Red set the little potted cactus down on the
table in front of her brother, Eighteen. We have to give him a name! she
thought for at least the hundredth time. She wanted him – both of them, Twelve,
too – to choose their own names. Rooster had given her hers – but it had been a
choice. What about Red? And she’d liked it right away, the simplicity of
it; the way, just three letters, it sounded like a pet name, something intimate
between two people who cared for one another. And in his low, rough voice, too…Red…
She suppressed a shiver and focused on the task
at hand.
Eighteen studied her with ready attention, little
hands folded together on the tabletop.
Twelve stood against the wall, one boot propped
against it, arms crossed, expression sullen. She wished Much were here, so she
could knock their teenage heads together.
“I thought we’d work on healing today,” she said,
nudging the cactus pot a fraction with the tip of her finger. Of all the things
she’d thought she might be, teacher had never been one of them. Tuck was
helping – when he wasn’t face-down somewhere – but he’d declared early on that
most of her powers were beyond him, and that she would be the better example
for her brothers. So here she was, pretending to be a grownup, giving lessons.
“Oh, I’ve never done that before,” Eighteen said,
apprehensive now. He fidgeted in his seat. “Is it hard?”
Red couldn’t help but smile at him. “It takes a
lot of concentration, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not so bad. We’ll
start small.” She pulled a small pair of scissors from her vest pocket and
snipped off a sliver of cactus.
Eighteen made a small, distressed sound in his
throat as the bit of wet succulent landed on the table.
“Now watch.” She set the scissors down, and
cupped both hands in the air loosely around the plant. Carefully, avoiding the
needles, she touched her fingertips to the green flesh of the cactus. She
closed her eyes, and swept her mind clean. Pictured the cactus: an image that
floated in the dark, her sole focus. Then she drew on the power that lived in
her bones.
It felt different, calling forth life instead of
fire. But not too different; fire was a real thing, a living thing. It was more
a matter of degree; it took less effort to heal something. It was a warmth
instead of a blaze. A safe heat, rather than an inferno.
She felt that it worked, a crackling in her
fingertips; felt the cactus sing to her, the near-silent hum of reknitted
flesh, just like when she did this for Rooster.
When she opened her eyes, the cactus was whole,
and Eighteen stared at her with wonder.
“Wow,” he breathed.
She smiled at him, his amazement infectious.
“Here, I’ll cut it again, and this time you can try.”
Twelve snorted. “What’s the point?”
Red hadn’t ever wanted to glare like she did
since meeting Twelve. She forced herself to glance at him slowly, and calmly,
kept her features schooled. “Why would you say that?”
He sneered. “Healing. Like that means
something. We’re meant to burn things. It’s what we’re for.”
“It’s what the Institute wanted us for,”
she corrected, though it was too easy to feel the old pull; the weight of that
place tugging at her, wanting to make her into something useful. “That place
doesn’t own us. It never did. We get to choose what we do with our powers.”
“We weren’t born,” he shot back. “They
made us.”
“We were born,” she said, patience fraying. She
didn’t relish explaining surrogacy to him – and, she knew, even if he understood
the concept, that he wasn’t talking about the physical process. Their parents –
whoever they were – hadn’t tumbled into bed together, hands wandering, breath
sighing out of them. Hadn’t kissed, and touched, and fucked; none of them had
been a happy accident, a wonderful surprise. When the surrogates birthed them,
their parents hadn’t been waiting in the wings, ready to scoop them up, crying
and kissing their foreheads. Their parents had never met them. Had ordered
their creation – ordered them up like generals commissioning the manufacture of
weaponry. “Just…try to keep an open mind, okay?”
He turned his face away from her.
When she told Tuck about her struggles with
Twelve, he advised her not to rush him. “You can’t make him want to learn,” he
would say, sagely, and then pour another cup of wine.
She focused on Eighteen. “Ready to try?”
He nodded, his eyes huge.
She snipped another bit of cactus, this one even
smaller, and nudged the pot closer to him. “It helps to touch it – but,
careful. There, like that. Now close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think
about it growing. Concentrate. Think about what’s hurt – your mind will show
you – and then draw enough power to heat it, but not burn it.”
He nodded, small fingertips touching the plant,
and closed his eyes. His brow furrowed.
Don’t concentrate that hard, she thought, but didn’t
voice.
His eyelids scrunched up – his whole face did. He
bit down on his lip.
And his hands burst into flames.
“Ah!” He let go, and the fire winked out. The
cactus was a little singed, smoke curled up from its flesh, but it hadn’t
caught fire like a more delicate plant would have. “Oh no!”
“It’s alright, it’s alright.” She moved around
the table and laid her arm across his shoulders – he was shaking. “It was only
your first try. You’ll get it next time.”
Twelve muttered something inaudible behind her.
She turned to reprimand him –
And hurried footfalls echoed down the hallway
outside, coming closer. By the time she’d glanced that way, a crew member had
poked his head into the open door – that was important for her, keeping the
doors open when she worked with the boys, and having a room with a window:
showing them she wasn’t trapping them and forcing them to learn anything, even
though Twelve acted like that was the case.
“Red, we’re having a big meeting in an hour. Rob
asked me to tell you. All personnel. In the great hall.”
“Okay, thanks, I’ll be there.”
He nodded and moved off.
“Does that mean us, too?” Twelve asked, tone
mocking.
“I don’t know, are you personnel?” she asked. It
felt like a mean thing to say, but she was just…tired of him. He was
exhausting.
He didn’t answer.
~*~
She spent another forty-five minutes coaching
Eighteen through the process while Twelve held up the wall and stared out the
window. By his fifth try, Eighteen was no longer shooting flames from his
palms, but other than a bit of golden glow, he hadn’t been able to heal the
cactus.
He sniffed, eyes bright with tears.
“Look at the progress you’ve made,” Red said,
patting his shoulder. “It’s not even been an hour, and you’ve already gotten
better at controlling your fire. That’s huge!”
“It – it is?”
“Yes! You’re not going to master this in a day,
Eight–” She stumbled over the name. The non-name. She looked down into his
cute, freckled face, and she couldn’t call him Eighteen.
Fresh tears welled in his eyes.
“You’re doing great,” she stressed, reaching on
instinct to smooth an errant red curl off his forehead. “A little more
practice, and you’ll be helping Tuck and me in the med bay, huh?”
His gaze dropped, and he nodded, slowly,
sniffling some more.
“Do you want to keep practicing while I go to the
meeting?”
Another slow nod.
“Okay. I’ll be back.” She lifted a glance to
Twelve, surprised to find him studying her, his expression unreadable. “Help
your brother,” she said.
“Is that an order?”
“Yes,” she said, hating the way his expression
flickered – a brief show of emotion – before he pressed his lips together and
glared her out of the room.
She let out a deep breath when she was in the
hall, reaching to massage the tension from the back of her neck.
“Trouble?” a pleasant voice asked.
Little John fell into step beside her, seeming to
take up most of the hall. His was never an imposing presence, though. He was a
big man, but he carried it well – carried it softly, almost. No one as cheerful
as him could ever intimidate anyone, no matter his size.
“I need to come up with names for the boys,” she
said, as they went down the long, stone-floored corridor that led to the grand
staircase. “I can’t keep calling them by their lab numbers.”
“Hm. Have you shown them one of those name
websites?”
“Yes. Eighteen gets overwhelmed, and Twelve just
doesn’t care – about anything. That’s the real trouble.” She sighed again. “I
can’t tell if he hates me because he’s fifteen, or because he doesn’t want to
be here.”
“He chose to leave the Institute. I’d say he
wants to be here.”
“He left because Severin asked him to,” Red
countered, hand dropping to her side. “And Severin’s off mooning over the last
tsarevich of Russia.”
“Mooning?” John asked, tone amused.
She felt her face heat. “I didn’t mean it like
that.”
He chuckled. “It’s okay if you did. Everybody
moons over somebody, at some point, I figure.”
God knew she did. And she’d seen her brother
Seven – now Severin – lean into Alexei Romanov; had watched the tsarevich put
an arm around his shoulders and comfort him. Alexei had been there when she
hadn’t; Alexei, and his pack, were his rescuers, in a way, and she’d never
bothered to go back and try to fetch any of her siblings. She didn’t begrudge
Sev his crush, or fascination, or loyalty.
She could have used his help with Twelve, though.
“I know they’re your brothers,” John went on,
“and I know you worry. But the older one will come around. And they’ll find
names when they’re ready.” He knocked the side of his fist very lightly against
her shoulder. “It’ll all work out.”
She marveled, still, that the people here – the
wolves, especially – thought nothing of touching her, even though she could
have torched them all with a thought. She wouldn’t, but it was strange
for anyone besides Rooster to know that straight away.
“You’re very optimistic,” she said, as they reached
the top of the stairs.
“Travel with Rob long enough, and you’ll be
optimistic, too.”
An appealing idea.
Red took hold of the bannister because, as
always, the staircase left her a bit dizzy with wonder. It wasn’t just grand in
theory, but a true grand staircase. It led down in a graceful, wide
curve from the upper gallery, where Richard Platagenet’s banner adorned the
wall at regular intervals, the three gold lions on a red field. The stair
treads were of stone, the bannister of gleaming carved wood, and it was a long,
long way down to the great hall, where a massive plank table sat topped by iron
candelabrum, old-fashioned tallow candles dripping all down their ornate stems
and loops. A sequence of iron chandeliers big as wagon wheels hung from the
ceiling, and could be lowered on their ropes so the candles could be lit. There
were electric lights everywhere within the fortress, muted sconces on walls,
and gentle, warm can lights that kept everything properly lit. But here in the
great hall, with its gigantic fireplace and its tall-backed chairs, it was all
flickering candles. Each time she descended, she felt like she walked backward
through time; by the time she reached the bottom, she half-expected to be
wearing skirts that she needed to lift as she curtsied to the lord of the
castle.
The vast space buzzed with activity, crew members
coming and going, kitchen staff laying out plates and cutlery and water cups.
Voices and footfalls echoed off the high, high ceilings. A whisper could get
caught up in those old timbers, she’d learned, startling you later like the
voice of a ghost.
Usually, dinner was a casual affair; the crew
drifted in and out of the great hall, dining in ones and twos, conversations
low and private. The kitchen started up at five and served until seven, though
Margaret could be sweet-talked into reheating you a plate if you were running
too far behind. Big dinner meetings like this were rare – or, at least they had
been in Red’s time here. They still overwhelmed her, sixty-plus people all
sitting down at once, the conversation roaring in and out like the tide.
They hit a wall of standing, talking crew
members, most still dressed in boots and fatigues, and they drifted apart. Red
sought, and found, Rooster through the crowd, and headed that direction,
anxiety ratcheting up a few notches. How awkward would he be this time? Could
it get any worse than clotheslining himself on a horse crosstie?
She had a bad feeling that it could.
Deshawn was with him, though, and Double Dee. If
nothing else, they would talk to her without stammering or nearly killing
themselves.
“There she is,” Deshawn said, grinning broadly
when she reached them. He opened his arms and she stepped gladly into the
offered hug.
“What about me?” Dunbar asked, mock-scandalized,
and she hugged him next. He squeezed her tight and lifted her up off the
ground, startling a laugh out of her. “Uh-oh,” he whispered in her ear, and set
her down.
She shot a glance toward Rooster, and found him
staring daggers at his friend.
“Hi,” she offered, not willing to risk a hug and
get rejected – or send him tripping backward over his own feet and crashing
into the antique buffet table behind him.
“Hey.”
Deshawn rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it
hurt. “I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said, schooling his expression before
Rooster could see it. “You been with the boys?”
“Yeah.” She tried not to make a face, but his
brows lifted.
“Not going so well?”
“It’s not going bad. Eighteen’s a sweetie.
But Twelve is…”
“Fifteen?”
“So, so very fifteen.”
“That’s not a real excuse,” Rooster said,
surprising her, drawing her attention. “You weren’t a shithead at fifteen.”
A beat passed, and then his words seemed to fully
register, and his face moved through a complicated sequence of cascading emotions.
From oh shit to oh no to aw hell. You were fifteen,
his gaze said, when it came to her. And now…
Now I’m not, she thought, staring at him, willing him
to understand. I grew up.
But he shoved his hands in his pockets and turned
his face away.
She glanced to Deshawn, who offered her a
sympathetic smile. He’s a dumbass, he mouthed.
But he wasn’t. He was just scared. She was, too,
but she wanted them to be scared together.
Behind her, someone clapped their hands together
loudly, the sound echoing off the walls, tripling up in the rafters. “If
everyone could make their way to their seats, please!” Will Scarlet called.
There weren’t assigned seats, per se, but
everyone tended to gravitate toward a usual chair. The Merry Men and Lady
Marian always held pride of place around the head of the table. Rob himself
stood behind his own chair, the one just to the right of the very head, the one
that always went empty. A larger, sturdier, gilt-edged chair, waiting for King
Richard. There was no reason for Rob not to make use of it while his king was
asleep, but he never had, Marian had explained. And never would.
Chairs scraped back, and everyone sat; a
several-minute production, thanks to the size of the gathering, but afterward,
everyone was respectfully silent. Red slid into her usual chair between Rooster
and Dunbar.
Rob remained standing.
Kitchen staff came in, wheeling trolleys full of
covered dishes. They laid them expertly all down the center of the table, and
removed the domed silver lids to reveal roasted chicken, potatoes with
rosemary; carrots, and peas, and crusty bread, and salad.
“Please go ahead and serve yourselves,” Rob said,
smiling at them all, and the grand production of passing the platters around
began – still nearly silent, with only murmured requests and thanks rippling
down the long sides of the table.
A particular hush lay over everyone; the Merry
Men looked almost serene, though Red saw more than one human shift uncertainly
in their chairs.
Red wasn’t nervous, really, but when the food reached
her, she only took a few carrots and potatoes, stomach tight with apprehension.
This place had become a home for her – her first real home, since she didn’t
think hotels counted, even when they’d stayed more than one night. There had
been Wyoming, the job fixing up Jack’s guest house; baking in the kitchen with Vicki…
But that was over and done. She’d burned someone
alive in the middle of a diner; no one there would want her now.
But here, at Lionheart, where she and Rooster
could both be themselves, and be accepted – she wasn’t just nervous, she
realized, but afraid. Afraid that something might alter this small peace they’d
only just found.
She didn’t even bother to unroll her silverware.
Watched Rob, and when the rest of the crew had filled their plates and started
eating, he spoke.
“I received an urgent call today from Dennis.”
The name didn’t mean anything to Red, but several
people around her paused, their forks hovering in front of their mouths.
“Over forty-eight hours ago, an advance recon
mission into Bucharest, Romania went wrong, and the members of the party have
been untraceable and out of contact ever since. The idea, according to Dennis,
was to scout the area before Prince Vlad’s expedition could depart, ensuring
both his safety, and that of the population. But, now, seven highly-trained,
well-armed men have vanished.
“The prince’s expedition is still underway, and
clearly, danger awaits.” He wasn’t smiling, but one corner of his mouth tugged,
and his eyes sparkled. “Ladies and gentlemen, I propose that we launch an
expedition of our own. I’d like to make formal contact with Vlad Tepes, and see
how we might be able to assist him in his war efforts.
“I also propose.” He did smile, now. “That we
enlist the help of our illustrious leader.”
Murmurs broke out up and down the table, hushed
and fervent.
Red shivered.
“Oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning,” Rob said,
“I’m going down to the catacombs to wake Richard.”
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