Marian looks at me curiously. “You remember Myoblast? Not many people do. History swept him under the rug. Are you one of those people with a thing for Sparks?”
“No,” I say, “I just … I have a head for trivia. Pub quizzes, stuff like that. Gives me an excuse to hang around in bars.”
Marian’s gaze gets more piercing. Then she turns her back and starts walking again. “You asked about my powers,” she says. “In a way, I resent them. Some people think the only reason I can invent things is because I became super. But I’ve always been an excellent engineer. I earned my Ph.D. from … I’d better not say, but one of the best universities in the world. I earned a research position in a leading robotics firm.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Have you ever heard of Byte Bitch?” Marian asks.
“Sure,” I say. “A supervillain. A punk Mad Genius who loved to make creepy-looking robots. She had a mohawk haircut, piercings everywhere. Blathered about ‘music of mass destruction.’ She was only around for a month or two, then disappeared. No one knows why.”
“Actually, I know why she disappeared,” Marian says, “but you’re correct about everything else. Byte Bitch was quite the throwback to Sid and Nancy. I assume she grew up in the punk-rock era, even though she looked as young as you are, Jools.” Marian sighs. “Some people get younger when they’re taken by the Light. Others…”
Marian picks a piece of leaf litter off her lab coat. She looks at the leaf in disgust, then flicks it away.
“I was talking about Byte Bitch,” Marian says. “One night she broke into the lab where I worked. She wanted to use our equipment and steal some components. So she zapped my lab mate and me with a taser, then tied us up and dumped us in a corner. She went to work building God knows what—some kind of weapon, I think. Several hours later, Tuxedo Rex came bursting in. I have no idea how he knew she was there, but he immediately started thrashing her. They had an enormous fight that ruined our lab … but eventually the dinosaur threw Byte Bitch into the weapon she’d been building. She literally exploded. Burst into multicolored sparks. I got showered with the sparks, and ta-da, that was my origin.”
“Sparks, eh?” I don’t say it, but I know all about sparks and getting superpowers. “Let me guess. Your lab mate got Sparked up, too. He’s now Robin Hood.”
Marian glances back over her shoulder at me. “When it’s time to erase your memory, I’ll have to send you through the wash twice.” She gives a rueful smile. “But that gives me the luxury of being honest. Yes, my lab mate transformed into Robin.”
“Transformed?” I say. “What was he originally like?”
“Ordinary,” Marian says, “like me. A man you could sit beside on the tube and never give him a second glance. He lived alone with his cat, did seven crossword puzzles a day, and never hurt a fly. But then he got superpowers, and…” She sighs. “You know how some people become Sparks and turn into berserkers? Eight feet tall, astronomically strong, and a totally different personality? My lab mate’s change was equally extreme. Other people believe it was a vast improvement, but—”
Robin Hood swings out of the trees, holding onto a vine.
This isn’t the kind of forest where trees have vines; however, for Robin they’ll make an exception. He lets go with perfect timing and lands at our feet in a low courtly bow. He sweeps off his hat, bends his knee, and gestures his hand in a move that seems simultaneously deferential, tongue-in-cheek, and sexy.
Oh so sexy.
Under his hat, his hair is a mass of natural ringlets. My fingers ache to run through those curls. Preferably while he’s on his knees in front of me, with neither of us wearing a stitch.
I tell myself these fantasies aren’t my own. They’re imposed by his Halo as it plays me like a self-juicing violin. But who am I kidding? I don’t need a whack from a Halo to be horny for a guy. I’m the Queen of Hormones, the Empress of Hasty Horizontals.
Robin says, “Milady Marian,” and kisses her hand. She gives it a little flick and taps him reprovingly under his chin. She wears a smile, but there’s sadness in it. Maybe she’s remembering the guy you wouldn’t give a second glance to on the train. But she only has a moment to reminisce. Robin straightens up quickly and turns his brown eyes on me. “And you, my unfortunate misstep! I’m delighted to see you recovered. I beg your forgiveness for my unpardonable mistake.”
He takes my hand and kisses it. I try not to swoon. Until this second, I had no idea what swooning felt like. Now, Marian could wipe my memory a hundred times over, and I’d still lie in bed every night trying to bring back this great swoony gush.
“Her name is Jools,” Marian tells Robin. “In case you don’t think to ask.”
He gives Marian a wounded look. “Why must you think the worst of me? I’m not always well behaved…” He gives me a meaningful look. “… but I am always well mannered.”
Marian rolls her eyes. She takes Robin’s wrist in one hand and mine in the other, then delicately detaches us. (All this time he’s been holding my fingers as if he hasn’t finished kissing them.) Marian drags Robin off his knees and up to his feet. “So you see, Robin, Jools is fine, despite your best efforts.”
“I truly am sorry,” Robin tells me. “It’s a mystery why I didn’t see that you were there.”
“No mystery at all,” Marian says. “Someone must have cast a spell. Several spells, I suppose: one to make the girl move into the way; another to prevent you from seeing she was there; and maybe a third to make sure she was hurt as badly as possible.”
Clever Marian, I think. And since I’m mad at Calon Arang, I’m on the verge of confirming what happened. But when I open my mouth, I nearly pass out … and not in a nice swoony way. It’s more like an ice pick plunging through my head. I want to scream, “Ow, fuck!” but I can’t say that either.
So this is what a nondisclosure agreement feels like.
Robin and Marian notice as the magic stabs me to silence. Robin seizes my hand. “Are you ill, milady?” Marian reaches for my throat and feels my pulse. Her eyes inspect me quickly from head to toe, perhaps to see if I’m bleeding. As if blood would show up on this bright-red costume.
Calon Arang’s NDA continues to screw its way into my skull like a drill bit. It doesn’t ease up for at least five seconds. When it finally lets me go, I slump. “I’m fine, really,” I say. “Just a bit…”
I don’t know how to finish that sentence. My go-to fallback kicks in. “Is there anything here to drink?”
Robin laughs, as merrily as only a dude named Robin Hood can laugh. “You wonder if we have aught to drink in Sherwood? Milady, I am crushed that you doubt our hospitality.”
He takes my hand and begins to lead me down the forest path. Marian gives a snort and stays where she is. “You two have fun,” she says. “I’m going back to my lab.”
I turn to look at her. Her face is … what? Resigned? Bored? I told you so ?
What does she feel for the man who Robin was before he changed? I wonder what he and she were to each other.
But whatever. I’m not the first whom Robin has led down this path. Probably not the last, either. It’s nothing to make a thing about; it is what it is.
Maid Marian turns and walks away. Soon she’s hidden by underbrush.
* * *
WALKING WITH ROBIN IS different than walking with Marian. The pace is faster—he’s bursting with energy and barely contains it. Any second now, he might sweep me up in his arms and carry me off, swinging through the trees.
He has the muscles to do that; Robin is known to be as strong as five normal men. He could pick me up and have plenty of strength left over for acrobatics through the forest. But I don’t know how he’d hold me and a vine simultaneously. Maybe that’s what stops him from doing it.
The narrowness of the trail also slows him down. I can see he’d love to be walking side by side with me—perhaps even arm in arm. But whenever he tries to drop back and join me, he’s blocked by a thornbush o
r a mass of thistles.
It makes me laugh: he’s such a guy. So damned panting eager, but baffled by logistics. It amuses me so much, I don’t try to help him. Eventually, he just speeds up so we’ll get out of the forest faster.
I keep pace. Cuz after all.
Soon enough we come to a clearing with a house in the middle. I recognize the house immediately: it’s a reproduction of Shakespeare’s birthplace, a Tudor-style building with lots of gables and bay windows.
It’s a good-sized house, especially compared to the Elizabethan average. It’s three stories high, with a tile roof, multiple chimneys, and a wattle-and-daub exterior. I don’t know why Robin lives à la Shakespeare—Willy S. was born several centuries after the legends of Robin Hood supposedly took place. But maybe for our modern-day Robin, old-timey England is one big pre-Enlightenment mush. Little John and Shakespeare and William the Conqueror all played darts together at the local pub (the one run by Lancelot and Boudica with King Lear’s daughters as serving wenches).
So why quibble about specifics? Besides, a place like Shakespeare’s house is ten times more livable than anything true to Robin Hood’s era. That was what, the twelfth century? So the floors were cold stone, with dried reeds strewn around to soak up piss. The lice fought the fleas to see who’d become king of the castle. By contrast, Shakespeare’s day was no pristine picnic, but at least they’d figured out chimneys. And I doubt if our current Robin enjoys suffering for the sake of authenticity.
“Welcome to my home,” Robin says, as he leads me into the house. “It’s a little cramped, but Lady Marian has updated it to have all mod cons. So, food? Drink? A hot bath, milady?”
I don’t answer right away; I just look. Robin’s right that the place is cramped. The ceilings are low and the rooms are small, as per normal with Tudor architecture. But the raw dimensions are only part of the problem. Robin has filled the room with fripperies; it looks like a junk shop that was heaped to the rafters when it opened in 1905 and has kept adding stock ever since.
I can tell at once that the contents are all loot that Robin stole. Since he steals from rich Darklings, the booty divides into three categories: generic bling, heavy on gold, silver, and jewels; antiques, including a Rembrandt, a Chippendale chair, and a Ming jade lion; and occult Things of Power that strike me as disasters waiting to happen.
I mean, it’s one thing to stack gold bars in the corner. It’s quite another to toss a dozen bottles bearing the Seal of Solomon into a rune-engraved crucible. Letting magical things lie on top of each other is like clacking together rods of plutonium … except with plutonium, you can use nice precise math to calculate how sorry you’ll be, whereas with sorcerous knickknacks, nobody knows what the hell will happen. Maybe nothing. Maybe Revelations 6, verse 8.
“So what do you think?” Robin asks.
I say, “I think I need a drink.”
He smiles. “As the lady wishes.”
* * *
ROBIN LEADS ME THROUGH the house. Every room has a similar decor: clogged with trinkets, many of which are traditionally found in dragon hoards or handed out by women who live in lakes.
When we get to the kitchen, it has the same degree of congestion. This time, however, the problem isn’t dangerous occultrements; the kitchen is cramped because of a large Cape Tech gadget in the center of the room.
The device doubles as the kitchen’s table. Its surface is an appropriate height for dining, and its electronics are recessed enough that there’s space for your knees to go when you pull up a chair. The machine is exactly what you’d think Maid Marian would build for a man like Robin: a gizmo for serving hot meals or cold drinks upon command. I’m tempted to say, “Tea, Earl Grey, hot.” But let’s not be totally stupid. I say, “Scotch, single malt, neat” … which is what Captain Picard really ordered when the cameras weren’t rolling.
A glass rises out of a hatch in the center of the table. I take it, but don’t belt it down. Partly that’s because I don’t want Robin to think I’m a desperate alcoholic. But it’s also because I don’t feel a sense of urgency.
Or interest.
Or any of the scarier words that usually fill up my mind when I think about my drinking.
Did the medi-tank do something to me? Put me through a cleanse?
Or is this a side effect of nearly dying? Maybe actually dying. I could have been forced to reboot, coming back without, uhh, an inclination toward sometimes mismanaging alcohol.
Maybe this newfound lack of compulsion was caused by my bout of Mad Genius, when I built that heater to warm me up and the shampoo to make me smell peachy. That really took the edge off. I’m still feeling pretty relaxed.
Yeah, no, I was relaxed. Now I’m freaking out. Something has changed, and I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. Nervous tingles flutter up and down my arms. But surprisingly, my impulse is to go and run hard for an hour, till I’m too hot and tired to think about anything. What I don’t feel is any urge to chug the Scotch that’s in my hand.
What is wrong with me?
Robin tells the kitchen machine, “My usual mead, if you please.” A moment later, the machine’s hatch opens and out comes a tacky Toby jug presumably filled with spiced fermented honey.
Robin and I clink: his pottery, my glass. He takes a hearty swig, then waits for me to do likewise.
I can’t bring myself to go through with it. Instead, I flip to whisky-judge mode. I swirl my glass; I nose the aromas. The Olympic-level taster inside me reports that I’m holding an excellent specimen of its kind. I don’t know if Marian’s machine teleported it here from its home distillery, or if the whisky was assembled atom by atom to duplicate a prestigious original … but it’s good. Very good. Very very.
I don’t want to drink it.
I don’t know why not, and that scares me. I could force myself to drink, but the prospect makes my mouth rebel. It would be like drinking some horrid concoction of urine, Liquid-Plumr, and blood.
All I can do is cradle the glass in my hands and look at Robin. “So what happens now?”
He grins. “To what are you referring, milady?”
I debate which way I want this to go. And how soon. “Naturally, I’m asking about your bazooka. The one you were trying to steal. Marian told me you pulled out prematurely—as soon as I got injured. Think you’ll try to steal it again?”
Ha! I’ve taken him by surprise. I hate to be predictable. But Robin recovers quickly. “We’ll try again if the opportunity arises. I dislike the Dark having a powerful weapon in their arsenal. And this weapon in particular—according to rumor, it only works when held by someone imbued with the Light. That’s disturbing. It would mean the gun could be used to determine who is or isn’t a Spark.”
I say, “Diamond claimed the gun isn’t his.”
“Diamond is hardly a paragon of truth,” Robin says. “Besides, are you referring to the message Diamond broadcast through the fest hall? That message was recorded before Diamond saw the weapon. At that time, I’m sure Diamond believed his self-destruction measures were foolproof. But he may have been mistaken.”
“So you’ll definitely go after the gun again?” I ask.
“If we locate it,” Robin replies. “Of course, as soon as we left, its keepers moved it. We attempted to track where it went, but between the Darklings, the All-Stars, and Waterloo’s local Sparks, they managed to confound Lady Marian’s surveillance.”
I’m stabbed with guilt. “Tell me about those local Sparks,” I say. “Are they all right?”
“As far as we can determine, yes. The winter witch, or whatever she was … she had no trouble freezing and killing the rest of the wasps. Overall, deaths were few: one of Diamond’s least successful exploits. Then again, his previous project ended in failure a mere two weeks ago. He’s had precious little time to devise something new. This wasn’t a full-blown scheme, just an improvised sally.”
I nod, forcing myself to hold my tongue. It’s not public knowledge, but when we fought Diamond
before Christmas, he got seriously hurt. A normal person would still be in the hospital, possibly in a coma or under sedation. The fact that Diamond did anything is amazing. On the other hand, he likely has a medi-tank of his own. That has to be one of the first things a Mad Genius builds.
“You seem most interested in these matters,” Robin says. “And knowledgeable.” He gives a dimpled smile. “Are you what is known as a fangirl?”
“You wish,” I say.
“Not at all,” he replies. “I am weary of fangirls. Individually, they each have admirable qualities, but their approaches toward me are repetitive.”
“Poor baby,” I say. “You get all the groupies you want, but they’re all the same.”
He gives me a rueful smile. “Money for nothing and the chicks are free.”
“Okay, let me break the mold.” I slap my hand on the table. “Hey, machine, make me a quarterstaff.”
Robin’s eyebrows lift. “What are you…”
The table’s hatch opens and a pole begins to emerge. I grab the end. I pull out seven feet of polished wood, thick enough that my fingers just barely go around it. When I’ve extracted the whole thing, I tell the table, “Now make another.”
Robin laughs. “You can’t possibly think…”
“I can and I do.” A second staff begins to emerge. I toss Robin the staff I’m holding. He catches it one-handed. I pull out the second staff and give it a twirl.
Robin quirks an eyebrow. “Wearing a codpiece has affected you, milady.” His face goes serious. “You do realize, don’t you, I’m a Spark?” He takes a breath. “I’m Robin fucking Hood.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s why I’m not challenging you to an archery contest. But you legendarily suck with a quarterstaff. While me, I’ve been playing hockey since I was four. Stick handling is my thing.”
He puts his hand to his heart. “Oh, milady!”
They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded Page 21
