by Tessa Elwood
Eagle appears on my right. Not especially close, but not forever far. He has abandoned his suit jacket somewhere and rolled his left sleeve up to his elbow. Not the right, though, where the pale blue fabric is locked to his wrist and already flecked yellow. He dips the haggard backup brush into the color canister and smears the wall.
He works his way from middle to top, backtracking for drips and making more. After a minute, I stretch on my toes and paint as high as I can reach. I keep at it until he catches on and stretches, too—almost to the ceiling trim.
We find a rhythm. Him still in his breakfast clothes. Me in a work shirt from one of Wren’s old uniforms. Fabric swishes and worn bristles. Wind sighs beyond the open balcony doors. It’s weird only coming up to his shoulder. His arm is an impossibly long line from elbow to fingertips—orange-flecked and popberry-yellow and glistening from the work.
“It’s not worth it,” he says.
I jump and my brush zags. “What?”
“Elona. Next time, let it go.”
“It’s wrong,” I say. “She’s wrong, no matter who her grandmother was.”
“But you didn’t know.” His glance is here and gone. “I remember.”
“I was supposed to be Emmie!”
“She didn’t know, either. I saw her face.”
Of course, she knew. Dad would have told her. Because Lord Westlet would have told him.
Except, Emmie never mentioned the burns, and she would have. She mentioned everything else.
“That has nothing to do with anything,” I say.
His reply disappears behind his brush. He slathers the spot he just painted with a second coat. A third. A fifth.
“Even if she didn’t know, that doesn’t make it true.”
Eagle leans in until I can count all the orange speckles flecked over his cheeks. It must have gotten in his eyes, too, because under all the black and lashes are hints of orange gold.
“You want your House to eat?” There’s no threat in his face. Just fact.
“Yes.”
“Let me handle them. Father was livid before, but at Fane. Not you.” He switches the brush to his right hand and holds out his left, his palm as paint-sticky as my fingers, which are already somehow wrapped in his warm, tight grip. “Deal?”
“I already promised your mom I’d—”
“Deal?” Quiet and strong at once. Like the eyes that won’t leave me alone, saying we can stand here all day. Just like this. It’s that important.
One.
Soft.
Shake.
TIMING IS EVERYTHING IN A HANDSHAKE. I FORGOT to count the seconds. I stare at the ceiling above my bed as my hand tingles and memory rewinds, but I didn’t count the seconds and I don’t know how many there were.
I AM A SCREECH BEETLE. I PANIC THROUGH THE DIGISLATE’S speakers. Eagle is with his dad, and the Lady took the cousins. I have a full half hour alone to research specialists and medichips, and am even able to sneak under the upper study’s half-moon desk which could hide whole armies.
And all I do is watch me.
Panna’s huge furred wings beat and bank. Dive and stretch. Bloom into a long vertical line with me at the center, dangling. Left leg, torso, and most of my right thigh free-floating in the open air.
Falling.
It’s not until the falling that I scream.
“Thought I heard something,” says a voice, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
Reggie’s head is half upside down as he peers under the desk. Even contorted he’s the epitome of balance, one hand on the desktop. “Comfortable?”
I hold up the slate. Point to the distant floating Reggie in the corner of the frame. He never gets closer. I’ve watched it three times.
He doesn’t even try.
“I’d like to be alone, please,” I say with temperance and tact.
Reggie slides under the desk instead, head scraping the grainy underside. “You know, before your arrival we could breathe without cameras.”
I swipe the screen off, hold it balanced on my raised knees. “You wanted me to fall.”
His smile doesn’t change, but now there’s paste holding it together. “Don’t be dramatic.”
I tap the screen back on, reload the image, and hold it out.
He doesn’t take it.
“The blood bond exists without me,” I say. “If you’re trying to kill the treaty, my falling won’t help.”
Reggie settles back into the curve of the desk. “Not much of a dancer, are you?”
“Do you want proof?” I reactivate the slate and open a network search. “Blood bonds are—”
I start to rise, but he lays two fingers on my wrist. “I have been informed, in no uncertain terms, exactly how blood bonds work. Do spare me a second lecture.” Then his fingers spider across my hand to the screen, and swipes through my recent search history.
I yank the slate away, but not before he reaches the one page I hadn’t exactly meant to look up.
“The Special Guard?” asks Reggie. “I’d have thought you’d have enough of them, what with all those long, long love letters.”
“We didn’t talk about it.”
“Really? It was all he talked about before.”
Needles prick my skin, and I swear Reggie sees every puncture. I rise, but he takes my wrist. Again. “Tell you what, I’m a veritable font of Eagle information. I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”
“What questions?”
He relaxes back, lets go. “Eagle doesn’t get ‘technical.’ Oh, he can be technical—I’ve seen him fix some highly random things on his precious skidcycle—but he can never explain how. Not when it’s right in front of him, and certainly not in whatever secret letters you shared. If you shared any.”
I can’t move.
“I’ve seen the feeds,” Reggie says, “and despite the obvious artistry of Mother’s pet reporter, ‘love-struck’ isn’t the word that springs to mind.”
He knows.
No, he thinks he knows.
Shivers take over inside and out.
Wren always says that stories, good stories, are about the start and stick—start with the truth and stick with it.
Reggie waits.
Truth.
“My sister’s in a coma.” Low, almost normal. “Our medics couldn’t help, so I tried hacking the inter-House feeds because you have biotech that we don’t, but it didn’t work.”
Dad dismantled the inter-range satellites. There’s no hacking that.
“But Wren, my sister, has Dad’s military clearance. Communication channels are separate from feed networks, and I thought if I could just talk to someone, find the right specialist, they could do something.”
Truth. I tried. It didn’t work.
But that was that story.
“I got patched through, finally, but I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t have the right names or questions and I couldn’t tell people who was asking, so I made things up. Said I was a researcher or a reporter or whoever the medics might listen to, except most of the time they didn’t. Then one night, I was really tired and said I was doing an anonymous empathy survey on difficult recoveries—and the medic patched me through to Eagle.”
I answered one once. An empathy survey. A medic popped her head in and droned out the required request, barely waiting for my response before closing the door. Only to open it again. I’m sorry, did you say “yes”?
“Eagle agreed to a survey?” Reggie asks, equal disbelief and horror.
I rub my arms. “In the medicenter, everyone knows how you should feel. They don’t even agree but they’re always right. Be strong, brace up, cry yourself sick, accept it. Sometimes it’s just nice to talk to someone who has no answer. Who doesn’t care what the answers are. No advice, no sympathy, only bored people asking random unrelated questions that you don’t have to answer. Eagle mostly didn’t.”
I can just see him in the medicenter bed, all wrapped up and bandaged, staring at t
he flipcom and wondering what his favorite bubblepop flavor had to do with anything.
“But I just kept asking, question after question, because I didn’t know what else to do and besides, he sounded so—”
Scratched. Inside out and alone.
“So?” Reggie asks.
But that’s between me and Eagle.
“So I said I had to go, but then he asked if I’d call back and I said yes.”
And I would have.
Truth.
“Then why aren’t you all over each other?” Reggie asks. “Not that I don’t appreciate the lack of public display, but still.”
I breathe in dust mites and wood as the quiet settles.
“It’s different, seeing someone. I mean, in letters the words are all there. But face-to-face I didn’t know what to say and I think Eagle thought I’d be—”
Strong, unafraid. Emmie.
“—different.”
Reggie doesn’t move for a long moment. Then he leans forward and plucks the digislate from my hands. Skims through screens, then lays the slate in my lap and activates a holorecord. A 3-D digital world springs to life—high quality with audio and full spectrum colors.
Elona stands, elbows draped over a low stone wall, hair woven back from her face in large braids that gather at her nape. She’s laughing, her earrings a dance of silver sparkles. “—course I’m going to win. You haven’t seen Charles ride, have you?”
“No, but I’ve seen Eagle,” holo-Reggie says. He leans beside her, outfitted for riding in tall boots and gloves, head bent in concentration over the black sphere in his hands. A holorecorder, from the shape and size.
A disembodied voice calls, “Is that thing on yet?”
“In a minute,” Reggie yells back, adding in an undertone, “Though with any luck, he’ll break his damn neck.”
Elona laughs as Reggie winks and tosses the recorder high into the air. The scene expands. People cluster in a small grassy clearing alongside a river with steep, rocky banks. On either side, steel ramps swoop in impossibly high arcs on beams that look about as supportive as a bug’s legs. Skidcycle ramps.
I shake my head. “No. He wouldn’t—no.”
But there is Eagle, towering over a golden skidcycle, jacket a blaze of silver and orange. His hair is longer, more haloed, and his face isn’t scarred.
I’ve seen pictures, but not ones that move. Here pieces fit and flow with nothing to break them up.
“Good luck, pretty boy,” calls Elona, tiny at the scene’s edge. “You’ll need it.”
Eagle smiles. A subtle smile that is sure of everything. Life is a foregone conclusion he has already won.
On the other side of the river, a different rider—this one in bright green with Charles’s gelled spikes—swings a leg over a jet black skidcycle and revs the engine. Eagle raises two lazy fingers, salutes the camera, then mounts up.
My heart skips a beat.
He makes it, I know he makes it. He walked me to breakfast this morning.
A call sounds, his wheels spin, and my stupid heart skips again.
The skidcycles fly, flashing in smears of color up the ramps and into the air and Eagle—Eagle leaps not only over the hungry rock river, but Charles. He nearly crests the tree line, slowed motion so high above the ground his shadow can’t keep up. So high Charles’s neck cranes to follow.
Then colors blur and wheels reconnect with ramps and Eagle’s cycle skids to a stop.
My fingers skim through the holo to the screen. “How do I replay that? Which button is it?”
“Asa?” It’s Eagle’s voice, un-tinny and real. His legs appear beside the desk, crouching as he drops, fingertips brushing the floor. The holo-version waves. Eagle freezes.
“Did you find her?” calls Lady Westlet from beyond the room.
I grin into wary eyes that aren’t sure of anything anymore. “You’re amazing.”
Eagle’s confusion jumps from me to his brother.
Reggie shrugs. “Apparently, you have a fan.”
HEART
THE PALE SCROLLWORK ON LORD WESTLET’S office door has a lion hidden in it. And a puff-fish and a heron with its wings spread. I stretch then raise my hand fast because this time I’m going to knock.
I’ve been summoned, and I am here.
My fist finds wood.
“Come in,” calls Lord Westlet and I open the door.
Lord Westlet sits on the corner of his desk, one foot hovering above the floor, suit so deep brown it’s almost black. “Asa.”
A three letter warning.
“Sir.”
“We have a visitor.” He nods to the right, and there’s Emmie.
An older Emmie in a brown shirt and long white vest jacket. Her hair is braided smooth, eye shadow neutral, shimmery fingernails brown instead of red. Around her right wrist, a faint chain sparkles.
I jump forward. “You’re here!”
She takes in my wrinkle-free slacks and the ribbon headband the Lady insists on, and says, “Asa.”
“Come.” Lord Westlet beckons me with a seemingly carefree hand. “I have a question.”
Emmie raises her chin, her gaze fixed over my head like I’m not enough of somebody to be real.
She knows about Elona.
“Asa,” says Lord Westlet.
Lord Westlet pats the desk beside him, smile no more or less than it was before. I stand where indicated and straighten my shoulders, like Emmie. “The Lady has my word, sir. I will do better.”
“Excellent. However, that is not the question.”
“My Lord,” says Emmie, “if you will—”
“Ah.” Lord Westlet raises a tapered finger. “I’m conversing with my daughter.”
The daughter I wasn’t a few days ago?
Not that I say so or even think it, because I am temperance and tact.
“Now tell me, dear heart, is ecoflux safe? Or do its factories still cause the Blight?”
“No.” I raise my head to his bland eyes. “Dad fixed it. He’s switched most of the big city power grids over, and the main transits. You can’t even buy uleum flightwings anymore.”
“So it’s safe?”
“Yes.”
“So there’d be no reason to retest or reevaluate its schematic?” he asks with casual disinterest, swinging his toe along the floor.
The hairs shift on the back of my neck, and I can feel the vacuum of Emmie’s glare. Which makes no sense at all because the answer is yes, it’s stable. It’s been stable for months.
“Wren was the technician,” I say, slow. “She helped build the schematic. I didn’t pay that much attention.”
“But within your recent experience, have you seen any reason to doubt its stability?”
No. The medicenter runs on the new power grid, and while I didn’t check the general feeds, Casser would have mentioned if something was that wrong.
I shake my head.
“Ah.” Lord Westlet looks past me, flashing teeth. “Tell your father that he has just forfeit the entirety of the first shipment and potentially the second—unless I have those schematics in hand by the end of the week.”
“No!” I reach for his sleeve and pull back just in time. “You promised.”
His smile transfers to me. “I said once Fane sent the schematics, if you recall. He has not. This, I’m afraid, is beyond your control.”
As if anything has ever been in my control.
“Please, you can’t—”
He waves me away, his words are for Emmie alone. “Do we understand each other?”
The blood disappears from Emmie’s face, probably to pool with mine on the floor.
“Perfectly, sir,” she says.
“Excellent.” Lord Westlet is sleek lines and snake coils. “Now the Lady believes this is an excellent opportunity to impress the newsfeeds. There’s a new club in the city she says the young people enjoy, and Eagle will be more than happy to escort you both.” The Lord nods at me, without quite glancing over. “Dear
est, please go and tell him so. I’ll send your sister along shortly.”
THE HALL BLURS. LIFE-SIZE PORTRAITS OF PAST WESTLETS catalog my steps, their rich satin and austere smiles line the marbled gray walls.
“He promised,” I tell their smug faces. “Maybe truth is fluid but your word is not, and we would not do that.”
Except Dad promised schematics that aren’t here.
And an Heir. He promised that, too.
I press my fingertips to the corners of my eyes and gulp hot air from cupped hands.
I have to find Eagle and tell him how happy he is. I can’t cry.
I face the whole dead gallery. “I hate you.”
And they don’t care.
The hall empties to winding stairs that lead to another long passage and finally a windowed sun room with wispy, ruffled curtains. I peer through the lace to the garden beyond.
Eagle stands by the edge of the stone patio, as if his boots ache for grass. Elona perches nearby on a high tabletop meant for drinks. Reggie leans against the table, elbow near her thigh, his other hand waving in illustration. The sun sparks off his ring, and skypetals bloom in organized clusters beyond.
On the patio’s opposite side, Lady Westlet laughs starlight in a deep purple blouse that billows in the breeze. Mekenna lounges beside her, face tilted toward the sun, threaded earrings shimmering.
Normal. Everyone fluid, belonging. So sure of their place they don’t have to think about it.
Like how we used to look before Dad posted Wren to Urnath, on the nights Emmie didn’t have a date and Dad read reports in the living room and Wren spread her dismantled communicator watch over the table and explained what went where and the transmitters that let her issue orders.
Eagle looks toward the window and I jerk away. Press my back to the thin strip of wall between the window and the door. I squeeze too hot eyes, except the burning runs much, much too deep.
Clacked steps. An approaching laugh. “Now, I would pay to see that.”
Lady Westlet enters, pauses, closes the door. “Asa.”
“I’m supposed to get Eagle,” I say, mostly steady, “for our itinerary.”
“Oh, the club, yes. Lucky your sister flew in today. I’d send Reggie as well, but someone must entertain the cousins.” She leans past me to peer out the window. “And he seems quite comfortable as is.”
