Left Ned was scowling and obviously working to keep his opinion to himself. Right Ned raised one eyebrow, and I grinned at the spark of humor in his soft blue eyes.
I didn’t know how that man could stand Left Ned’s attitude sometimes. But they were brothers. What else could he do?
“Do you think there’s something dangerous about our visitor?” I asked. Neds had more worldly experience than I, since he’d been in and out of the big cities and traveled for most of his life. “Seeing as how he’s unarmed and unconscious,” I added.
“Go ahead,” Left Ned said, “joke about it. But he’s trouble. Galvanized trouble.”
“It’s fine,” Right Ned said. “Nothing about him you can’t handle. We’ve seen you take down crocboars bare-handed.”
“You should have kicked him out on his heels, not dragged him in here and bedded him down like a lost puppy,” Left Ned muttered. “He’s a stranger.”
“I take in lots of strangers,” I said. “Plus, he’s wounded. A Case always tends to those who are hurt. Even if he was my sworn enemy, I’d patch him up before kicking him to the crocs.”
“We know that’s your way, Tilly,” Right Ned said. “And we respect it. Don’t we?” he said to Left Ned.
“No, we don’t,” Left Ned said. “Too much kindness will just get you trouble. And that”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the bed—“is already too much trouble.”
Right Ned rolled his eyes. “We’ll get the water. Be right back.”
I knew Left Ned was right. Sometimes it was better for all involved just to let a wounded thing lie. Sometimes kindness only reaped a bitter harvest.
But the man had come to warn my father. He’d come to help him, quite possibly at the risk of receiving that wound he now suffered. If for nothing more than his stated intentions, I felt he deserved to be mended.
And quickly, before he drew unwanted attention to my property.
Neds, probably Right Ned, had pushed the curtain back from the window, letting the daylight in to cheer the place.
From here I could see the row of oak trees stretched out on either side of it, all the way down the two miles before it ended at the old highway no one used anymore now that the cities were connected by freeways, sky, and tubes.
I pushed my hair out of my eyes. Grandma said my hair was the color of maple syrup and beautiful. I just thought it was bouncy and got in the way too much. I turned back to the supplies.
Thread, needles, scissors, clamps, plain cotton, and bandages. Regular disinfectants didn’t work on me, and I’d guessed they might not work on him either, which was why I’d brought a small jar of scale jelly. It looked like fruit jelly, a nice amber yellow of peach or tangerines boiled with sugar. But it was not eating jelly at all.
It was boiled-down lizard scales. When Neds had taken some of it down to the feed and seed just to see if they had ever seen the stuff, the owner had no idea what it was made of.
Dr. Smith, who’d been buying wormer for his goats that day, took an awfully strong interest in it, and said it didn’t look, smell, or feel like any medicine he’d ever used to patch up people or animals. He’d volunteered to run it through his lab to see what made it up.
Luckily, the Neds aren’t the sort who trust easily. They’d told the doctor no, laughed it off as just a single near-empty jar they’d found down by the old nuclear power plant at Clark’s River, and come on home.
We didn’t know why it worked on me—maybe it was a stitched thing. It did nothing at all for the Neds. But as long as it worked, I was happy for it and did my best to keep a supply stocked.
“You’re lucky I was a nosy and willful child,” I said as I rolled up the sleeves of my checkered shirt. “Even luckier Quinten answered my questions. Well, most of them, anyway. Let’s get to patching that gash of yours.”
I braced my knees against the box spring and lifted him a bit, then tugged off his jacket sleeve by sleeve.
I put him down as easy as I could, but it must not have been that easy. He moaned a little, and his eyes rolled under the lids.
“Now I’m going to take off your shirt,” I said in a friendly voice. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, but I didn’t want him to wake up fighting. I’m strong, but preferred not to stitch up a wound while ducking a fist.
His hands, covered in half-dried blood, were twice the size of mine. And the rest of him matched that proportion.
Not much could knock me out cold, but I figured if he clocked me, I’d be seeing stars.
“I’m starting here with your sleeves.” I made sure all the cuff buttons were undone, then leaned over him. “Rolling up the right sleeve, my friend.” My fingers brushed against the ridge of stitches that circled his forearm.
I’d never touched another person life-stitched like me. Never touched a man, unless the few times I’d patched up Neds’ cuts counted. My father, then brother, had insisted I stay hidden. Said if I let any other person find out I was stitched, they’d come to kill me, kill us all—land, beasts, and every last Case included.
So I didn’t have the experience with men that other woman my age had. I had long ago accepted that was just the way it would be.
Unless I found someone whom I could trust with my secret. Whom I could trust with my life.
And that only happened in fairy tales.
Gently, I dragged one finger along the stitches on the man’s arm again. It wasn’t a horrible feeling; it wasn’t frightening or odd.
Being stitched was evidence of a mending, an overcoming of pain. Our scars were proof that we were strong enough to keep living.
I carefully slid the button at the top of his collar through the hole. His collar loosened. He caught his breath just slightly as my knuckle brushed the bare skin of his neck.
I didn’t think the galvanized had much feeling. Just in case I was causing him pain, I decided to keep talking.
“My farmhand says you’re trouble. I hope you prove him wrong and see that I’m just here trying to help you.”
I thumbed the next button open. “So just stay still. I’ll try to be gentle.”
I hadn’t put my hands on this much of a man, well, ever. I was trying not to get distracted by it, but couldn’t help but let my imagination wander over him a bit.
I undid the rest of his buttons, then assessed the situation of his torn-up undershirt. Seemed a shame to cut up a man’s shirt, but it already had a slash through the front from whatever sharp edge he’d gotten into an argument with.
Didn’t look like a crocboar did it. Too clean, and he had too many of his guts still on the inside.
I tugged his undershirt up out of his pants, exposing just an inch or two of his bare stomach above his belt. His skin was a shade lighter than his hands, several shades lighter than my skin.
No stitches at his belt line, just smooth ridges of muscles.
I took up the scissors and cut along the seam of his undershirt, holding the material in one hand away from his skin. Even at rest, he had a body of a fighter: muscular arms, chest, stomach, and thighs. I knew the galvanized fought for show, but I’d always suspected it was just for show.
I was wrong.
“Hold still. I’d hate to stab something important.” I slid the scissors under the narrow strap over his shoulders. Snipped, blew a breath to get my hair out of my eyes, stretched across his chest, and cut the other shoulder free.
I folded the material down and away to one side, leaving him bare beneath me.
Stitches ran from the muscles of his left shoulder, crossed with another set over his well-defined chest to make an X over his heart. The stitches continued over the tight muscles of his stomach, skirted the edge of his wound, and ticked down across the muscle ridge above his left hip bone. Three thinner lines of stitches tracked from the center of his chest and buried in the knotted muscles across his right rib
s.
Other stitches ringed his right shoulder, elbow, wrist, and ring finger.
I’d seen Neds shirtless once when he’d gone swimming in the creek. He was put together in a pleasant, natural sort of way: skin and muscles all the same smoothness, tone, and stretch, making a well-built man who happened to brace a bit wide at the upper back and shoulders to make room for both heads.
But still, even with the unusual number of heads Neds possessed, he was all one body. Organic. Natural.
This man was not natural. It did not mean he was ugly. Quite the opposite.
The stitching joined pieces that were not quite the same color as the rest of him; a little too light as if some of his skin never quite took to sunlight, and in other places a little too dark, with muscles and scar tissue bunching thick beneath. The work it took to make him, to piece him together, was amazing. As fine as anything I’d seen my dad or brother do, even though his thread was much thicker than mine.
“I understand there are only twelve of you in the world—galvanized. But I have no idea why you’d come out to my land. Did you know my father? Do you know his enemies? Your stitches are gray. Does that mean House Gray still claims you, or are you on the run?”
I reached for a cloth to clean the blood from his wound. “Were you in an accident, or put together for a purpose? There must be a point to it, to you. You must have a story.” I brushed the cloth gently along the smear of blood on his stomach.
His breathing let go and he gasped. I looked down at his face.
Into eyes red as banked coals.
4
It was called Mercury Fever, and like the California gold rush before it, brought hundreds to the little town, searching for a fortune in the dirt and hills. But the promise of mercury also attracted men of the sciences: mad men with mad plans.—1869
—from the journal of L.U.C.
He didn’t blink, didn’t look away from my eyes.
I’d seen crazy before. I’d seen beasts mad with pain, and I’d been the one who put them in that pain.
They looked a lot like the man lying in the bed below me.
“You are safe,” I said. “You are in my guest room in my home. I am just about to sew up your injury.”
For too many tumbling beats of my heart, I thought for sure he had forgotten how to understand the language. There didn’t seem to be a lot of sanity left in him, just a raw, mindless anger.
I licked my lips and tried out a soft smile even while logic was telling me best thing would be to back up nice and slow and find my shotgun.
“These are scissors.” I lifted them so the sunlight could catch them in gold. “I’m just going to put them over—”
The floorboards creaked.
His hands shot out viper-fast, wrapped around my wrists, and yanked me down against him as he shoved back with his heels and pushed both of us off the bed.
I’m a strong girl, but along with speed, that man had monstrous brute force. He was on his feet and I was too, as he manhandled me over to the corner of the room.
“Whoa, hold on,” I said. “Simmer it down. We’re all friends here. We’re all friends.”
He planted his back against the wall, seeking a defensive position. My back was against him and the heat of his blood soaked through my overalls and cotton shirt, trickling down toward my belt.
He’d yanked the scissors out of my hand with that grab and roll he’d just done off the bed. He held them hidden, tucked by his thigh, while his other arm hung over my shoulder and across my chest, keeping me still.
I could hurt him. He was in his stocking feet and I had on steel-toed boots, not to mention I knew how to throw a wicked elbow. I wasn’t afraid to aim for the parts of him that would hurt the most—including his wound.
“You came here to me,” I said. “I’m trying to tend your injury. Which would be a lot easier if you’d get back into bed.”
“Told you he was trouble,” Left Ned said in a cold, cold voice. He stood in the doorway, a wooden bucket of water in one hand, an old Glock 20 in the other. The gun was aimed our way.
“I’ve got this under control,” I said. “He’s just spooked is all. Might better unspook without that gun pointed at him.”
Neds had once told me they controlled opposite sides of the body, so Left Ned was primarily right-handed, and Right Ned was left-handed. That meant Left Ned had his finger on the trigger.
Didn’t seem likely we’d get out of this without him putting more holes in the stranger.
“Tilly,” Right Ned said, “you can’t see his face.” He nodded slightly. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have this under control.”
“Do not,” the man said in a voice so low, it was almost a growl, “come closer, or you will swim in your own blood, shortlife.”
Both the Neds’ eyebrows went up.
All right. Maybe I didn’t have my thumb quite as tight on the situation as I’d like, but language like that was not allowed in my house.
“Easy,” I said. “No one needs to swim in anything. You don’t want to hurt us. We don’t want to hurt you.” That might have sounded more convincing if one of us weren’t pointing a gun at his head. “And I’d appreciate it if you stowed your bigotry.”
He said something in a language I didn’t understand. Russian, maybe? I was passable with French and Spanish, but Quinten had always handled Russian. Still, it didn’t sound like a bygones-be-bygones sort of speech.
“What’s his name?” I asked Right Ned. “Did you find anything in his pockets? An identification card of some sort?”
“No. There isn’t even a label on his jacket.”
“You’re gonna let her go, big man,” Left Ned said. “Or I’ll blow you full of so many holes, you’ll be recycled for spare parts.”
Death threats. Sure, that’d make him relax.
“Ned Harris,” I said. “I’ll have none of that kind of talk in front of our guest.”
“The stitch is crazy,” Left Ned said. “And there isn’t any mending you can do to fix crazy. He should be taken down before he hurts someone, Matilda Case.”
At the sound of my name, the man behind me jerked. I expected the scissors to fly from his hand toward Neds, but instead his arm around my shoulder loosened and he released me.
“Case?” he said as if he’d just remembered where he was. He inhaled, his breath hard and wet—who knew what kind of damage rolling off the bed had done to his existing wounds—and his posture straightened. The scissors fell to the floor with a clunk.
Suddenly I wasn’t standing against him at all.
“Step to the side, Tilly,” Left Ned said, the gun still trained up and to my right a bit, aimed at what I supposed was the man’s head.
Right Ned nodded slightly, a silent plea for me to clear away for the shot.
Instead, I turned and faced the man.
He slumped against the wall, both hands at his side, his stomach dripping with blood and showing far too much of his insides. His color had gone chalk gray, with green shaded in the hollows of his cheeks and around his lips. Eyes that just a moment before had burned sharp were now as dull as cold ash.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please. Forgive my manners. Your hospitality has been . . . has been more than kind . . .”
“You got that right,” Left Ned said. “Now we’ve run all out of hospitable.”
The slosh of the water bucket hitting the floor startled me. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Right Ned with another gun in his hand.
It occurred to me that my hired hand was packing an awful lot of heat around the farm. I had a brief moment to wonder if Neds had even more artillery stashed in his overalls before Right Ned squeezed the trigger.
Instinct made me duck. Good thing too. That gun was aimed straight away at me, as much as at the man.
The projectile dart hit
the big man square in the chest. He frowned, looked at the yellow feather sticking out of his skin, then slid down the wall, out cold.
“I cannot believe you just— Put the guns down!” I said.
“It’s a tranquilizer,” Right Ned said.
“Now. Down. Both of them,” I said. “We do not shoot our guests. Honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into those heads of yours.”
“Sense,” Left Ned said. “He was holding you hostage. You understand that, Matilda? How dangerous a thing he is? How powerful? Galvanized.” He spit.
“What in the—? Since when do you have an opinion on the galvanized? Do you know him? Know something about him I don’t know? Because now would be a good time to share.”
Grandma peeked around the corner of the door. “There you are, dear. Is it time to go? The men are outside,” she said. “Men in cars.”
Left Ned swore soft enough Grandma wouldn’t hear him, but I threw him a mind-your-manners look anyway.
“What kind of cars, Grandma?” I walked over to lead her out of the room, and noticed the blood on my hands.
“White, dear.”
“White?” Right Ned said, surprised.
“Did you call them?” I asked.
“You know I wouldn’t. But White’s Medical, and he’s hurt. We could hand him over.”
So House White must have been tracking the unconscious guy.
“Is he House White?” I asked, wishing I’d kept up with this sort of House information. “Running from House Gray?” Yes, I was the communication hub for House Brown. We tracked where the Houses were taking over land, drone paths, and resource dumps. We also handled seed exchanges; goods bartered; and even kept a books, recipe, and repair exchange. None of those things involved keeping track of the galvanized.
“I don’t think so,” Right Ned said. “I think he’s House Gray.”
I ran through what I knew of House Gray’s and White’s current standing. Didn’t think they were at odds any more than usual. Maybe they were working together to reclaim him? Or maybe House Gray had loaned his services to House White?
I was beginning to think Neds were wrong. This man wasn’t trouble. He was a lot of trouble.