She returned to southern California to build a cache and wait out the winter. When she wasn't riding, she practiced her kung fu. Alden hadn't taught her anything about weapons, but she began to integrate sticks and knives into her shadow-fights, finding the flow of her attacks adapted easily to short blades and batons. After so much practice using both hands at once—block and attack, simultaneous offense and defense—wielding two knives concurrently and independently was no challenge at all.
One after another, all their tips about other camps or descriptions matching Alden failed to pan out. She settled in Oceanside as a base of operations, scavenging at night, when it was too dark to approach homesteads without risking gunfire, and continued her sit-down parlays during the day. The mountains stood in easy reach if the aliens came to lay waste to the town. Midway between L.A. and San Diego, she was positioned to catch and filter news from both.
And that was how she met the old man.
She found him on the beach, shirtless, three fishing lines flung into the breakers. When he saw her walking down the sand, he reached for a pistol, holding it in his lap as she stopped and produced her sign. He narrowed his eyes and nodded.
They put their guns away. Tristan offered him water; he accepted. She swept her greasy hair from her face. "I'm looking for my brother. Thirteen, nearly fourteen. Blond. Last time I saw him, he was thin, couple inches shorter than me."
The man glanced at his fishing lines. "And when was the last time you saw him?"
"Months ago. The aliens took us."
"Probably not beneath the couch cushions, then. Or in the fridge. I can't count how many times I left the remote in the fridge. Keys in the other pants. Like they had little legs of their own."
It was sometime in November—she hadn't been keeping close track of the days—but the wind from the ocean remained a neutral non-temperature. "My missing key does have legs. I don't suppose you've seen him."
The old man scratched his beard so hard she winced. He examined his nails, wiped them on his cutoffs. "La Jolla Country Club."
She nodded. She'd run into too many maniacs to be disappointed. "If it helps, I saw the ship coming into Los Angeles a few days ago. Thanks for your time."
She turned down the beach. The man called after her. "I heard there's a man who turned the La Jolla Country Club into his own little fiefdom. Got his own knights. Horses and swords and lances. Makes 'em swear oaths of fealty."
"I'll try not to offend His Liege, then."
The man shook his head, tanned face scowling. "Will you let me finish, young lady? He's got peasants, too. Which is a very polite way of putting it, if you ask me. Turns out the king has a thing for blonds. Male and female."
"Kids?"
"Them, too."
"Know where he gets them?"
The man shrugged his mole-mottled shoulders. "Sends his knights a-ranging."
"I appreciate it," Tristan said. "Anything I can do in return?"
He looked suddenly out to sea. "A hug."
"A hug?"
"Don't have to."
"A normal, hands-in-the-right-places hug?"
He glanced sharply back to her. "Don't know what you're implying, ma'am."
She shook her head. "Sorry. I've spent too much time with the wrong crowd."
"These days, it's hard not to."
She extended her arms, ready to jab his eyes or twist out his beard if he got funny. He smelled like sea salt and less sweaty than she expected. After a long moment, he disengaged.
"Been so long since I felt anyone but myself." He went red beneath his beard. "Not to say—"
"I know what you mean," she smiled. By the time she got back to the bike path, he'd gotten back to his poles.
She went to the house to ready her gear and her cover story. She was the employee—the agent—of a wealthy man. One with specific tastes of his own. A man whose vast wealth had survived the Panhandler perfectly intact, if in different forms: gasoline, women, groceries, orchards, a small fleet of working cars, boats, even jets. She consulted her map and got on her bike and rode down the coast.
It was a quick trip. Thirty miles, if that. With only one major traffic snarl to detour around, her Vespa killed the distance in just over an hour. Palm fronds waved from the drive to the club. A wall of stakes barred the turn into the parking lot. Tristan stopped and killed the engine.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
Tristan peered for the source of the voice. An ostrich feather bobbed behind the stakes. The sunset gleamed from a metal cap. A man planted his feet and stared down the road, a pike in one hand, a machine gun in the other.
"Tristan Arthur," she improvised; could have done better, but at least the last name couldn't link her to Alden. "I seek an audience with the king."
"Is His Majesty expecting you?" The guard had a deep Southern accent, Tennessee or Georgia.
"He is not. However, I represent a lord of San Francisco, and I believe the king may find the proposition I bear more than fruitful."
The man leaned the pike against the stakes and raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. It futzed and clicked. After a short talk, he holstered it and gestured with the gun. "Well, come on in, milady. Leave your steed at the gate. 'Less you think it's likely to bolt."
Tristan dismounted the Vespa and threaded through the stakes. The guard requested her guns and knives but left her with the two foot-long batons she wore strapped around her left shin as an apparent brace. A woman raked leaves from the shoulder of the asphalt path. Other fieldhands chopped at yellow stalks in the fields beyond, which were interrupted by sand traps and putting greens. Beyond the high barb wire fence enclosing the grounds, the ocean glittered in the sunset. A horse clopped down the path. The guard stepped off, scowling at Tristan until she did the same, and doffed his plumed cap to the rider, who glanced their way and carried on.
An expansive white building waited at the end of the path, glossy black solar panels glinting from the shallow pitch of its roof. Inside, the guard presented Tristan to Lady Winslowe, a forty-year-old woman with a swan's build and a chandelier of braids dangling from her head. Electric lights beamed from the ceiling. The lady took her to a former office repopulated with cushions and candles, and used her walkie-talkie to summon a servant for coffee.
"You have electricity," Tristan said.
"His Majesty believes in gilding tradition with modern advances," said Lady Winslowe. "Does your lord lack power?"
"Only help skilled enough to act as quickly as My Lord would like," Tristan smiled. "Lord Hugo expects to have the grounds repowered by spring."
The woman chuckled. "Well, I hope you haven't come to poach our man."
"Bear no such worries. I am here for the purpose of...my lord's diversion."
"The harem," Winslowe said casually. "Well, if you're hoping to part Lord Dashing from his pleasure, I hope your own king is wealthy indeed."
"Lord Dashing?" Tristan said.
The woman eyed her levelly. "Our king."
"My lord's resources are expansive," Tristan recovered. "And as his agent of the field, I have been granted full power to disburse them."
Lady Winslowe nodded, braids swinging. They chatted a while—weather, roads, the likelihood of alien attack—then the lady withdrew with promises to return soon. Tristan sat still. The black hemisphere of a security camera lurked in the corner.
Winslowe took a full thirty minutes to come back. "The king will see you at his table."
"An honor." Tristan followed her up a broad staircase. Men with rifles stood at arms, ostrich plumes twitching in the fan-stirred air, which was moist and warm despite the snow growing on the mountains. Servants bustled past, eyes downcast, plates clanking on their trays. They moved with the precision of those who know their task and the consequences of its failure.
King Dashing took his dinner on a patio overlooking the sea. A cherrywood table glowed in the light of two electric lamps. Blackened whitefish steamed on his plate, adorned by mashed avocados and a
careful tower of orange wedges heavy with molten sugar. Two guards stood blankly behind him, rifles held to their shoulders. Black hair flowed from his widow's peak, a braided silver crown circling his head. He had the long, hawkish nose of a Roman lord and the dark-rimmed eyes of a man who's been up all night drinking.
"My liege." Tristan knelt, bowed her head. "I bear greetings from Lord Barry Hugo, ruler of the kingdom of North San Francisco. As his agent of the field, I—"
The king set his fork on his plate. "Don't patronize me."
"Patronize you, my lord?"
"You talk like a fucking hobbit."
"The rest of your men—"
"This isn't Camelot. This isn't Westeros." The man waved his hand as if dispersing noxious smoke. "This is a pageant. This is how I roll. Does this Barry Hugo even call himself a king?"
Crickets chirped from the golf course cornfields. Tristan lifted her eyes. "I believe he's related to a French baron."
Dashing forked up a bite of whitefish and chewed around the meat's heat. "Look, talk however you like. Spit it out in iambic pentameter, if that's what gives you a kick. But if you think I'm a madman playing dress-up, you're going to leave with nothing but bad news."
"Thank you for correcting me," Tristan said evenly. "To my distress, I'm somewhat ignorant of courtly etiquette. Should I be seated?"
"I forgive your ignorance, since it's shared by nearly the entire damn world. You may sit and stand after securing my permission. Address me as 'my Lord,' 'Your Highness,' 'Your Grace So Generously Endowed That None May Doubt the Proof of God's Love,' et cetera." He considered her across the night. "Basically, follow the Leaden Rule: treat me as you would treat any other man surrounded by a compound of men with guns."
"Noted." She sat. "Then allow me to flatter you. Your estate is run like Mussolini's wet dream."
"Men crave order. Remind them of that and their lives get much happier."
"Happiness in servitude?"
Dashing snorted. "What were you before? College girl?"
She nodded. "Berkeley."
"Thought so. You have the arrogance of one. Probably why you caught that beating."
"I 'caught that beating' defending my family," she said. "Defending my lord."
"Mind your tone, lass," he smiled. "Anyway, we're off point. Did you know what you wanted to do? At Berkeley?"
"I majored in music."
"You wanted to be a musician?"
"I don't know," she said. She had a hard time dredging up the memories; that life had been erased like yesterday's errands. "I just wanted to work in something related. I hadn't really figured out what."
He pried an orange wedge from the syrupy tower and bit off its end. Hot juice squirted the table. "That's my point. When you're told you can do anything, you wind up certain of nothing. Where would you rather be? Dropped off in the jungle, for all its lushness? Or set down a clear, straight road?"
"Some roads are rougher than others."
"Yeah, but at least you always know where you're supposed to go next. That was the problem with the old world. Too many choices. With too many choices, you wind up with doubt. When you doubt, you hesitate. When you hesitate, you lose and you second-guess and regret. Everyone's a sad sack of shit. I made millions selling houses and all I could think was 'Jesus, I should have been a quarterback.' That's what we had before. Endless opportunity and endless misery." He pointed the tines of his fork at her face. "I guarantee you, you'd be happier as one of my whores than working PR for some longhaired, guitar-toting whiner."
"I doubt that," she said. "My lord."
"I'm sure you do. But consider this. You'd know when to rise, what to wear, how to rear my children. I'd give you purpose. What's more important than knowing why you exist?"
"What about the blond boys?"
"What about them?"
"I majored in music, not anatomy, but it could be a long wait before they bear any of your kids."
Dashing sucked pulped fish from his teeth. "Yeah, well, their purpose is their lord's happiness. Doesn't get more important than that." He waved his fork in a wide circle. "All these people here, you think they're happier when I'm happy? Or when I'm pissed off?"
Tristan considered the grain of the table. "I'm sure that's a great comfort to them."
"Far better than trying to make it out there. Want me to prove it?"
"I already have a lord, my lord."
The king smiled, thumbing his crown up his brow. "And he can come rescue you, if he loves you as well as I would."
She met his gaze. "Is this a threat?"
"It's a talk."
"I'm here as a businesswoman. Not a new piece of your burgeoning empire."
"Sure. You want my boys. Strange, traveling five hundred miles for that. Did San Francisco get nuked? Or did your guys' strain of Panhandler only hit the blonds?"
Tristan's veins tingled. The man's voice carried a detached curiosity, but she could see the shape of the knife inside the sheath. "Your Majesty's reputation for wise judgment and taste has traveled further than you might think."
"If you were here to open diplomatic channels, you would have just said so." He speared another slice of orange. "The question, then, is what truth does the lie conceal? Does Mr. Hugo want me for his vassal? Are you here to scout the lay of the land? Report back with the weaknesses Hugo can exploit to make me his slave?"
"Your Majesty is tragically mistaken," Tristan said. Heat rose up her spine. "My lord has no designs on you nor your empire. I am, quite frankly, shocked that a man of your stature would feel threatened by the visit of a lone woman."
He rolled his eyes. "I sold houses, girl. I know lies like mothers know sons."
She crossed her legs, reaching under the table for the batons strapped to her shin. "Again, my Lord, I can assure you—"
"Enough. Guards! Seize her!" He laughed, clapping. "Oh, I've longed for an excuse to say that."
The two guards unfroze, circling the table. More feet pounded toward the balcony. Tristan yanked free her batons and flung herself at the nearest soldier.
25
Ness fell into the bristly grass. Another laser flicked across the night, electric blue, sizzling into a pine with a pop of boiling sap.
"What the hell's their problem?" Shawn said, prone beside Ness. He snugged his assault rifle to his shoulder and pumped a burst into the house. "We were supposed to ambush them!"
"We should call ahead next time." Ness pulled the trigger. The stock juddered into his shoulder; he winced away from the bang. "Make sure we're all on the same page."
Another laser flashed overhead. Shawn returned fire. "I'm only counting two points of contact. What say you circle around to the front door and hit them from behind?"
"You do it. It's your brilliant idea."
"Then we should make sure I stay safe enough to keep having more."
Ness fired blindly through the grass. His shots thunked into the wood of the outer wall. "I wouldn't even know what to do."
"Pretty simple, man. If the door's open, sneak in. If it's not, kick it down. I'll keep 'em so busy they won't even notice."
"Why can't you do it?"
"Damn it, Ness, you spent years hanging out in this house!" Shawn shot another burst and crawled on his belly toward a tree. Lasers strobed in the darkness, smoldering the grass, filling the night with hot and bitter smoke. "Anyway, chances are you flush them straight into me. You want to be in my place then?"
Ness followed him through the half-dead grass. "Why don't we just stay here until we hit them?"
"Because that gives them the time to act first. You ever wondered why all the shit I pull works so well even when it's dumb as hell? 'Cause I make them react to me." He fired again, then hurled a pine cone as if it were a grenade. The lasers ceased. "Now get up. Act. Make them fuck up."
Ness wanted to scream. It was like his brother could switch off his brain whenever he pleased. Well, Ness couldn't. He could see all the ways he could fail. Rush inside and me
et a whole hive of aliens. Miss his most crucial shot. Get his head boiled by a blue bolt until it burst like a microwaved tomato.
He could see all these things and a dozen more. Yet he crawled from the tree and circled around the house.
The autumn rains had revived the grass. It flattened beneath him, dew soaking his elbows and jeans. Shawn's rifle roared in three-round bursts. Blue lightning lit the way in regular pulses. He wasn't sure what had spurred him to move. His brother's faith in him? Being so close to the proof of the lie keeping Nick and Kristin in slavery? Or just inborn familial stupidity? Whatever the case, his fear remained, but his hesitation melted like February snow in a southern wind. He crawled around another corner. The lights of noise of battle faded. Ness faced the front door.
Shawn had been right about one thing: Ness knew the house well. Sleeping over as a child, he'd made countless trips through the dark to the fridge, afraid that a single light or creaky step would send Mr. and Mrs. Rogers flying from bed to shriek in his face and call his mother to come pick him up. By the time he turned twelve, he knew the house well enough to be able to rise without waking Tim, slip into Tim's older sister's room (while she was out, of course; not to say he hadn't thought of going in while she slept and—kissing her? Seeing if she slept naked? His thought process had never made it beyond entering the darkened room), and examine her things, as if seeing a teenage female's natural environment would unlock his understanding of how such creatures worked.
It had been years since they graduated high school. Ness hadn't slept over more than a handful of times since then. But childhood memory ran deep. He could find his way from front door to back with his eyes closed.
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 58
