Knights of Black Swan, Books 7-9 (Knights of Black Swan Box Set Book 3)

by Victoria Danann

  Wakey had been coming three or four times a day to relieve Falcon. Sometimes he’d stayed to talk about everything and nothing. Just to keep his friend company.

  On that occasion, neither said anything. They sat without speaking, listening to the conversation taking place in the cell.

  “Do you have family?” she asked Jean Etienne.

  “No. I’m one of the originals.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means I didn’t come into the world the usual way. I was created as I am.”

  “Oh.” Her mind groped about for what she might say in response to that and came up with nothing. “But you said you make families. Do you have a wife?”

  He smiled. “We do make families, but I’ve not found someone who makes me feel inclined to be half of a pair.”

  She nodded. “Me either.”

  Falcon’s mouth pressed together as he thought about the fact that it was hard to find the right someone when you wouldn’t even accept a dinner invitation.

  “Do you have a, what do you call it?”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Yes. That’s it. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “No. I did once. It didn’t work out. So I decided to concentrate on my career here.”

  “And you were good at what you do?”

  She shrugged. “I like to think so. They promoted me when my boss retired. I didn’t really have a chance to implement all the changes I’d planned.” She said it sadly.

  “If you weren’t going to spend your life working for The Order, and you could do anything, what would you want to do?”

  “If I could do anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to be a singer in a cabaret.”

  “Can you sing?”

  “No,” she shook her head and laughed.

  He laughed with her.

  Wakey whispered to Falcon. “I’m going. Get some sleep.”

  Falcon nodded.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Day Five - Psych Eval

  Elora ushered Rosie to Monq’s corner table in the Mess at nine-thirty. Things were quiet at that time. Students and instructors had already eaten and begun their day. Knights weren’t up yet.

  “Thelonius Monq, this is Elora Rose Storm.” Rosie beamed at Elora as she always did when Elora insisted on announcing her birth certificate name. “Otherwise known as Rosie.”

  Monq had risen to greet them. “How do you do?” he asked Rosie who took his hand. “Please join us,” he said to Elora.

  “Okay,” she answered.

  Monq and Rosie sat facing each other with Elora in between.

  “I understand you’re recently back from travels,” he said to Rosie.

  “Yes. That’s true. Not much has changed,” she said in an effort at pleasantries.

  “Well, yes and no. The surroundings don’t change much, but people do. That’s actually why I asked you to breakfast.”

  “Oh?”

  The waitperson appeared. “What can I get you?” he asked cheerfully.

  “Bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on wheat toast,” said Rosie. “And a fruit cup, extra red grapes.”

  “Plain bagel with peanut butter on the side and a cranberry juice,” said Elora.

  “Ooh,” said Rosie. “I’ll have cranberry juice, too.”

  The man looked at Monq. “I’ll have that skillet thing you make, but substitute broccoli for the asparagus spear tips, use chopped chicken breast instead of beef, and bearnaise instead of Hollandaise. Also, cut the potatoes in half and poach the eggs for two and a half minutes. I’ll have that twenty-five percent Kona blend coffee with the Bailey’s hazelnut creamer and two pieces of rye toasted on one side only. Butter on the side. Not on the toast.”

  The server took it in stride as if that was not an unusual breakfast request for Monq. “Juice?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you, Ronald. Grapefruit if you please. But put four tablespoons of sugar in it and shake well.”

  “Of course.”

  Rosie gave Elora a what-have-you-gotten-me-into look, which inspired a chuckle.

  “Something funny?” Monq asked. “What did I miss?”

  “If you don’t think your breakfast order was funny, you’re missing a check in with reality.”

  “Over the top?” he asked.

  “Completely,” she said.

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “Or just save yourself the embarrassment of being eccentric. Stay in and make your own.”

  “First, I’m not embarrassed and, second, why would I do for myself what I can have others do for me?” He turned to Rosie. “So, may I call you Rosie?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Good. Call me Monq.”

  “All right.”

  After an acceptable period of small talk, Monq dived into the reason for the breakfast meeting. “I understand you’ve been away for about five years.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Coincidentally, Glendennon Catch has been away for about that same length of time. I understand you know him?”

  Rosie took on a posture that looked slightly guarded. “Knew him,” she clarified.

  “So you’re not still friends.”

  “It seems that would be safe to say.”

  “I see. That’s a shame. Just between the two of us,” he looked at Elora, “or I guess I should say the three of us, I wonder if you could help me with some background on Sir Catch.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, this is a sensitive and tricky business. I have ethical and professional boundaries in play here.”

  “Is there something wrong with Glen?” Rosie asked, looking more than casually concerned.

  “Nothing serious. I believe he may be experiencing a form of post traumatic stress.”

  “That doesn’t sound not serious to me.”

  “I believe a few minor adjustments will make all the difference. Right now he seems to be closed off to the people who care about him. At the same time his anger is volatile, an outward expression of an inner conflict.”

  Rosie scowled. “What happened?”

  “Getting to the bottom of that. Slowly. You can help,” he looked between the two of them, “both of you, by giving me some insight as to who he was before he became active duty.”

  “Just ask what you want to know,” said Elora.

  “You knew him first, right?” Monq asked her.

  Elora looked at Rosie. “Yes. I knew him for some time before Rosie was born.”

  “Give me something I wouldn’t find in his file. Fill in between the lines, if you will.”

  “My impressions?” Elora asked.

  “Exactly,” Monq replied, pleased that she seemed to have caught the subtext of what he was after.

  “Well, he was one of my trainees. He hit it off with my dog and began dogsitting for me. When Ram and I were sent to Edinburgh on temporary assignment, right after the wedding, I took Glen with me to take care of Blackie when I couldn’t be around.” She chuckled. “Well, he ended up making quite an impression at Headquarters. Stood all those dusty old professor-types on their ears.” She looked at Monq. “He’s one smart kid, you know. And by that I don’t mean smart, I mean off-the-charts brilliant.”

  Monq nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well, he dated a lot, but no one in The Order. First, he was too young and, second, as you know, work place entanglements are discouraged.” Rosie snorted and looked at Elora’s belly pointedly. Elora made little clockwise circular movements on her abdomen and smiled before she continued. “Not that the personnel wouldn’t have jumped at the chance. I heard a girl in archives, who didn’t know I was in the stacks, refer to him as a walking phallic symbol.”

  Monq giggled. “I can see that.” Elora and Rosie both stopped and gave him a speculative look. “What? I’m not blind!”

  “Hmmm. Well, I hated hearing him objectified in that way. I felt offended on his behalf.”

  “Be
cause women are always objectifying your husband?” Rosie asked.

  “They are?” Elora narrowed her eyes. “I’m taking names. Make a list.”

  “Hold on,” said Monq. “If there’s any psychoanalysis to be done at this breakfast, I’ll be the one doing it.”

  Elora sighed. “Where’s breakfast? I’m hungry.”

  “Eating for three? I see him coming this way now,” said Monq.

  They waited until after their orders had been set in front of them and Ronald had left.

  “I’ll tell you this though,” Elora began. “Glen’s mind was full of possibilites about what he might do with his life. He had so many talents… He could have done anything.” She sighed while she spread peanut butter on her bagel. “And everything excited him. It was a joy to watch. But something happened right around the time Helm was born. I’m not sure what it was, but all of a sudden Glen had decided he was going to be a knight and that was that. There was no more talk about options after that.”

  “Interesting,” Monq said while he made sure the bite of skillet breakfast he was about to eat had sufficient bernaise sauce on it.

  “What about you, Rosie?”

  Rosie stopped eating like she’d been caught redhanded doing something wrong. “What about me?”

  “What can you tell me about Sir Catch?”

  She set her fork down and sat up. “Look. I’m not sure I feel comfortable giving Glen’s shrink insights into my relationship with him. It feels like it might be a betrayal.”

  “Might you tell me something incriminating?”

  “Incriminating? Well, no. Not incriminating per se. But personal.”

  “Loyalty is one of humanity’s loftiest expressions of higher self, my dear. Admirable and commendable. Let me assure you that my motives are born entirely in the interest of restoring him to the person that people once described as affable and easygoing as well as sharp and quick. He lost his way. The Sovereign has asked me to help him find it. He’s back here at Jefferson Unit because concerns were logged by the last three Sovereigns at his duty assignments.”

  Monq observed the line that formed between Rosie’s brows and the fact that she might have paled a little. “Concerns?” she said. “That’s impossible. Glen is the most solid, grounded person in the world.”

  Monq raised his chin as he studied Rosie. “By all reports, he was. At one time.”

  “Oh gods,” she said.

  “It seems to me that you still care about him. I’m happy to see that he still has people on his side. He’s probably going to need that.”

  Rosie looked at the napkin in her lap for a minute or so before making a decision to share.

  “My parents say that ‘Glen’ was the first word I spoke.” She looked up and smiled just a little. “I have a memory of wiggling, trying to get my mother to put me down so that I could go to Glen. I think I idolized him a little bit and loved him a lot. I don’t know why. It was like I was born thinking he was the best thing that ever happened to two-legged creatures. I grew up really fast. Did you know that?”

  Monq glanced at Elora. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Well, after I hit puberty, the fact that Glen was dating girls was driving me insane. It was confusing to me because I was sure I was supposed to be the girl and he just thought of me as the kid he was babysitting. Eventually my mother and her friend,” her eyes flicked to Elora, “invited the two of us to have dinner with them. They’d cooked up a sort of matchmaking thing.

  “Well, it worked. That night Glen and I were officially dating. I think I was about a year old and telling him we were exclusive or he was in big trouble. Once he gave in to the idea of a romantic relationship with me, he was okay with the exclusivity. As it turned out, he liked me a lot, too.”

  Monq and Elora watched a deep blush creep up Rosie’s neck and color her face. She didn’t share what she was thinking, but they could guess it was outside the parameters of what Monq needed to know.

  “I was so proud of him when he became temporary Sovereign. Then I panicked when he was inducted. I told him that he wouldn’t accept an active duty position, as a knight, if he loved me. I told him he couldn’t have that particular job and me and I gave him a deadline to choose.”

  Elora frowned. “I never knew this. Litha didn’t tell me.”

  Rosie raised her head. “She was probably ashamed of me. She should have been. I wasn’t expressing love for Glen. What I was expressing was my own selfishness. I was way too inexperienced with life to understand love.”

  Monq and Elora remained quiet when she stopped talking, absorbing the implications of what had been said. At length Monq said, “So he didn’t acquiesce and you…”

  “Disappeared. Just like I said I would. I didn’t even tell my parents where I’d gone.” Elora looked away. “Now I understand that it was cruel to do that to him. It’s the biggest regret of my life. So far.”

  “Thank you, Rosie,” Monq said. “This has been more helpful than you know.” Monq looked at the face of his phone. “I’m needed in the lab. Rosie, I have another couple of questions. Could we pick this up again tonight over dinner? I need to stay close by the experiment underway, but if you would be so kind as to join me in my offices?”

  Rosie glanced at Elora. “Uh, sure. I guess.”

  “Excellent. Seven o’clock.”

  Monq had invented a reason to leave breakfast. There had been no message, urgent or otherwise. But something about Glen’s case had been niggling at him and he knew what it was. When he reached his office, he closed the door and connected to the Black Swan archives, recently made available via a satellite that The Order owned and controlled.

  He typed in the search term ‘floaters’ and began reading. By lunch time he was satisfied that he’d found a crack in Black Swan procedure that, in the case of Glendennon Catch, had become more like a black hole than a crack.

  Around three, Monq strolled into Rev’s office without an appointment. The admin began to rise, but Monq stayed him with a raised hand. “Don’t bother to get up. I’ll see myself in.”

  “But, sir…”

  Rev’s attention jerked toward the door when it opened without a knock because, first, that wasn’t acceptable, second, everyone knew that, and, third, it simply didn’t happen because of the first two things.

  “Sovereign,” said Monq, “we need to talk.” Monq closed the door behind him and sat down in the chair in front of the massive desk that was as imposing as the personality who sat behind it.

  Rev looked at his screen. “I don’t see you listed on my schedule.”

  “I didn’t see Glendennon Catch listed on my schedule when you insisted I take that on.”

  “Is this about Catch?” Rev scowled.

  “The immediacy is certainly about Sir Catch although there is a larger issue to be taken under serious consideration.”

  Rev looked at his watch. “Five minutes.”

  “That will do for a start. What do you know about floaters?”

  “I don’t have time for games.”

  “All right. I assume you know that they’re temps who fill team vacancies and are then reassigned to do the same elsewhere when the vacancy is filled.”

  “Four minutes,” said Rev.

  “I read Sol’s file today.”

  “Sol’s file?”

  Monq nodded. “Well. The part of his service that was spent as an active duty knight. He was assigned a partner right out of training, Miles Copper. Spent eight years with that same partner. Both survived. Copper retired to a chicken ranch, if I recall. Wanted to raise a family in Nevada. Sol became a career Swan.”

  “Point?”

  “Knights with permanent partners form deep bonds with each other. They rely on each other for backup, of course. But experiencing near-constant combat stress, they rely on each other for companionship and emotional support as well. They know they can count on each other and many report that they wouldn’t hesitate to die for their partners.”

  “Yo
u’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  “What if, instead of having one partner for eight years, Sol had been assigned to a part of the world where he’d never been, to be temporary partner to a knight who wasn’t completely over the loss of his own partner and was resentful toward Sol for taking the place of the departed. What if Sol never stayed in any one place long enough to make real friends, form real attachments, or even feel like he could count on his teammates.”

  Monq had Rev’s complete attention and he was beginning to look disturbed by what he was hearing.

  “Did you know that the longest any one knight has ever served as a floater, before Glen, is two years?” Rev shook his head. “Well, it’s a fact. That’s as long as they can take it. You know how long Glen lasted?”

  Rev cleared his throat. “Five years.”

  “That’s right. From what I gather, it’s indicative of a dedication to The Order and a personal strength of will that is extraordinary, even for a knight. He deserves to be decorated for that service, which has left him so broken psychologically. It seems his own strength of character has been his undoing. Other knights quit before they were drawn into a psychological quagmire that sucked them under.”

  He definitely had Rev’s full attention. “Furthermore, The Order is going to have to find another way to handle temporary vacancies. We’re destroying good knights. Stress without a shared bond and the belief that you’re not in it alone creates too much strain on the personality, like a rubber band pulled until it breaks.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do.”

  Rev sat back and sighed. “What do you need from me?”

  “For starters, make sure that when, if, I can put the kid back together again, he gets a permanent job in a place where there are people who care about him.”

  Rev sucked in a big breath and nodded. “Okay.”

  “And make sure this doesn’t happen to any more knights. They’re not disposable.”

  Monq got up and left without another word leaving Rev to mourn the loss of potential and think about the knights who could have been utilized so much better if they’d been paying more attention.