Crucible Zero

  “It wasn’t my best moment.”

  “You owe me an apology.”

  “I’m sorry your brother was being an ass and I had to use you to make my point.”

  “Worst apology I’ve ever heard. Want to try that again?”

  He shifted that left shoulder again, and it made me curious as to why he favored it. “People don’t say no to me,” he said.

  “You might want to get used to it,” I said. “I’m not intimidated by you.”

  “I can see that.”

  “And?”

  “I like it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “This tough-guy thing you’re trying to pull off? Not really doing anything for me.”

  I was lying. Tough Abraham was all kinds of hot. It was making my knees wobbly just watching him move, listening to his low, rumbling voice, imagining his hands stroking over my skin.

  “Well then, maybe I’ll try a different approach.”

  “Try approaching an apology.”

  “I’m sorry I grabbed you. It was . . . ungentlemanly.” That slash of a smile was a little rakish, the stitches at the side of his mouth pulling and not allowing the corner of his mouth to lift completely.

  “So, we’re clear that my personal space is my own?” I said. “Because you’re all over it right now.”

  He stepped just a fraction of an inch closer, and I couldn’t help it: my breathing got a little tight and quick.

  “If I ask you kindly,” he said, “would you please explain why touching you made everything in my body come alive?”

  The soft burr of his voice washed me in sensual memories. I wanted to make those memories a reality again; needed him. But a part of me, the smart part of me, realized what he’d just said could also be taken as a threat.

  Sorry, memories. Survival comes first.

  “No, I will not,” I said. “But I will point out to you that if I can make you feel, I can make you hurt. Just so we’re both clear about where we stand on the whole touching-without-permission thing.”

  The smile was back. It looked good on him.

  “If I ask you nicely—very nicely—will you give me permission to touch you?”

  “No.” That would have sounded more assured if my voice hadn’t cracked.

  His eyes flashed with heat and amusement. “If you’ve lived a life before, if you’ve known me before, then I must have been something very special to you.”

  “Not really.”

  “You did go back in time to save me from Slater.”

  “I went back in time for other reasons. But since I was there, it seemed polite to warn you about Slater.”

  “You tackled him when he tried to shoot me. You were definitely trying to save me. And I’m asking myself why a woman would do such a thing for a man she didn’t hold in high regard.”

  “Maybe I thought you’d live your three hundred years and actually do some good for the world instead of hiring yourself out to kill people for money.”

  “Doesn’t sound a lot like me.”

  “And that, Mr. Vail, is so very disappointing.”

  He frowned, stilled by my cold tone.

  “What was I to you?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “It doesn’t matter. Things are different now.”

  “They don’t have to be.”

  Ah, gods, there it was. The words I most wanted to hear from him. The promise that we could be together again. We could make it right again.

  My heart thumped hard with need for that, even though I knew he didn’t mean it. Even though I knew he didn’t know what he was saying.

  He was just looking for my weakness, a way to get what he wanted out of me: information.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, too much emotion coming out with the words. “Don’t be so cruel as to make promises you won’t keep.”

  The calculating look in his eyes faded, replaced by concern that made me forget for a moment that he was a different man and this was a different time. A time I wasn’t all that sure I’d get to keep.

  “Matilda,” he said. “I’m sorry—”

  “Is there a problem here?” Quinten asked from the end of the hall.

  Abraham immediately stepped back, and I realized he’d been leaning so close to me, I’d been wrapped in his heat, lost in his presence, my world filled by the sensation of him.

  A sharp knife of loneliness twisted through my heart. I missed him, even though he was standing right next to me.

  I straightened knees that had buckled despite my best intentions.

  “No problem, Quinten,” I said, my voice steady. Good thing too.

  Quinten was covered in shadows there at the end of the hall, but as he walked our way, the light caught the gleam of an ax in his clenched hand.

  Where is he going with an ax?

  In his other hand was a bottle of something that smelled like moonshine.

  “Why are you out of your room, Abraham?” Quinten asked.

  “Am I a prisoner here?” Abraham squared off toward him, but hadn’t quite declared a fight. Yet.

  “You are to stay where I tell you to stay. My property and my rules,” Quinten said. “Or do I need to make that point clear? The only reason you’re still here and not tossed out on your ass like your friend Sallyo is because I thought you might be useful. Don’t make me change my mind.”

  I knew how this was going to end. In a fight. That bottle in Quinten’s hand was down a couple inches. I didn’t know how full it had been when he’d started drinking it.

  Maybe it would be good for both of them to get a little of their anger out on each other. Although my brother was at a distinct disadvantage, since, one, he could feel, and, two, he had only human strength.

  “Are we leaving when it gets dark?” I asked.

  “Not now, Matilda,” Quinten said. His breath smelled of booze, but he sounded stone-cold sober.

  “Where are we going?” Abraham asked.

  “House Earth,” I said. “We need to handle some things there before we go kill Slater. And if you two are going to be snarling at each other all night, we might as well be traveling while you do it.”

  “We’ll wait until morning,” Quinten said.

  “No one travels at night.” Abraham turned his attention fully to me, a frown on his face. It was perhaps a ploy to think he didn’t have his guard up, thus tempting Quinten into swinging that ax, but I didn’t think so.

  Abraham wasn’t afraid of a man with an ax. It took more than that to kill him.

  “I travel at night,” I said with a shrug.

  “No one travels at night, because they’d spend more time fighting off ferals than getting anywhere, and that’s if they were lucky. If they weren’t lucky, they’d just be dead.”

  Ferals. Right. Quinten had mentioned those.

  “Are they that bad?” I asked. “I mean, we had crocboar and other roving mutants in my time. They weren’t too hard to put down if you weren’t afraid of getting bloody. I’d take out one or two a week on my own and feed them to the lizard.”

  Abraham shook his head slowly, then looked over at Quinten. “Do you believe she traveled back in time?”

  I answered before Quinten could. “We haven’t had much of a chance to talk about it,” I said. “How long does it take to get to Compound Five?”

  “On foot? A few days,” Quinten said. “But we can take the truck. If we start early enough, we should get there before sundown.”

  “After we stop by House Earth, we’re going to kill Slater?” Abraham asked.

  Quinten nodded.

  “Do we have a plan for how, exactly, we’re going to do that?” Abraham asked. “You have every mercenary in this hemisphere looking for you, and unless you turn yourselves in or issue a challenge, we have no idea where Slater really is. You need intelligence
on his movements. Reliable intelligence.”

  “I know,” Quinten said. “Let me handle the details.”

  “I don’t see that to be in my best interest,” Abraham said. “Or yours. If we’re going to take down a man as powerful as Slater, a head of a House, we will need to work together with at least a modicum of trust between us.”

  I waited. Abraham was being more than reasonable, especially considering Quinten had just been threatening him with an ax.

  And I thought Quinten had been mostly reasonable to admit that having Abraham and Foster on our side was only to our advantage.

  I just didn’t know why there was so much hatred between them. It wasn’t like my brother was above the law. He’d admitted to smuggling information out of House Fire to work on the cure that had put us in all this trouble anyway.

  No, whatever Quinten was angry at the galvanized about, it was personal.

  “You are armed and in my home,” Quinten said. “I would be a foolish man indeed to give you more trust than I have. But it is getting late. You and Foster are welcome to a meal or a bath.” He paused, pressing his lips together. When he next spoke, the words came out in a measured drone. “Matilda can show you where the bath is.”

  He glanced at me, and I nodded.

  Quinten turned and walked back down the hall to his room. “Get some sleep,” he said without looking back. “We’ll go over the route to Compound Five in the morning before sunrise.”

  He took a long swallow from the bottle, stepped into his room, and shut the door behind him.

  “He’s a cheerful man,” Abraham said, nodding after Quinten. “Who died?”

  “Most recently? His sister,” I said.

  He frowned.

  I walked down the hall to the bathroom I hoped would be there.

  “Neds should be in soon,” I said when his footsteps sounded behind me. “Don’t get in his way, okay? He’s more than happy to mess a person up, and keeps enough guns on him to arm a battalion. And don’t count on me riding to your rescue again. I’m done playing referee between the menfolk.”

  I put my hand on the latch, held my breath, and turned it, opening the door. Bathroom. Decorated a little differently, but there was still indoor plumbing with a shower and a tub. I exhaled and nodded.

  “So, that’s the bathroom,” I said. “Help yourself if you want a scrub.”

  “You walk through this house, your home, like you’ve never seen it before,” he said. “Why is that, Matilda?”

  He was waiting for me to fill in the last piece of the puzzle. Waiting for me to tell him I had woken in this body and found Evelyn on the way out of this mind just hours ago, when he’d knocked on the door.

  I gave him a small smile. “It’s been a long day. I’m going to get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning, Abraham.”

  I turned to walk past him down the hall. Close enough he could reach out and touch me if he wanted. Close enough I could reach out and touch him. In my mind’s eye, I took his hand and drew him with me back to my room, where I could lay him in my bed and fill myself with comfort that would only be lies.

  I walked past him, without a brush of contact.

  “Good night, Matilda,” he said, his voice so gentle, so familiar, so him, I wanted to cry.

  Instead, I kept walking, not daring to look back.

  6

  Time is killing me. Killing us all, I suppose. And it’s giving me a terrible headache the more I try to unwind the puzzle of it.

  —W.Y.

  I opened my eyes, my head heavy with a confusion of dreams. I tried to remember where I was, what time I was in, and what had happened.

  I lay in bed, dressed down to my underwear and a T-shirt. A quick glance at the crocheted-lace-curtained window showed it wasn’t yet true light outside.

  I was home.

  For several beats of my heart, I just reveled in that truth. No matter what happened from here forward, I had survived going back in time. My brother was still alive. So were Grandma, Neds, and Abraham. That was good. A win.

  But we had people to save and a man to kill. Today was the day we got down to it.

  Someone was laughing in the kitchen. Several someones, actually. Low voices, high voices, a babble and crash of tones and demands and laughter, as if the whole house had been suddenly filled with people having one big party.

  Why hadn’t Quinten woken me? Had he already left? Or was I in another timeway, filled with people?

  I threw the heavy blankets off and crossed the cold wooden floor to my chest of drawers. I didn’t feel dizzy, didn’t smell roses. Both those things seemed to announce the timeway shifts. So maybe I was still in the right timeway.

  I changed into new undergarments—which were a lot more lacy than anything I’d ever owned—Evelyn’s, I assumed. Then I shrugged into a tank top and layered on a lighter shirt. I was delighted to see that Evelyn had also commandeered Quinten’s old sleeveless jacket. I slipped that on with a smile. The pants selection consisted of supple leather or denim. I chose leather, then pulled on a pair of hand-knitted socks and stuffed my feet into sturdy boots.

  Evelyn might have more feminine taste in clothing, judging by her undergarments, and in decorating, judging by the lace doilies and crocheted frills that set a soft edge to every clear surface of her room, but when it came to her outerwear, she went all out for practicality.

  I approved.

  Last night when I came into my room, I hadn’t expected to fall asleep. But now it was almost daylight, and I hadn’t even packed for the trip.

  I pulled a duffel out of the closet, threw in a spare pair of clothing, and, remembering my travels from last time, added in anything I could carry that was lightweight but could be used for barter or trade. I snooped through Evelyn’s things and found a little wooden case with a handle.

  Inside that was the finest set of sewing needles, hooks, clamps, and other accouterments that I’d ever seen. The items looked like they’d gotten some use, but were well oiled and sharpened.

  A small, fine square of cloth held tiny silver stitches across it—different loops and crosses and staggers. It was like an embroidery sampler, except I knew what these stitches were used for.

  I glanced down at my arm, where the neat row of X’s marched around my elbow.

  “You were quite the hand at stitching, weren’t you, Evelyn?”

  The bottom of the box was filled with thread of different thicknesses, and beneath that was a small packet of powder I assumed was medicine.

  Everything in that tidy case seemed useful, so I tucked it in my duffel, along with the spare knives, bullets, and the two small hatchets I found hanging on the back of her closet door.

  There was a palm-sized mirror propped on her nightstand, so I took that too. I couldn’t help but catch a look at my hair as I packed the mirror away.

  An annoyed growl escaped my throat. The wild, maple-colored waves would only get in the way.

  I took the time to braid my hair loosely in one plait that fell to the middle of my back and to bind it off with a tie.

  Then I hefted the duffel over one shoulder and walked out into the rest of the house. Most of the noise was coming from the living room.

  There must have been twenty people gathered there, little children who were only waist high running around, six men of various heights and widths, and several woman with tanned or freckled skin and hair cut short or pulled back in buns or braids.

  Everyone was in clean, work-ready clothing, including boots and trousers, though the jackets and hats had been piled up in one corner of the room.

  In the middle of them all, sitting in her rocker with a huge grin on her face, was Grandma. She looked like she had just woken up inside a dream come true.

  I noticed something odd rooting around at her feet. At first I thought it was a pig, but then one of the small
er children threw a ball of Grandma’s yarn and the creature waddled off after it, little bat wings pumping as it ran on its stubby reptilian legs.

  It wasn’t a pig. It was a stitched pig. A dragon-pig.

  Aw. Cute.

  “Come on back now, Floyd,” Grandma called. It trotted around, pushing the ball with its ridiculous scaly pink head.

  So that was Floyd. Well, one mystery solved.

  “Evelyn!” one of the men hollered when he caught sight of me standing in the doorway. He was the tallest of the lot, maybe about six foot, his skin a smoky brown, his eyes even darker. “How’s my favorite stitcher?”

  The room filled with a tide of greetings and waves, while one of the kids tripped over the charging dragon-pig and fell down, crying.

  I waved and smiled and hoped I was acting like Evelyn to them.

  “Come on in the kitchen. Let’s get you some food.” A woman whose black hair was shot through with silver put a toddler down on his feet and took me by the hand. Her grip was strong and warm and friendly, and I got the feeling she’d taken my hand more than once when I was younger.

  It wasn’t a memory, but more of a tactile response to her. I had known her, or, rather, Evelyn had known her. Maybe even been under her care for a good long while.

  “We got in a little early because Peter just couldn’t wait. He had us all packed up and ready to leave an hour after your brother called. I swear he would have gone charging into a pack of ferals if it meant getting away from the homestead. The old man has itchy feet.”

  We were in the kitchen now. Quinten sat at the table with a man who looked several decades older than him, his gray hair receding away from a square, dark face made memorable by his short, crooked nose.

  A younger man and woman were expertly cooking up a breakfast of ham and eggs and thick sliced bread that made my mouth water.

  Abraham and Foster stood on the far side of the room, their backs to the wall, eyes shifting between the doors and people. They did not look comfortable, but other than the man at the table occasionally tossing a glance over at the galvanized, the other people in the room didn’t seem to notice them.

  Abraham nodded slightly as I entered. I didn’t have a chance to respond.