Blightborn (28 page)

When he throws open the door, she leaps out with one of the three unsheathed knives, the blades spun around so that she can stab instead of slash—

But he dismantles her.
Dissects
her attack. He catches her knife-arm, slams it backward so the wrist hits the jamb of the closet. The knife clatters. She swings a fist—he leans back as if it’s nothing. His knee pumps into her gut. The bulbous back end of his pistol cracks against the side of her head.

She remains standing, but the whole flotilla tilts suddenly, spinning like the blades of a windmill. Then her cheek hits the carpet, and she realizes,
I’m not standing at all
.

He grabs her. Sits her up. Slams her against the end table. She’s having trouble breathing. She knows her arms are there, but they feel like scarecrow arms stuffed with hay and corn—no muscle, just twin sacks hanging off her body like so much useless meat.

In the background is Merelda, watching in glassy-eyed horror. Standing by the lamp. One hand over her mouth.

The peregrine thrusts the needle-like barrel of his sonic shooter in between Gwennie’s lips. The metal clacks against her teeth. She tastes the tinny tang of the weapon.

“You should have left the city when you had the chance,” the peregrine says. “You could have fled, little sparrow. Over time we would have forgotten. But here you are. Why?
Why
are you here? To see your old friend? To hurt her? To hurt me?” He rattles the gun in her mouth. She tries to cry out and struggle, but he grabs her throat. “Truth is, I don’t care. I told you if you crossed me, I’d hurt everything around you. I’ll recall your family. I’ll kill your father in front of your mother, and your mother in front of your brother. And that little brother of yours, I’ll break him apart like a sugar cookie.”

I’m going to die,
she thinks.

Defiance roars through her like a lightning strike.

“Uck oo,” Gwennie snarls around the barrel of the gun.

He sneers, his nostrils flaring. “Take good fortune, because
you
won’t be around to see them suffer. Bye-bye, Miss Shaw—”

The lamp crashes down on his head.

The peregrine slumps suddenly to the side. Shards of porcelain sticking out of his hairline. The gun out of his hand and her mouth.

He moans. Eyelids flutter like a corn leaf in a sudden wind.

But he doesn’t wake. He just lies there. On his side.

Blood pooling.

Merelda stands there. The broken base of the lamp still in her hand.

Gwennie gasps. Reaches down, picks up the pistol.

She points it at the peregrine’s head.

Merelda grabs her wrist. “Don’t! Please.”

So Gwennie points the pistol at Merelda instead.

“You betrayed me,” Gwennie says.

“I know. But . . .” She looks at the peregrine as if to say,
I fixed it
.

Gwennie hisses: “I almost died.”

“I’m sorry. He’s been . . . good to me.”

“Well, he’s been
really godsdamn bad
to me.”

“I’m sorry. You don’t understand—”

Gwennie cries out in rage. Her hand is shaking. Her knees wobbling. The walls feel as if they’re closing in. As if her whole world is threatening to crush her to bone dust and red paste. She grabs the visidex off the nightstand and shoves Merelda onto the bed, storming past.

By the time she’s at the front door, Merelda’s calling after her. Sobbing. “Please! Take me with you.”

“Eat dust,” Gwennie says, reaching for the door. Merelda grabs her wrist and holds it. Her face is a twisted mask of sorrow, tears pouring, mouth open in a grief-struck hole—strands of saliva connecting her lips.

“He’ll kill me. Don’t you understand?
He’ll kill me
.”

“Good.”

“My brother!” she cries in a wretched, weeping stutter. “Don’t tell him. Don’t tell him what I did or who I was. Please. Please.”

Cael.

What will she tell Cael?

She betrayed me but then saved me, and I left her behind. To whatever horrible fate awaits her.
He’d never be able to look at her again.

“Damnit!” she says. She tucks the pistol into the back of her pants and pulls her shirt over it. Then she pokes Merelda in the chest. “Stop crying. You can come. You can come! But I swear, Merelda McAvoy, you ever think to betray me again like that, I’ll shove you in a box and wrap it with a pretty bow and deliver you to the peregrine personally. Let’s go.”

THE OPEN DOOR

LANE FEELS THE HESITATION
all over—in the back of his throat, in the hinges of his joints, in the well of his belly, as if his body is resisting what he’s about to do, as if all parts of him are straining to turn away from Killian’s door and march back to the bunk room and—

And it’s too late. Because he sees the light framing the edge of the door, and here he is, knocking. Wincing. Cursing under his breath.

The door opens.

Killian. Framed by the light from a pair of electric lamps. A glass of whiskey—his so-called ‘jorum of skee’—in his hand.

“Howdy now, Lane,” Killian says. The side of his cheek bulges out with the thrust of his tongue. “It’s late.”

“I like late better than I like early.”

Killian smirks. “In this we have an accord. Come on in.”

He’s never been in the captain’s chambers before. Maps on
the walls. Shelves of old books and sheaves of withered, weathered papers. In the corner stands a small, ornate cabinet—metal etching in the glass doors—showcasing bottles of various liquors. Lane recognizes the toothy shark of Micky Finn’s Botanical Gin staring out front and center, as if ready to leap and bite. Killian pulls over a chair, plants it in the middle of the room.

“Go on. Sit. I’m just here figuring out the fleet’s next move.” That wicked smile of his flashes. “You look tense, Lane Moreau. Lean back. Let the Saintangels carry your worries in their teeth to the bountiful garden of the Lord and Lady.”

Lane laughs nervously. “Glass of that gin would help.”

“Oh ho ho, you a gin drinker? I shoulda pinned you to the board as a gin drinker. It’s not my style, not really—too many things happening on my tongue, and, if I’m being honest, it tickles my nose a little. The skee, though, the skee is always my friend. Gotten me through many a troubling night.”

“I’ll take some skee then.”

Killian laughs. “Lane, don’t change yourself to suit the tastes of other people. You’re the one who has to live the life; they just have to watch. Might as well enjoy it, and if they don’t like it, stick up a pair of middle fingers and ask them very kindly to screw off and die alone. You, my friend, are drinking some gin tonight.”

Into the cabinet. Cap off the bottle of Micky Finn’s.

He hands a glass of gin to Lane.

Lane sips it. Licorice and evergreen and—sure enough, he feels a little tickle in his nose.

“What can I do you for, Lane Moreau?”

“Something I have to tell you.”

Killian doesn’t sit. He just paces around Lane in a circle—like the orbit of a buzzard flying over its kill. “Confession time,” Killian says. “Confessions are always so intriguing, and thus I am intrigued.”

“Cael saw something.”

“Saw something? Saw what? Shooting star? Skunk ape? One of the Saintangels come down on a chariot made of moonlight and starshine?”

Lane thinks,
Don’t do this; don’t tell him; divert, change the subject, make something up—Cael is your captain, not Killian Kelly
.

“Cael saw a boat. Following us.”

There it is. Out in the open. It feels better. Doesn’t it? Suddenly he’s not so sure.

“A boat.” Killian sucks air through his teeth, takes a noisy sip of whiskey. “That is curious. Can’t be Empyrean—those sonsa-bitches are like termites; once you see one they’re already all up in your walls. Someone else then.”

“Cael thinks it’s . . . people from our town. From Boxelder.”

“That where you’re from? Boxelder? I never thought to ask.” Killian stops right behind Lane. He sets the glass on the floor. Then his hands drop to Lane’s shoulders. Give them a squeeze. “So you’re being tracked by a posse from home, huh?”

“We—” And now Killian starts massaging Lane’s shoulders. Thumbs pressing hard circles. Fingertips pushing skin and muscle toward his collarbones. Warmth radiates. His whole neck tingles. Lane clears his throat. “We got into a bit of a row back home. Cael’s father was growing a garden. Had some . . . ah, hobos helping him out.”

“Hobos. We’re friend to hobos, that’s for sure. If you’re a
raider, you’re an exile, and if you’re an exile, you’re a hobo.” Killian draws a deep breath through his nose, and Lane finds himself doing the same. “I do appreciate you bringing this to my attention. You’re loyal. That’s good.”

One hand leaves Lane’s shoulder.

Moves to his cheek. Starts caressing that cheek with the backs of Killian’s knuckles.

“Uhhh,” Lane says, mouth suddenly mealy and unable to form proper words. His heart kicks up like a tornado. He stands. Spins around. Hands out. “I should go.”

“Whoa, whoa, settle down, horsey; you’re working yourself into a froth.” Killian reaches out and clasps both of Lane’s wrists together. He uses them like a rope to pull himself forward. Grinning, tongue snaking across the flat whites of his teeth. He leans in for what is unmistakably a kiss, and again Lane gasps and pulls away—

His mind is going crazy.
This is what you want. This is who you are. What the hell are you doing?

Killian echoes the question. “What the hell, fella? Have my eyes been duplicitous traitors all along, seeing things that weren’t really there? Because here, Lane Moreau, I thought you’d been giving me a certain look since the moment I took that gun away from your head.”

“I . . . I don’t—”

“You sure?”

Killian’s hand moves to Lane’s stomach. Slides under the shirt. Dips downward, begins to fiddle with the buttons on Lane’s pants. He doesn’t pop the button. Not yet. But Lane can feel him toying with the clasp.

“You tell me no, I’ll stop right now. And though it will be a sad and lonely night for me—in which I will surely soak my pillows through with a couple-few tears and a whole lot of sweat thinking about you—I am obliged to respect your wishes.” Killian clacks his teeth together. “You don’t want this, just walk away. No harm, no foul, friend.”

Lane doesn’t pull away.

“Last chance. Pull away or stand right there.”

Lane stands perfectly still. Trembling a little, maybe.

“Thought so,” Killian says, and kisses Lane hard on the mouth.

Cael leans out over the back of the trawler, the faint lights of the other boats drifting alongside in the darkness. Sometimes he thinks he sees the shifting of shadows way out over the corn—the bright sails, he imagines, of Boyland’s land-yacht. The bucket-headed bastard at the prow of the boat. And silly Wanda at the back, worrying over him even still. She’s trying to figure out who he is, maybe, who she got herself Obligated to. If she’s smart—and he thinks she is—she’s starting to worry about that.

All told, Cael feels damn unsettled. That question of Lane’s from earlier—
What do you stand for?
—haunts him now. And it feels bound up with the Blight popping out of his chest, one vine twisted around another, as if he’s been caring about the wrong things—or at least not all the right things—this whole time.

He’s now a hobo. And a raider. And a Blighter. Three things that a few months ago he at best dismissed, at worst hated. And being those three things, he thinks, should give him some
perspective, same way that seeing Pop work with those hobos and those Blighted folk gave him some, because now it’s all the more personal. Now it’s
him
.

And yet inside he’s got that twisting, turning feeling—a bundle of starving rats that make up that revulsion he feels, a revulsion that seems a part of him now. Like even though he is those things, he still
hates
those things. Like maybe he ought to hate himself.

But then it swings back the other way:
I should stand for something greater than myself. I should try to look past my own damn skin
.

Of course, right now his own damn skin is betraying him. And he thinks, where else is the Blight going in his body? Earl Poltroon’s whole arm was gone, replaced by root and stalk, vine and leaf. Is it in his marrow? Sending wormy runners into the meat of his brain?

How long does he have?

Behind him, a drag-
thump
, drag-
thump
. He turns, startled, and sees Rigo limping up on his crutch. “Hey, Captain,” he says, grunting with each syllable. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Cael shakes his head. “Naw.”

“You’re bugged by all this.”

“All this?”

“Being with the raiders.”

“I feel like I’m in bed with Old Scratch on this one.”

“Yeah, I know. But they seem all right. They fixed me up when they could’ve just left me there in the corn.” Rigo leans forward with a groan, watching the moonlit corn disappear from the back of the boat. “Though damn if my leg doesn’t itch something fierce.”

“Rigo, I—” The words catch in Cael’s throat, and he wants to tell Rigo all kinds of things. He wants to say he’s sorry for dragging him along. He wants to say it’s his fault that Rigo lost his leg. He wants to tell his friend that Mister Cozido is out there right now with Wanda and Boyland searching for his son.