Blood Binds the Pack

by Alex Wells

  She turned and ran back.

  Longbridge blocked off the doorway of the office, a squad of his men packing in behind him. Mag gasped and pulled back around the corner before they could spot her. But she could hear muffled yelling, the crack of rifle butts meeting muscle and bone, from out here. Clarence had thrown himself over Odalia, taking blows meant for her.

  Mag leaned around the corner, driven by urgency, and reached to try to grasp at the greenbellies. There were twelve total, between those blocking the door and those inside. She pulled at a couple of them, and saw their backs stiffen in response. Stop, she forced on them. But that was only two, and she felt her control slip away even as she reached for more. She was rushing too much, trying to do too many things at a time. She hauled back Longbridge’s fist as he raised it, made him hesitate, then he snarled, “You’re behind all the trouble in this goddamn town,” and swung at Clarence. She felt fist crack on cheekbone from both sides.

  More. She needed all of them. Her hands moved involuntarily as she tried to grasp the whole group of them, swaying with their violence. It had seemed easier, somehow, in the crowd before, but she didn’t have the attention to consider why. Her head throbbed and her nose tickled, and she felt like her eyes were going to pop out of her head from the pressure.

  Too many. She couldn’t grab them all at once, and as she slowed one greenbelly, another would shove them aside, lip curled, and take their place. Mag sank to her knees, still trying to find a way to control them all, her vision starting to black out.

  And then they stopped. Not because she told them, but because they were done. They dragged Clarence and Odalia – still alive, they were both still alive, she dimly felt that over the echo of blood pounding in her ears – out in front of the office and dropped them both. Then walked away like they were trash. They passed right by Mag, huddled against the corner of the schoolhouse, and didn’t even notice her.

  Dizzy, Mag dragged herself to her feet and staggered to the two crew leaders. She fell to her knees by Clarence, fumbling for her handkerchief to press against the bleeding gash on his head. He groaned and opened his eyes into swollen slits. “Hold this,” Mag told him. Nothing in his arm looked broken, so she dragged his hand up and pressed it against the handkerchief. “I’m gonna get help.”

  There wasn’t anything else she could do. She’d tried, and failed. She staggered to her feet and ran down the street, heading for the nearest house.

  “We don’t want no one startin’ fights right now,” Clarence said, enunciating each word carefully through his bloody lips. His face barely looked like a face any more.

  “Do you really expect us to do nothing?” Ira Chadha said, crossing her arms over her chest. She was a dayshift miner, one of Clarence’s. Hers was the house Mag had come to first, and her entire family had rushed out to help her bring Clarence and Odalia into their living room. Her husband, Arjun, was doing his best to doctor them both with help from his oldest son, Sai. Arjun had been on the night shift when Mag first arrived, but he’d lost most of his right leg in an accident with the drive chain not long after.

  “We’re ready to fight,” Arjun added. “This is enough. Too much. Our oldest–”

  “I’m right here,” Sai said. “And I want to fight, too!”

  Arjun shot him a nasty look and he quieted, “–is about to leave the breakers to join Ira in the mine. We want better for him!”

  “I want to fight too, but not yet. They either want us scared, or not thinkin’. Not organized. They want an excuse to make an example of more of us,” Clarence said.

  “They got guns and we don’t,” Odalia added. A growing bruise stood out red on her cheek and her lip was split, but she seemed all right otherwise.

  Arjun subsided, though Ira still seemed fit to steam. “The whole town will know of this by shift change anyway.”

  There was no stopping that kind of gossip. Mag wished she could think a little better over her headache. She had another handkerchief holding in bleeding of her nose, and she’d let Arjun and Ira think that she’d gotten punched. She felt bad about that. “It ain’t bad for people to be mad. We need that. All that’s gonna take us through it is blood and rage. But we gotta be smart-angry, not dumb fightin’ angry.” Not like Uncle Nick, flying off the handle and almost getting his people killed. “We pushed them and they gone and pushed us back. If we stay quiet, they’re gonna swagger around and think they won, and is that so bad right now?”

  Ira made a dismissive growl, but she saw Arjun paying attention – and so were Odalia and Clarence. Mag continued: “Let ’em think they got us cowed. We play it sweet and let the fire burn and keep organizin’ and gettin’ ready under their damn noses. They think we’re down, they ain’t gonna be lookin’ for us when we come at their necks.”

  Clarence made a sound like a laugh. Ira blew out a long sigh, then shook her head. “I hope you never have cause to be angry at me, Mag.”

  It was sort of a compliment, and Mag was willing to take it. “You tell everyone that. We ain’t gonna let ’em pull us by the nose.”

  Ira nodded. “We’d better start telling that, then, before rumor has all three of you dead and buried.”

  “I can watch ’em while y’all go talk,” Mag said.

  Arjun gave her a doubtful glance. “You look in the grave, yourself.”

  “Only halfway there.”

  He laughed, to Mag’s relief. The family filtered out of their own house, heading in different directions as they left to make sure the right sort of news spread. Mag sagged against the wall. She had so much she needed to say, but now wasn’t sure where to start.

  “My boy’s Sai’s age. Damn glad he’s not here, or he’d have rushed off already,” Odalia said. Mag knew that most of her family was in Segundo; Odalia had transferred to Ludlow to get a better paying job and left them behind. She’d said a time or two that the school in Segundo was better too, since it was closer to Newcastle.

  “Makin’ me glad I never had any,” Clarence remarked. “Got enough worries with everyone else’s.”

  “Easier life when you only got yourself to worry about.” Odalia lifted the damp cloth from her face to peer at Mag. “How’d they get you?”

  “They didn’t. Not like that.” Mag cleared her throat uncomfortably. She hadn’t ever told either of the crew leaders about the witchiness growing in her. They needed every weapon they had, and she’d come to trust both Clarence and Odalia as good people. Still, every instinct she had screamed at her not to speak, because it would surely get her killed. Her throat had gone so dry that the first few words sounded more like croaks as she said: “There’s somethin’ I can do. A witchy thing. Been able to do it for a while. I can… lean on people, like. Tell them to not do something, tell them to stop, and they stop. That’s how I kept me and Anabi from bein’ taken to the train station, the day the Weatherman was supposed to come.” She looked Clarence in the eye. He seemed strangely serene under the bruises. “An’ when people were tryin’ to fight yesterday… that’s how I stopped ’em. And I tried to do that again today, tried to help you two, but it didn’t work. Too many of ’em this time.”

  Odalia sucked in a breath. “You’re a fuckin’ witch.”

  “Weren’t a choice on my part.”

  “You ever do that to one of us?” Clarence asked quietly, the kind of quiet that said he was very, very angry.

  “No.” Mag shook her head. “Never.”

  “You ever try?” Odalia demanded.

  “Never!” This had been a mistake, but she couldn’t take it back.

  “Why the fuck should we trust anythin’ you say? You didn’t tell us till now, with us half dead ’cause you let ’em–” Odalia said.

  It felt so unfair. She’d tried. “Because if I was… was doin’ somethin’ to you, do you think I’d be telling you this at all?” Mag demanded, annoyance somehow cutting through her fear. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “I think it’s disgusting,” Odalia said.

&
nbsp; Clarence gently probed at his cheek with his fingertips, winced, and stopped. “All’s fair in love and war, they say. Don’t know ’bout love, but we sure got a war coming.” When Odalia started to protest, he gave her a quelling look. “I gotta think about this. Don’t go tellin’ anyone else, Mag. Nor you, Odalia. And… don’t go about using it. Not if you don’t have to.”

  She licked her lips. “You’re trustin’ me?”

  “You’re the one who said we had to stick together.” His lips twitched in a frown. “Guess I know why now.”

  “That wasn’t the reason, then.” But she didn’t entirely believe herself, even, and she could tell Clarence didn’t either.

  He continued to just look at her through that swollen, bruised mask of a face, like he’d read an answer he liked better on the inside of her skull. “You were right then and still right now. ’Bout plenty of things. If we’re gonna take action…”

  “Then we still got to lay supplies,” Mag finished. “Can’t hold the mines hostage if they can dry us out in a few days.”

  Clarence nodded. “We’re gonna get more volunteers off this. People mad as hell and wantin’ to do somethin’. Collect ’em up, and keep gettin’ us ready.”

  Odalia frowned and cut in: “If you think you can do it without messin’ about with their heads.”

  That felt like a slap to the face, and damn unfair after working with them for months. But she reminded herself that Odalia was still hurting bad, and no one was ever reasonable in that state. “I never have and I never will. You know that.”

  Odalia just glared at her, one eye swollen shut. “Not sure I do.”

  The sick feeling of it was still foremost in her mind when she told Anabi what had happened, later that night. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. And I don’t even feel right using it.”

  Anabi pulled out her slate and wrote: Because it’s wrong, or because you’re scared?

  “Both, I guess.” She hated to admit that, but it did scare her. It felt too easy, to stand on someone else’s mind and just push them this way and that. She couldn’t do it with a group yet, but one person seemed trivial now.

  Scared doesn’t matter. Do it anyway.

  That felt unfair. How much had Mag been through, terrified out of her wits, and still kept going? She’d made it out of that goddamn laboratory and hadn’t hidden away. She’d kept fighting, even when she’d lost everything. “You’re scared all the time,” she snapped. “And I ain’t seen you do anythin’ with your witchiness.”

  Anabi sat back like she’d been slapped. She shook her head and wrote: What I’ve got is different.

  “What I got is different too.” She’d always known Uncle Nick and Hob with their sparks of fire, and now seen people who could call the wind or walk on sand without leaving tracks. She’d never heard of anyone being able to do what she could. Maybe that was just because they’d all been killed for it already.

  Not different like yours.

  “Then explain it to me,” Mag said. She’d never demanded this story from Anabi before, but she was tired of feeling judgment from all directions, from Odalia because she even had her power whether she used it or not, and now from Anabi for not using it. No one knew a damn thing about how it felt.

  Anabi stood abruptly. Mag’s heart felt like it’d sunk down to the floorboards – had she made her so mad that she was leaving? Even angry, she never wanted to do that. She stood as well, tongue tangled with apologies and frustration. But instead, Anabi simply went over to the stove and set some water boiling. She gave Mag a glance over her shoulder and pointed imperiously at the chair, so Mag sat again and waited. Silently, Anabi made them each a cup of coffee and then returned to the table. She wasn’t smiling when she set the cup in front of Mag, but her frown wasn’t angry either. More like she was thinking really hard.

  Mag waited silently as Anabi fortified herself with a sip of coffee. Then she picked up her slate, and bit by bit wrote out: I didn’t get thrown out of Harmony because I was witchy. I got thrown out – she looked at Mag for a long moment, then continued firmly – because they wanted me to be a man, and then my brother caught me kissing a minstrel girl.

  Her shoulders hitched as she looked at Mag again, this time from under her lashes, like a little girl peeping scared out of a blanket.

  Why did any of that matter? Well, it mattered to Anabi because it meant she’d broken with her kin, in that far-off, strange town of hers. But she seemed to expect some kind of break from Mag too, some kind of reaction. She was tight as a spring with that tension. Perhaps it explained a thing or two: some of Anabi’s shyness, how she kept her back to Mag when she bathed. But Mag hadn’t ever pried because it wasn’t something to be questioned, and that hadn’t changed. Anabi still felt just like Anabi always felt to her, like the strange, beautiful damp wind blowing off a green field near a farm village. The only thing Mag felt was angry that someone had made Anabi that scared, when your kin were the ones who were supposed to protect and love you. “Fuck ’em, then,” Mag said.

  Anabi stared at her for a moment, and then burst into silent laughter. She was beautiful like that, unfairly so, Mag thought.

  And then thought again, of the other thing Anabi had said. About kissing a minstrel girl. It made her want to ask if Anabi would mind kissing her, too. It seemed an awful thing to say, when they were in the midst of some story that had shaken Anabi so much. Instead, she reached out to touch her hand and give it a gentle squeeze.

  Anabi squeezed her hand in return and went back to writing: I ran away before they could come after me. As I left the valley, I met a man. He had eyes like a cat’s, and he told me that he was a witch. The valley near Harmony – Anabi paused, seeming to gather her thoughts – there’s this wind that tears down it, regular. It sounds like a wildcat screaming, and it’ll rip living things to shreds. He said he was the wind. Then he – a longer pause – attacked me.

  Mag squeezed her hand again as Anabi wiped the slate clean, her movements slow.

  He was going to let loose that scream on me because I was fighting him. So I kissed him. And I ate the scream. It lives in my chest now. I feel it, like spikes. Every time I breathe.

  “Shit,” Mag whispered.

  That’s why I don’t talk. I think I still can. But if I make a sound, the scream could escape. Like I said. What I have is different.

  “Thank you,” Mag said. “But you didn’t have to tell me all that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made ya.”

  Anabi smiled crookedly, wiping the chalk away to write just a bit more: I didn’t, but now I’m glad that I did. She reached out with one dusty hand and touched Mag’s cheek.

  Mag couldn’t help it. She covered Anabi’s hand with her own, turning her face into that touch as her stomach gave a warm little flutter. “Witchy ones gotta stick together,” she said, her voice thick. She smiled. “Even if you’re strange for a witchy one.”

  Anabi’s thumb brushed over her cheek, slowly, and her smile shifted to become something warm rather than ironic.

  Mag swallowed hard. She felt grubby and small-minded even still, but she couldn’t help but ask, “Do ya ever like girls that aren’t minstrels? I ain’t got much of a singin’ voice, even if I’m not as bad as Hob. And–”

  Anabi’s lips parted in a silent laugh again, and she stopped Mag’s nervous chatter with a light touch of one finger. Then she wrote on her slate: I like hellraisers and troublemakers.

  Mag laughed. “Then you’ll be wantin’ Hob, won’t ya?”

  Too skinny. And she smells like cigarettes. Anabi leaned forward to lightly poke the end of Mag’s nose. You’re the biggest troublemaker around, and best at it because no one notices.

  “I think that’s a compliment.”

  It is. Anabi dotted the simple sentence with an emphatic period, then rose and took Mag’s hand. She tugged her to her feet and mouthed “bed time” before kissing her on the cheek. Mag followed her upstairs, happy to have the slow sway of Anabi’s walk rather than re
bellions and numbers and witchiness on her mind for the rest of the night.

  Chapter Eleven

  55 Days

  After two weeks of waiting for Mr Yellow to be released into his care, Shige was on edge. Every day of delay would make it more difficult to execute his orders once he landed; the likelihood that it would be impossible to achieve enough chaos at this point was frighteningly high. He’d begun to look for ways he could push in the Corporate hierarchy without it being obvious when he received a special afternoon summons to Dr Ekwensi’s office. The instructions attached were precise, and an immense relief.

  “Ah, Dr Ekwensi. I hope that I haven’t kept you waiting too long,” Shige said, finding her at Mr Yellow’s room as usual.

  “You’re well in time. Mr Yellow is completing his final checks. Are you ready for departure?” She favored Shige with a distracted nod. Mr Yellow stood, head slightly bowed, at the center of the room; someone had given him a blue suit like Shige’s, and he’d dressed himself competently.

  “Yes, fully packed, and I saw to it that the ship is ready as well. Your instructions said that I will need to take Mr Yellow directly to the departure port.”

  “Regulatory requirement. We don’t want to risk contamination due to delay.” She blinked and focused on him. Shige gave her his best “helpful underling” smile. “Follow me. I have a set of care instructions for you to carry to the field lab.”

  Useful, that. Shige wouldn’t have to manufacture a reason to visit her office, just a moment of distraction for her. “It would be my pleasure to help.”

  He followed her to her office and kept up a patter of polite and insubstantial small talk that Dr Ekwensi simply ignored. He’d learned that she seemed to treat such things as white noise, and it helped him to fade into the background of her attention even when he stood right next to her.

  In her office, she pulled a blank data card from her desk. The cards were vehicles for minuscule storage synapses that would be far too easy to lose or forget if they didn’t travel in a much larger container. These particular ones were size optimized to be difficult to misplace, but easy to store. Dr Ekwensi made a face as she tucked the card into the terminal, the screen coming to life with a scroll of commands she transmitted to it. “Ridiculous that we have to rely on such archaic things.”