Forged Absolution (Fates of the Bound Book 4)

by Wren Weston

  “Let me guess. If I saw their work, I’d be amazed.”

  “So amazed.” Kenna’s proud expression fell as she glimpsed a corner nook. Two young women sat below a painting of a ship caught in a storm. One embraced her upset friend, a hand trailing along her back, both their books forgotten.

  Not uttering a word, Kenna marched quickly through the library, tour forgotten. It was as though she followed Connell for the second time that afternoon.

  Lila and Dixon trudged along behind her.

  “Cecily,” Kenna said gently, crouching before the two young women. “Perhaps the library isn’t the best place for you right now.”

  Cecily pulled away from her friend’s arm to reveal red-rimmed eyes and an even redder nose. She sniffled softly. “I’m sorry, Mom, I was okay until—”

  “I know. Go back home with Camille so you can really get it out. There’s no shame in it.”

  “But I need to work. I need to get ready for next semester. I don’t want to fall behind. I’ll be okay—”

  Camille ignored her friend. She gathered up their books and tossed them into their backpacks. “You’re not going to fall behind. You’re a genius compared to those idiots at university, and school doesn’t even begin for another month. Let’s take it easy for another week. We’ll marathon the next season of The Estate and eat chocolate chip ice cream until we get sick. We haven’t even started the third season. That’s what we’re falling behind on, not our studies.”

  “But…”

  “No buts.” Camille hitched her loaded backpack upon her shoulders. “I want ice cream, and I want to watch The Estate. Do it for me.”

  Cecily sniffled again. “Achille and I used to eat ice cream together.”

  “I know, but you’ll have to settle for me now. Let’s go, hon. These books are terribly heavy.”

  Kenna helped Cecily to her feet. “Thank you, Camille. What would I do without you?”

  “You’d probably get a lot more done, since you wouldn’t be addicted to some silly teenage soap opera. I saw the family’s queue yesterday. You’re watching it too.”

  “Hush, child. It’s research.” Kenna helped her daughter put on her backpack. “Has Cecily invited you to Solstice breakfast?”

  “Of course. Lunch and dinner, too. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Cecily sniffled, and Camille took her by the hand and led her through the shelves.

  Kenna watched them go. “My daughter is on break from university. Her boyfriend broke up with her several weeks ago.”

  “She seems to be in good hands,” Lila said.

  “Thank the gods for Camille. She and Cecily have been best friends since the moment they met at university, and she’s proven her worth in the last few weeks. She hasn’t even left my daughter’s side since the breakup. She’s been so focused on trying to cheer her up.”

  “A friend like that is hard to come by.”

  “Yes, she is. I’m not too happy about all the hot chocolate and ice cream Camille keeps sneaking her, but I can hardly complain. At least my daughter is eating, and Camille is just doing what she can. Cecily will be heartbroken for a long time to come. First loves and all that. You must remember how things were at that age. You live with an open heart, and your whole world crumbles at the slightest strike against it.”

  Lila gave a small nod. She had never actually lived like that—not as a teenager, anyway.

  No wonder Tristan had gotten over her so quickly. He’d had practice. He’d had others. She’d probably never even meant as much to him as he’d meant to her.

  The realization knocked a deeper hole in her heart.

  She’d let herself get so undone, and for what?

  Dixon gave her hand a little squeeze as Kenna led them to the back of the library, which opened up into another section of the building. Dozens of computers filled the room, with students pecking away.

  Kenna seemed to have a point about students learning through their interests. Few highborn, lowborn, or workborn students would have been caught dead in a library over Solstice break, not unless it was to choose an adventure novel. But these kids still dug into all manner of subjects. One boy had two art history books open near his computer.

  Sketches of noses filled his screen.

  Lila’s eyes strayed over the computers themselves, balking at the selection. Midrange rigs, all of them.

  “Our admin, Kara, runs both labs and the server room,” Kenna said under her breath. “You can work here, of course, but Mòr believed you’d prefer your guest cabin. Just pick a computer, and our admin will have it set up before our tour is complete.”

  As if summoned, a woman with bubblegum-pink hair appeared from behind a counter and shook hands with them all. “I was told you were coming today. I was also told you’d need a computer and access. I don’t like my rigs going out where I can’t see them, but the oracle has commanded it, so I suppose I’m overruled.”

  “I will take care of it as if it were my own,” Lila promised, inclining her head.

  “You better. I’m not as cuddly as my hair might suggest.” The woman led them to a door in the back. She grabbed a card attached to a lanyard at her neck and slid it through a reader, which emitted a feeble beep. The door snicked open. “The real computers are in here.”

  The group entered another room. Adults and much older teens bent over keyboards, typing and digging into manuals. The computers might not have matched the ones she’d had at home, but they only lagged a touch.

  As Kara droned on about their specs, Lila stopped before the fastest rig in the room.

  “How did I know you’d pick that one out of the bunch?” Kara sighed. “I’ll have it set up in your cabin within the hour. Come see me if you need anything else.”

  Kenna led them back into the main computer lab. “In the meantime, I’ll show you the cafeteria and the greenhouse. My cousin, Edana, and her husband have done some wonderful work with ferns. Many of them are bigger than your friend there. Unless you’d like to visit the Star Tower?” she asked, aiming her question at Dixon. “My youngest sister takes care of the telescope.”

  She opened the main door of the library, and the group slipped out into the cold. “On second thought, it’s too early for the tower. Blair’s not even awake yet.”

  Dixon and Lila exchanged glances.

  “My sister marches to the beat of her own drummer and her own alarm clock.”

  In the end, they visited the greenhouse first, an open-air room covered in plastic and steel tubes. The ferns were, in fact, bigger than Dixon, as were the aloe plants and roses. They were beautiful, even more beautiful than the ones at Bullstow or the Randolph estate.

  Kenna pointed out the cafeteria next, a structure nearly as large as the library. “You can have lunch there tomorrow, though we’ve stocked the refrigerator in your cabin. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like. As for breakfast tomorrow, Mòr has invited you to eat with us. She’ll be better then, and well rested.”

  The sun dipped below the horizon as they walked toward a stumpy tower in the back of the compound.

  Kenna folded her hands behind her back. “We haven’t had a chance to go over that list of missing children yet. Do you wish to interview them? I could set up a place for you in the library or the administration building.”

  “Holding interviews would tip off the mole whether they’re on your list or not,” Lila replied. “I want to keep my reason for being here a secret for as long as possible.”

  “Mòr was right. You are sneaky.”

  “Sneaky and thorough. I’ll start digging into your logs tonight. The mole has been sending information to the empire somehow. Maybe if we’re lucky, they’ve sent them from here. I’ll look for evidence. While I work on that, you and Connell can take a pass at the photos and see what you think of the matches.”

  Th
e group jogged up the stone stairs. Only boxes filled each floor, as though the tower served as extra storage for the compound. After climbing several stories, they stepped out onto the top floor. The domed metal roof had been cracked open, revealing a wide telescope pointed away from the fading sun. Tables filled with open books and pencils littered the room. Bookshelves lined the circular walls.

  A pale woman in her mid-twenties sat atop a stool in the center, her boots crossed under her butt, somehow balanced so that she did not fall. Blonde hair cascaded down her back as she pored over a spreadsheet on her computer. She wore a forest-green sweater and bright pink pajama bottoms, both baggy on her wispy frame. A yellow knit cap perched on the top of her head, matching her fingerless gloves. A muffin sat beside her, only one bite taken from the top.

  “Blair is an astronomer, and my youngest sister,” Kenna said. “We stopped trying to get her to participate in the family business a long time ago.”

  The group waited for Blair to look up and notice them.

  She did not.

  “We also stopped trying to get her to participate in much of anything.”

  Kenna tugged on her sister’s hair.

  Blair startled, but did not turn away from her notes. She merely threw out a lazy arm to bat her elder sister away. “I had breakfast. Go away.”

  Kenna pushed the muffin toward her sister. “Oh really?”

  Blair finally looked up from her work. “I’m going to finish it. It’s on my to-do list.”

  “This is your muffin from yesterday, Blair. I know because you took the last chocolate chip. You didn’t even finish it.”

  “It’s not from yesterday. I just got it an hour ago.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I think I know my own breakfast.”

  Kenna picked up the muffin and chucked it at the wall.

  It broke into two hard lumps.

  “It seems my muffin is defective. Can you bring me another?”

  “No, I can’t. And it’s not defective. It’s just old.”

  “Maybe I lost the one from this morning.” Blair looked around her table helplessly, moving books around in case a stray muffin had gotten lost underneath. “Or maybe I ate it. Did I eat it?”

  “How should I know?”

  Dixon fetched her breakfast from atop a book bag.

  Blair’s gaze lingered on his face. “Sometimes I lose them. Is it squishy?”

  He squeezed the bottom and nodded.

  “I told you I had a muffin.” Blair pinched the top and nibbled a blueberry. “Why did you let outsiders into to my tower, Kenna?”

  “Tell Dixon thank you first.”

  “Thank you first,” Blair said absently. “Why did you let outsiders into my tower?”

  “It’s not your tower, and they are friends.”

  “Whose?”

  “Ours.”

  “Yours. Not mine. I don’t have friends. Friends are boring.”

  Dixon chuckled and crouched beside the telescope, stooping to peek through the eyepiece.

  “Don’t touch it,” Blair said, swatting him away. “You’ll knock it out of alignment.”

  Kenna rolled her eyes. “He’s just curious. Must you be so impolite?”

  “I’m neither polite nor impolite. Go away. I’m too busy to pretend an interest tonight.”

  “You’re always too busy, and you’ve forgotten your coat again.”

  “It’s not cold.”

  “It’s barely above freezing, and it will only get colder.”

  “I remembered my hat and gloves.” Blair took another bite of muffin.

  “A hat and gloves aren’t warm enough.”

  Lila extended her hand, hoping to quiet the argument between the sisters. “My name is Lila.”

  Blair stared at her fingers. “I don’t shake hands. People are always clammy or warm or sticky. It’s unsettling.”

  Dixon laughed, a little sputter that threatened to turn into more.

  His dimples reappeared.

  Blair noticed them. “Who are you?”

  He flipped his notepad around and pointed at his name.

  “Dixon Leclair. What an odd name. Why do you insist on molesting my telescope?”

  He fished in his pocket for his pencil.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  No, someone else got there first.

  “Are you making sport of me?”

  You should eat your muffin.

  Blair turned back to her spreadsheet. “Don’t nag, else you’re just as bad as Kenna.”

  “Oh, say it isn’t so,” Kenna said.

  “Well, at least he’s not yammering away in my ear. Why don’t you just start writing down everything for me?”

  “You’d just lose the paper. What do you even have the telescope pointed at?”

  “A star.”

  “Which star?”

  “Ooka Pooka Looka in the Zoink Boink Nebula. Why do you ask? It doesn’t matter what I say. You never remember any of it.”

  Dixon peeked in the eyepiece, then scribbled on his notepad. Bellatrix. Orion.

  Blair cast her eyes over her papers. “How did you know that? Did you see it somewhere?”

  Dixon grinned and tapped his head.

  “You knew it already?” Blair asked, barely pausing for his nod. “I’m going to prove Bellatrix isn’t one star but two. Some damn Spaniard is trying to do the same thing. He always tries to snag my observation time at Krek, but he only goes there so he can get drunk and party. Fool doesn’t know his ass from a—”

  Kenna’s palm vibrated in her pocket. “Thank the gods. Kara has your computer ready. I’ll take you to your cabin and get you settled in.”

  Chapter 11

  Lila stretched under her blankets as someone knocked on her bedroom door. Her eyes shot open, then opened wider at the strange surroundings, at the queen-sized bed, at the thick woven rugs covering the floor, at the chest of drawers and matching bedside table, at the painting of horses rushing across the dusty plains above her head. She’d woken up in strange places for a month now, feeling like some wandering refuge from her matron’s wrath, staying in the cottage by the lake, in Dixon’s bedroom, and now in the oracle’s compound.

  She should have been used to it. She’d have to get used to it. This would be her life. A life that would be made easier after her mother returned her money—if she returned it. Lila had checked her accounts before trundling off to bed.

  She’d found them empty. Again.

  “Come in,” Lila said, sitting up with effort.

  Dixon strode over the rugs, wearing nothing but a pink robe loosely belted at his waist. It billowed as he plopped beside her and scanned the furniture and the painting.

  He pointed to his mouth.

  “Please tell me you didn’t wake me up for breakfast. Wake me up for lunch and not a moment before.” She dug under the covers. “On second thought, make that dinner.”

  Dixon dug under them too, flashing her in the process.

  He pointed to his mouth again.

  “No, I only went to bed a few hours ago.”

  Dixon had gone to bed early after meeting with Kenna and Connell to review the bios of the matched children. None of the matches from the empire had been valid, but forty-six missing children from the Allied Lands had passed through their compound. The pair had assured Dixon that none would have collaborated with the empire.

  Lila had been busy all evening and most of the night, working on a program to scout through the compound’s logs. Since she didn’t know what she was looking for, she’d cast her net wide, pulling anything from the logs with telltale marks of subterfuge.

  Unfortunately, people being what they were, she’d pulled a great deal of data. Too many budding hackers sold snoop programs these days, guarant
eeing their clients invisibility on the web. Fortunately, none of them could provide it, but that didn’t stop people from buying them.

  She’d skimmed through the hidden and fairly innocent search records of curious, horny schoolchildren, the loss records of gambling addicts, the love letters of several cheating spouses, the comic book purchases of several middle-aged women, the obsessive profile-stalking of ex-lovers, and one very bold and secret love affair between two women in a BDSM relationship, neither of whom could stop fighting over who would get to be the top in their next interlude.

  She’d found the ramblings of two secessionists as well, halfheartedly wishing someone would reinstate the Republic of Tejas. Lila could only chuckle. Roughly a hundred and fifty years ago, the American government had combined the republic with purchased acquisitions from the French territory east of the Mississippi River and a chunk of occupied, disputed territory claimed by the Mexican Commonwealth, or at least what would become the Mexican Commonwealth. America wouldn’t have been formed if not for the rivalry and arguments of the old countries. The Declaration of Peace had almost broken before the ink had dried.

  Slightly more concerning were the ubiquitous messages to and from the other oracle compounds. Many believed that the oracles should rally against the civilian government, especially against Henri Lemaire. Bravado spurred bravado, with many pointing out that they had plenty of ammunition, training, and approval from the gods to take back the country, reinstating the old ways.

  Lila wondered if her father knew about such sentiments.

  She wondered if Mòr did too.

  Lila found more than just calls for sedition. She’d also stumbled on porn—lots of porn—and whole libraries of pirated movies and television shows. In addition, they’d also pirated thousands of academic papers and journals, nearly outnumbering their pirated entertainment.

  Their naughty behavior didn’t come close to the intrigue and crimes she would have found on a highborn estate, though.