Scavenger Blood

by Janet Edwards

  “Ghost doesn’t seem defensive of his dignity,” said Tad.

  “Ghost has a more relaxed leadership style,” said Donnell, “but even he wouldn’t risk being ridiculed in public. Alliance officers are in a very different position. They should never be imposing their own decisions on anyone, just applying the alliance rules with impartial fairness.”

  I saw that Phoenix had emptied her bowl of stew. “Phoenix, would you like some more to eat?”

  She shook her head. “I feel very full.”

  I moved the jug of water closer to her. “Keep drinking as much water as you can. Winter fever leaves your body badly dehydrated.”

  I waited for Donnell to finish eating, then Tad and I took the dirty plates off to the waste bin. We went into the Resistance wing so I could collect the bag with my flute, and then returned to our table. A couple of minutes later, there was an outbreak of clattering sounds, and Aaron stood up and carried Rebecca off towards the crèche area.

  Phoenix looked around in panic. “What’s happening?”

  “There’s nothing wrong,” I reassured her. “We need to clear the Resistance tables out of the way, so this area can be used for the entertainers and later as the dance floor. School lessons and dances have to be held in the Resistance area, because none of the other divisions will let people trespass on their territory.”

  I stood up and picked up my chair. “We’ll take our chairs across to sit in front of the Resistance entrance now.”

  I led the way across to where chairs were being lined up in neat rows. Tad followed carrying his chair, while Braden brought chairs for both Phoenix and himself. Phoenix trailed after us, looking even more nervous than before.

  “I’ll need to sit in the front row with Donnell and his other officers,” I said, “but the three of you can sit right behind me.”

  I moved my chair into position in the front row. Donnell arrived a moment later, carrying the whiskey bottle in one hand, and his paper cup in the other. He sat down next to me and tucked his whiskey bottle under the chair.

  Donnell’s other officers came to join us in the front row, and the rest of the Resistance settled down in the seats behind us. In the four corners of the room, people in the other divisions were moving their chairs to sit at the edge of their territories. When the scraping sound of chairs finally died down, Donnell stood up, strode forward, and clapped his hands.

  “Children, take your places!”

  The smaller children of every division ran to sit in rows on the floor in front of the entrance to Sanctuary. Rebecca waved at me from the front row, and I heard Tad whispering in my ear.

  “The children here are unbelievably well behaved.”

  I waved back at Rebecca, and turned to whisper back to Tad. “The children here are oppressively well behaved. That’s because they learn very young that misbehaving can be dangerous.”

  A group of Resistance musicians went to stand near Donnell. I got my flute out of my bag, and considered joining the other musicians, but decided against it. The alliance traditionally held an evening of entertainment and dancing on the first day of each month, but those monthly events had been abandoned during the winter fever and food rationing. This was the first time I’d been sitting in the front row with Donnell and his officers, so I should stay here to emphasize my new status as deputy alliance leader.

  Donnell began singing his most famous song, Anthem to Earth. As always, he sang the first three lines alone, his incredible voice mesmerizing everyone.

  “Some men were fickle and some left through greed.

  Some fled through fear and some out of need.

  But we who remain will prove faithful indeed.”

  I watched for the downward sweep of the lead violinist’s bow, and joined the other musicians in playing the melody, while everyone in the room sang the last line of the chorus.

  “Earth is our heart, our home world!”

  I was usually totally absorbed by this song, but this time I was distracted by worry. My flute playing was good enough to join in with something like this, where the Resistance musicians were supported by the division musicians playing in their own corners of the room. I didn’t play at a high enough standard to do a solo performance though.

  If I wasn’t going to play the flute, that meant I’d have to sing, but I hadn’t inherited either Donnell’s looks or his golden voice. I watched gloomily as Donnell finished his song and came to sit down again. He reached for his whiskey bottle, caught me looking at it, and shook his head.

  “Oh no, Blaze. Given my own failings, the entire alliance is deeply thankful that you don’t drink alcohol. You mustn’t disappoint them all by resorting to whiskey to ease your performance nerves.”

  Luther was starting to sing now. Donnell was right that Luther’s voice was much worse than mine. I should definitely sing something, but I wasn’t sure what song to choose. It had to be one that I knew very well, or I might forget the words in my panic.

  I considered one of the obvious popular songs, where I could count on help from the audience singing along, but then I remembered the song that my mother had sung to me at bedtime when I was a child in London. I’d never heard anyone else sing it, and people would love hearing a new song.

  There was a thin scattering of applause. Luther was coming back to his seat, and it was my turn to sing. I stood up, put my flute down on my chair, and then realized that none of the other musicians would know the tune to this song. I picked my flute up again, headed out into the centre of the room, and beckoned the lead violinist over to stand next to me.

  “You won’t know this tune,” I said, “so I’ll play the verse and chorus through once, and then you can join in while I sing the words.”

  He looked surprised, but nodded. I put my flute to my lips and started playing. I could depend on the Resistance to be polite, however bad my performance, but the other divisions worried me. Bringing down Cage had made me popular with most people, but his more ardent supporters hated me. Given the slightest excuse, they’d start jeering at me.

  I looked anxiously across at the people in the Manhattan area, and saw Shark sitting at the front of the crowd, with Wasp and Viper on either side of him. Shark had a contemptuous look on his face, and leaned to say something to Viper. I couldn’t help tensing, and my playing wavered, but Wall moved to stand looming over Shark.

  I wasn’t sure if I should be reassured that Wall was ready to stop Shark from causing trouble, or even more worried. Did Wall expect my first performance to be an utter disaster?

  I’d played the tune of both the verse and chorus now. I glanced at the violinist, and he gave me an encouraging smile to confirm that he was ready to accompany me. I took my flute from my lips, the violinist played the first note, and I began singing.

  There was something odd about this song. The tune didn’t sound much by itself, and the words were no more meaningful than those of dozens of other love songs when spoken in isolation. It was when you combined the two, bringing the music and the words together, that it made a whole that was far greater than the two halves.

  By the second line, I could see Wall’s lips had curved in an incongruously sentimental smile. At the end of the first verse, he turned to look at his pregnant girlfriend, Tasheka.

  I was hugely encouraged. If I’d managed to reach Wall with this song, then it would be working its magic on everyone in Reception, with the obvious exception of the inscrutable Ice. I launched into the chorus about Helena, the much-loved girl who filled the world with light, let my eyes drift from the Manhattan corner to the rows of Resistance members, and broke off my song in the middle of a line.

  Donnell was getting to his feet, an expression of shocked disbelief on his face that made me feel sick. The violinist must have seen it too, because he abruptly stopped playing, and there was dead silence in the room.

  I’d only seen that expression on Donnell’s face once before, and that was when he heard about my brother destroying the New York portal relay
centre. I must have done something dreadfully and irretrievably wrong. Donnell and I had finally been making our relationship work, we’d been a proper father and daughter at last, but I’d somehow wrecked everything.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “How do you know that song, Blaze?” asked Donnell.

  The song, I thought numbly. Yes, it had to be the song that had brought that devastated expression to Donnell’s face. I should never have sung it, I would never have sung it, but how could I know it would lead to disaster?

  “How do you know that song, Blaze?” repeated Donnell.

  I moistened my lips. “My mother sang it to me at bedtime when I was a child.”

  “Keira sang it to you?” Donnell gave a dazed shake of his head. “Yes, it must have been Keira. I wrote that song two weeks before I left London, and I never sang it in front of anyone but her.”

  “You wrote my bedtime song?” I was bewildered. Donnell couldn’t have written this song. It was about a man’s love for a dazzling girl called Helena. My parents split up before I was born, but everyone said that Donnell had never looked at anyone other than my mother. Donnell had told me that himself.

  Donnell was smiling now. “Yes. No.”

  He waved his hand in a gesture of helplessness. “There are songs that I’ve written, painfully coaxing them into life one word and one note at a time. Others came from nowhere, as if they were already fully formed in an alternate universe, and just searching for someone to be their route into ours. This song was one of those, so I’m not sure if I wrote it or it wrote me.”

  It was true then. Donnell had written this song. Suddenly I wasn’t bewildered or numb any longer, but furiously angry. My parents were supposed to have split up because of a climactic argument over Donnell coming to New York. It hadn’t been like that at all. There’d been another woman involved.

  I lifted my head to glare at Donnell. “So who was this Helena?”

  Donnell looked confused. “Helena was your mother, of course. She was Keira Helena O’Shaughnessy. Helena means light, and the song is about how she filled my world with light.”

  I had an odd, dizzy moment. The dazzling Helena of the song was my mother. Donnell had written this song for her.

  “I didn’t know my mother’s middle name,” I said. “I didn’t know that you’d written this song for her either. She never joined in when other people sang your songs. She never spoke your name to me. She never said a single word about you. How could I guess that every night she ...?”

  I was too swamped in emotion to finish the sentence. My mother had never spoken my father’s name to me, but she’d sung about his love for her every night.

  Donnell brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. “When the last of the respectable citizens left New York, the criminal gangs turned against each other and against my Resistance people. I had to come to New York to negotiate an alliance between them before they wiped each other out. I couldn’t risk bringing your mother and brother with me because the trip meant using a hotwired portal. Your mother said that ...”

  Donnell shook his head. “Well, we both said lots of things. Our quarrels were always ferocious. It took far longer than expected to negotiate the alliance, and your mother sent a message to New York saying that ...”

  He let that sentence trail off and started another. “I sometimes think that I could have been a brilliant singer, or a brilliant leader of the Earth Resistance, or a brilliant husband. It was trying to be all three at once that made me such a disaster at all of them.”

  His voice was one of mourning now. “I never went back to London. I thought your mother and I had reached the point where everything was over between us. I was wrong. I should have known I was wrong. The fire that happened between your mother and me could never go out. She was singing my song to you each evening. If I’d gone to London ... If your mother had escaped from the firestorm and come to New York ...”

  The two of us stood there in silence for a moment, staring at each other, and then the impatient voice of Rebecca spoke from behind me. “Blaze sing.”

  Donnell turned to stare in the direction of Rebecca and the other children, and then looked ludicrously embarrassed. He’d obviously forgotten that we had the whole of the alliance watching us. I’d forgotten it too. No, not exactly forgotten it, but the presence of other people had seemed utterly insignificant compared to what was happening between my father and me.

  Donnell gave a single rapid look around the room, and turned to smile at me. “Rebecca wants you to sing again, Blaze. I want you to sing again too.”

  There was a sudden rustle of movement, as if everyone in Reception had been too tense to move for the last few minutes and was now relaxing again. I looked at the faces of the Resistance, and saw the same expression on all of them. One of deep fear that was changing into relief. Startled, I glanced at each division area in turn, and saw that expression echoed there too.

  I had a shocking revelation. For years, everyone had known that the only thing holding the alliance together was the force of Donnell’s personality. The unexpected death of Donnell’s long-term deputy, Kasim, from the winter fever had horrified us all, filling us with fear of what would happen to the alliance if we lost Donnell too. Cage’s bid for power had raised that fear to nightmare levels, but now Cage was gone and I was deputy alliance leader.

  It was a couple of weeks since the crucial alliance leadership meeting that had confirmed my appointment. I hadn’t been the ideal candidate in a lot of ways. I wasn’t a heavily muscled fighter. I wasn’t a glowing, charismatic leader. Above all, I wasn’t Donnell.

  The alliance members had had time to stop brooding on the ways I was different from Donnell, and move on to thinking about the ways that I resembled him. I wasn’t a heavily muscled fighter, but I had an Armed Agent weapon on my arm just as Donnell had had all these years. I wasn’t a glowing, charismatic leader, but they’d all seen me stand on a table in Reception and challenge Cage. I wasn’t Donnell, but I was his daughter.

  Their biggest remaining concern had been that I wouldn’t be able to handle a combat situation, and that had been removed when I walked into Reception carrying Cage’s sniper rifle. Now the people of the alliance had accepted me, not just as my father’s deputy, but as the person who would eventually succeed him as alliance leader. Cage’s supporters would always resent me of course, but the vast majority of the alliance members had decided they could trust me to follow the same rules of fairness as my father and safeguard their futures.

  Most of them probably hadn’t realized that themselves until they watched this confrontation between Donnell and me. I had been terrified that I’d lose my budding relationship with my father. The alliance members had been terrified that I’d lose my position as deputy alliance leader, and they’d be back to the old uncertainty about who would succeed Donnell.

  “Blaze?” Donnell prompted me.

  I struggled to get my voice under control. “I’m not sure that I can sing right now.”

  “Yes, you can,” said Donnell. “An entertainer doesn’t disappoint their audience, and I’m here to help you.”

  He stepped forward to take my hand, and nodded to the violinist. “From the beginning, please.”

  The violinist played a series of rippling notes, and I started singing the first verse again. My voice was a cracked wreck of itself for the first few words, but Donnell was singing with me. By the end of the first verse, my voice had recovered, and I became aware of something odd happening. Donnell was using the golden tones of his incomparable voice to support mine, his expertise drawing out a confident richness and depth to my singing that I’d never been capable of before.

  At the start of the second verse, a lift of his eyebrows, and the pressure of his hand on mine, signalled a change. We were singing alternate lines now. I’d thought this song was written to be sung by one person, and it worked that way perfectly, but it could also be a duet. Donnell was singing his part in that duet, and I was singing t
he part intended for my mother.

  We reached the chorus again, and our voices united, singing words that were written for the woman we’d both loved and lost in the London firestorm. Everyone in the room was silent until the final chorus ended, and for a full awed minute afterwards. Then they stood up, and there was a thunder of clapping and thumping on tables. The alliance members were applauding one of the greatest songs that Donnell had ever written, and the fact that their future leadership was secure.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The next moment I was aware of, I was sitting in the front row next to Donnell again. I had no memory at all of coming back to my chair. In fact, I must have missed at least five or ten minutes of time, because Machico was out in the centre of the room, pretending he’d lost a playing card, and searching for it in the ears of the front row of children.

  Tad whispered from behind me. “I didn’t know you could sing like that, Blaze.”

  “I didn’t know I could sing like that either.”

  Machico discovered his missing card in the ear of a delighted five-year-old Queens Island girl, and all the children gurgled happily. Machico gave a bow to his audience, and came back to stand in front of Donnell and pull a wry face at him.

  “You and Blaze were an impossible act to follow.”

  Donnell didn’t seem to notice he was there.

  Machico waved a hand in front of his eyes. “Sean? Sean? Are you on the same planet as the rest of us?”

  There was still no reaction.

  Machico sighed, snapped his fingers right in front of Donnell’s nose, and Donnell’s right hand shot out to grab his wrist. “Don’t do that, Mac. You know I hate you doing that.”

  “Ah, you’re back with us, beloved leader.” Machico sat down in his chair, and glanced at where Julien was getting reluctantly to his feet. “Good luck, Julien. The crowd was gossiping through the first half of my act, but they’re starting to pay attention again now, so you should do better than me.”