“What?”
“I want a room. For two days while you get your affairs in order. How much?”
“I said I’d patch you up, not open a boarding house.”
“How. Much?”
Neds stood just out of the man’s line of vision. Right Ned shook his head while Left Ned drew a finger across his throat in the “kill him” gesture.
“You couldn’t afford it,” I said.
“You don’t know what I’m willing to pay.”
There was a fire in his eyes. Some of it was anger, yes. But there was a glint of something else. Amusement. He was getting a kick out of arguing with me, of trying to make me bend to his authority.
Not going to happen.
If he wanted to pay, he’d have to pay big.
“Are you carrying gold?” I asked sweetly.
He frowned.
“No? Silver? Lead? Copper?” I made big, innocent eyes at him. “A girl out in the brush doesn’t need credit chits, Mr. House Gray. What do you have in your pockets that’s worth my hospitality?”
One of the Neds coughed, and I realized that could have been taken in a very different manner.
Abraham flashed me a wicked smile.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said before he opened his mouth, even though a rush of heat stung my cheeks.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. He didn’t have to. We’d searched his pockets. They were empty. But his eyes still burned with delight. He thought he had something I’d want. Something that would make me let him stay here.
“Information,” he said.
“I don’t need information, Mr. House Gray.”
“Abraham,” he corrected. “Are you sure about that? I have access to more information than you could glean from ten lifetimes out here, Dumpster-diving data off hacked lines.”
“Dumpster-diving?” Left Ned started.
“What kind of information?” I asked.
Here it was, his chance to give me something that would help House Brown, since he must have assumed I was lying about being part of House Green.
It was also my chance to see how he had sized me up. What sort of woman did he think I was? What did he think was important to me?
His eyes wandered over my body slowly, from feet all the way up to my eyes. I resisted the urge to fold my arms, turn around, scowl. I didn’t like being seen—had spent a life working very hard to stay hidden.
And this man was in the middle of my living room, uncovering every detail of me.
“I don’t suppose fashion would interest you?”
Really? I gave him a chance to tell me what he thinks of me, and he takes a dig at my choice of clothing?
I strode over to the door. “No,” I said. “It wouldn’t. Call off the drones. I’ll see you in a couple weeks. Good-bye.”
“You heard the lady,” Left Ned said. “Get moving.”
“Your brother,” Abraham said. “Quinten.”
Nothing could still me faster.
“I know where he is. Where he was last seen.”
“Is he alive?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Dammit. He’d seen right through me. Probably knew all along that I had a brother. Knew that he’d been missing and I’d been worrying.
He nodded. “I will tell you where he has been. I will tell you what we know of your mother’s message. I will tell you . . . I will answer anything you ask of me. For two days. Then you come with me to House Gray, where we will settle your House claim and the claim on your land before someone comes out here and offers you no choice.”
“You call this a choice?” Left Ned said. “How about we pick up our weapons and give you a choice of dying here or walking off our property and dying there?”
“You said my father’s enemies wanted to find me,” I said, ignoring Neds. “Do you know that for sure? Do you know who they are?”
“Your mother’s message was unclear. I’ll tell you what I know if you come with me now, or if you let me stay and come with me in two days.”
It meant he’d be underfoot. Two days on the farm, getting in my way, getting in my business, uncovering the secrets I’d spent a lifetime hiding. The Lizard, for example. There was no way to hide that stitched monster.
But I couldn’t just run off with him blind and leave Grandma and Neds behind to try to deal with House Brown—or, worse, to be harmed if House Gray did not keep their word and this land was seized and burned.
If I was going to negotiate with House Gray for my land, my family, and my House, then two days of grilling him for information might give me something I could use for leverage.
“You’ll call off the drones,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You’ll answer anything I ask, truthfully.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll stay out of my way.”
“If you wish.”
Not quite a yes, but close enough.
“All right. Two days. You can have the room down the hall. I’ll give you a change of sheets and you’re welcome to a portion of the meals. Don’t bother my grandmother, and otherwise keep your hands to yourself. Neds and I carry weapons, and we aren’t shy about using them. Agreed?”
I strolled over, held out my hand.
He wrapped his huge hand around mine, warm and callused, his eyes widening for just a moment at our contact before he nodded.
“Agreed,” he said.
“Neds,” I said, “please help Grandma settle in for her nap.”
“And where are you going to be?” Right Ned asked.
“Watching our guest hold up his end of the bargain.”
Neds got moving and shepherded an already-drowsing Grandma down the opposite hall to her room, the little sheep trotting behind them.
Left Ned threw me a couple pointed looks that made it clear he thought I’d gone insane.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I had.
“Do you need something to call off the drones?” I walked past Abraham and headed into the kitchen. There was still a pool of blood that needed to be cleaned up.
“Satellite link? Data bounce? Smoke signals?”
His boots fell in muffled thuds as he followed me.
“Just an open sky.”
“Right that way,” I pointed at the kitchen door where he’d first arrived. “Watch the mess on the floor.”
I turned the water on the sink, pulled a couple of heavy rags out of the drawer, and tossed them under the faucet. Cleaning up blood was best done with a lot of hot water and soap.
“Let me help you with that,” Abraham said. He hadn’t even walked into the room yet. I couldn’t tell if that look on his face was guilt or worry.
“Just call off the drones. You aren’t the first man to bleed on my floor.” I offered up a smile and that seemed enough to get him on his way and out the door.
I wrung out the rags and watched him out the side window. He held up his left palm and jabbed at it, like he was punching in a code.
Huh. Maybe that was why he didn’t have anything in his pockets. He was coded into the network with flesh and bone.
He let his hand drop and tipped his head up to search the sky.
Yes, I was staring. He inhaled, his shoulders shifting a little, and closed his eyes. The afternoon sunlight poured over him, glowing up his skin while bringing those life stitches into stark contrast.
The wind pushed his hair around a bit, giving me a good, long look at him.
His face in semiprofile was god-awful handsome: strong nose and cheekbones, square jaw and mouth that relaxed into a slight frown. The lines around his eyes eased a bit as he took another deep breath, absorbing the warmth of the day. I wondered if it was pain that had put the lines at his eyes and across his forehead.
I’d seen the fighter’s muscles covered
by the bandages wrapped around his middle and his heavy gray coat. But the way he was standing now turned my mind away from how dangerous he might be. If he’d wanted to, I supposed he could have overpowered Neds, maybe even overpowered me. But he’d talked to get his point across, and though he was annoyed by it, he’d done what I wanted and given me some time to settle things here.
It was . . . well, nicer than I’d been treated by anyone in House before.
Galvanized. I’d heard a lot about them, but had never met one. So far he had caught my full attention.
He took a third deep breath, and this time I inhaled with him and exhaled, letting that breath take away the fear that knotted like a fist in my chest. Fear that I had made the wrong choice bringing him into my house. Fear that I shouldn’t have agreed to let him stay. Fear that my brother was hurt, or, worse, and that I’d just sealed a deal that would take away my land and fail the people of House Brown.
For just that one breath, I didn’t worry about all the things I should be taking care of.
I just watched him.
He opened his eyes, then turned to look at me.
Crap.
I quickly looked away and poured some soap into the sink, agitating it to get the bubbles to rise.
Had he seen me staring at him?
Probably.
The real question was: why did I feel so embarrassed about it? It wasn’t like he knew what I was thinking about him.
Right?
I squared my shoulders and pretended like I couldn’t feel his gaze on me. Pretended that I didn’t know he was laughing at me.
By the time he strolled back into the kitchen, I was on my knees, halfway through cleaning up the blood.
“Drones are called off. You got your two days,” he said.
“All right, then. Clean sheets are in the hall closet. Put the soiled ones on the floor in your room and I’ll take care of them.” I stood and carried the two rags sopping with soap and blood over to the empty side of the big sink.
“I could lend a hand,” he said.
“No need.” I wrung out the rags, then sloshed them in the hot-water side of the sink, soap almost up to my elbows.
A little bell set in the corner of the ceiling rang out like a chime stirred by a hard wind. Out in the barn, another, deeper bell rang, and I knew there was another bell even farther out on the edge of the property that gave one low knell.
Someone in House Brown was calling. Someone needed my help.
“What’s that?” Abraham asked.
I turned, the two rags in my hands. “On second thought, I could use your help.” I deposited the soapy rags in his hands. “Wipe up as much blood as you can. There’s a box of sodium peroxide powder here.” I plucked the box out from beneath the sink. “After the blood’s up, sprinkle this over the stain, but don’t inhale the dust.”
“I know how to clean up blood.”
“Good!” I gave him a wide smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”
I wiped my hands on a towel and strode out of the kitchen, through the living room, down past Grandma’s room and my room, to the narrow door that led to the basement.
It was locked, keyed to open for my fingerprints and for Neds’, Quinten’s, and Grandma’s.
I glanced down the hall before opening the door. Abraham stood at the end of the hall, watching me.
“Better get on it,” I said. “Terrible mess, that floor.” I tugged open the door and shut it firmly behind me. Waited there, listening for his boots, but I didn’t hear him come down the hall, didn’t hear him put his hand on the door latch.
Good enough.
Stairs led me down to the communication hub for House Brown.
When I was young, the basement was a wonderland to me. Filled with copper, wood, and brass mingled with slick plastic and shining silver and glass. The room glittered with a dizzying display of dials, levers, buttons, screens, and wires. I had dedicated three months to learning what every toggle, gauge, and system could do.
Quinten had taken Dad’s antiquated short-wave collection and expanded it until we could tap into every sort of data stream ever made. It was why we were now the hub for House Brown. Some of the House Brown communities had current tech and could bounce data from here to Jupiter if they wanted to.
But the majority of the people in House Brown weren’t that advanced. Still, it didn’t take much to put up a tower and send some kind of a signal.
Quinten had made sure we had the equipment to receive even the weakest signals here, loud and clear.
The main station to the right was Quinten’s. He usually sat in the leather office chair in front of the monitors that stacked from floor to ceiling, maps and radar and other vital tracking systems available at a glance.
I preferred the antique hutch off to one side that held analog radio equipment, a telegraph key, and a sweet little laptop Quinten had linked into our entire network.
The laptop screen was blinking in time with several other screens and buttons in the room. I glanced over at the maps. Signal was coming in from Nevada. The Fesslers’ land.
I tapped the code into the laptop, flicked on the video, and sent a reply.
Almost immediately, Braiden Fessler—head of the desert homestead of about fifty—snapped onto the screen above the hutch.
He was somewhere between seventy and ninety, his dark skin cooked down by years in the sun until it was a deep mahogany of wrinkles and creases. He wore a tattered, billed cap over his large ears, and his white hair curled down in sideburns to join with a pointed beard.
“Matilda, we need your help. There’s heavy equipment moving our way, about thirty miles out. Is there someone you can call to stop this? Is there a way to jam their work orders?”
“It’s not that easy,” I said. “Did survey drones pass over?”
“About a year ago. Didn’t think much of it.”
“But nothing recently? No indication you’d been scouted by a House?”
“Nothing.”
My fingers glided over the screen, accessing roads, House Brown locations, and nearby cities.
“You’re sure they’re headed your way?”
“A few of us rode out that way to see what was what. It’s a line of earth movers, Matilda. Drills, cranes. I think they’re coming to tear down our village and set up a geothermal plant.”
I nodded, thinking furiously. That made sense. It could be House Orange, out to throw down a mining operation, but all the records and scans we could tap into indicated there was nothing valuable beneath the Fesslers’ parched soil.
There was, however, a strong natural heat source—geothermal—that could be rigged up as a power generator to supplement the nearest city.
“What are we going to do, Matilda?” Braiden asked. “We have children here—babies. There’s nowhere else for us. This is our home. Our land.”
“They’re thirty miles out?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I flipped to the satellite feed, got a lock, and pulled up the eastern edge of Nevada.
“I see them. About twenty vehicles.” I dialed it in, couldn’t see any colors or House markings. “Don’t know who’s behind it. But I’ll find out. Let me track this as far as I can. If we know which House is moving your way and why—”
“We know why,” he said.
“No, we suspect they want the thermal. But it could be other things they’re coming for. Mining. Waste dump. Data hub.”
His dark eyes watered, but he nodded. “When will you know? When will you tell us how to stop them?”
He wanted hope and assurances I did not have to offer.
“The equipment is big and slow moving. I’ll have something by tomorrow morning. Just hold through the night. If there’s no way to stop them . . .”
“No,” he said, cutting me off. “We have run
enough. We have been pushed away from green fields and safe hollows. We have escaped the slavery of our generations to the Houses. We will not leave our land. Not this time.”
I’d heard that before. So many people in House Brown were tired of running. They wanted to stand and fight, even if that meant losing everything.
“I’ll do what I can to find a solution,” I said. “In the meantime, I want you to tell everyone to pack a bag.”
“But—”
“Mr. Fessler, please,” I said, raising my voice just a bit. “We’ll do everything we can to find a way to turn them back. But if we fail, I want your word that you will not put your childrens’ lives in danger. I want your word that you’ll tell their mothers and fathers to run. I want your word that you’ll go with them.”
“Of course,” he said, dropping his gaze.
“Good,” I said. “Give me the evening and night. I’ll contact you in the morning. Call me if the situation changes in any way.”
He nodded and reached forward, ending our link.
I sat there a moment, not breathing.
I’d handled situations like this dozens of times since Quinten had left, but it was never easy. Sometimes we won and got information out soon enough to either shut down the House operation or at least warn House Brown people enough in advance that they could take their valuables and run.
Sometimes we lost.
The odds were never on House Brown’s side. But that didn’t mean any of us were about to stop fighting.
7
The government’s army buried the dead. Hundreds of men, women, and children planted in mass graves at the foot of Alveré Case’s tower. The newspapers reported a smallpox outbreak. The newspapers lied.—1910
—from the journal of L.U.C.
The door opened and boots started down the stairs. I’d been living with Neds long enough to know the cadence of his stride.
“Tilly?” he said, ducking the low beam before stepping into the cluttered main room. “I heard the bell.”
“It’s the Fesslers’ place.”
“Nevada? Middle of the desert?” Right Ned asked.
I nodded, pulling the maps up across the screens and monitors over Quinten’s station. “Heavy equipment headed their way about thirty miles out. Braiden’s worried. He wants to stand or die.”