Scavenger Blood

by Janet Edwards

  I spoke in what I hoped was a calm, self-assured voice. “I’m aware of the amount of meat on those falling stars, and we won’t be wasting it. I just want you to leave collecting the bodies until I’ve recalled and reorganized the patrol groups. We’re used to coping with one or two falling star attacks in the vegetable garden each day, but we’ve had three attacks in less than fifteen minutes, and I’m sure there are more of them out there watching us. It isn’t safe to have only two people in a patrol group in these conditions.”

  “Deuce and I don’t need help to deal with a falling star attack,” snapped Knave.

  “I know you can easily deal with one falling star attack,” I said, with pointed patience, “but several in quick succession is a different matter. Deuce has just been smothered and covered in falling star digestive juices, so he isn’t in a good state to fight.”

  “Blaze is right,” said Deuce. “If another falling star drops on your head, Knave, I’ll be too busy being sick to fight it, and Blaze can’t leave the main entrance unguarded to come and help us.”

  Knave glared at his younger brother, clearly furious that he was taking my side in this argument. “If Blaze recalls the patrol groups, she’ll be leaving the other doors to Parliament House unguarded.”

  I took the whistle from my knife belt. “All the other doors and windows are locked and secured by the alarm system. If Cage tries to get in through any of them during the next ten minutes, then sirens will start screaming and we can respond, but I think there’s little chance of that happening. With so many falling stars out hunting, Cage has to be cowering inside a building.”

  Deuce nodded. “Cage must be constantly aware of the danger of a falling star catching him. As a lone fugitive, he’d have no hope of escaping being suffocated and then eaten.”

  Knave opened his mouth to keep arguing, but I held the whistle to my lips and blew as hard as possible, so the recall signal rang out piercingly loud. One short note, one long, and another short.

  When the echoes died down, I expected Knave to start arguing with me again, but he just stood there in sullen silence until the other three patrol groups came running up. It was obvious from the dishevelled appearance of two of the men that they’d suffered falling star attacks like Deuce.

  “We’ve been getting falling star attacks in dangerously rapid succession,” I said briskly. “I’m merging the four patrol groups into two. Each of the resulting two groups will have four men and need to patrol half the perimeter of the building rather than just a quarter.”

  I paused. “Those who’ve been attacked by a falling star can take five minutes to wash and get some clean outdoor clothes. After that, I’ll arrange the new groups and you can start patrolling again.”

  Two of the men instantly walked off into the Parliament House, but Deuce stayed to strip off his coat.

  “Thank you, Blaze. This coat stinks.” He held the offending item at arms’ length, and wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I stink too. I’m deeply grateful that you managed to warn Knave and me of that last falling star.”

  My father and I were keeping the tracking system of our Armed Agent weapons a closely guarded secret. The fact that no one knew it existed was a huge advantage in the current situation. If Cage tried to attack either of us, then our guns would warn us of his presence well before he was in bow range.

  “That was pure luck,” I said. “I just happened to catch sight of the falling star in the air.”

  “Well, I’m grateful anyway.”

  Deuce hurried off after the others, and I started thinking about how best to arrange the new patrol groups. Each of the five divisions had their own wing of Parliament House as their fiercely guarded territory, while the spare sixth wing was used as our communal hospital and storage area. The main reason the Resistance led the alliance, and our division leader was the alliance leader, was because the other four divisions didn’t trust each other to run things.

  Donnell had to make sure that he always treated the other divisions equally, so the guard roster for the Parliament House had been set up to have a pair of guards from each of the other divisions on duty every day. As deputy alliance leader, I was both in charge of the guards and representing the Resistance.

  Now that I was merging groups, I had to worry about the various conflicts between the divisions, especially the long-running, bitter feud between Manhattan and Queens Island. By the time the victims of falling star attacks had returned in less smelly coats, I’d decided that any possible combination of two pairs of guards carried a risk of them trying to kill each other, so I should take a totally different approach.

  “Each guard group will consist of one person from each division.” I pointed at four men in turn. “You four will patrol the river side of Parliament House and bring in any falling star corpses left there. The others take the land side.”

  The men seemed to think about that for a moment, but headed off on patrol without arguing. I sighed in relief before concentrating on my own guard duty again. I believed I was right that Cage would choose to stay inside a building while so many falling stars were hunting, but the temperature was barely above freezing point. It only needed to dip a crucial degree or two, and the falling stars would all retreat to shelter and go dormant, leaving Cage free to move around at will.

  The guard groups brought in four dead falling stars, and I shot another one lurking high on the front wall of Parliament House, so an hour later there was a neat line of heavily loaded carts next to the entrance.

  I was staring at the apartment blocks to the south-west again, when a massed yell went up from behind me. I hastily glanced over my shoulder, and saw the door of the Parliament House had opened. Second shift school must have finished because more children were streaming outside.

  “Stay near the entrance of the Parliament House, everyone,” I shouted the reminder to the new arrivals. “It won’t be safe for you to wander off to play until Cage is caught. Understand?”

  They solemnly nodded in response. Cage had a history of amusing himself by tormenting people, and I knew only too well that he targeted children as well as adults. When I was eleven years old, Cage had held me upside-down over a fire, so close to the flames that my long hair burned, and I’d kept it trimmed short ever since. Some of these children would have been victims like me, and the rest would have witnessed enough of Cage’s behaviour to know he was dangerous.

  The children joined forces to load up carts with their tools and the harvested wintereat. They pushed those over to join the line of carts filled with dead falling stars, and then ran to the row of portals in front of the building. Once people had used those portals to travel effortlessly to any destination in the Americas, but they were dead and useless things now.

  The children formed into a line and danced in and out of the upright rings. “Dial it! Dial it! Portal, dial it! We’re ordering you by Newton. We’re commanding you by Einstein. We’re conjuring you by Thaddeus Wallam-Crane!”

  I must have heard the children chanting their ritual rhyme a thousand times before, but it was oddly disconcerting hearing the name of the centuries-dead inventor of the first short-range portals now that his descendant, Thaddeus Wallam-Crane the Eighth, was working in the vegetable garden only a few paces away from me.

  The children’s game only lasted a couple of minutes before ice-cold raindrops began pelting down on us. The children squealed, ran for the door to Parliament House, and jostled their way inside. I waved at the off-worlders to follow them, then urgently blew the recall signal on my whistle.

  I rubbed water from my eyes as I checked the tracking display of my gun. The children and off-worlders were all inside the Parliament House now, and the blue dots of guards were coming into range at running speed. I waited in the rain to count all eight of them into the Parliament House, before running for cover myself.

  I couldn’t have been standing out in that rain for more than three minutes, but I was already drenched. I automatically unbuckled my knife belt, an
d put it on the knife and bow table that belonged to the Resistance. Tindra was standing next to the tables, making sure that everyone handed in their weapons as they entered Reception. She looked ill at ease though, as if she half expected the murdered Marsha to reappear and demand her position back.

  The children were packed by the glass front wall of Reception, peering out at the rain. Two women came over to look at it as well, with a group of smaller children from the crèche area chasing after them. One girl toddled over to me, stretched out a hand to touch my dripping coat, and then snatched it back again.

  “Blaze wet,” she said in disgust.

  I smiled, pulled my soggy hat from my head, squeezed out the excess water, and shrugged off my coat. “Yes, Rebecca. Blaze is very wet.”

  I turned to look around the vast room with its five groups of tables and chairs. Tad and Braden were sitting at one of the Resistance tables in the centre of the room, while the guards had split up, each pair going to the corner of Reception that was the territory of their respective divisions. I noticed Knave and Deuce having a brief, but clearly heated exchange in the Manhattan area, before Knave stalked off through the curtained entrance that led to the Manhattan wing of the building.

  I’d just started walking towards Tad and Braden when a group of white dots appeared on my gun’s tracking display, coming towards Parliament House at running speed. That had to be a hunting party returning.

  When the door opened, the small figure of Rebecca moved hopefully towards it, only to scowl her displeasure when she saw it wasn’t her father, Aaron, leading his hunting party into the room, but one of Donnell’s three senior officers, Weston.

  A line of cursing men trailed after Weston into Reception, dragging off their dripping coats, and Weston turned to laugh at them. “Why are you complaining? We’re the fortunate ones with a hunting spot barely five minutes run from here. Everyone else is still out in the rain.”

  The men joined in the laughter before walking towards their division areas. The unmistakable bulky figure of Wall, leader of Manhattan division, paused by the crèche group to scoop an eager four-year-old boy into his arms, and was moving in the direction of the Manhattan corner of the room when an older boy ran up to intercept him.

  I frowned. Wall had had a succession of girlfriends over the years, and accumulated a dozen children, though he oddly preferred to refer to them as his nephews and nieces. Those boys were two of his nephews, Otis and Fleet. The older boy, Fleet, was only eight, but had already earned his alliance nickname through his rapid thoughts and actions. I knew he’d be giving Wall a full report on exactly what had happened between Knave and me.

  My gun’s tracking display came to life again, warning of a whole mass of white dots approaching, with the green dot of Donnell at the back. I faced the door again and saw women entering, dripping wet and burdened with fishing bags. I winced as I saw all but one of the crèche toddlers rush towards the arriving women. Rebecca didn’t move from where she was standing, or even bother to look in their direction.

  Donnell was the last to enter the room. He waved an arm at me, handed in his knife and bow, then came to join me, frowning as he saw my expression.

  “Is something wrong, Blaze?”

  I shook my head. “I was just watching Rebecca. It’s nearly two months since her mother died in the winter fever. Yesterday, Rebecca went towards the women when they returned from fishing. She obviously remembered how her mother would come back with them at the end of the day, and was looking for her.”

  I sighed. “Today, Rebecca went towards the returning hunting party to see if her father was leading it, but wasn’t interested in the women at all. She’s finally realized that her mother’s never coming back.”

  Donnell grimaced. “We lost too many good people in the winter fever. I still catch myself looking around for Kasim, wanting to ask his advice or share a joke with him, and then getting a horrible feeling of loss as I remember he’s gone.”

  Donnell stared blankly into space for a moment, before adding another comment. “I’m not implying that you aren’t doing a good job as my deputy, Blaze. You are. It’s just that I miss my best friend.”

  “I understand.” I hastily changed the subject. “You must have already been coming back before the rain started. The women couldn’t possibly have packed their fishing gear and got here so quickly.”

  Donnell took off his wet coat and shook it. “Yes. We’d been having a lot of problems with falling star attacks, and the sky was looking ominous, so I decided to bring the fishing pairs back early.”

  I groaned. “We had problems with falling stars here too. After three attacks in fifteen minutes, I decided to reorganize the guard groups to be two groups of four men. The best arrangement I could think of was to have one man from each division in each group.”

  “That was the right decision,” said Donnell. “If you can’t have a separate group for each division, then it’s wise to mix them in equal numbers. They’ll accept most things so long as it’s clear you’re treating every division precisely the same. I think ...”

  Donnell broke off his sentence because Wall and Deuce were coming towards us. “Can we have a word with you two?” asked Wall.

  “Of course,” said Donnell.

  Wall turned to me. “I apologize for Knave’s behaviour to you today, Blaze. I’m removing him from the Parliament House guard rota and will deal with him severely.”

  I blinked. “There’s no need to take a trivial insult so seriously. Knave was just following the tradition of teasing new officers.”

  “There’s every need to take this seriously.” Wall’s dark face took on a menacing expression. “Knave was deliberately defying my orders when he insulted you.”

  I was confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I gave everyone in Manhattan specific instructions, Blaze. Cage was a member of Manhattan division when you challenged his rule of fear in front of the whole alliance. He was still a member of Manhattan division when he tried to murder you and the off-worlders in their hospital room in Sanctuary. Our enemies in Queens Island division would have had the whole of Manhattan punished as accomplices to Cage’s crimes if you hadn’t spoken in our defence.”

  Wall paused. “I told my people that I had given you our allegiance, and ordered them to treat you with the deepest respect. Not just because we were in your debt, but also to show Manhattan’s loyalty was to you and Donnell, while we considered Cage nothing but a renegade murderer who should be executed.”

  Donnell was frowning. “But Knave disobeyed those orders. What exactly did he say to you, Blaze?”

  Wall answered that before I could. “Fleet told me that Knave called Blaze the most stupid girl in the alliance. Fleet is only eight years old, but his reports are always accurate. I believe Knave wasn’t just insulting Blaze to defy me, but also to make a public statement of his loyalty to Cage.”

  “Loyalty to Cage?” Donnell repeated sharply. “I told you yesterday that I wanted to increase the number of men on the Parliament House guard duty roster, so people could get a chance to spend some time hunting as well. You said that both Knave and Deuce were trustworthy, hating Cage as much as you did.”

  “And I believed that was true,” said Wall bitterly. “Deuce will now tell you what he just told me.”

  Fair-haired Deuce took a reluctant step forward. “Being in the same division meant I couldn’t avoid contact with Cage, but I loathed the man. I thought my brother loathed him too, but this afternoon I had an argument with Knave. He completely lost his temper and told me that ...”

  Deuce broke off his sentence and sighed. “You probably know that Knave is married to Diana and they have a two-month-old baby girl.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Diana went into labour during the winter fever. Our more experienced nurses were all busy with critically ill people, so I ended up delivering the baby myself.”

  “What you may not know is that I briefly dated Diana before she got involved with my br
other,” said Deuce, in a harsh voice. “There was never anything significant between Diana and me, but Cage fed Knave a pack of lies about us being madly in love and carrying on the relationship behind his back. Cage also told Knave that the baby looked more like me than him.”

  That brought back memories of an encounter I’d had with Cage by the cooking fire on my eighteenth birthday. “Cage used that tactic against me too, telling me that I looked more like Ice than Donnell.”

  Wall gave Donnell a speculative look, and glanced across at where Ice, leader of London division, was standing by the curtained entrance to their wing of the building.

  “It’s perfectly natural for Blaze to look like Ice given she’s the image of her mother,” said Donnell hastily. “Keira and Ice were cousins, and there was a strong family resemblance between them. There’s an even stronger family resemblance between you and your brother, Deuce. It’s not just the fair hair and blue eyes, but the distinctive jawline and eyebrows as well. I don’t see how Cage could claim the baby looked like you rather than Knave, especially since small babies rarely resemble anyone.”

  “That’s what I told Knave,” said Deuce, in a despairing voice, “but I’m afraid that Cage has done a very good job of poisoning his mind against me.”

  I gave Deuce a sympathetic look. I knew exactly how good Cage was at poisoning relationships. He’d had my so-called best friend, Hannah, working for him for six years, feeding me a set of lies designed to keep me vulnerable and divided from my father.

  “Knave said that what happened yesterday evening proved that Cage was right,” continued Deuce. “I hadn’t just stolen his wife, but his position in Manhattan division as well.”

  “What was it that happened yesterday evening?” I asked.

  Deuce flushed. “Cage used to be one of Manhattan’s alliance representatives. Now Manhattan has declared Cage renegade, his position is free, and Wall announced yesterday evening that he was giving it to me. Knave felt that he should have got the position because he’s my older brother.”