Coyote Rising (57 page)

Seeing the bridge intact again, he felt a surge of joy. In his absence, the Matriarch had persevered. Once he returned to Liberty, she’d make sure that the ones who’d dare attempt to murder a Savant were brought to justice. She would not let their crimes go . . .

“Over here! It’s over here!”

Hearing a child’s voice shouting somewhere behind him, he looked around, saw a couple of small figures running toward him: two boys, carrying fishing rods. Lurching the rest of the way out of the water, he raised his free hand. One of the boys stopped, his face expressing fear. The other one slowed down but continued forward, more curious than afraid.

“Who are you?” the boy demanded.

“S-s-s-sa . . .” Covered with sand, his vocodor made only a harsh noise; the boy stared at him quizzically until he adjusted the pitch and volume, tried again. “S-s-savant Manuel Castro. I—”

“What happened to you?” The boy stared at his broken leg. “You look like crap!”

He was unaccustomed to such impudence, especially from one so young; nonetheless, it was good to see another face, hear another voice. “I was captured by members of the resistance. They took me prisoner, then threw me off a raft several miles upstream. They tried to kill me, but as you see—”

A stone struck the side of his head.

Castro felt no pain, yet his vision blurred for a half instant. Looking around, he saw the other boy pulling his arm back to hurl another rock at him. “A Savant! Tomas, get away! It’s a Savant!”

“Stop that!” he shouted. “Under authority of the Matriarch, I order you to!”

“You know the Matriarch?” Tomas peered at him.

“Of course, the Matriarch Hernandez!” The other boy threw his rock, but it missed him, splashing into the water behind him. “Stop this! And tell me who you are!”

“I’m Tomas Conseco, and I’m taking you prisoner.” Then Tomas kicked the crutch out from beneath his leg.

Castro toppled to the ground, and the boys attacked him. He wrapped his left arm across his face to shield his remaining eye, as for several long minutes they kicked him and pelted him with stones and gravel. When they finally got tired of their sport, the boys grabbed him by the arms and began dragging him across the beach. He was impressed by their strength; only hatred could lend so much muscle to those so young. For a moment, he thought they were going to pitch him back into the channel—which would have been a blessing—but instead they hauled him toward the bridge. Yet the worst indignity came when Tomas opened the fly of his trousers and, with hideous glee, urinated upon him.

It was at that point when the Savant Manuel Castro, former lieutenant governor of New Florida, realized that many things had changed while he’d been away.

On the eve of First Landing Day, Liberty was busy preparing itself
for the festivities.

As he strode through town, Carlos saw townspeople suspending
pennants between woodframe houses, stringing lights above their windows. Out front of the grange hall, vendors and craftspeople were setting up tents; the early arrivals had already put out their wares upon benches and tables: handmade clothing, catskin boots and gloves, cookware and cutlery, labor-saving devices for the frontier home both complex and simple, hand-carved children’s toys. Shags carrying visitors from the Midland colonies shambled down Main Street, with Proctors directing them to stables where the beasts could be kept while their owners found temporary lodging either with friends or in one of the boardinghouses in Shuttlefield.

And everywhere Carlos looked, the new flag of the Coyote Federation rose from poles or hung from porches; it had even been painted across the faux birch walls of some of the houses that had recently been built along the side streets. Despite his dark mood, this gave him a certain sense of satisfaction. During all the public meetings he’d chaired as mayor, not even the long debates over the exact wording of the various articles of the Liberty Compact had raised as much ire as the ones pertaining to the flag’s design, and it wasn’t until Vonda Cayle presented her compromise—the Ursae Majoris constellation, transposed upon three horizontal bars of red, white, and blue—that all sides were satisfied. Now that the “Big Dipper” had been formally adopted, everyone took pride in it; at least it wasn’t as scary as the one proposed by the Forest Camp delegation, which featured a snarling coyote above the slogan “Don’t Mess With Me!”

The long, cold summer of ’06 was almost over, and everyone was ready for a party, yet that wasn’t what occupied his mind just then. Ignoring the bunting and decorations, giving only passing nods and hand-waves to citizens who called his name, he headed for the windowless log cabin at the end of the street. First Landing Day could wait; before he could join the celebration, there was some family business that needed to be settled.

The Chief Proctor was waiting for him outside. “She’s in there,” Chris said, then held up a hand as Carlos marched toward the door. “Look, wait a minute—”

“Wait for what?” Carlos started to walk around him, but Chris stepped
in his way. “How many times have your guys brought her in? Two? Three?”

“It’s the fourth . . . but it’s more serious than that.” Chris dropped his voice. “This time she’s put someone in the infirmary.”

Carlos stopped, stared at him. It wasn’t the first time Marie had been taken into custody by the blueshirts; on three occasions his sister had been charged with public drunkenness, and the last time she’d also faced charges of assault and battery stemming from a brawl in which she’d been involved. “What happened?”

“Lars was with her,” Chris said quietly. “They picked a fight with some guys from Forest Camp. About what, I don’t know, but Lars threw the first punch.”

“So it was just a fight.”

“It got worse. Witnesses say she broke a bottle and slashed someone’s face with it. Wendy just called, told me that she’s had to put ten stitches just below the right eye.” Chris paused. “Sorry, man, but that’s assault with a deadly weapon. I can’t look the other way this time.”

Carlos nodded. The first two incidents, he’d asked Chris to do nothing more than lock her up for the night. The third time, he used his position as mayor to persuade the magistrates to be lenient with her; grudgingly, they had only sentenced her to house arrest and four weeks of public service, the minimum penalty under Colony Law.

“All right. I understand.” Chris was right; this time, she’d gone too far. Carlos ran a hand through his hair as he forced himself to calm down. “Is Lars with her?” Chris nodded. “Let me talk to them, please.”

Like other buildings erected during the first year of the colony’s existence, the stockade had recently been expanded. The original log cabin—where, ironically enough, Chris himself had been interred on several occasions before he’d straightened himself out—now served as his office; the new part was built of fieldstone and cement and served as the county jail. Unlocking a solid blackwood door, Chris led Carlos down a narrow corridor of stone cells fronted with iron bars; at the end of the corridor, he found his sister.

“Heard you coming a mile away.” Marie lay on her back upon a small bunk, one arm cast across her forehead. “You should keep your voice
down,” she added, pointing to the tiny window above her. “I could hear you through there.”

“If your ears are that good, then you know what we were talking about.”

“I only said I heard your voice. Didn’t say I know what you said.” Marie sighed. “Okay, all right. I’m sorry. Won’t do it again, I promise. Now would you get my shoes back? My feet are cold.”

“Mine too.” In the cell across from hers, Lars Thompson sat on his bunk, holding a blood-soaked tissue to his nose. “Hell, you think I’m going to kill myself just because I pounded some lumberjack?”

“Looks like that lumberjack got in a few pounds of his own,” Carlos said, and Lars glowered at him with mutual disdain. He’d never liked Lars, not even when he’d been a member of Rigil Kent, and especially not since he’d become his sister’s boyfriend. Lars had been in trouble before, too, yet his uncle was Clark Thompson, the leader of Blue Company during the Battle of New Florida, now a member of the Colonial Council. Like Marie, he’d also benefited from family influence.

“I understand you started it.” Carlos folded his arms as he leaned against the bars of his cell. “Want to tell me why?”

Lars said nothing. “He was sticking up for the corps,” Marie said, lacing her hands together behind her head. “This guy claimed that, if it hadn’t been for Bob Lee—”

“Robert Lee.” Carlos hated it when people called the captain by a nickname he’d detested when he was alive. Especially those who knew better.

“Whatever . . . if it hadn’t been for him, there was no way we’d have taken down the Union. That we were outnumbered, outgunned . . .”

“And he was right,” Carlos said. Lars started to object, but he stared him down. “Go on. You were saying . . . ?”

“So one thing came to another, and . . . aw, c’mon! Where was he when we crossed the East Channel? I asked him, and he said he was taking care of his wife and kid!”

“We asked for volunteers, not conscripts.” She began to argue, but he raised his hand. “So you two decided to defend the honor of Rigil Kent. Is that it?”

“Hell, yeah!” Lars stood up, advanced toward the bars. Carlos could see the dried blood on the front of his shirt; how much of it was his own, and how much was someone else’s, there was no way of knowing. “And what would you have done?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Carlos shrugged. “Asked if he had a picture of his family? Offered him a drink? Proposed a toast to Captain Lee?” He ignored Lars, looked straight at Marie. “Anything but open his face with a broken bottle. I understand Wendy had to put some stitches in him. I wonder how he’s going to explain that to his wife and kid the next time he sees them. He’s just lucky he’ll be able to see ’em at all.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt him.” Her voice became very small. “Just give him a scratch.”

A sarcastic retort hovered on his lips. Instead, he regarded her for a few moments, once again wondering what had happened to his sister. He’d discussed this with Dr. Okada, in her capacity as chief physician; although psychology wasn’t her specialty, it was her opinion that Marie was afflicted with some sort of personality disorder. She’d come of age waging guerrilla warfare. When she should have been engaging in the usual rites of puberty, instead she’d been learning how to shoot people with a high-powered rifle. Indeed, she’d even taken pleasure in her task; even if she wasn’t sociopathic, her lack of remorse put her close to the edge.

Or maybe it was just that she and Lars didn’t know what do with themselves now that the revolution was over. The remaining members of the Union Guard had long since left; the Coyote Federation was at peace. Everyone else had put down their guns and picked up hammers and nails. Even Lars’s younger brother, Garth, who’d been bloodthirsty in his own right, had helped build the greenhouses that helped keep everyone alive. But perhaps there were bound to be a few who weren’t ready to stop fighting, if only because that’s all they’d ever learned how to do.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t tolerate this behavior any longer. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” he said, “but if you think you can just let this pass, you’re—”

His com unit chirped just then. As much as he wanted to ignore it, he
plucked it from his belt, held it to his ear. “Mayor’s office,” he said, trying to ignore Lars’s sniggering.

“Carlos, it’s Jaime from AirMed.”
That would be Jaime Hodge, a gyro pilot with Liberty’s medical airlift team. “
We’ve just picked up someone from Bridgeton and we’re flying him in. Touching down in Shuttlefield in ten minutes.”

Carlos let out his breath. He turned away from Marie’s cell. “Jaime, can this wait? I’m in the middle of—”

“
You may want to get over there. It’s Manuel Castro . . . we’ve found him.
”

Carlos’s hand trembled on the phone; he tightened his grip to keep from dropping it. The last person in the world he’d ever expected to turn up again . . .

“I understand,” he said quietly. “Don’t let anyone else know about this.”

“
Sure. He’s in pretty bad shape. We’ve already called ahead to the infirmary, and they’re sending down the ambulance to meet us.
”

“I’ll meet you there.” Carlos clicked off, then turned to Chris. “Something’s come up. Keep ’em here until their arraignment. I’ll inform the magistrates that we need to—”

“Carlos!” Marie jumped off the bed, rushed to the bars. “I’m your sister! You can’t—”

“Sorry, kid, but you and your boyfriend have crossed the line.” He reluctantly gazed back at her. “Nothing I can do.”

“You’re the mayor! You can . . . come back here!”

But he was already walking away, trying not to hear her voice as it rose to become an angry shriek that followed him down the cellblock. Even after he shut the door, he still heard the obscenities she shouted at him.

Manuel Castro lay motionless upon an examination table in the
Shuttlefield infirmary’s emergency room, his robotic form incongruous in a place meant for flesh-and-blood humans. Nonetheless, Wendy had propped a pillow beneath his head and draped a sheet over his body; Carlos found her with the Savant, her hands in the pockets of her smock.