Enzo looked at the two wasted souls and said, “Well, you might as well tell me.”
“It’s better this way.” Pulling the fresh phone from her pocket, Marlow handed it to Enzo with a photo on the screen.
“Queen Sable,” Enzo observed. “The motherliest fucker of all.”
Marlow laughed. She tried to speak but had to wait. Finally, she pulled the smile on her mouth down to look more serious, admitting, “I miss it here.” She petted Nika’s head until she had her muscles under control, and then started again, “Look at the picture,” and when he looked up, “No, Enzo, really look at the face.”
He saw nothing, then maybe something. He looked at Marlow. She had changed the way she held her eyes, and when he looked again, also her mouth. He remembered how she looked when they first met, and now she looked much the same. Her face had no emotion. He asked, “Are you her double?”
“No.” She waited. “Look at the photo then look at me.” He raised his head to the Cloitare Stare.
“Fuck no! Fuck. You. No.” Enzo shoved the phone away, sliding it down the length of the bench.
Running her hand through Nika’s hair, she let him exhaust the first pitch of hysteria and fall back into the drug. “Cut us out some speed because I’m about to make things worse.”
Enzo dug in Max’s pocket then started chopping out different lines. He wouldn’t look at her. He wasn’t sure he believed it. The things he knew about her, what she’d done. He was glad he was high, but speed, he agreed, they needed speed. It would clear his mind.
Enzo snorted, winced and cursed “Blow me” for the burn, and then passed to … “Do I call you Sable?”
She raised her head sniffing. “As you like.”
Now he stared at her, couldn’t stop looking. It was every bit Marlow drawing up another line over Nika’s wrecked head. “This is really whacked out weird. Are you really?” He stretched down the bench to retrieve the phone and look again. “You were scary enough before.” He looked out the front of the plane. “We abducted a soldier.”
Sable laughed, scattering powder. “Yes, you did.” Then she saw he was nervous and set the tablet aside while pocketing the bag of speed. “You’re under my protection, for what it’s worth.”
“Well, if fucker hadn’t had his hand around your throat, I’d say it was worth a lot.”
“Yeah,” she tried to excuse him, “he’s had a bad couple of days, and I’ve got a really cloying voice.” She smirked without explaining. “That aside, I need a favor.”
Enzo looked around the plane, smiling, nodding, feeling superbly ironic, “Sure, the Queen needs a favor.”
She was absently making a twist with Nika’s hair. “I need you to set up a meeting with the Count. Tell him to expect Marlow.”
“You need money?” He looked set to offer.
“No. But you should know the trade in lithium for your batteries is about to dry up.”
“Man, you weren’t kidding about wrecking parties.”
“The army learned about the tunnels.” Sable frowned over the lopsided bun she’d made on Nika’s head. “There was a situation. I had to tell the General. I’m not exactly certain who I betrayed in doing it, but it sure felt like I had been marked for hell. Divided loyalties.” She shook her head sadly, thinking Remy was never going to speak to her again after learning what she’d done to get here. “My loyalties are all over the place. If you’d like a taste of it, the King’s intelligence chief wants to recruit you.”
Enzo was glad for all the drugs. “You got any more wrecking balls you plan to swing through here?”
“No, I think that was the last.” Sable pulled the sticks from her hair and fastened them through the mess she had made of Nika’s. She patted them in place so that Enzo knew she meant to leave them. Pulling the great mass of red braids up, she harmlessly tied it with more braids. “While I’m sure the chief would love to be regaled again and again with your comedic theatrics on the ground, what she really desires is access to your contacts, which brings us back to the Count. Set up a meeting.”
~~~~~~
There was a question Berringer had wanted to ask repeatedly over the past year. The question rose to shake its fist at the sky every time he had to deal with Sable. He had sent Fallon to the military plane to bring back Sable’s bag of electronics while he blocked the Pigeon’s front wheels with felled logs from the field. Just in case, he told himself, because he was long past thinking there was anything for which she was not capable.
With another cell from the bag, he left Fallon to explore its contents while he walked out into the high trunks of the clearing.
“Why?” he asked his father. “Why did you train her?” He was deliberately vague knowing the phone wasn’t secure or encrypted.
The laughter was expected. “How did my little monkey give herself away?”
“The first time by flipping all over the room with a sword.”
This was not met by amusement but a lengthy pause. “The first time, you say. Maybe we don’t speak about the same creature.”
“Your pet has turned into a monster, and she’s a hell of a thing for me to keep caged.”
“The only she I have trained to flip you could not keep caged if you tried.”
“I learned that today. Why did you train her?” In the silence waiting for his father’s reply, Berringer watched Fallon unpack the bag. The waxing moon against the snow made it easy to see the inventory being ordered on the road: phones, circuit boards, multi-tools, USB drives, and more circuits and cables which meant nothing to him. All he really recognized was that Sable’s friends had dressed Fallon thickly in layers for the cold, which showed a level of decency he could respect despite what they’d done.
His father’s question was simple and direct. “What has happened?”
“She’s off the rails.” Berringer didn’t know if he was just bemoaning his fate, trying to find someone to blame or someone to help. “She played a game of low-flying suicide with me tonight while talking about running a sword through her chest, but so much has happened, I sometimes forget she went on a killing spree with an axe.”
“Where are you?”
Berringer looked around, and now he laughed. “Sierra. She brought me to Sierra.”
“Bring her to me.”
“I have to get her back.”
“I don’t care if you have to accept the mantle of traitor yourself.” His father was severe. “You will bring her to me.”
~~~~~~
Flicking ash and passing a cigarette back into the plane, Sable left her friends behind. To the General, she gave a wry smile of recognition to the logs under the wheels, and then she laid her hand on Fallon’s shoulder as he knelt in the road repacking the bag. “You Ok, Wi Fry?”
He was prepared to be formal, but something changed with her touch. He was honest. “I got ganked by noobs camping my base, so I’m never going to live this down.”
“Do what all the pros do: blame it on lag. In this case, it was the latency of the early morning mind.”
“Yeah, heh, that’s good. Lag. My ping was too high for PvP.”
The General understood no part of their amusement.
She turned from Fallon to tell him, “We’re waiting for a message back from the Count. He’ll send a time and place to meet to my phone. It could come in hours, a day, or at most three. I expect the meeting will be in Erentrude.”
She was waiting for his response, staring him straight in the eyes while her pupils zoomed in and out, making him wonder what drug was driving. Just looking at her made him tired. More tired than he had ever been. He was beginning to feel the frustration of having no control, doing the bidding of his father over the will of his king for the benefit of a lunatic queen. He was too tired to fight and hoped she was as well. He motioned to the military plane, indicating they were leaving, but not registering agreement or contradiction to what she had said.
When she made no attempt to go near the cabin, but instead sank into
one of the passenger seats with the bag of electronics, he would have thanked any nonexistent god of her choosing—including Aidan—that he didn’t have to argue or explain why she was never getting near the controls again.
Wanting a body in the seat to prevent any midair excitement, he had the Lieutenant sit as copilot. The fullness of the moon in the cloudless sky outshone the light from the instrument panel, ensuring the General could fly by sight, and in the brightness, he saw Fallon’s grinning relief to be free. Fallon was pointing out objects and dials he recognized from a flight simulation game, and the General didn’t correct him when he was wrong.
Back over the woods flying north, the General turned east for the sea instead of west for Erentrude, and shortly after, Sable came to kneel between the seats.
“General?” Her expression was big with a question. “The coast? Really?” She regarded him as mad.
He exhaled long and shook his head to show he wasn’t happy about it either.
“Uh …” At a loss, she tried to throw her eyes at Fallon. “I’m wondering how well you’ve thought this through.”
He understood the appeal of returning nothing.
She said with hidden meaning, “I’ve only ever been out to this area alone.”
“Same with me.”
“Then,” she was grasping, trying not to mention the third person, “uh … maybe this is a problem.”
“Not if you turn the night black.”
Sable retreated. In moment, she called, “Wi Fry, will you come back here and look at a glitch in this program?”
Orson Feridon
Venerable, elderly, and old were just a few of the descriptions that always shocked Orson Feridon when they were applied to him.
“I have an elderly gentleman here who needs to be put at the front of the queue.” The agent had delivered him to the ticket collector, and Orson had felt brief irritation that he was going to have to wait on some old geezer to get his ass in gear before he could get on the last ferry.
He’d been a senior for twenty years and still couldn’t get accustomed to it. It did have its advantages though, like tonight, they weren’t going to leave an old man stuck in the capital with snow on the ground. He liked it better when he had been ushered to the front because of who he was, but he had not come to Sierra some forty years ago to be recognized.
And after four decades, it required no special thought to appear Sierran born and bred. His wool suit had been tailor-made two generations ago to fit a man slightly larger than himself. It was worn at the joints but still strong, a testament to its quality, just like the elegant hand-stitched leather shoes that had been resoled at least a dozen times. When he was still sought with aggressive urgency, the only thing that could have given him away was the canvas brace on his right hand. He still needed it to support his mutilated bones, damage that had healed while he hid, too leery to seek help, unwilling to risk any report of the unique injury that played on the news. The recording was old black and white, slow stuttering shots of him tearing apart an office he’d been locked in for his own protection while rioters broke into the cells to hang him. The image would resurface every couple of years, and, as time moved on, the captions had changed. Last he’d seen, he was being used on the network to attack psychology: Self love is for pussies. At the lowest, he’d played in an ad for calcium: Orson Multi-Minerals: Repairs the damage no matter how you got it. Then the video would play of him taking a broken chair leg and bashing his bones until the compliance shackle slid from his hand.
Even with the brace, he had the appearance of a country cousin to the King. He looked like two thirds of Sierra, the whole family near bankrupt but raised on tales of when their ancestors had been rich. There was a promise they would rise again, and until then, everybody had been instructed to keep their wits together and not allow appearances to slip. He played his aged and prejudiced part while the young, so far removed from the threats of war, wore secondhand clothes donated in Erentrude.
When coal ran the world, Sierra was a capitalist haven full of industry, a manufacturing powerhouse with jobs for millions. Then, in the span of two centuries, they became so wealthy they stopped producing, becoming instead consumers of the inexpensive technology of their neighbors. The global move to renewable energy left Sierra behind, but not their previously resource-poor neighbor, backward and religious Erentrude. Now it all came down to storage, which was the lithium found in the bowl of Salt Mountain. It seemed to happen overnight, every weapon Sierra had ever sold the Clementyne Dynasty was pointed back at its maker.
The wheel of change was still spinning Erentrude up and taking Sierra under. Orson had been born in the kingdom’s ascension, a privileged child that had made his way to the side of the king. More than anything, he wanted to go back, but the Cloitare had put an end to that. He’d been labeled the greatest betrayer, the killer of a king. And his revenge, he had been told, was threatening suicide, talking about running a blade he would have taught her to use through her own chest when it was meant for something else.
Orson had been in the capital when he got the call. “Off the rails,” his son said. It was next to impossible for the master strategist to imagine the impassive girl he had trained would ever learn any emotion that might lead to despair.
He had recognized her cool isolation in the midst of the same crowded last ferry he was on now. She had been looking straight ahead at the viewing window that mirrored the lights from inside, laying a hard, penetrating gaze on the passengers at her back. It was one of the few times he remembered his age and he’d deliberately used it to get what he wanted, tottering off balance until he was offered the seat at her side. He had already seen her pale eyes with the small speck of black before sitting down, and she must have thought she was safe to stare at him through the reflection of the glass.
He had told her without insult, “What you’re doing is considered rude.”
“I apologize.” But still, it had taken her a long moment to look away.
“If you hope to blend in,” he had offered, “you need to control that Stare.” And when she didn’t blink to even acknowledge he had spoken, he added, “It’s called the Cloitare Stare, and it’s the sort of thing that would give away the Bound Bride.”
This had brought her attention back, but she wouldn’t return his smile.
The nuns had said she was cloistered in meditation, but Orson, better than anyone, knew the Cloitare were full of lies. He believed nothing they said, for when the clergy were speaking, they were lying. When the Cloitare felt the need to make a defense, truth was never a part of it. He had assumed the Bound Bride was dead and the mothers were preparing a substitute, hoping enough time could pass for them to slide her in without notice. Of all the fortunes he never thought to be blessed with was a runaway nun, much less the Mawan, Destroyer of Time.
“The hair is good,” he had told her, “but your clothes are too new.” He had yawned and relaxed, filling out his seat and taking over the whole of the shared armrest until he’d pushed into the space where she clasped her hands in her lap. When he felt the skin on her arm, he made a face of disapproval, showing he had recognized another problem. “One of the difficulties in maintaining that Stare is you’ve dropped your heart rate so low you feel cold. All of this on its own is enough to betray you. But what happens if you suddenly need to defend yourself? You’re going to pass out.”
Her stillness had been profound.
“And now just imagine if I were actually looking at you and not through the obscurity of this window, I would see I had startled the last remaining circle of your pupils completely away. You are hiding in a nun’s defense when it is the very thing that will get you recognized.”
She had decided to hear no more.
“I need to know but one thing about you to know a thousand,” he had said. “I can see by your steady intake of breath that you are not going to be smart and ask me to teach you. Instead, you are going to try to convince me I’ve had a bad dream.”
While he had laughed, she held her lungs full, wavering, considering how to proceed.
“Well?” He had looked straight over to her. “Let’s see what you’ve got. Persuade me!”
Finally, he had made her smile. In the next moment, she had turned to lean her forehead, for all appearances affectionately, against his and the rumbling tingle of her voice had reverberated through the bones in his face while her hand slipped across his lap to his chest.
A quick clip across her throat had started her coughing. He had buried her head in his lap to slap her back and held her down with a twisted wrist. For the benefit of those near them, he had spoken in Sierran, “Damn lollies, I am alvays varning you about svalloving candy.”
She was his favorite pet because the last thing he expected was for her to recover and be laughing against his thigh. With the flush of blood through her veins, she had begun to feel warm and he had let her up. Recomposed in her seat, she had decided to return his smile. “So, now I am a little smarter,” she had said. “But before I ask you to teach me, you should know,” she had looked at the brace on his hand and then to his eyes, “I have been looking for you.”
It was over a year since he had last seen her and tonight his son was bringing her back.
He didn’t know how the Cloitare had found her, but that she would be found he had known. It was getting late and he had trained her too well. She had been so secret and elusive the clergy couldn’t find her, but he had his eye on the endgame and was determined she was going back to the convent, had even been prepared to betray her himself. Then an unexpected reprieve, the story dominating the news was the Bound Bride was returning to the palace convent to be presented to the King.
Orson had watched with the rest of Erria as she led a procession of nuns across the courtyard. He had held his breath, wishing she could hear him silently reinforcing, “Swallow your pride, pet.” But his worry was unfounded. She had knelt without hesitation, subservient to the King. Next followed the glorious stretch of time when her obstinance was an advantage; she had stayed low until she brought the clergy down with her. And he had smiled to know the last move would be his.
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 25
