Stray

by Evan Fuller

  20.

  Sovereign

  When his body was rebuilt again, he found himself inside the back yard of his estate. He felt the familiar stomach sickness, but this time he kept himself from vomiting. Green was still lying on his back, naked, covered in ash. “Have I ever asked you to marry me?” the gateman rasped.

  For a moment Emery thought the question was directed at him, and he felt some consternation as he scrambled for a response. But Violet answered from behind him: “Only twice. And if you’re going to try for a third, you might want to be wearing something more appropriate first.”

  Green opened the same eye and regarded himself. “Oh, umm… let me run inside and, uh, get my coat…” He climbed shakily to his feet. “Good work on that. The kid thought you were gonna let them shoot us.”

  She watched with what Emery thought might be amusement as he padded toward the house. “He’s too humble,” she said. “After that stunt, he didn’t have energy to make the jump by himself, but he still assisted me with the landing.”

  “Well, I owe both of you the utmost thanks. I do hate being shot. Please, come in.”

  Violet cast her raven hair over her shoulder. “Thank you. Without your work inside, we may not have found those weapons. It grieves me to imagine what plans Zakarova had for them.”

  “They’ll probably manage to salvage some,” Emery said, “but I hope we’ve set them back, at least.” He held the door as she stepped inside. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Water, please. You have a… formidable home.”

  “I thought the same upon first seeing it. It’s a bit much, even for Rittenhouse, and certainly more than I need. But I like to think I’ve put it to good use.” It had been months since he’d allowed himself to admit that.

  She nodded and reached to take her glass. He was beginning to discern her features in brief glimpses—if he looked for too long everything blurred. Her skin was an olive complexion, like Juliet’s but a shade darker. Her nose, like his own, was bent as if once broken; it was something the spell surrounding her had never let him see. “How long have you been doing this?” he ventured. “Working for the king, I mean.”

  “Oh,” she replied with a vague smile, “years and years.”

  –

  Bustle had been crying all morning since she told him she had to leave. Leila knew he would, but he was doing it a lot. She sat with him till Emery and Green got back and Green came out of the shower. Wasn’t like she had anything to pack up. They’d took her knife and locked it in the basement with the other weapons and stuff, and she couldn’t think of any way to get it back without telling that it was hers. Oliver was all the way down in the tunnel anyway, and he had the only key besides Emery’s. “I’ll be back for visits,” she kept telling him, but Bustle just said visits aren’t like being there all the time and she couldn’t argue with that.

  Green came and knocked on her door when he was all showered and looking more like hisself, maybe a bit cleaner than normal. “Come on down,” he said, “we’ll be leaving soon.”

  Bustle started crying more at that but she told him he could come down too and be there till they had to leave. So he wiped his face a bit and they went down. When they got to the kitchen Leila was surprised: the lady was already here. “Oh, hi,” she said. “I decided I want to do like you were sayin’ and go with you.”

  Emery looked real confused. He did that a lot. “What?”

  “Like I said,” Green told him, “the little one said yes.”

  The lady thought she should explain a bit more than that. “When I met Leila, I told her that if she was interested to come back outside after she got her brother safely here, I’d like to have her train under me.”

  “Train under you. Do you mean…” Emery looked at her a little less confused. “I didn’t know you had those talents.”

  She shrugged. “It’s against the rules here, and I didn’t wanna get in trouble.”

  “Yeah,” Green said, “she probably didn’t wanna make you keel over worrying. You know how you get about that stuff.”

  “Hey, I think I’ve been a lot better about that.” He turned to Leila. “Are you sure about this?”

  She nodded. She was happy he wasn’t gonna try to make her stay. Not like he could.

  “In that case,” the lady said, “I think it’s about time for us to go. Thank you for the water and the hospitality.”

  “You want me to lead us?” Green was taking his knife out.

  Emery’s face got nervous. That was another one he did a lot. “Actually, could you guys wait until we get out back before doing that? House rules and all.”

  Green gave one quick laugh that sounded kinda like a dog barking. “Gotten better about it, have you?”

  “Hey,” Leila interrupted. “I’m gonna need a knife, right? Can I have that one you got off Salvador? Jus’ seems fair, I did get all kinds of beat up for it.” Her chest and back were still bruised but she’d woke up today feeling better.

  “I don’t see why not,” Emery said. He ran down to the basement real quick to get it.

  “He seems like a decent young man,” the lady said. Violet—that was her name. Leila had just remembered.

  “He is,” Green said. “Don’t tell him I said that, though; might go to his head.”

  When he came back up and gave her knife back, Leila felt like a whole person again. Maybe she wasn’t a real lioness just yet but she would be soon. Violet would teach her how. “I love you more than everything,” she told Bustle, putting her hands on his shoulders. “You be good for Mister Emery, okay? When I come back for visits I wanna get to play with you, but I’ll whoop you instead if he says you didn’t behave.”

  “I’ll be the best, promise. You be good too, I’ll whoop you if the lady says you don’ behave.”

  She gave him a little clap on the bum for that. “Think you’re bein’ smart. Little brother, you should know by now who does the whoopin’ around here.”

  They walked out into the day. It was late afternoon and the days were getting longer now. Good. The snow was already melted and soon it would stop being cold. She wondered if she’d get a warm place to sleep out there like at Emery’s house. It didn’t matter. If Violet would teach her to be strong, Leila would take whatever she gave her.

  “Jumping is like learning to speak,” Violet said. “You’ll do it bit by bit as we walk you through it, and as time passes you’ll be able to do more for yourself. Prick your finger, just enough for a single drop. We’ll carry you most of the way.”

  She looked at Emery. “Thanks for the food and the clothes and the warm bed and for getting rid of the Salvador boy and stuff. Take care of my brother, okay?”

  “I will. You be safe out there.” Emery turned to the other magic people. “You two as well. It was a pleasure to formally meet you, Violet.”

  “Likewise. Thank you for your assistance to the king.”

  “You take care of yourself, eh?” Green stepped forward and shook Emery’s hand. “Way to keep a level head back there. Things got crazy, and you handled yourself way better than I guessed you would.”

  “I’ll take that as a complement. You take care of yourself too, Green. I hope I’ll see you again not too long from now, maybe under less life-threatening circumstances.”

  “Ha! Kid, you keep that optimism up.”

  “Are you ready?” Violet asked.

  Leila nodded and poked her little finger with the tip of the knife.

  “Alright, here we go, then. Remain close to us.”

  A second before they went, Bustle ran forward and hugged her waist. Emery had to peel him off so he wouldn’t get pulled along with them. “I love you more’n everything too, Sis!” he shouted, and then they were gone.

  –

  Lydia watched from the window as the three dissolved, drifting skyward as a trail of embers rained down. She met Emery at the doorway as he walked Bustle inside. “I didn’t get to see you before you left this morn
ing.”

  “Sorry about that. We were running a pretty tight schedule throughout the day.” She wondered what to make of his smile. “Juliet came at around—oh. Juliet and Oliver are still down in the tunnel. Oops. Would you like to come down with me? Oliver’s prepared something special to celebrate the day.”

  “Sure. The other kids are downstairs with Miren,” she told Bustle. “Go play. But please, no hitting Carrot, even if he’s misbehaving.”

  “I’m gon’ be good,” he said. “Leila made me promise.”

  “That’s good to hear. We’ll be down in a bit.” The boy pulled off his shoes and padded down the hallway.

  “Did you get the medicine?”

  “It wasn’t medicine.” His shoulders sagged. “I’ll tell you about it once we’re down there, so Juliet and Oliver can hear it at the same time.”

  They made the climb into the sewer and the walk through the tunnel largely in silence, but it seemed Emery’s earlier hostility toward her had evaporated. He didn’t pull away when she took his arm; if anything, he appeared comforted by the gesture.

  “Who’s there?” Oliver called anxiously as they approached.

  “Sorry,” Emery replied, “it’s me.”

  “About time, Emery. We were making bets on how many pieces you’d be broken into when we went down there to find you.”

  “As always, your affection comforts me greatly. We couldn’t come back through Redemption. We kind of wore out our welcome on the way through.”

  “We were watching from here,” Juliet said. “Was that Dr. Hanssen?”

  “Yeah. The timing of that encounter was rather poor.”

  “Wait,” Lydia interrupted, “what?”

  “Alright. Everybody, get comfortable.” Emery took his own advice and took a seat on the tunnel floor. There was a gas lantern between them, and it cast his high cheekbones and sharp face into relief. “I’ll start with the beginning.”

  The other two seemed to know the first details, but before long they were no less taken aback than Lydia. To think all this had happened in these few hours while they waited. When he finished they were all speechless.

  “And then we came down here to meet you guys,” Emery added after a moment. “I think that about covers it; any questions?”

  Oliver found his voice first. “Where did all those guns come from?”

  “I’m not sure. They were the Abel and Thorsen models, the same ones we’ve had in the house for years, but their production lines are monitored by Unity, and supposedly every single one is pre-registered and built to order. Just as big a question is what was to become of the guns. Why does Zakarova need so many? The king is a thorn in his side, but nobody threatens his authority in any serious way. And who has the power to produce them, and what could Zakarova possibly be paying that would be worth all that? Yeah, this raises a lot of questions, and there are a lot of very frightening potential answers to those.”

  “So now what?” Lydia asked. “After all the time we’ve spent on this tunnel, we can’t complete it, and at the same time we don’t have any more medicine.”

  “Yeah. I’ve realized that, and it’s a disappointment.” He stared at his folded hands, dim red in the lantern. Everything was dim red. “A crushing disappointment. But on the other hand, we damaged a shipment of weapons bound for who-knows-what terrible intention. We’ll have to accept that we did some good work and that some things just aren’t within our power to change.” He glanced at Juliet, who returned an affirming nod. “I’d like to thank all of you for the work you’ve done, for the time you’ve spent down here and for putting up with me when I’ve been… difficult. Sooner or later we’ll dig back toward the sewer so at least the part of this tunnel we’ve completed can be put to use. But our most pressing concern is making sure nobody in Redemption ever comes through that gap. And to that end, I believe that Oliver has prepared us a very special display for all of us.”

  “Juliet did as much to rig it as I did. And as for display, well… we can watch, but we’re going to want to be at a good distance. There’s no telling how unstable this whole tunnel is, and I’d love to not be crushed to death on such a nice day.”

  “Alright, then, we’ll go for a bit of a walk. You all ready?”

  They nodded; Lydia noticed that they’d removed the tools from the area. Besides the lantern, there was nothing left by the gap. “Alright, then. Set it off.”

  Oliver struck a match and held it to the length of cord he’d fashioned into a fuse. He’d been planning this ever since they’d found Redemption at the end of the tunnel, procuring the necessary supplies from the closet in the basement where he had cataloged the munitions Emery had inherited with the estate. “Let’s go,” he said once the cord was smoldering.

  The four of them put a hundred yards behind them before they turned, hands clasped, to watch the pinpoint of light where they’d left the lantern to illuminate the gap. “Good,” Emery said as they watched it, “I need to be able to see this.”

  “How long will it take?” Juliet asked.

  “I’ve never built a bomb before.” Oliver scratched his head. “If my estimates were right, we should have a couple minutes more.”

  No sooner had he spoken than Lydia saw a cluster of little white flashes, far smaller than she had expected. It took half a second for the sound to reach them; by the time it did, the flash had disappeared. Another moment later and the lantern’s light was gone; the darkness in the tunnel was complete. A while later the rumbling ceased.

  When everything was still they clicked their flashlights on. “You two go on ahead,” Emery told Juliet and Oliver. “We’re going to hang back for a minute. We left you down here for hours anyway, so it’s only fair. And Oliver, take notes on that, in case we’re ever betting our lives on timing a fuse. But besides that, good work.”

  Oliver laughed. “Thanks. We’ll see you up top.”

  He waited until their light had all but disappeared up ahead. “There’s one thing I left out,” he said quietly. “I killed someone today. This Vorteil recovery agent—a boy, really. I shot him in the stomach, Lyd.”

  “My God.” She took his arm again. The flashlight beam was at their feet; only the faintest glow touched his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you had no choice.”

  “As much as anyone ever has no choice. I mean, I was trying not to, and then… he grabbed my gun. If I’d waited another second, that would have been it not only for me but for that other agent, the injured guy I told you about. I can’t think what else I could have done. But just the same, I don’t know how I’m going to sleep at night with that.”

  “If all those other guns had gotten where they were headed, think how many more people would have been killed. In the grand equation it was a lot of lives against his.”

  “I keep telling myself that.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he leaned into the embrace. A moment later she was kissing him, but she’d misunderstood. He pulled away.

  “Lyd.” A pause. In the blackness there was no face to read. “Miren and I—”

  “Oh. I kind of picked up that something was happening with you two.”

  “No, I’ve already broken it off. But what I’m trying to say… I have some work to do. I need to learn to be okay by myself before I can be with someone else. When you and I were together, I always felt the need to be the savior, to be the one who makes everything okay, because I don’t know how to not do that. What I said to you in the market—how I felt you didn’t support me after Timothy died. That was true, but it was half my fault. I’ve never let anyone support me.”

  “Then let me now,” she pleaded.

  “It’s deeper than that. I need to confront some things on my own before anyone can be good for me, before I can be more than superficially good for anyone. And you—well, I won’t tell what work you have to do; that’s for you to decide. All I’m saying is that if we were together now, we’d try to do better, Lyd, I know we would. But as lon
g as that deep stuff isn’t fixed we’d fall back into the same old pattern.” An invisible hand came to rest on her shoulder. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry I was so hostile. I hope that if nothing else, we can learn to function together as friends.”

  “Yeah,” she said mechanically, “I’d like that.” She walked two steps behind him as they made their way from the tunnel. She shouldn’t have fooled herself. She’d call Mikul when she got home.

  –

  Emery stumbled upstairs to make himself another cup of tea. He was too weary to stay upright without it, but he didn’t want to risk coffee and find himself lying restlessly awake hours from now, when he finally made it to bed. It was just after dinnertime; if he tried to sleep now he’d wake around midnight and be just as miserable as if he had the coffee.

  Upon making it back in, had Oliver relate the story in its entirety to Miren, whom he wasn’t ready to deal with himself. Since then, she and the others had kept the questions coming. Juliet looked pleased to see that he wasn’t taking the absence of the expected medicine too hard, so he tried to continue not taking it too hard. He was too tired to keep being civil for much longer, though. He stirred a spoonful of sugar into the tea and descended the stairs to rejoin the others, but as he crossed the basement he heard a sharp tapping sound upstairs. “Is that…”

  “What is it?” Lydia asked.

  “Shh.” He waited, and there it was again. “Someone’s knocking on the door.”

  “There are two doorbells,” Oliver pointed out. “Who in the world would be knocking?”

  “I’ll go find out. The two of you who are legally allowed to be here can come with me if you’d like; everyone else, please be quiet this time.”

  Lydia and Juliet followed him up, closing the door at the top of the stairs when they had reached the top. The knocking came a third time before they reached the foyer; the fist behind the door was not happy to be waiting. Slowly, deliberately, Emery flipped the porch light on, undid the bolt, and opened the door.

  The two were standing with their hands behind their backs. Each wore the standard metallic gray jacket, black slacks, and brushed steel four-circle badge. He had pictured this scene countless times, but he had not expected it now. “Good evening, sir Esposti. I’m sure you remember our last meeting. Again, I am Inspector Caroselli, and this is Inspector Bhatt. On behalf of Unity, we’re here to speak with you.”

  “And here we are, speaking. What can I do for you gentlemen?”

  “We’re going to need to come inside.”

  “Why would that be?” He tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “It’s mild weather for the first night in months, and I think my porch is more than sufficient for whatever we need to discuss. I can have miss Varun bring you both something to drink.”

  “You misunderstand, sir,” Inspector Bhatt replied. His voice was high, sharp. “We’ve received an anonymous tip, and we’ll need to investigate your property for illegal activity.”

  “I can’t imagine what you might have to necessitate this.” He could, in fact, very well. “Is there a specific accusation being brought against me, or is something as vague as ‘illegal activity’ cause to search a citizen’s home?”

  “It’s all in the warrant, sir.” Inspector Caroselli produced a trifold document. A real paper warrant: this must be serious.

  “If you have a proper warrant, then by all means.” It was a gamble, but what else did he have at this point? Inspector Bhatt stepped forward to enter the house, but Emery braced a hand against the doorjamb to block him. “You’ll let me examine it, of course, to see that everything’s in order.”

  He unfolded the paper, trying keep his hands from shaking, and quickly scanned it. Just as he’d hoped, it was a printed template with the specifics hand-written in. Hereby accused of possessing illegal narcotics with intent to distribute, premises to be inspected for evidence of the above, and so forth. At the bottom he found what he was looking for. A signature from one Adam Thorn, Justice of the Peace—a Vorteil appointment, if Emery recalled correctly—and beneath it, a blank line. “I’m afraid this document isn’t yet valid.”

  “The warrant is perfectly—”

  “I see spaces for signatures by one Unity official and one representative of the pursuant circle’s government. As you, Inspector Caroselli, certainly know, the only Roccetti empowered to sign a search warrant is the high regent, and there’s no signature here.”

  He wasn’t sure whether it would be enough to stop them. Inspector Caroselli snorted. “You can’t be serious. There is no Roccetti Rex.”

  “And this warrant will be incomplete until one is appointed to sign it. The moment you bring me that document, I’ll be happy to let you inspect every inch of my property. But this is legally void.”

  “That’s just a formality.” Inspector Bhatt tried again to enter the house. “You can’t avoid inspection just—”

  This time Emery seized him by the shoulders. The law alone wouldn’t stop them—he had to strip their sense of power. And quickly. “You see the two other citizens standing behind me,” he said softly. “Step back for thirty seconds and listen, if you value the income this job provides your family.” With a bit of pressure on Emery’s part, the inspector backed up a few inches. “Now, you know full well that the law is not a formality. It’s a code written to recognize the sovereignty of circle governments and the role of Unity as an auxiliary administration, one that’s not empowered to override circle law. When I drag you before your own justice of the peace, I’ll frame this as a personal attack on a Roccetti citizen by an unnamed accuser who I am all but certain is not from my circle. And these two witnesses behind me will testify that when I repeatedly called on you to respect due process, you instead forced your way into my home in violation of the law you’re pledged to uphold.”

  Inspector Bhatt nodded coldly.

  “Don’t speak to me like I’m any less a Roccetti than you,” Inspector Caroselli said. “You wouldn’t be so hostile if you weren’t hiding anything.”

  “Think what you like, Inspector, but I can promise that you haven’t the slightest clue what is or isn’t in this house.” He drew a shaky breath. “I’ll see you gentlemen again when that warrant is properly filled out, I’m sure.”

  Emery felt a hand on his back, but he didn’t turn to see if it was Lydia or Juliet who stood behind him. He watched the inspectors all the way to the gate; when they had passed through, he closed the door and sagged against it.