyes half-closed like a sleeping cat’s. “But it only made sense that a galvanized who enjoys conversation and doesn’t frighten small children be the one sent to talk to her about her choices. Which ruled me out.”

  I glanced up at Foster. That stony, almost inhuman expression hardened his face again. I thought he might not really be angry; he just looked that way. All the time.

  “Since House Gray and I work very well together . . .” He shrugged. “So little energy and resources from me, and I still get a chance to talk to you. How is that not a brilliant outcome?

  “But that thread,” he said, staring at the stitches on my wrist. “It isn’t anything I’ve seen in biomodification. Do you have more of it?”

  “Yes. On the farm.”

  I still didn’t want to reveal any secret I didn’t have to. Like the laboratory beneath the pump house out on my property.

  The only reason Neds knew about the lab was because I’d been skewered pretty badly by the pony, and had to have him fetch me the threads since I was losing blood too quickly to do much good for myself.

  “What would I have to do to get a length of it from you?”

  “Well, you’d have to let me go home.”

  “I can arrange that.”

  “Can you?” I glanced at Abraham, who rolled his eyes.

  “You rule House Yellow, Welton,” Abraham said. “Not every House in the world.”

  “I don’t have to rule every House to get what I want,” he said.

  “What about what we want?” Dotty asked. “We’ve been waiting for a game of five-card stud for an hour now. Close your mouth and open your wallet, Welly. Who’s in?”

  Loy, Buck, and Abraham all took to the table. Along with Dotty and Welton, it was a pretty full game.

  Helen stood from the couch. “I’m going out for a walk,” she announced.

  “Want company?” Wila offered.

  “No. I just need some fresh air.” She threw a look my way, like I was the one stinking up the place.

  I did not know what I’d done to get under that woman’s hide. We’d barely spoken.

  She closed the door behind her, and I headed over to the kitchen to get some tea.

  So far, I thought I’d handled myself well, or at least well enough I didn’t think I’d be removed from House Gray. If I could just stay out of January’s judgmental gaze and not do something stupid like pick a fight with Helen, I might even make it through the night.

  I stayed in the kitchen while my tea steeped.

  A knock at the door made every face in the room turn in that direction.

  “Who knocks?” Welton asked.

  “No one,” Dolores said. “Helen?”

  Every person stood.

  Foster First, Abraham, and Buck strode over to the door. Foster opened it, his huge body and coat blocking the entire doorway and the night beyond.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  I knew that voice.

  Foster stepped aside, and Robert Twelfth from House Orange walked into the room. Buck gave him one up-and-down look, then shook his head and walked away.

  Foster stepped outside, looked at the dark yard, then walked back in and shut the door.

  “You knocked?” Abraham asked. “Since when do you think this is a formal affair?”

  Robert shrugged. “I didn’t want to startle anyone. It is late.”

  “N
ever too late for a brother to arrive.” Abraham held out his hand, intending to pull him into that half hug they’d done in the abandoned garage, but Robert took his hand instead and shook it.

  The last time I’d seen them meet, there had been a lot more smiling, some back patting, and general pleasure in seeing each other.

  But now Robert seemed reserved, and maybe even suspicious of Abraham’s greeting.

  I wondered if something was wrong.

  “It is good to see you, Abraham,” Robert said with a stilted formality. “It is good to see you all.”

  A few people waved or called out a hello.

  “What took you so long?” Abraham asked.

  “There were some House matters that needed my attention,” he said.

  Still so formal.

  “Food’s cold, but there’s plenty of it,” Dotty said. “Help yourself to it, Rob.”

  “And bring me a beer,” Abraham said, slapping Robert on the shoulder.

  From where I stood in the kitchen halfway across the room, I saw him scowl, but no one else was paying much attention to him.

  He started toward the kitchen and then he saw me.

  He stopped, and his body language changed. Robert was just a little taller than me, bald, and sharp featured, with a tight mustache and beard that circled his thin mouth. He wore a pair of rectangular glasses, the lenses of which were orange.

  We’d met before. He’d called me sister. But from the way he was looking at me—surprise and a whole lot of what looked like hunger—I wouldn’t have guessed he’d ever put eyes on me.

  “Matilda,” he said.

  “Hello, Robert.”

  “Beer, Rob,” Abraham called out. “Anytime now.”

  And there it was again. The anger, the annoyance.

  Weird.

  “Here you go.” I handed him a beer from the refrigerator.

  The poker game was back on, and the game of dice and paper had been revived by Wila, January, Vance, and Bede.

  Which meant besides Foster and Robert, everyone was playing something. Robert reluctantly turned and delivered the beer then settled at a table by the window, watching the room.

  His eyes followed me as I walked over to the poker game.

  I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he was not acting like himself at all. Or at least not like the man I’d met very briefly once.