Blightborn (27 page)

Gwennie turns toward him. And now it’s Wanda’s face. Peering from behind a webbing of vines that tighten against her straining skin, her mouth forming an “oh” of pleasure as vines emerge past her lips—

That dream melts away into a dozen smaller dreams, like a mirror broken, each shard reflecting a piece of an image: men in dog-masks, a horse flying, Rigo limping, the corn turning dark and dying, hands reaching for him through the blackening stalks.

He gasps awake.

His chest, itching so bad it hurts.

A voice whispers in his ear:
Soon, Cael, soon
.

Come to me. . . .

He tries not to whimper, but he feels under his shirt—

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no
.

The stem has grown. It’s long now. Longer than his forearm. A vine. A damned
vine
. Not two leaves. Not three. But a dozen of them. Twitching and tugging under his fingertips.

Suddenly, it moves: fast as a snake. It shoots out from under his collar, coils around his neck—

And tightens.

He gurgles.

Across the room in the half darkness he sees Lane sleeping, head craned back, mouth open. He tries to call out to him.
Tries to reach for him—only a few feet away, fingers stretching, tendons burning—

The vine tightens. A deeper blackness threatens.

The voice again:
Do not try to fight it
.

Hell with that.
He fights. He rolls out of bed. Claws at the vine around his neck. Feels the vine start to break apart under his fingernails—the stems splitting, spilling juice, then blood. Leaves pop off and fall into shadow.

Cael takes a swipe for Lane’s hand—and just misses.

Fine. He’ll have to do this himself.

He gets his fingers under the tightening collar—

He
rips
.

The vine splits. He hears it scream, and he doesn’t know if everyone can hear him or if it’s a scream only inside his head, but it’s loud and it’s terrible and it chills every inch of his marrow.

But it’s done.

He lies on the floor. On his back. Panting. Palms slick with blood and sap. Lane moans. Rolls onto his side. Eyes still closed. Mouth still open.

Cael almost laughs. All that and his secret is still kept.

But then—

His shirt ripples. His breastbone feels as if it’s cracking apart, splitting as if by a hatchet’s blade—

A massive vine, this one as thick as his wrist, tears through the fabric of his shirt and launches forward—not toward Cael but toward Lane, where it plunges into his mouth, his throat bulging, his eyes opening wide and popping out beyond his eyelids,
the whites flooded fast with blood. Then the eyes pop out and two more vines emerge from Lane’s sockets—

Cael wakes up.

Clothes and sheets soaked through with sweat.

Lane sleeps soundly.

He pats at his chest—first over the shirt, then under it—and there he finds the same stem with three leaves he had before he went to bed.

Just a dream.

Just a damn dream.

He stands up, stumbles out of the room, and heads to the deck.

He needs some air.

The back of the boat—a few men sleep out here under the white stars and slivered moon. The darklight catches across the sheen of corn leaves, little curls of puddled moon—white as far as the eye can see. In the distance, the winking red lights from the underside of the flotillas. Others might not see those lights, but his eyes are better than most, and when he turns his gaze back to the horizon line—

He sees something out there.

Behind the fleet.

A small light in the corn. Different from everything else. It moves, juddering just a little before it’s gone again.

“Hey, Captain” comes a voice behind him, and it startles Cael enough that he about pisses his britches. He says so, too, and Lane smirks, strikes a match to light a crooked cigarette. “You look like you peed your whole body. You’re wet, head to toe.”

“It’s just sweat,” Cael says. “Couple nightmares. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Is it hard for you?” Cael asks, changing the subject from anything that has to do with the Blight. “Being away from home, I mean.”

“Nah. You and Rigo are my home. My father’s dead. My mother’s a dang Babysitter somewhere out there in the wide-open nowhere. I’m good out here long as you guys are with me.”

A small voice of worry dogs Cael.
What happens when the Sleeping Dogs become his family instead of us?

Still, he says, “You think Pop’s okay?”

Lane shrugs. “I guess if anybody is, he is.”

“I’m worried. About him, and Mom. About us. Shoot, about Rigo. He lost his leg, Lane. And it was my fault. Dragging him out here with us—he was never up to salt for this kind of adventure.”

“Rigo’ll be all right. He’s tougher than you think.”

“I hope so.”

“Besides, it isn’t your fault. You want to blame somebody, blame the skybastards. The Empyrean are the ones keeping us down. If we had access to real food, medical care, even one-tenth of what they have, none of this would’ve ever happened. Rigo would damn sure have his leg.”

“I guess.”

Lane claps him on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Boss. Don’t bust yourself up over it.”

“I gotta tell you something,” Cael says, and for a half second he thinks,
I could tell him about the Blight; I could just say it right now. Lane says we’re family. He’ll understand. He saw the Blighters at Martha’s Bend, the ones working for Pop.
But instead, he says, “Back there at the depot, I saw . . . Boyland. And Wanda.”

Lane snorts. “Were they k-i-s-s-i-n-g? Or f-u-c—”

“Ew, no, no, like, I wasn’t hallucinating. They were really there.” He tells Lane the whole story. Minus the part where Wanda saw the Blight.

When he’s done telling the story, Lane goggles. “What? Are you shitting me?”

“I would not dare shit you about this.”

“King Hell.”

“Yeah. There’s more.”

“Uh-oh.”

Cael points out over the moonlit corn. “I saw something out there. A . . . light or something. Moving around just above the stalk tops.”

“You think it’s them.”

“I do.”

“That is not good news.”

“Not precisely. If Wanda’s with him . . . who else?”

“That’s a question I almost don’t want answered.”

Cael says, “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Cael, if we’re being followed—”

“Let’s see if we can find out more information first. Maybe
we can handle this instead of making it a thing. I don’t give a sack of rats if Boyland gets blown to greasy bits, but . . . I don’t want to see Wanda hurt.”

“Okay,” Lane says. He pitches the cigarette. “I’m gonna head back to the bunk. You coming?”

“Nah. I’m still worked up. Don’t suspect sleep is really in the cards tonight. Go on; I’m good.”

THE TIDINGS OF SARANYU

THE FESTIVAL BEGINS
at dawn, which is when it always begins, for that is when the goddess Saranyu—one of the old goddesses, and the patron goddess of this flotilla—was born. The whole flotilla wakes early. Children run around in black and white masks: those in white are the avatars of Saranyu; those in black are the agents of Chaya, the dark god born of Saranyu’s shadow. Chaya chases Saranyu. Saranyu chases Chaya. Children chase children, laughing, roughhousing.

Adult women wear long, colorful dresses. Men wear colorful trousers and baggy shirts: turquoise blue, coral pink, orange the color of fire’s heart, red the color of pig’s blood. They chase each other, too—not as enemies but as men trying to find and seduce the women, much as the god Vivasat chased and seduced the flotilla’s patron in the sky.

Cloud cannons belch forth big puffs of white and gray on days when the sky is clear, for it is said that Saranyu dwelled in
the clouds, until her husband found her hiding as—of course—a winged mare. The day gets later and the clouds are given color—until soon everything is wreathed in a rainbow haze.

All day: drinking and laughing and chasing. Men on rooftops, throwing flowers. Women on propeller-bikes, trying to catch them. Auto-mates on stages, acting out scenes from the Saranyu mythologies.

Percy tells Merelda all this as they lie together in bed. As he speaks, his fingers walk forceful little steps up her shirt, toward the buttons around her collar, while his other hand holds her hip.

She can see the visidex behind him. On the bedside table.

She keeps asking him things to distract him. And maybe, though she’s hard-pressed to admit it, to distract herself.

“I’m done answering your questions,” he says, pressing hard, cold kisses along her jawline. “The festival is tomorrow morning. My family is asleep. We are awake. Let’s make the most of it.”

She swallows hard, trying not to sound nervous. “Why didn’t you get me one of those . . . pretty, colorful dresses?”

He pulls back from the kissing and levels a look at her—the look a parent gives to a child when he’s about to administer a lesson. Or, rather, the look
Pop
used to give
her
in that situation. A greasy layer of discomfort settles over her at the thought.

“La Mer,” he says with a sigh. “The Tidings of Saranyu is about men and women, yes, but Saranyu was married. Vivasat was her husband. And so it is a day to celebrate that—and many husbands and wives, or wives and wives, or husbands and husbands, choose to consummate their marriages again on the day. That is why they call the night of the festival the Night of Reconciliation, for once the children are in bed . . .”

She bristles. “Is that what you’ll be doing?”

“Of course.”

“You’ll be with
her
.”

“
Her
name is Mercy.”

Percy and Mercy. Ugh.
“I hate that name.”

“Oh,
tsk-tsk
. I told you in the beginning; jealousy will not suit this arrangement we have. You are the mistress. She is the wife. These are the roles we play.” He smiles and lets his hand drift downward until it’s cupping the inside of her knee. Finger tickling the back of her leg. She fails to repress a small giggle. “Besides, it’s you I truly love. And when I make love to her, as is my husbandly duty, she will lie there like a bird that struck a window and fell prone in the street. But you’re not like that.” He stops tickling, and she stops squirming. His hand drifts farther north. Across the expanse of her thigh. “Besides, tomorrow is just . . . nonsense. The old gods are a joke. They do not exist. Nor did the Lord and Lady come and usurp them. Nor was there ever a Jeezum Crow, or an Old Scratch, or the Saintangels or Sea Devils. We are the gods of our kingdom, the keepers of our domain.”

Fingers now just at the inside of her thigh. Tracing small circles.

“And you,” he says, “are my domain.”

They own you.
Gwennie’s words echo in her head.

He reaches in to kiss her.

She pulls away.

He gives her a look. Conflicted. Confused. Almost angry.

Gwennie’s gotten under her skin. Forced a little splinter of doubt into her mind. Doubt and shame and guilt.

That angers her. She shouldn’t have to feel angry. Percy is good to her. A spike of jealousy rises in her against his wife, and she thinks,
I need to get on his good side; I need to show him that I’m loyal, and Gwennie can go to hell and—

Before she even realizes it, she whispers: “I saw Gwendolyn Shawcatch.”

The peregrine’s hand recoils from her. Her flesh aches to have it replaced, but the mood is dead; the alarm is plain in his eyes—dancing like ball lightning.
“What?”

Tears line the bottoms of her eyelids. “She came to me. Earlier today. She . . .” Her eyes press shut.
Stop crying, stop crying, you can do this; you can make this all go away.
Her voice becomes the tiniest, breathiest whisper. “She’s here, Percy. In the closet. Behind you.”

The look of love and warmth and lust that lingered on his face is now well and truly gone.

He gives her a stare—she can’t tell if it’s a caution against danger or a warning that he
is
the danger. Either way, he slides out of bed, pants still on, shirt off, the half-light from the corner lamp drawing lines across the etched contours of his broad shoulders.

He reaches down. Pulls up his ankle holster—which was pooled on the floor in a puddle of black straps—and draws his long, sleek sonic pistol before standing and creeping toward the closet.

Merelda pulls the sheets closer. Then pushes them away. Then backs up off the bed and stands, all the while thinking,
I’m so sorry; I just couldn’t do it
.

Percy turns toward her. Presses a long finger against those pretty lips of hers.

Then he flings open the closet.

Gwennie lunges for him.

The realization lands in her gut like a swallowed cannonball:
Merelda McAvoy betrayed me
.

She shouldn’t be surprised. But she’s furious just the same. This stupid, selfish girl may have cost her everything. Her freedom. Her family. Her home.

All of that, knocked off the table with a sweeping arm.