by Anne Bishop
It wasn’t said, but it was understood, that if that Cyrus or his mate tried to see the Sierra, they would need another trip to the hospital for a sudden loss of blood.
• • •
Meg moved the kneepad, then resumed weeding the next section of the kitchen garden. She wanted to do something simple—a task that had an instant, visible reward, that had no gray areas, no emotional turmoil. At least, not for her. If weeds had feelings, they might take a different view of her plunging her gardening tool into the ground around them and ripping them out, roots and all. But they weren’t voicing opinions or arguing with her, so she dug and ripped with homicidal cheer.
No one believed the solicitous excuses that Simon and Monty had made for moving Cyrus and his family to the apartment across from Monty’s, especially after Cyrus was barred from going upstairs to talk to Sierra. When Simon told Sandee that she couldn’t go into the Courtyard until she washed her clothes and stopped smelling like skunk spray, she shrieked loudly enough to be heard by people at the end of the next block. Combined with Sierra’s drama and Steve Ferryman’s opposition to Sierra’s living on Great Island, Sandee’s reaction became the one thing too many, depleting Meg’s ability to cope with the feelings and futures of the people around her.
She would do a bit more weeding, then take a cool shower. Simon and Sam would be home by then, and they would make a salad and warm up the already-cooked meatloaf she’d picked up at Meat-n-Greens for sandwiches. Then she intended to do nothing but sit in the summer room and read. Maybe even sleep there tonight.
“Arroo!”
Meg waved as Sam raced toward her, looking hot and dusty but happy. Of course he was happy. He hadn’t been touched by all the trouble caused by pesky humans—and she had a copy of the new Wolf Team book for him.
“Hello, Sam!” She dropped her weeding tool and hugged him. “Did you have a good day?”
He arrooed and licked and made her laugh. She smiled at Simon when he trotted over to join them.
“Give me a few more minutes to finish this section; then we’ll go home and have dinner,” she said.
She picked up her tool and dug around one of the zucchini plants and pulled out a gray wad. But when she turned the wad over, she realized she had snagged a white puff of a tail.
• • •
Simon heard Meg yelp and saw Sam snatch something from the end of her weeding tool. The pup bounced forward, then darted back, clearly inviting her to play. Meg didn’t look like she wanted to play, but Sam wasn’t taking the hint.
Simon pounced on the pup, rolling him over and pretending to grab for the toy. Sam scrambled to get away, and the two of them ran around while Meg cautiously lifted the zucchini leaves to make sure there weren’t any other surprises. Somewhere along the way, Sam dropped the bunny tail and Simon didn’t pick it up, figuring he could find it and bury it later. They ran and played a few minutes more before Simon trotted over to the water pump, shifted his front paws into furry hands, and pumped some water for both of them.
More interested in playing in the water than drinking it, Sam was thoroughly wet when he ran to Meg and jumped on her back, his belly fur soaking her cotton shirt. She squeaked and shrieked, and Sam slid off her back as she scrambled to her feet.
“I’m going home now.” She stomped toward their apartments.
He lapped a little more water, which seemed a lot colder than the hot, humid air. Making sure his front paws were back to proper Wolf form, in case he needed to run, he caught up to Meg, timed his move, and swiped his tongue along the back of her knee.
Another satisfying squeak accompanied the prancy steps of the Squeaky Dance before Meg returned to a stride that would put some distance between her and wet Wolves.
CHAPTER 10
Watersday, Messis 11
“I know, I know.” Eve hauled more art supplies out of the carry sacks she’d brought into the sorting room. “I got carried away. But I wasn’t sure what you wanted, and I can return anything that hasn’t been opened or used.”
Meg stared at all the items piled on the table. She’d asked Eve to look for a how-to-draw book and a set of pencils for Hope’s friend Amy Wolfgard. It looked like Eve had done that, but what was she supposed to do with the rest of the supplies?
Eve studied Meg, then returned a couple of items to the carry sacks. “Too much?”
“How did you pay for all this?” Meg asked.
Eve winced. “I used my house money. It didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t be reimbursed for the supplies you wanted to keep.”
“You have the receipt?” Meg studied the itemized list Eve provided. Did the Others already know about drawing and painting? They knew about telling stories and making music. Since Hope’s friend was interested in drawing, maybe there were Courtyard residents who would be interested in the art supplies. Something to ask Henry.
Meg selected a book of basic drawing instructions and a book about drawing the natural world—animals and landscapes. She added two sketchbooks, a box of colored pencils, graphite pencils, a sharpener, and an eraser.
Eve set a wood box on the table. It had a simple hook lock and a handle. “Figured you would want something to hold the pencils and other supplies. This was the least expensive artist box available.”
Meg put it with the rest of her selections and added it to the tally. “I’ll go to the bank in the Market Square during my midday break and get the money to pay for these items. And I’ll talk to Simon about how to pay you for the rest.”
“You’re paying for these?” Eve sounded surprised—and a little unhappy. “If I’d known that, I would have asked how much you wanted to spend before I started buying things.”
“I hadn’t thought about setting a purchase limit,” Meg replied. “I’m doing this for Hope, so I should pay for it.” She paused to savor the feeling of buying something for a friend, the excitement of spending money this way, the anticipation of Hope’s pleasure when the box of supplies arrived.
Eve returned everything else to the carry sacks and set them to one side. “Okay to leave them here?”
Meg tensed, anticipating the anxiety that came from a change in the room. Then she realized that this was just another kind of delivery, and she coped with deliveries all the time. “That’s fine.”
Eve rummaged in the sacks and put one last item on the table. “Catalog from the art store in the Bird Park Plaza. I’m happy to go to the store for you when I’m out shopping, but this way you could order supplies and ask Harry to pick them up when he makes his deliveries.”
Harry had worked for Everywhere Delivery until the company changed its name to Everywhere Human Delivery. Now he worked for the Courtyard, picking up anything the terra indigene ordered from businesses in Lakeside. There weren’t a lot of things to be picked up, and there weren’t a lot of other deliveries being made. Some of that was simply because the Business Association had ordered and stored everything they could before the Elementals and Elders shook the continent. And some of that was because everyone, humans and Others, was trying to figure out what businesses still existed and had merchandise to sell. You couldn’t phone a company outside of the region where you lived, and not receiving a reply to a letter could mean a sack of mail was sitting in a railway station somewhere and a response would come eventually—or it could mean there was
no one left in that town to send a reply.
“I’ll find out what to do with the rest of the supplies,” Meg promised, tucking the receipt under the new geode paperweight she’d purchased from Jenni Crowgard.
Eve smiled. “Then I’ll leave them with you and get to work.”
• • •
Meg called Henry, figuring that, as a sculptor, he would be the most interested member of the Business Association when it came to art supplies. And he was interested. She just hadn’t expected him to walk out of the Liaison’s Office with charcoal sticks, graphite pencils, the other sharpener and eraser, and a sketchbook—and a slip of paper that told him what he owed Eve Denby.
Before she had a chance to call, not only had word reached Simon and Vlad that she had something new and interesting, but Jake Crowgard had spread the news to the rest of the terra indigene in the Courtyard, and a steady stream of Crows, Hawks, Owls, and Wolves showed up to look at what was available.
By the time Meg closed the office for her midday break, all the art supplies were gone and she felt exhausted and overwhelmed—partly because she had ended up warning everyone away from the supplies she’d selected for Hope. She’d even leaned over them and growled a couple of times, which amused Vlad more than it did Simon.
No telling how long the interest in this kind of art would last, but for the moment, the Others were excited about exploring something new.
• • •
Monty didn’t break the silence that had filled the car ever since he and Kowalski headed out to patrol some of the streets in the Chestnut Street station’s district. Jimmy had recovered sufficiently from his inexplicable weakness and had gone off that morning “to explore his options.”
Monty knew all about his brother’s options. What he needed to know was if Jimmy’s presence was splintering his relationship with his men, his captain . . . and Simon Wolfgard.
Only one way to find out.
“Something you want to tell me?” he asked.
“Don’t want to,” Kowalski replied after a moment. “But have to, I guess. And it’s better if you’re the one who talks to Commander Gresh.”
Monty sat up straighter. “Why do I need to talk to the commander of the bomb squad?”
“He and his family are among the humans Simon Wolfgard is allowing to shop in the Market Square and buy food items as well as other goods.”
“Captain Burke is also included among those humans. Is that a problem?”
Kowalski breathed out, an audible sound. “With everyone putting in extra hours since that storm in early Sumor, shopping in the Market Square has been handy, you know? You come home from work, do some chores, buy some ground meat from the Courtyard’s butcher shop and a couple of rolls from A Little Bite, and have burgers with a salad or some of the vegetables from your share of the Green Complex garden. You buy eggs there because it’s easier than standing in line in the grocery store or butcher shop in the Bird Park Plaza and finding out the person ahead of you bought the last dozen—and then having to break up a fight between the woman who bought the last dozen and a woman trying to take them in order to bake her kid a birthday cake. And broken eggs end up on the floor, along with the women, and you, being an officer of the law, have to sort it out and arrest one or both.”
“You had to do that?”
“I broke up a fight like that a couple of days ago—after the eggs hit the floor and things really got nasty—but I was off duty at the time, so Officer Hilborn made the arrest.”
“Gods,” Monty muttered. Had his preoccupation with his own family distracted him so much that he hadn’t been aware of what was going on? “Are we going to have to quell riots?”
“If we do, it’s because people aren’t using the same sense and neighborly kindness they would have shown each other a few months ago,” Kowalski replied. “Before the Humans First and Last movement got everyone thinking that any time a shop runs out of something it’s a shortage and people are going to starve if they don’t hoard whatever they can grab off the shelves, those women might have fought over a dozen eggs. People do stupid things all the time. But more likely they would have been passing acquaintances—women who didn’t know each other outside of chatting in the shops while waiting their turn, but still people who would know a bit about each other. Instead of fighting over the eggs, they would have split the dozen so that the woman could bake a birthday cake for her kid. That’s what people would have done. That’s what most are still doing.”
“New people have run to the remaining human-controlled cities, looking for work and a place to live. They’ll be trying to buy rationed goods at the shops too, so it stands to reason that supplies won’t always match the demand for a while.”
“That concern about supply and demand isn’t limited to the human shops.”
Monty considered his partner’s body language. Kowalski was circling around something. “Just say it, Karl.”
“If we’re not careful, we may not be welcome in the Market Square stores much longer, and that’s going to make it harder on all of us.”
Monty sighed. “This is about Jimmy?”
“It’s about all of us. As for family . . .” Kowalski let out a bitter laugh. “Ruthie’s mother, the woman who loudly declared that her daughter was dead and called my Ruthie trash, rang her this morning and wanted Ruthie to buy her a ham—five or six pounds would do. After all, the freaks had plenty of meat and could just catch more if they ran out. When Ruthie said she couldn’t buy that much meat even if a ham was available . . .” He drove for a minute in silence. “I could hear her screaming at Ruthie halfway across the room, so I took the phone and hung up on the bitch.”
“I’m sorry, Karl. For you and for Ruth.”
“Yeah, well. Personally, I hope that bridge is burned for good. Not sure what that says about me, but I hope it is.”
“You love your wife and don’t want to see her hurt.” Monty studied his partner, an uneasy feeling corseting his ribs. Even before the storm and the difficulty of transporting food and other goods between the regions, it was less expensive to buy food in the Courtyard than in other stores in the city. With prices going up even more, and with some food items in short supply, would there be pressure from friends and family on those who had access to the Courtyard to supply them with food as well?
Was selling food under the table one of those options Jimmy was exploring? Gods.
“I’m piecing this together from things the girls overheard or were told by Nadine, who has more information about raw food supplies than the rest of us since her bakery is now operating within A Little Bite,” Kowalski continued. “When Simon Wolfgard made the apartment residents part of the Courtyard and, therefore, among the beings who could eat the food produced within the Courtyard or brought in from the farms that supply the Courtyard, the Others figured out they would need an extra fifty pounds of meat per week to provide for their tenants. Someone figured out that amounted to twenty-four ounces of meat for each human—roughly four good-size burgers or a small roast or meat for a stew. And that means the Wolves now have to bring down two deer each week instead of one because the quantity of beef and pork being sent to the Courtyard from earth native farms hasn’t changed.”
“And a pack isn’t successful at every hunt.”
“The deer herd has been self-sustaining because the Wolves won’t kill a fawn unless it’s already injured. But how long will that be true if more deer are killed than reproduce?”
Now Monty understood why he would have to talk to Louis Gresh. Every purchase of meat from the Market Square butcher shop was putting pressure on the Wolfgard. Regardless of whether the Wolves preferred eating deer or moose over beef, some members of their pack—mainly Meg Corbyn—preferred beef and pork. The day Meg went hungry because some other human had bought the last pound of meat or the last dozen eggs was the day there would be a significant change in the
relationship between the humans in Lakeside and the terra indigene—and that change would not be good.
“You have any thoughts about this?” he asked.
“Now that the mayor has implemented the fair-distribution act so that each butcher shop receives a percentage of the meat coming in from another region, twenty-four ounces is the per-person, per-week limit a registered customer can reserve at a butcher shop,” Kowalski replied. “The kind of meat doesn’t matter. That’s the total.”
“A significant change for most households—except for the few of us who can buy that amount from two sources.”
Kowalski nodded. “The girls talked it over, and they’re going to purchase what they can from the human stores because we can buy rationed goods and the Others can’t. The terra indigene can buy pizzas at Hot Crust or eat at the Saucy Plate, but they can’t go into a butcher shop and buy a roast. So the girls are thinking that if we sell half the meat ration to the Courtyard each week—and by ‘sell’ I mean receiving a credit equal to the amount we paid for the meat—we can buy a sandwich at A Little Bite or have a meal at Meat-n-Greens without putting a squeeze on the Others. Nadine is going to float the idea to Tess.”
“I’ll talk to my mother. She may have some ideas. Even during lean times, she made sure we ate pretty well.” Monty thought for a moment, then looked at Kowalski, fighting not to smile. “Or is my mama one of the girls?”
Kowalski blushed and concentrated on his driving.
“There is the creek running through the Courtyard. Maybe a few of us should try to catch some fish.” Were there places along the shore of Lake Etu where people went to fish? He’d never been interested in the activity, but it was another source of food.
A weighted silence. Finally, Kowalski said, “We’re not going far enough into the Courtyard to reach the creeks. Won’t be for a while.”
