by Helena Maeve
Chapter Seven
Alana woke to the soft, unfamiliar shuffling of footsteps, yet the usual rabbiting panic didn’t accompany that strange and unexpected commotion. She cracked an eye open to find Jackson tugging on his shirt—a shame, because it meant his fine upper body was concealed behind frayed cotton, depriving Alana of any voyeuristic enjoyment.
She sighed, rolling over onto her back. “What time is it?”
Jackson started at the sound of her voice. “Seven,” he said. “It’s— I have to go to work soon.”
“You work when you’re here too?” Alana grumbled. She knew as soon as the words had left her mouth that it was unfair to assume otherwise, but it was early enough and she felt lazy enough not to assume the worst just because she’d spoken out of turn.
The fact that Jackson had stopped to watch her stretch her sleep-heavy limbs emboldened her even further. “Are you sure you don’t want to play hooky today? We could stay in bed…” There was no ulterior motive to the request—she was too groggy for that—nothing but the entirely selfish desire to feel his hands on her again.
“You’re making it very hard to refuse,” Jackson said, sighing as he flexed his hands at his sides. “The wind traps need fixing, though, and I promised I’d lend Ophelyn a hand topside.”
Lend me a hand, instead. Alana had a hard time restraining the wanton proposition. She might have sought to make herself available last night, but she didn’t want to appear as though she had no self-discipline. At least in New Eden, such women tended to attract all kinds of bad company.
“Can I come with you?” she asked instead, sitting up. Her camisole rode down to cover the tops of her thighs. She was glad she’d woken to clean herself up and put it on during the night, even though it ran counter to Jackson’s instruction. Baby steps, she told herself.
To Alana’s surprise, Jackson shook his head. “I already told Maity you’d help out in the infirmary. Work on the wind traps can be dangerous,” he added. “You’re suspended thirty feet above the ground and the currents are strong even if the turbines aren’t working…”
And he didn’t think Alana could handle it. He didn’t have to spell it out for her to understand. Her pride smarted at the implication, but she bit down the uneasy spark of annoyance. Now was not the time. She finally had Jackson treating her like a woman instead of a stray who wouldn’t give him peace. She was in no rush to give up what little ground she’d gained.
“All right.” She sighed, scrubbing a hand through her tangled hair. She’d have to find a brush somewhere and work out the knots. Perhaps Maity could be of some help.
“We could break our fast together,” Jackson said, as though to sweeten the pill.
He’s trying. That in the process he stomped all over her ego was not his fault—she had always been difficult. No man had ever wanted her for a wife because she could not be tamed. None had even cared to try. And now Jackson was shackled to her out of some bizarre sense of duty. No wonder he was fumbling.
“Let me get dressed,” Alana started, sliding her bare feet to the floor and wincing as her tattered soles met icy cement.
Jackson had recovered his boots, though, leaving her no other option but to go barefoot. How apropos. Alana bit back a surge of bitterness. She reached for her dress as it was dangling from the wardrobe door like a piece of snakeskin.
“I don’t know if these’ll fit you,” Jackson said into the ensuing silence. “I got them from Leona, but she’s got big feet, so…” He was holding up a pair of moccasins made entirely of cloth and yarn and dyed a very dark blue.
Alana felt a flash of guilt for judging him too fast, before that gave way to suspicion. “What do we owe her?” she asked, meaning What did you promise her?
“Nothing. She was already indebted to you.”
“To me?” Alana arched brows. “Why would she be indebted to—? Oh.” She cut herself short abruptly, understanding dawning like the dim, flickering glow of a lit candle. “She’s the one you were buying the herbs for, isn’t she?” The woman he had left with child.
No wonder they had looked so cozy at the cabin.
Jackson nodded. “Will you try them on?”
What could she say? No, because they belong to your last lover, the one who already gives me the creeps? It wouldn’t endear her to Jackson any more than it would convince him that she knew her place as his thrall.
Alana nodded and slid her feet into the moccasins. They were indeed a little loose, but preferable to walking around the dome in bare feet. She followed Jackson down into the warren of corridors that made up the underground city, recognizing yesterday’s landmarks on the way to the communal kitchens. It took her a moment to realize that Jackson was speaking, her scattered thoughts evaporating when he glanced her way.
“Everyone does a rotation,” he said, “citizens and thralls alike. Scouts get some privileges, like skipping to the head of the queue, but we still have to pull our weight.”
“So you have to get rigged up thirty feet from the ground to repair some wind traps?” Alana snapped, a thread of aggravation slithering through.
Jackson clamped his mouth shut, bemused.
“Sorry.” Spoke out of turn again, bully for me. “I didn’t mean— Of course you’ll do whatever you want, but I just don’t see why you have to take on the most dangerous job when you already spend so much time fighting off mutts and walkers…” The next thing out of her mouth was going to be mention of pillaging peaceful towns but something told her Jackson wouldn’t appreciate being reminded of that.
Silence stretched between them like an elastic pulled taut as they returned yesterday’s bowls to the kitchens and were given a plate of hardboiled eggs, moldy cheese and a piece of bread in their stead.
The kitchen boys didn’t even leer at Alana this time.
“It’s not the most dangerous job,” Jackson said, once they had found a seat at a metal picnic table.
The chill of the bench seat was seeping through Alana’s skirt as she glanced up. “It’s not?”
Jackson shook his head, but he offered no further explanation. He didn’t speak again as he peeled his egg out of its shell. By the time he’d finished his breakfast altogether, the mess hall was teeming with the hubbub of many voices. He glanced over his tray at Alana, something soft and uncertain in his gaze. It wasn’t much, but right there, in full view of all his brethren, he reached for her hand and gave her fingers a light, companionable squeeze.
Alana felt her heart skip a beat. The closest she’d come to public displays of affection back home had been the odd hug from friends who had later learned not to associate with her. She’d never had a man take her hand in earnest, because he wanted to stake a claim.
She had never wanted so badly to thread their fingers together and hold on for dear life.
“Will you be all right with Maity?” Jackson asked, stroking his thumb across Alana’s pulse point. “She’s a little—”
“I’ll be fine,” she hurried to answer. She wasn’t afraid of Maity or of hard work. She didn’t want Jackson mistaking her sour mood for laziness. “You make sure you don’t take a tumble, all right?” she pressed. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the thought.
What would become of her if Jackson fell?
She struggled to forge a smile when he brought their joined hands to his lips and gave her knuckles a warm, tender kiss.
Watching him go was harder than it had been to leave New Eden behind as the flames had been licking at the foundations of her neighbors’ homes. The same awful sense of powerlessness pervaded.
“I know,” a voice said at her shoulder. “I sigh after that perfect ass all the time.” Alana turned to find Maity shaking her head with mock wistfulness. The brunette flashed her a grin. “You had a good night, though, didn’t you?”
“W-what?”
Maity chuckled, patting her shoulder. “No need to be shy, sweetheart. I’m just down the hall… Though I wager the old man in his cellar heard you too. C
ome on, you can tell me all about it while we cure some tummy aches.” She slid an arm through Alana’s, hoisting her up from the table. “Jackson tells me you’re some kind of healer…”
Even if she’d wanted to, Alana wasn’t sure she would’ve been able to extricate herself from Maity’s grip. She didn’t bother trying.
* * * *
New Eden’s town council would never have allowed a woman to run the clinic, much less two working in tandem, but between them Alana and Maity attended to a dozen patients by noon that day. They made a good team—Maity was quick to show Alana the ropes, but she had no ambitions of being consulted on every decision.
“Jackson says you know what you’re doing,” she told Alana after the third time Alana asked her opinion before wrapping a wound she knew was not in need of further treatment. “So do it. I’m a brewer by trade, not a doctor.”
They’d had a medical doctor once, Maity explained, but he’d died three years earlier. His apprentices made do with a dwindling supply of drugs well past their expiration date in the hopes that their scouts would be able to find more.
“Scouting… That’s what you call what Jackson does, yes?” Alana asked as she washed her hands between patients. Basic hygiene had been instilled in her as a girl, one more oddity for Krall and his peers to take issue with.
Maity nodded. “He sizes up a target and calls in the heavy artillery if there’s a chance we can take it. Not exactly a glamorous trade… Or one with high life expectancy. I think the oldest scout I ever met was his brother.”
Alana nearly dropped the soap bar. “Jackson has a brother?”
“Had,” Maity corrected. “He was about twelve or fifteen years older than him… I don’t rightly recall. He kept to himself a lot. Weird guy.” She cast a glance around as if to check that no one was listening before adding, “They say he had visions.”
“He took hallucinogenics?” It wasn’t unheard of—even in New Eden, there had been so-called prophets who communed with the Holy Spirit after a few deep pulls of the pipe.
“Nah… It just happened. He’d get all shaky and start foaming at the mouth, and when he came to, he’d tell us where to go. It was freaky. Some people said he was possessed by spirits.” Maity shook her head, passing Alana the towel. “I wouldn’t bring it up with Jackson. If he hasn’t mentioned it to you, it’s that he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Of course,” Alana echoed, but her thoughts were already chasing the white rabbit of this new information, recasting everything she knew about her would-be protector in a new light.
“I’m going to grab something to eat. You want soup?” Maity pitched over her shoulder.
“No… Thank you.” The egg she’d had for breakfast was still sticking in her throat and there was some cheese left in a cloth-wrapped parcel beside the sink if she felt peckish. “Maity?”
“Yes?” The other woman spun around, already in the doorway.
“Did he have any thralls? Jackson’s brother, I mean…”
Maity arched a brow. “You’ve met Leona, haven’t you?” She drummed her fingertips against the doorjamb. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone!”
“Sure thing,” Alana said, lacking conviction.
She dropped into a chair, floored by the news. Leona, a slave? It made no sense at all. Leona was anything but meek. Finn had spoken of her as his mistress with little hesitation and far less shame. If she’d been another man’s thrall, surely she’d behave with a little more decorum, a little less bluster—wouldn’t she?
Alana ran a hand through her hair, gripping the curling chestnut tendrils because she had no other anchor. Patching up cuts had done nothing to distract her from Jackson’s careless confession. She is already indebted to you. Had he truly bedded his brother’s thrall?
It shouldn’t have come as a shock. It was common practice in New Eden for a widow to be wedded to her husband’s brother—or cousin, or father, or, assuming there was no blood relation, his son. The Holy Book said it was lawful, so the council supported such arrangements, ostensibly for the protection and happiness of the widow herself. Maybe in Haven that meant brothers took over each other’s property when one survived the other.
At least he has no other family. Alana shoved past the roiling squall of shame that rose with the notion.
She didn’t even register the holler ringing down the hall like bell chimes until it came again, cleaving through the tangle of her thoughts like a knife through butter. After the third time, she could make out Finn’s voice pitched to a shrill, strangled frenzy.
He rounded the corner with a limp, unconscious Leona in his arms.
Their eyes met.
“Maity stepped out—” was as far as Alana got before Finn’s knees buckled under him and she saw him go down, Leona’s weight bearing him down to the floor like a block of cement. Alana rushed forth. She barely snagged an arm around Leona’s shoulders before the back of her skull smacked the cement.
“She complained of pain in her gut before she passed out,” Finn blurted out in a gasping torrent. “I can’t wake her up. I don’t know what’s wrong…”
“Put her down first,” Alana said, scrabbling to push up her sleeves. Leona’s eyes were closed, but when Alana lowered her ear to her chest, she could make out the faint thump of her heartbeat. “Did she take something?”
“She drank tea—”
“What kind?”
Finn balked. “W-what?”
“What kind of tea?” Alana all but shouted. “Go back to the room and bring me what she took. Go!”
Finn didn’t take much more encouragement. Out of the corner of her eye, Alana saw him barrel into passers-by, their indignant shouts registering only dimly. Leona, slack-limbed and unresponsive on the infirmary floor, took precedence.
Alana checked her eyes and pressed gently on the hinge of her jaw to check her throat, all to no avail. It wasn’t until she pressed a hand to her distended belly that she understood what was amiss. The crotch of Leona’s trousers was soaked with blood.
“You drank the whole thing, didn’t you?” Alana huffed in a low, panicky breath. “I’m going to kill Jackson.”
But that was a thought for another day, when Leona’s life wasn’t hanging by a thread. All right, what now? The answer flowed out of her like water from a spring— I don’t know.
That wouldn’t do.
From somewhere deep in the well of memory, Alana heard her mother warn her patrons against putting sick babies to sleep on their backs, lest they should choke on their own vomit. It was worth a shot.
She gripped Leona by one arm and tilted her onto her side, gasping with the effort. A slice of blonde hair fell into the other woman’s eyes, but the rest of her barely reacted.
The crimson stain on the floor was unsettling. It was also nothing that Alana hadn’t seen before. She slid behind Leona’s limp back, ignoring the coppery scent of blood, and pressed her knuckles into the other woman’s lower belly. The only thing she could think of to do was stimulate muscular contractions and hope that would be enough to flush the infusion that hadn’t yet entered her bloodstream.
She gave Leona a good shake. “Come on.” Nothing happened. “Come on, you can do this.” Leona remained stubbornly unconscious, her smirky, smug face unusually blank of expression.
Alana gripped her by the back of the neck in a last ditch attempt to stimulate her pressure points. “Come on!”
The shout rang out through the infirmary like a thunderclap. Alana barely heard it as she felt Leona jerk violently in her arms and retch all over the bare floors.
* * * *
“Charcoal?” Finn repeated incredulously.
“It’ll help with the nausea,” Alana sighed, crushing the black nugget into powdery dust with the back of a mug. “One every six hours or so, if she needs it.”
Finn didn’t quibble. “And the tea?”
“No, no more tea.” She had flushed the remainder down the drain with shaking hands. Her remedies had ne
ver threatened to kill anyone before. It was unsettling to think Leona had nearly been her first victim.
She made to bring the mug down with another hard thump when Finn pulled her into a warm, one-handed embrace.
“Thank you,” he said, pressing the words into the sweaty tangle of her hair. “I don’t— I could’ve lost her without your help.”
You nearly lost her with it. “Don’t mention it.” She really hoped he wouldn’t, but news of Leona’s near miss had already made the rounds of Haven. If there was still a soul who hadn’t heard, they were probably dangling from a wire above a great void. Where are you, Jackson?
She watched Finn cross to Leona’s bed, the corners of his lips trembling into a smile as his mistress whispered his name.
“You all right, honey?” Maity asked, materializing at Alana’s side with a bucketful of dirty rags. Scrubbing down the floors had been a two-woman job once they had got Leona stabilized. You could barely see the rust-colored blot where Leona had lain only an hour or two before, caught in the perilous no-man’s-land between this world and the next.
Alana nodded wordlessly. What business did she have being less than all right? She was the one who’d sold Leona those herbs.
“Why don’t you go on home?” Maity pressed, clearly a long way from persuaded by Alana’s newfound reserve. “I’ll finish up here.”
“I can help,” she protested, but it was weak and didn’t even begin to suggest a convincing argument. Her mulishness, she was beginning to understand, was not much to recommend her to people who put deeds before mere talk.
Maity shook her head. “Go home and rest. You did a good thing today.”
Alana knew when she was beaten. She had to cleave through a freshly grown thicket of rubberneckers on her way out of the infirmary, but none of them pushed or prodded at her. If anything, their murmurs grew low as she appeared in the doorway, no doubt every eye recognizing her for the reason Leona had ever wound up in the infirmary in the first place.
