Beating Heart Cadavers (23 page)

Ch. 31

The albino wandered through the valley, taking the route through Uhm in the hopes of slipping through the border undetected. He could be certain that Ratsel had noticed the missing notebook by now and knew who had taken it, and yet the fear of what would happen to him if he was caught had been replaced by a heaviness that overwhelmed his entire being, and his failing heart throbbed erratically in time with his clumsy footsteps.

He wasn't entirely certain what had enticed him to take the notebook. He thought he ought to have known, or at least ought to have realized when the decision had come to his brain, but it had just simply happened, like a switch going off in his head. Perhaps it was something in watching Fields fall to the swampy earth after Merdow had shot her, or the way Caine's son had squirmed in his arms when he had carried him to the river to drown him. Or maybe it had nothing to do with his brain at all, he considered. Maybe the chemicals leaching into his bloodstream were rendering him incapable of rational thought, and his decisions were stemming from a separate organ. He gave a dry, crackling chuckle as he considered it. He must have had a change of heart, he thought. It seemed rather ironic that it should happen now: after so long of wishing for the metal contraption trapped in his chest to be different, it finally was, and the only reasonable explanation for it was that he was dying.

He shifted the notebook beneath his jacket as he carried on, willing himself to make it the last few miles to the border before the leaching metal poisoned him entirely. Fields had said that the Mare-doctors in Hasenkamp could cure him.
Cure
was such a deceiving word, though. They couldn't cure him, and they couldn't make him better, but they could make him live longer, perhaps. But maybe that was how it was for everyone, he considered. Maybe his heart wasn't so different from anyone else's, but it was simply easier to pinpoint his troubles because the damage it did to his insides and anyone who touched him were visibly apparent. And if that was the case, then he ought to have feared what lay behind him and not in front of him, and yet something unsettling trickled down his back along with the sweat that was staining his silver uniform even so, though he was much too exhausted to think of what it was.

By the time that he had made his way far enough towards Hasenkamp to reach the gated settlement that Fields had considered her home for a year or so, his legs had begun to feel like rubber beneath him, and it was all that he could do to not simply stop on the sandy gravel and lay down to rest. There were lines of tents and wagons in the distance beyond the walls, and the smell of chestnuts rose up from the dirt to mingle with the one of stale alcohol. He wondered vaguely what Fields would think if she could see him among the desolateness, and whether she would have forgiven him initially upon seeing how far he had traveled to bring Andor's notebook to the Mare-folk, or if she would have only done so when he admitted to the number of wrongs he had done for the past decade or so.
You were right,
he would have told her when he saw her, and his heart gave another painful tremor that dug unkindly at his chest.
You were always right.
He only wished that he had realized it sooner, for even if he could be certain that there was an afterlife, he was sure that they wouldn't be entering the same one.

Hasenkamp was set up on a large, flat stretch of destroyed land in the Wastelands. The soil was ruined and largely useless for growing anything other than stringy vegetables, and the few surviving cattle fed off of food scraps rather than the minimal grass that sparsely spotted the ground. The residents lived in tents that scattered the area with many families living together, and the large wagons were reserved for medics and supplies. It was desolate to a fault, as well as bone-dry and cold, and there was nothing welcoming in the armed guards that stood on the high wall waiting as he approached.

They shifted their guns in their arms as he approached.

“Stop!”

Jasper looked up as the voice shouted down to him, and through his bleary gaze saw the man who had addressed him. He was clutching a long rifle in both hands from where he stood on top of the wall, and his fingers drummed against the metal as he waited for Jasper to adhere to his order.

The albino faltered momentarily. He opened his mouth to call back – to tell them what he had brought them – but his throat was too parched to speak. He took another few shaking steps forward towards the wall. There was no way to enter from that part of the valley other than to go over it, and he didn't think he would be able to drag himself high enough to do so. He wondered if they would heave him up, or if they'd make him walk all the way around to one of the real entrances. There were checkpoints outside those, though, and as he was certain that Ratsel would have put out an order for his arrest, he knew that he would have to convince them to let him in then and there.

“Stop!”

The guard shifted the gun to a low ready position, and Jasper slowed to a halt. He twisted his tongue in his mouth, but still couldn't produce enough saliva to warrant speaking a word. He ought to have changed from his uniform, he thought idly. A Mare-folk trying to hop the border wouldn't be dressed in high Onerian clothing, and certainly not a Spöken uniform. But they would let him in, he thought. The silvery material was reflecting the surrounding expanse of dirt and dead grass, and they couldn't tell what he was from up there. No one saw the Spöken, after all.

“You're not welcome here!”

The guard moved the rifle into position, aiming it directly at him. Jasper raised his hands to either side of his head, still choking on his breaths. The rattling that came from his chest was like a pin reverberating against a metal table, and he wished he could hold his hand over it for just a moment to silence it.

“I have something – for you,” he croaked out.

The sound barely rose above the growling wind, and the guard didn't move his rifle. With the barrel pointing directly at his chest, Jasper felt his last bit of strength leave him, and he sunk to his knees onto the dry ground.

“Who are you?” the guard demanded.

When Jasper made no reply, he jumped down from the wall and approached him, and the bullets in his ammo carrier jingled together like the welcome bells in an Onerian tea shop. He reached the albino and grabbed the collar of his uniform to check the silver pin, and his face twisted into an expression of disgust. He looked back up at his colleague.

“He's a Spöke!”

The second guard turned to face the opposite direction and called down to someone hiding within the boundaries of Hasenkamp.

“Go tell Sunset there's a Spöke here,” he said, and then dropped down to approach Jasper as well, his gun held in front of him in a long line of black metal.

“Who're you here for?” the first ordered, shaking him by the collar. “Who sent you? Do the Spöken have a message for us?”

Jasper shook his head, but the action was so slow that it was indistinguishable from the forced movements that the guard's bared fists were causing. The guard leaned down towards him, and the hardened skin on his face from spending too many hours out in the burning sun brushed against Jasper's own.

“No,” Jasper wheezed, willing his voice to work properly. “No, I have something ...”

“How did you get here? How do you know this route?”

“My sister … Ladeline. She … told me ...”

“What's he saying?” the second guard asked. “Madeline?”

“Ladeline,” Jasper tried, but the word was even quieter than the previous ones had been.

“What's the message? What do the Spöken want us to know? Is this an invasion, or an official declaration of war?” The guard shook Jasper's collar more firmly, trying to uplift the answer from his throat when none came. “Well?”

“I have … something ...”

He began to reach into his uniform to pull the notebook out from behind the line of silver buttons, but the guard grasped him more firmly and twisted the fabric of his uniform in his hand so that the collar constricted against his neck.

“We have a message for the Spöken, too,” the guard said. “Do you think you can deliver it for us?”

Jasper clapped his hand over the other man's, their skin cracking against each other in the still air, and fought to speak as the breath was strangled from him.

“I'm here – to help,” he choked. “I have – something –”

He fumbled in his jacket and caught hold of the metal binding, pulling it from its resting place to show to them, but no sooner had the shiny metal come to the air than it was kicked from his fingers by the second guard. The notebook scattered over the ground, tumbling to a stop some feet away, and the guard's gun moved to rest just below Jasper's rapidly beating heart.

“I don't speak – to the Spöken – anymore,” Jasper breathed.

“No?”

“No,” the albino said. “I can't – can't deliver a message –”

“Oh, I'm sure that you can,” the guard replied. He moved his finger to the trigger, and a smile flickered across his burned face. “You'll just have to deliver it in a body bag.”

The shot rang out into the quiet valley behind him as the bullet pierced his chest and moved through him, and the hum of people behind the wall faltered, though whether from the sound of gunfire or simply because his hearing had failed him, he wasn't sure. He arched backwards to fall to the earth, his legs still bent beneath him from the way that he had been kneeling, and for a long moment he stared up at the bright white sky that seemed to both be threatening rain and mocking the fact that it would never come to the vacant wasteland.

“Hold up – Sunset wants him alive for questioning!”

The warmth of the white sunlight hitting his face matched the feeling of blood pooling over his abdomen, and he was only vacantly aware of the voice that had rung out somewhere before him. Someone tucked their hands beneath either of his arms and hoisted him up to carry within the walls, and his head lulled from side to side as they went further through the array of tents before entering a wagon. Through his uneven gaze, he could see the vagrants watching him with wide eyes.
A Spöke,
they must have been thinking, because their eyes were unfriendly even though his injury was soaking his once-silvery uniform through with dark red. And he didn't blame them, he realized. Not for this.

They tossed him down onto a thin cot. The fabric ceiling wavered above him, but the sight was soon replaced by a woman who pressed a bandage to his chest. It wouldn't help the wound – not now – but perhaps if they could keep him alive long enough, he could explain what he had done – and hadn't done – and that something in what he said would make things all right again.

The doctor stepped back and frowned, her hands still holding the dressing to his chest, and looked at the guards.

“He's a Mare-folk,” she said.

“Course he's not: he's a Spöke. Look at his uniform.”

“He's a Mare-folk,” the doctor repeated, her voice sharp. “I'm looking right at his heart.”

Someone moved around the cot to come to her side and peered down at where the bullet had ripped through Jasper's chest. He frowned momentarily, his thick brows knotting above his eyes, and then his gaze traveled up to Jasper's face.

“Oh, fuck. Go get Fields.”

Fields
, Jasper repeated to himself, his mind numbing over the word and bringing him someplace else. His mind must have been blurring along with the corners of his vision. Ladeline was gone. Gone and drowned, face-down in the swampy outskirts of the Spöken headquarters. Jasper ought to have retrieved her body, he knew. He should have waited until Merdow had finished gloating and left Avelinn, and then run back to the spot where she had fallen and plucked her out of the dirty water to clean her off, not left her there to bloat and decay.

He would have buried her in the fields leading to West Oneris. They had watched them pass by as they took the train there, sitting by the window seat hand in hand in accordance to Ladeline's plan to gain entry into an orphanage after their parents had abandoned them. No one really wanted orphans, especially not one that had looked like him, but no one wanted a child with a metal heart, either, and despite all the precautions and lies that it had taken to convince everyone that they were just two children whose parents had met untimely fates, feigning normalcy had always proven so much easier than being who they really were.
Fields
, Ladeline had said with the utmost certainty in her voice as they watched the train whiz past them.
That's our new name. That's what we'll call ourselves.

Jasper hadn't been so certain. The fields were dying and dreary, just one long expanse of gray, and he didn't like the name at all. And if they took a new name, he had argued, what would happen if their parents changed their minds and came back for them? What if they had searched and searched, ready to love them again in spite of the metal hearts, and he and Ladeline were unable to be found because they had changed their names? Ladeline hadn't answered his questions. At the time he had supposed it was because she didn't know the answer, but now, of course, he knew that she had known everything. No one would look for them, and no one would come back for them, because no one could love them upon knowing what they were.

“Jasper?”

The doctor shifted up to the head of the bed to make room for the new voice, and an outline of someone with long, braided hair and a sharp, pointed jawline came into his view.