Kin

by Lili St. Crow

  All the other kingirls did. She’d never had the courage to ask Gran where she’d graduated from, or why Ruby wasn’t sent to Hills. It wasn’t a bad school, but Juno was the school for New Haven aristocracy, at least the charm and mere-human ones. If Cami had been born into Family instead of adopted, she would have gone to Martinfield like all the other Family girls. Ruby had once or twice wanted to ask her if she’d ever longed to belong with the kind that raised her.

  That wasn’t a kind question, though, and she was glad she’d reconsidered, for once. Considering how things had turned out.

  Ruby hopped, lightly, testing her trainers. Just right, bouncy in the heels and light in the forefoot. You wanted a broken-in pair, comfortable but with some life left, for this sort of thing. Heels for hunting, boots for tracking, and trainers for fullmoon.

  A silver thread ran through the night sky, and like she did every time, she ducked her head and picked up the pace, searching for the right beat.

  She settled into a long easy lope, but she didn’t follow the thread. Instead, she aimed the long way down the Park. The rest of them could bunch up tonight, but she wanted space and no awkward questions or narrow-eyed judging. Of course, what you wanted and what you got were two different things, even on fullmoon.

  The others would ride up the thread like it was a silver rail, pulling the circle tight. You weren’t quite helpless in the face of the moon, but sometimes it felt like it. Rootfamily means freedom, they said, the strains of the moon’s blood in yours stronger, the kin unraveling in branches out on either side.

  Freedom? Sure, to a certain degree . . . until responsibility closed in, and your duty to the clan reared its ugly head.

  Why are you so Wild? Ellie had asked, once, and Ruby had just shaken her head. Adulthood meant freedom to her friends, but Rube only had a little time before she became a Clanmother-in-training, trying to breed more girls after college so the moon’s kin didn’t die out, learning diplomacy and how to navigate her clan through alliances, keeping up with Gran’s import-export business to keep Woodsdowne a power in the city, and just generally doing everything she disliked until she died.

  Ruby sped up. The silver thread widened, and behind her the boys’ footsteps fell away. They were branch, too; their mothers had married outclan. Hunter had siblings, all boys, but Thorne was an only. It was probably why he was angry. Without siblings, you didn’t have anyone to help take care of your children, and inheritance might pass to a branch with more members after you died. Cubs need siblings, the Elders said.

  Continuance, every clan’s obsession. How many other Wild kingirls felt this desperation? She couldn’t just come out and ask do you ever feel like just a walking incubator for more kin? None of them had ever been friendly, and Gran sending her to different schools hadn’t helped.

  Nobody had ever been quite friendly, except Cami and Ellie. Even then, she didn’t talk about being kin. There was no point, and the habit of secrecy from the Age of Iron was old and strong. They sort of knew, but they didn’t talk about it. Not like Cami and the Family.

  Cami considered them normal, and let little things drop. Of course, it probably helped that Nico’s father had treated her just like a born-in daughter. It used to make Ruby feel a little funny to visit and see the way the entire Vultusino house sort of revolved around her friend, with Enrico Vultusino clearly thinking she hung the moon and Nico always glowering if he thought someone had messed with her.

  Come back to the now, Ruby. You’re running.

  Hop skip and jump, trainers lightly touching a moss-covered rock, branches whipping by, more sensed than seen. She leapt, ducked, and settled into another lope when she was certain there was a nice, comfortable distance between her and anyone else.

  In the distance, the song began. High trillings and long modulated notes, a chorus of communion. Mere-humans would fear the sound, hearing fur and teeth in it, but there was really nothing to be afraid of. It was when the kin were dead silent that you had to worry.

  Ruby sank her teeth into her lower lip. A bright scarlet star in her mouth, copper-tasting, the smell maddening and rich. Behind her, Hunter’s cry was an orange rose opening against the deepening sky, and Thorne’s fierce quiet a song all its own.

  When had she started to listen for that silence? Did he guess? Probably not.

  Hopefully not.

  The end of the Park was coming up. A steep bramble-covered slope studded with stumps and ancient oaks, their leaves rattling as the breeze came up from the bay. Beyond it was the very edge of Woodsdowne, where other suburbs began—Hollow Hills and the Market district, not technically a suburb but still not a place to go traipsing while the moon’s gift was at its peak. The shift would be on her soon. Already her skin was rippling, a bittersweet pain below the flesh.

  He’s coming on the train. Furious negation burst out of her, a high chilling note crowding her throat to spillskin fullness, and every kin in hearing distance replied. Harsh, fierce music. Mere-humans used to bolt their doors at night, thinking the moon’s children did awful things. They’d more to worry about from each other than any of Ruby’s kind, and if you didn’t believe that, just look at the tabloids full of mere-humans and charmers doing things to each other kin would never dream of.

  All this flashed through her and away in a moment, skating the edge of rage. The red was all through her now, deep like a rosette on the sheets the first morning you wake up with cramp-aches, your body unfurling a scarlet pennon signaling the end of everything good.

  Ruby put her head down. Her feet sped up, knowing each dip and rise, the hidden traps in the thornbrakes. A line of fire on her wrist, her cheek, she was going too fast to slow down even as the branches clawed at her.

  Another cry, rising from deep inside, and the hill unspooled underneath her. A low stone wall at the top was the boundary, the absolute edge. It wasn’t permissible to go past it on fullmoon nights. Woodsdowne was theirs, but outside was the realm of the mere-humans, and on fullmoon, they didn’t mix.

  Last shot, Rube. You gonna go for it?

  Of course Gran said they’d send him back if she didn’t like him. But Ruby had a duty. A responsibility.

  Why are you so Wild?

  They all asked. Why explain?

  Breathing hard but smoothly, air like dark red wine, legs full of youth and her jeans shaking off slashing brambles, soles skritching over the top of a stump that still cried out at the loss of its height, a tongueless imperative. A leap, hands catching, bramble tearing . . . and she was atop the low stone wall, as the moon’s call sent a secret subtle thrill through all of New Haven, from the sky-scraping piles of rot at the core to the outermost Moving Wall against the Waste, from the highest house on the Hill to the deepest sunken sewer. The bright face and the dark face, and Ruby on the thin edge between them, vibrating, leaning forward, ready to leap—

  —and hot iron-strong fingers around her ankle, she fell backward with a blurted cry, all the magic of running draining away.

  Back into her life.

  • • •

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Thorne, his own skin blurring and the words strangely slurred as the shape of his jaw changed, hissed as Ruby and the brambles both clawed at him. “You go beyond bounds and it’ll—”

  “FOUND YOU!” Hunter crashed merrily through a wall of greenery, colliding with Thorne. The sound, meaty and solid, would have been hilarious if Ruby hadn’t been so stunned. She gathered herself and surged to her feet, juicy needle-fingered vines clutching all over her shirt, weaving in her hair. As if the hillside had come alive, and wanted to eat them all.

  “Idiot!” The word spiraled into a thrumming growl as Thorne moved, quicker than quick. The knot of thrashing ended with a flat smacking sound, and Ruby inhaled sharply. They were both on the edge of the shift as well, bulking up and furring out, claws piercing fingertips.

  The smell
s—broken plants, green sap, the baked dryness of stone—held a serrated edge now. Musk, and copper, and spikes of dominance. They both struggled upright, vines hanging overhead like fingers.

  “Ow.” Hunter shook his head, and there was a flat shine to his dark eyes, visible even in the deepening dusk. “You bastard.”

  Thorne shrugged, and opened his mouth to say something else, probably dismissive.

  Unfortunately, Hunter’s fist caught him right in the face, and there was a moment of silence after that crunching blow before both of them erupted. Not into vociferous argument, which would have been okay, but into almost-silent motion.

  On a fullmoon night.

  Great.

  Ruby opened her mouth to yell at both of them, but they crashed down the hill in a knot of low deadly noise. Potential sparked: suddenly every vine on the hill wanted to wrap itself in her hair, and the dusk became a spreading bruise.

  By the time the others converged on the spot, drawn by that low un-noise of violence and dominance, she had managed to untangle herself and had hauled Thorne back, keeping Hunter down with a stare and a snarl, her lip lifted and teeth tingling. The moon rose higher, a bleached bone dish; for the rest of the evening’s run every cousin took turns keeping the two boys apart, and Ruby right in the middle of the pack.

  So much for running alone.

  FOUR

  “UNACCEPTABLE,” GRAN SAID SOFTLY. “YOU’VE GIVEN both of them false hope.”

  Way to slut-shame, Gran. Ruby’s lower lip jutted; the Moon was high overhead but the run was done, the shift receding into the place it lived except on special nights. Potential sparked and fizzed between them, describing the arcs of their personal space. Gran’s was the glow of an active, powerful charmer.

  Ruby’s was vivid, sharp-edged, not-yet-settled charm energy pushing against her grandmother’s. High emotion disturbed the sea of Potential everyone was swimming in, and it fueled some types of charm, but those were dangerous.

  Those were dark, even if not-quite-black charming, and you messed around like that at your peril.

  Deep breath, Ruby filling her lungs so she didn’t yell in response. When she could talk without screaming, she did. “I have not. They’re cousins, Gran. We grew up together. You wanted me to spend time with—”

  “I had thought you would settle with one of them, yes. Obviously that is not going to happen.”

  So what, if it had, what then? “So I have to get married and start squeezing out cublings right this second? What about getting an education? Am I just going to school so I can be a better barefoot pregnant—”

  As usual, Gran took refuge in propriety. “You have a duty to your clan!”

  “Why don’t you just collar me and chain me in the basement? You could have the boykin take turns and get me knocked up! Then you’d have everything you wanted, right?”

  The words bounced around the living room. The tapestry shifted, shifted. Gran had gone white, to match her parchment hair, but the incandescent outrage filling Ruby to the brim didn’t permit a step back.

  They faced each other, young woman and old, and Gran’s shoulders dropped. “I’ve only ever tried to do what’s best.” Quietly, as if defensive. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

  Gran never needed to be defensive. She made the decisions, and everyone fell into line.

  Ruby’s jaw ached with denying the shift. “Oh, I know. For the clan. The clan this, the clan that. It’s all about the clan!” A blockage in her throat, a reek of sour salt. Her skin was too sensitive, every edge scraped hard, even invisible air. “Fine! Okay! Fuck the clan!”

  She didn’t mean to scream it, but she did. The buzzing all through her was the shift trying to burst free. Her bones crackled, zinging electricity popping and sparking from her fingertips, her scalp tingling as her hair tried to stand straight up.

  Gran actually blinked.

  Fury evaporated, leaving only a thin ringing hopelessness. Uh-oh. Really gone and done it now.

  “I certainly hope you do not mean that.” Edalie de Varre drew herself up. “The clan birthed you, has raised you, protected you, given you every advantage.”

  You raised me. I don’t know who birthed me. I don’t even know if you’re my real grandmother, but we all know I’m root and not branch, I’ve got to be. Right? The hollow place inside her gave no answer. “So squeezing out babies as soon as I get out of college is a small price to pay for all that, right?” Her hands were fists, to disguise the bulging along her wrists. To shift in front of the Clanmother during an argument, well, you just didn’t. “Got it, thanks.”

  “Ruby—”

  “I’ll be up in my room, preparing to meet my future impregnator. I shouldn’t even go to school at all, you know? It’ll only give me ideas.” She turned on her heel—her trainers were still full of leaf mold and black Woodsdowne dirt—and stamped for the stairs.

  “Ruby!” Score one point, at least—she’d managed to make Gran raise her voice.

  If it was a victory, it was an empty one. Dirt clumped and scattered from her trainers, all over the hardwood of the stairs on her way up. She’d charmsweep later.

  Did I really say that to her? Mithrus.

  Her room closed around her with its usual comforting mess, clothes scattered strategically to hide the books underneath, papers stacked to confuse any searcher. Nobody ever noticed the textbooks or the fact that she kept all her school notes and reference papers. She should clean the whole thing up and reorganize it now, since she wasn’t supposed to be herself anymore. Or even the self she’d made for everyone else.

  A bright, careless, exacting child was what Gran had wanted, and Ruby had done her best. Except now they wanted to flip a switch and have a docile breeder. Doing that sort of 180 was enough to make a stomach rebel and a head spin. Even if you were used to flipping around and spinning at a moment’s notice for everyone else.

  Just thinking about the whole mess made her want to slide the window open and slip out, climb down the plane tree outside her window—an old childhood friend—and then . . . what? She could call one of the boytoys, hit a club, or even just walk aimlessly.

  On any other night, maybe. Not fullmoon. Even Thorne wouldn’t dare to sneak out and wait around in the Park to see if she was in a mood to run. And if Thorne wasn’t coming out, Hunter wouldn’t be either.

  She flipped the lock on her doorknob, as if Gran couldn’t break whatever small pin held the thing in place with a simple flex of her wrist. She was much, much stronger than she looked.

  Ruby, although she was kin, was . . . not.

  That was the biggest secret of all. Oh sure, physically she was fine, a true daughter of the moon: she could run faster than pretty much anyone, she didn’t get sick, and she bounced back after any injury with little trouble.

  Gran’s strength had a completely different dimension. One Ruby, no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t make herself own, too.

  She flopped down on her bed. The shaking in her arms and legs just wouldn’t go away. Neither would the knot in her stomach.

  Here, in this white-walled room with its crimson bedspread and heavy red velvet cushions, she was relatively alone. Only relatively, because every cough, every move, could be heard.

  A strong kingirl wouldn’t feel this sickness all through her. A good kingirl wouldn’t have gone for the boundary wall. A real kingirl would not have shouted fuck the clan at her grandmother.

  She was the last hope of the Woodsdowne rootfamily, and all she wanted to do was run like a coward.

  No wonder Gran was disappointed.

  FIVE

  HAVEN CENTRAL STATION HADN’T MOVED SINCE THE Reeve; the true iron in the tracks and trains kept the worst shifting and Twisting of Potential at bay. You could see pre-Reeve leftovers everywhere, but they never gave Ruby quite the same satisfied feeling as the tingle all through her bones as true
iron tamed the often-invisible flux that had drowned the world at the end of the Great War.

  Snowflake-cinders spun lazily down as the train heaved itself to a stop, its blunt nose searching through a cloud of smoke. The platform conductor was sing-screaming the names of other stops along the line—New Avalon to the north, Pocarello and points south—and the breakwheel made a grinding noise as layers of heavy-duty, heavily regimented charm parted. A delightful, shivery pulsing against all her skin, even under her clothes, and Ruby was hard put not to shudder. Gran was a straight, slim iron bar of icy silence beside her, a veil obscuring her face and her hat perched just-so, only a few hints of parchment hair escaping from under its jaunty tilt.

  Ruby was in her dirt-caked trainers, again, a pair of ratty jeans, and a faded, scoop-necked Phib sweater of cerise silk yarn that was nevertheless last year’s fashion. No guy would get the nuances. Ellie, of course, would know exactly what last year’s sweater meant, but she wasn’t here.

  Thorne stood just behind Gran and to her left, his position as an only child among the branches brought home by his place at the sinister side of the root-mother. Gran didn’t hold with much superstition, but she was definitely making a point.

  Hunter was right next to Ruby, tucked behind her half a step as diplomacy demanded, the bruising on his face already faded to a yellow-green shadow of itself.

  Kin healed fast.

  Thorne, scowling under slicked-down gel-darkened hair, couldn’t have looked any more mutinous if he’d tried. Still, neither could she, she supposed. Hunter just looked a little sullen.

  “BREEEEAK NOOOOOOW!” the conductor yelled, and rivers of charm parted. You couldn’t see the charm-symbols outright, but the train blurred and wavered under them like pavement under heat-ripples. Billows of steam rose, metal glowing red and the cinders whisking themselves into strange angular cloud shapes before blowing away.