by Raven Dark
“Cherry. What took you so long? You must have stopped to see Crash before you came here.” His bright blue eyes were both gentle and teasing.
Cherry shook her head and walked around the table to him. She set the tray down and pecked him on the cheek. “Hi, Gramps. Hungry?”
“Starved.” He seated himself in one of the chairs at the table and dug in.
She managed to ignore his mention of Crash entirely and behave as if I wasn’t there, other than to nod to one of the chairs for me to sit.
“And who is this lovely young lady you’ve conveniently forgotten to introduce me to?”
She rolled her eyes at him and waved her hand between us dismissively. “Grandfather…Violet, Violet…my grandfather, Mac Holdenguard. His road name used to be Dice.”
He raised a silvery brow at me, one that matched his thick head of chrome-colored hair. The look took in my amethyst eyes and lavender hair. “Violet?” He said the name with an amused, knowing look at Cherry.
I gave him a smile and held out a hand. “My name is Setora.”
“Ah.” He shook my hand with his good one.
“Do you prefer Mac or Dice?”
“Whichever, just don’t call me ‘Old Man.’” He flashed me a glorious set of white teeth that looked anything but old and made his face look ten years younger.
While she worked, hanging his bag of newly darned clothing on the back of his bedroom door and setting the containers of water on a small counter, Cherry watched us with a cautious kind of interest. I could feel she still didn’t trust me.
I tried to ignore the suspicion that pounded off her, took a seat across from Mac—or Dice—and poured his tea for him.
“Thank you. But you sit with me at your own risk, Setora. I’ll talk your ear off now.”
I chuckled. “Go ahead.”
“Uh-uh. Less talking, more eating, Gramps.” His granddaughter kissed the top of his head and rubbed his shoulders. “Oh, and Baker said you have to eat the binacca this time.” She waved her finger at him in warning.
He grumbled and ignored the fruit, cutting up his steak, somehow managing to hold the fork in his hook and the knife in the other without difficulty. “That shit is disgusting. It tastes like peaches someone’s stepped on with their bare feet.” He looked at her. “Cherry, stop fussing and sit with your friend for a while.”
“I will, Gramps. After I clean up for you.” I thought I saw her wince at the word ‘friend.’ She started washing up dishes already piled in a sink full of suds. She dropped a dish into the sink and the dirty dishwater splashed down her front.
“Shit.” Cherry stalked to her grandfather’s bedroom and closed the door almost all the way. I heard hangers moving as she hunted through what sounded like his closet.
“I’ll do these,” I said, going to the sink and starting on the washing.
“A Violet who does dishes. Interesting.”
“Gramps,” Cherry snapped.
He just shrugged. But I wasn’t offended. I knew it was unusual for a Violet to do menial labor.
“Grampa, I’m borrowing a pair of your slacks.”
“Sure.”
I turned, catching a glimpse of Cherry through the half-opened door. She’d turned her back to the door, stripping off her frock and the black shirt underneath, leaving the black straps of a bra visible.
My jaw almost dropped. Now I knew why she wore the shirt under the frock. It wasn’t for style. Every inch of her back was crisscrossed with deep whip marks. They’d healed, leaving behind layers of scar tissue. Now that I thought about it, she’d gone out of her way to keep her back turned from me when we’d bathed that first day.
Quickly, I tore my eyes away before Cherry or Dice could notice me looking at her, and focused on the dishes.
“No need to get those perfect hands dirty, Violet, have a seat.” Cherry came back out into the kitchen and shoed me toward a chair.
“Cherry, I’m not an invalid, I don’t need you to do everything,” Dice said. Sit.”
She sighed, put the cup she’d been washing down and sat at the end of the table opposite him.
“So, you must be the one those yahoos stole from Vale the other day,” he said to me.
“Yes, sir.”
“That hair real?”
I grinned, knowing why he asked that. “Yes, sir.”
“You know, in almost every zone, there are women who pay a fortune to make their hair look like a Violet. Some have their eyes synthetically altered to look purple.”
“I know, sir.”
“Can I touch it? Your hair?”
“Gramps,” Cherry rolled her eyes. “Don’t be weird.”
“It’s fine.” I happily leaned over to him.
Dice rubbed a few strands between his fingers like he was touching fine silk. A laugh escaped him. “It is real.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, no ‘sir.’ No one’s called me that since I was the General.”
“You were the General?” I leaned forward with interest when he nodded. “You were Sheriff’s predecessor, then?”
“Here we go.” Cherry looked at the ceiling, but her eyes sparkled with love for him. “Now you’ve got him started. He’ll spend the whole day telling you old war stories if you let him.”
“I was,” Dice said as if Cherry hadn’t spoken. “For twenty-two years until I lost my arm in an explosion.” When I widened my eyes, he took it as a question. “A man who can’t ride can’t lead.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere. Twenty-two years is a long time for a General to lead, isn’t it?”
“It is. Sheriff’s already held the Gavel for fifteen years, but he’s got a lot of leader in him yet.”
“Wait. Sheriff can’t be more than thirty. He became General when he was still a boy? How is that possible?”
“Well, that’s a long story, Setora”
“Don’t let him fool you. It’s a story he’s happy to tell,” Cherry said. But her face beamed with happiness rather than boredom.
“Oh, hush, woman, make yourself useful.”
Cherry gave a feigned sigh, got up and set a kettle on a grill in the hearth for boiling. “We’ll need it for this yarn.”
“So, you must have noticed by now, Sheriff is different with some of his men. Hawk. Steel. Pretty Boy.”
I nodded. “They’re closer. Like brothers. Why?”
“You hit the nail on the head. They are brothers, in a way. When they were young, and I was General, our club had a different name. We were called The Reapers. Our hold was in Galadar.”
“Where the volcano is?”
“Mount Dire, yeah. My predecessor set us up there since Dire hadn’t done more than belch in centuries, since before the Old World ended. Sheriff was sixteen when Dire blew. He and the other three were best friends. Inseparable. You didn’t hear this from me, but the four of them built a makeshift clubhouse and used to pretend they were the head of their own crew.”
“Oh, really?” I couldn’t even picture that.
He drank the rest of the tea Cherry had brought for him on the tray. The kettle started whistling and Cherry got up and took it off the grill.
“Take a guess what they called their club,” Cherry said.
“Ah! The Dark Legion. I love it.”
“Yeah, those kids. I tell ya, they didn’t have it easy.” His eyes looked suddenly sad. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the explosion wiped out most of our zone and destroyed the Reapers club. I was holding church when the clubhouse went up and took my arm with it. The eruption of Dire left only a handful of us alive, and I couldn’t lead anymore. Most of us were too devastated to rebuild. Sheriff gathered Pretty Boy, Steel and Hawk, and they got us going. They rallied everyone who could come and brought us here to the Grotto.”
I looked at Cherry. “So, you came here to the Grotto in the beginning with everyone else?”
Her eyes lowered. “No.” She set the teas down for us and wouldn’t look at us.
Somet
hing flickered in Dice’s eyes, then it was gone. I chose not to press.
“Fifteen people at most back then,” Dice said. “They saved us. We needed a leader, so when Sheriff went for the title, he was voted in as General. The youngest General in history. Pretty crazy, right?”
“Not necessarily.” I paused, giving a wary look to Cherry. I wasn’t sure she’d want to hear me talk about my life before the Grotto.
When I saw both were listening, I went on.
“Families like the J’nai operate a little differently than road warrior crews. Damien told me once, he became the head of the J’nai at eighteen, and that’s not unusual. The succession within a Family is always inherited by the eldest son. Like a monarch.”
“Which means when the head of a Family dies, his eldest son takes his place, no matter how young he is.”
“Right.”
“So, a Family could end up with a ten year old in power?” Dice’s brows were high.
“It happens.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Cherry said. “That kind of thing should have died with the Old World.”
I agreed. That led me to another thought. “Who’s next in line in the Dark Legion? What happens if Sheriff can’t lead for some reason?”
Dice looked at me as if searching for some kind of motive on my part before he relaxed. “Hawk, naturally. The four of them, Sheriff, Hawk, Pretty Boy, and Steel, they are the Dark Legion’s heads. They are what keeps this Grotto together. I can’t see anything happening to Sheriff anytime soon, but you never know what life’s going throw your way.”
I considered his words and thought about the secrecy and all the guards Sheriff had standing vigil wherever I looked. Barring illness or old age, I couldn’t imagine anything taking Sheriff down, either.
I said as much to Dice.
He cleared his throat. “You have to understand, Sheriff and those boys would do anything to protect this place, and Sheriff especially. He takes his job as leader very seriously. Almost too much.” He drank down the tea Cherry had made for him. “But he’s a damn good leader, I’ll tell you that much. He won’t let nothing take down the Grotto.”
Dice finished the last of his food, except for the binacca. Cherry and I drank our tea while we continued to talk.
“If you’re not going to eat that, I will.” I nodded to the bowl of fruit. The outside of the fruit looked like a pomegranate, cherry-colored on the outside, but with skin like an apple and insides with sections like an orange.
“Be my guest.”
I reached for one of the succulent looking pink slices. I bit into it and the sweet, citrus flavor brought my taste buds to life. I enjoyed every morsel as it went down.
“Anyway,” Dice said, “I know what most people see when they look at Sheriff and his men. Cutthroats. Pirates. Thieves. But they’re just doing what’s necessary to survive. When they built their pretend club, they made a pact never to let anything divide them, and when they got old enough, they’d build a real Dark Legion. They made good on their word.”
“But there has to be another way to keep their club alive than stealing from others,” I pointed out.
Cherry shook her head like I was missing something. “Nothing is that simple, Violet.”
“Cherry. Be nice.”
Until now, she’d seemed so much more relaxed, even forgetting her suspicion of me. She seemed happy that her grandfather had someone to talk to. I got the feeling he wasn’t used to visitors.
“But she has a point,” Dice added. “You’re only seeing half the story. The Dark Legion doesn’t steal only for its own people. There are a lot of people who owe the Dark Legion their lives because of what they do.”
“How?”
But Cherry got up suddenly, finishing the last of her tea. “All right, that’s enough for now, Gramps. We need to finish the rest of our chores before the dinner whistle.”
Disappointment darkened his eyes. “You don’t have to rush away so soon. There’s two hours before the whistle.”
She went over and gave him a lingering hug, like she meant to stretch out her time here as much as possible. “Is there anything you need me to do for you before I leave? I won’t be back here until late tomorrow.”
He shook his head and squeezed her close, then reached over and shook my hand. “Thank you for bringing your friend by.” He drew back a little. “Speaking of which, you need to bring that boy Crash by soon.”
“Gramps,” she groaned. “Not this again.”
He chuckled. “If you won’t make a move, maybe he will. I’ll give him my blessing, and we’ll see how fast he stakes a claim.”
“Don’t you dare!” She shoved at him. “Grampa, don’t you dare.”
I covered a laugh. I’d never seen a woman’s face turn so red.
We left, and Cherry and I finished our chores before she took me back to the slave quarters with fifteen minutes to go before the whistle sounded the end of the men’s work day.
Cherry set her now empty basket on the shelf by the entrance to the slave quarters, and I looked out across the grass that surrounded the laundering pool. The water sparkled under the sun, the grass that bright, cheery green. Gems of every color winked at me from the rock walls.
Hearing Dice’s stories not only changed the way I saw my masters, it changed how I saw their home. This wasn’t some place they’d conquered and taken for their home. It was a refuge, a sanctuary from which they’d built a new life. A new life from the ashes of the old.
Dice had said they stole to help others. I didn’t understand how that could be, but I knew one thing for sure. My masters weren’t the monsters they wanted others to think they were. There was goodness in them. I just had to find a way to draw it out.
Chapter 10
Both Sides of a Blade
The end-of-workday whistle echoed through the Grotto right on time. The sun was just touching the top of the cliff wall when it went off. Cherry and I finished the last of our chores and headed for the entrance to the slave quarters. Hawk’s silhouette grew larger as he made his way across the lawn.
It hit me how relaxed and at ease I’d felt throughout the day with Cherry when, suddenly, I began to feel the tension from that morning seeping back in. That tension grew stronger the closer Hawk drew, as though his presence brought it with him.
Not that Cherry and I would ever be best pals or anything but meeting her grandfather had given me a glimpse into another side of her. It put us on an equal level somehow, and thus made it easier to tolerate her prickliness.
I still had no idea what to make of Hawk.
“Here,” Cherry said abruptly. I looked down. She was holding out the open package of underwear from earlier that morning.
I cocked my head at her.
She gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Well…since your idiotic men won’t give you any.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “You’re giving these to me?”
“Just take them, Violet.” She pushed them into my chest. “And this too,” she added, holding out the black bag with the toothbrush I’d used.
As soon as I took both items, she spun around and disappeared into the deeper tunnels, toward her room as though she was afraid I’d give them back if she didn’t leave.
“Let’s go, kitten.” Hawk’s quiet, even voice barely penetrated the entrance to the cave.
“I’m sorry, Master, what?” I shook myself and looked at him.
“What are those?” He stepped into the entrance and nodded to the package I was still holding to my chest.
Was he just curious, or did I imagine the irritation in his voice? I looked over his face. Those dark circles at his eyes looked deeper now, his tanned features looking tired and worn. A vein stood out on his brow, and sometimes his eyes squinted as if the light around him hurt to look at it.
“Oh…they’re just panties.” For some reason, my face burned.
His grin lasted only an instant, but it was there. Hawk was such a composed, disciplined man, t
he smile looked out of place on him. I wondered what it would sound like to hear him raise his voice or laugh. “Come on. I’ll take you to get something to eat as soon as I change.”
I might as well not have spoken. Sighing, I followed him out.
We arrived at Hawk’s rooms within about ten minutes. He lived only a few caves away from Sheriff’s office. He took the torch from the wall by the entrance to his quarters and lit it with the flames from a torch mounted on the outer cliff wall, casting the front room in a warm glow. I slowly followed him inside, curious as he lit a few other torches mounted about the room.
What I was expecting to see in Hawk’s rooms, I didn’t know, but I hadn’t expected this.
His front room had none of the opulence and finery Pretty Boy decorated his place with, but it had a different sparseness than Steel’s. Instead of couches, a set of two flat mats made of red leather sat on his living room floor on either side of a small black table. The table stood no more than two feet off the ground and had a single bowl of binacca sitting on it. Matching the table, a cabinet stood in front of the mats, positioned like an altar, with rows of squat, white candles atop it. Thin carpets covered the floor, but only enough to prevent the feet from touching the cool stone of the cave. Shelves all about the room held rows of more candles, which he lit with a long wooden stick that smelled of cedar. Everything about his quarters gave me the impression of discipline, order in the extreme.
“Wow.” I stared at his walls. Each one was mounted with weapons. Swords of every size and length hung in rows, along with a crossbow, an ancient longbow, and a few other weapons I didn’t recognize, all mounted in ways that looked ritualistic rather than decorative.
Headed for a room at the back, Hawk stopped and raised one dark brow at me.
“They’re beautiful. You have a lot of weapons, Master.”
He walked back to stand in front of one wall with me where rows of long, thin swords were mounted. “Yes. I like stabby things.”
My eyes snapped to his. “Are you joking, Master?” My thoughts veered back to that comment he’d made when he’d first seen me, that he was going to kill me.
