by J. C. Staudt
“We don’t intend to bully anyone. We’re simple travelers. All we’re asking for is a few minutes of her time.”
“You know how many drifters we see around here, come off the wastes and telling hard-luck stories about death and hunger and misfortune? I had a hair on my head for every one of them, maybe I wouldn’t be so shiny up top.”
“We don’t need food or charity. We hired a nomad guide in Sai Calgoar who’s done an excellent job of making sure we don’t go hungry. We just need to talk to the Glaives.”
“Isn’t but one Glaive left in this town,” said Arnie. “She said no.”
Gregar Holdsaard stepped forward, fists clenched. “You have no clue what kind of bullshit we’ve been through, or how far we’ve come to get here. This isn’t some coffing joke. A couple minutes of conversation isn’t going to kill her.”
“Calm down, Gregar. It’s alright,” Raith told him.
“I suggest you all go on about your business,” said Arnie.
“I suggest you mind your own,” said Gregar. “This doesn’t have to be difficult. We’ve got some questions we want answered. That’s it. Once we get this sorted out, we’ll be out of your hair.”
“Seems awful suspicious,” said one of Arnie’s minions, a gap-toothed buckwheater in a flip-brimmed hat. “Bunch of big dways snooping around the home of a defenseless girl who’s all by herself.”
Another minion spoke up. This one was short and heavy-set for an above-worlder, with wild, thinning brown hair. “Y’all got any of them where you’re from? Girls?”
“Alright, asshole,” said Gregar, taking another step forward.
Raith halted him with an arm. “We both know how this ends, Gregar.”
“I say we blow down the door and make the bitch talk.”
“Violence is a tool for those who have no other.”
“You got a better idea?”
“These men are right,” Raith said. “The girl isn’t our property. It’s her right to refuse us if she doesn’t want to talk.”
“How can you say that? We came all this way—”
“Y’all are going to have to step away from the house now,” said Arnie. “I’m going to ask you nicely the first time. I gotta ask you again, I won’t be so friendly about it.”
Raith heard fidgeting behind the door.
It opened.
“Cool it, Arnie,” said the young woman they’d called Savannah.
Raith nearly fell over when he saw her. It was Myriad—just as she’d been all those years ago, but now with hair the color of honey. “Myri?”
She gave him a strange look. “Beg your pardon?”
“Myri… is it really you?”
“I don’t know anyone named Myri,” said the girl.
When she spoke, Raith saw his mistake. This wasn’t Myriad. Her face was familiar, yet she bore signs of a different ancestry. The voice wasn’t quite right; the features were broader. The discrepancies became clearer as the girl moved, like some half-visible picture caught in a glare of daylight. And there was no way Myriad could still be so young… was there?
“My name is Savannah Glaive,” the girl said.
She was like Merrick, back in Belmond. Just like Merrick, only she looked even more like Myri than the young healer did; stunningly so, in fact. “You’re a Glaive?”
“What? Yes.”
“You’re a member of the Glaive family.”
“Yes.” She spoke as if to someone not too bright. “Who are you? Did Lethari send you?”
“Who is your mother, child?”
Across the yard, Arnie piped up. “You don’t have to tell him anything, darling.”
“I’ve got this, Arnie,” Savannah said. “Victaria Glaive was my mother. She left, a few years ago. I haven’t seen her since I was twelve or thirteen.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks.”
“What’s with all the pointless questions?” asked Ernost Bilschkin. “Shouldn’t you be asking her about Decylum? About getting home?”
Raith ignored him. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
She shook her head. “I’m an only child.”
Raith studied her closely. Pale milky skin from forehead to fingertip. And nails. She had fingernails. But she was only seventeen. Raith had so many questions, but he didn’t want to risk turning her away again. “Theodar,” he said. “Does this woman look familiar to you?”
The apothecary scratched his chin. “I was gonna say… uh, I never knew Myriad all that well. But I’d say she looks a lot like her. Sure does look like that Merrick dway, too.”
A murmur arose among the Sons, who appeared to agree.
“I think so too,” said Raith. Victaria Glaive, he thought, playing the name over and over in his head. Maybe Merrick Bouchard wasn’t the healer we needed, after all. Maybe there’s another healer in this world.
“It’s hot out here,” said Savannah Glaive. “You all better come in out of the day. Arnie, would you all mind coming in, too?”
Arnie tipped his hat. “Anything for you, darling.”
Raith caught Savannah’s frown just before she turned and led them indoors.
It was the sort of house that was bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. Raith noticed its structural similarities with Decylum the moment he walked in, though this was built on a much smaller scale. Something about the layout—the angling of the walls, the crossbeam pattern on the tall ceiling. It was a building made to be underground, expertly crafted to withstand heat and weather. Solid as a bunker, and yet it didn’t feel at all like the stark, utilitarian complex one might’ve expected. It was sleek and cozy, with furniture chosen and arranged by someone with an eye for design.
“Make yourselves at home,” Savannah said, gesturing toward the deep-cushioned living room. She didn’t offer them food or drink, but went to stand with her back to the kitchen doorway, arms folded, waiting for the explanation Raith had promised.
The Sons took seats in the armchairs and on the couches, sighing with the sudden relief of cool repose. Arnie and his minions formed a loose string of bodies along the walls, as if trying not to be noticed while they readied themselves for the worst-case scenario. Aside from a few murmurs, no one spoke. To Raith, it felt like one of those awkward dinner parties where no one knows each other and the space is too small for the guest list.
“How much do you remember about your mother?” he asked. “The way she looked. The way she spoke. What she was like.”
Savannah was confused. “What she was like? She was my mom. She had… black hair. A soft voice. She was tall. Taller than my father. She was kind and loving. Always warm, always nice to be around. But I remember there was something distant about her. Something not quite… in the present. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s been almost five years since I’ve seen her.”
“You look so much like her,” Raith said, despite himself. Here he was again, at risk of losing the girl’s confidence. At risk of looking strange; of making her shut the door in his face and refuse to speak to him any further. He needed her; not just to get the Sons home, but to find Myri… if she was still out there. He knew he should stop, but he couldn’t. Not if the girl truly was another one of Myriad’s children.
“How do you know my mom? Do you know where she is?”
“I wish I did… I’ve been wishing I did ever since the day she left. Did she ever talk about her life before she met your father? About where she was born, or where she grew up?”
Savannah smiled faintly. “Funny you should ask. I asked her that lots of times. I was always curious. I wanted to know what kind of family she had. Who her parents were, who her friends were growing up. She never really said much. She had this way of… glossing over things. When I was little, she used to distract me and change the subject. As I got older, that wasn’t so easy anymore. I mean, it wasn’t like I was interrogating her every day about it. She would just say something like, ‘It was a
long way from here, in another place,’ or she would joke with me and say she was from a cave in the below-world. A few times she even came close to promising me she’d tell me when I got older. I never pressed her about it for very long. Like I said, there was always something about being around her. It was… comfortable. Intriguing. I don’t know. Satisfying? Like I didn’t need anyone else, or care about anything else. When I had her all to myself, those times were the best. Until she started getting sick.” She broke off, turning to look at something that wasn’t there.
“Sick,” Raith said, feeling a twinge in his gut. “What do you mean, sick?”
“I don’t know what it was. The town doctor at the time thought it was mutantism, but dad swore up and down it was something else. She started getting weak. Achy all over the place. Sores on her skin…” Savannah shut her eyes tightly. “I hate thinking about it. She was never the same after she started going.”
“I’m sorry,” Raith said. He stayed quiet for a moment, then asked, “When she left, what was that like? How did it happen?”
“In the middle of the night,” Savannah said, sounding annoyed. “We were sleeping. We woke up, and she was gone. Dad rode out into the scrubs to look for her. He didn’t come back for almost a week. For a little while, I thought I’d lost him too. It was—” She stopped and bit her lip, tears welling.
“Shoot, mister. Give the poor girl a break already, will you?” Arnie leaned his rifle on the floor and slung his arm over Savannah’s shoulder. The gesture was clumsy, and she swayed away from him until his arm was hanging between them like a rope bridge. After a few seconds, Arnie let it fall.
“Raith, let’s get to the real conversation here,” said Ernost. “The one about finding a way home.”
“I’m not sure what you all are expecting from me,” Savannah said. “I already told you I don’t know anything about a Recyclin, or whatever.”
“Decylum,” said Theodar. “Doesn’t ring a bell, huh?”
She shook her head.
“Isn’t that one of them secret bases where the Ministry used to experiment on people?” said one of Arnie’s men.
“It was a research facility,” said Ernost. “And it’s our home.”
A crude noise came from where Jiren Oliver was seated, followed by a wet muddy smell. The closest of Arnie’s men wrinkled his nose. The man next to him smelled it too, and began to laugh disgustedly. “I think your friend over here just let loose.”
Derrow got up and crossed the room to Savannah, a walk of shame he seemed resolved to endure. “He doesn’t know any better. Is there an outhouse or something we could use?”
Savannah’s look was sympathetic. “Even better,” she said. “We have gravity plumbing in here. Composting toilets. Just down the hall and to the left, there.”
“Thanks.” Derrow retrieved Jiren and guided him through the room, a veritable maze of furniture and bodies.
“You gonna take ol’ boy out back and show him a thing or two?” asked a minion. He was tall and clean-cut, with a wide mouth and thin lips that wriggled when he spoke.
The others laughed, except for Arnie.
Derrow wasn’t amused, either. “You looking for a problem? ‘Cause I’d be glad to give you one.”
“Oh-ho, big dway making threats,” said the man, laughing.
Derrow turned toward him, blackened fists balled at his sides. Raith saw where this was going, and he didn’t like it. These are small-town simpletons, he wanted to say. And above-worlders, for all that. They don’t matter. What they say doesn’t matter. Leave them to their petty insults and empty threats. You know you could end them in the blink of an eye. You don’t need to prove it to anyone—least of all them.
But Derrow Leonard wouldn’t leave it alone. Not when Arnie’s minions were having a laugh at the expense of his best friend. He stopped, halting Jiren by the arm, and stared at the tall man with the thin lips. They stood there staring each other down for a good long while, neither man moving, neither one speaking. Then Derrow did something Raith hadn’t expected. He backed down. “Come on, Jiren,” he said, prodding his friend toward the hallway.
The minion gave him a smug grin, then nudged the man beside him. “Guess we know how he got his hands so dirty.”
Raith saw Derrow’s spine stiffen as he inhaled a deep, calming breath. He kept going, though, undeterred.
Raith took a breath of his own. He couldn’t help thinking that if Derrow had been the one afflicted and Jiren had been asked to endure the affront in his place, the confrontation may not have ended so peacefully. Derrow is coming into his own, he thought. It was the first time Raith had seen the younger man choose wisdom and restraint over headstrong reprisal.
When the two Sons were gone, Raith turned his attention toward Savannah again. “The real reason we came here was to find out everything we can about Glaive Industries. Who ran the company. What they did. Records of projects they worked on. Contracts. Blueprints. Maps. Schematic diagrams. I realize most of this may be proprietary information, but if we can piece together the clues, there’s got to be something here that will point us to Decylum’s location.”
“You left home without knowing how to get back?” she asked, as though it were the most obvious mistake anyone could make.
“We knew how to get back,” Raith said. “Some of us did. We brought two navigators and a commscreen. The Scarred attacked us outside Belmond, and they both went missing.” Raith brought out the battered device Edrie Thronson had retrieved from the rooftop the day they’d searched the outskirts. The day Jiren Oliver had been killed.
“Oh,” Savannah said, taking it. “A lodwit.”
“What was that?”
“This is a lodwit. A long-distance wireless transmitter. We have one in the study. Here, I’ll show you.”
The Sons burst into excited conversation.
Savannah brought Raith to the bookshelf, where she flicked a hidden trigger behind one of the volumes. There was a click, and the shelf creaked open like a door. The well-lit room beyond was half library, half museum. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, some packed with books, others displaying artifacts and trinkets from ages long past. Tinted daylight shone through thick glass skylights in the ceiling. In the center of the room stood a desk and two rolling armchairs.
Raith spun in place, taking in the high shelves loaded with books by the thousands. “I’ve never seen a collection this large. It’s incredible.”
“My grandfather and great-grandfather were both huge collectors. Dad hardly ever came back here; he said it reminded him too much of his dad. Uncle Toler used to spend all kinds of time in here… for the same reason.” She went to one of the shelves and lifted a commscreen off its display stand, then handed it to Raith.
It was an older model, a boxy, heavy thing. On the metal casing beneath the screen were etched the letters LDWT. Raith looked at his own damaged commscreen, just now noticing the remains of the same letters. His weren’t molded to the frame, though. They were stuck on, a decal which had been all but scratched off. “Does it work?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s got a built-in power cell. The rechargeable kind. You can’t really remove it without damaging the thing. We’ve never tried powering it up. This was just one thing in my grandfather’s collection of memorabilia. I mean, who would we call, if we got it to work?”
Raith knew who he would call. “May I… try?”
Savannah shrugged. “Go for it.”
Raith removed the back panel and set it on the desk. He inspected the battery and decided it would be tough to charge the unit without melting something, unless he could touch the leads directly. “I might be able to make this work, but there’s a small chance I could damage it.”
She took it back. “Well, I don’t want you doing it then. This is an important piece of my family’s history.”
“I’ll be very careful—”
“Okay, you know what? This isn’t working. I’ve let you into my home, and now y
ou’re messing with my stuff. This isn’t a flea market. You’re obviously in some trouble, but I don’t know how to help you. These are all just textbooks and storybooks and encyclopedias. Nothing like the sorts of things you’re looking for. It could take weeks to go through them all, and I doubt you’d find anything.”
“We’d still like to have a quick look around, if you don’t mind.”
“I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“Please…”
“You heard the lady.” It was Arnie. Nosy, self-righteous Arnie, who, from what Raith had seen, made Savannah just as uncomfortable as he and the Sons did.
“Alright. We’ll go,” Raith said. Had he been a different man, he might’ve simply snatched the commscreen and made a run for it. Instead, he retreated from the study and led his men outside.
He didn’t blame Savannah for being wary. A bunch of strange men were nothing for a young girl to feel at ease about. He was a little surprised she’d invited them inside at all. Now he’d blown their last chance at enlisting her help. Unless this orphaned teenage girl had a sudden and inexplicable change of heart, Raith and the Sons were back where they started—only now, they were further from home than ever.
CHAPTER 45
Whelm
The calaihn were always there, watching. Their fires cast a never-ending glow on the cave’s rimy blue walls, a constant reminder of their presence. Every so often, they’d send a group of scouts around the bend to sit on the snake’s spine and watch the Marauders’ stronghold as if it were a piece of artwork, or an animal carcass. They’d cock their heads and speak to one another in tones too low to make out, even if any of the ikzhehn on the walls could’ve understood their strange lilting tongue.
While the calaihn maintained their siege, Lizneth often wondered what madness had driven Ankhaz to build his stronghold in an area of the caves with only one way in and one way out. It was more easily defended that way, she supposed. And as she’d seen when the calaihn tried to advance along the snake’s spine, it was treacherous terrain—difficult ground for a force of any size to traverse while under attack from the defenders on the fortress walls. There were the escape tunnels, of course. But as Deequol had told her, those were in no condition for use anymore.
