Scorpion, page 10
“The Last Lifers are gone,” Heather says. She doesn’t sound confident.
“No,” Pilar says. “They just pulled back from Ell Aye like a wave. They gonna come back.”
“You hate me bout as much as I hate you, Heather,” Trina says. “But this is real. I’ll help you if it saves the Holy Wood.”
“Jesucristo, how stupid do you think I am?” Heather says. “Last Lifers? Palos? Why don’t you just say we’re being attacked by ghosts? It’s just as real.”
“Don’t you remember? That’s what Apple was trying to warn us about,” Trina says, and knows she’s said the wrong thing. Apple is the one who got away from Heather.
“Ah,” Heather says. “In that case—there’s a new deal. Do it or else.”
“You got nothin on me.” The moment Trina says it, she realizes it’s true. Without the fear of death, Heather can’t make Trina do anything anymore. Trina’s untouchable. Her heart beats wild and furious. Free. This is how the Last Lifers must feel.
“Nothin?” Heather says, and holds her arms out wide, taking in all the Holy Wood.
No, Trina is touchable.
“You got, what, three weeks left before you End, Trina?” Heather says. Trina shrugs. “So … let’s make the most of it. Speak for me. Make it super convincing. Or else I Exile you both. Then I start killing a kid a week.”
Pilar gasps, but Trina doesn’t twitch. She’s not surprised. Heather has only ever loved herself. It wouldn’t take anything for her to tear down the village where she grew up.
Still.
“That’s a big jump, from saying ‘please’ to killing,” Trina says.
“Eh. I don’t got a lot of middle ground,” Heather says.
“They gonna hate you even more than they do now, Heather,” Trina says. “You thought bout that?”
“I have been thinking bout that, and I don’t think they will,” Heather says. “Because there are a bunch of Exiled Muscle lurking around the gates, and they just been looking for a chance to pick us apart. And then the two former leaders of the Holy Wood get Exiled and want to take everyone down. Now they got their chance. They break in through the secret path from the Bear Wall, they steal a Kinder out of his bed. We never find the kid. We just find him hacked up in a ravine.”
The horror breaks through the wildness that has been keeping Trina from feeling. It pulls her back into herself. Heather smiles. “There’s always an enemy for people to hate,” she says. “You just gotta make one.”
* * *
“Fucking puta,” Pilar says, after the candle burns out and they can no longer see each other in the dark. Heather locked them both in, and won’t let them out until the morning, when they’ll be dragged in front of the Circle.
“Language, Priestess,” Trina says, smiling. “Didn’t know you had such a mouth.”
“You don’t know a fucking thing about me,” Pilar says in the dark. “You locked me in the Zervatory when I was eight and no one’s talked to me since except for the priestesses and novices. You don’t think that’s got an effect on my language?”
“Well, now I’d like to know more,” Trina says.
“What you gonna do tomorrow morning when she comes back?” Pilar says.
“I guess I gotta do it,” Trina says. “I just—I don’t see nother way.”
“If she’s okay with killing those kids, why would she stop once we give her what she wants?” Pilar says.
“That’s basically what I told you the day you arrested me,” Trina says.
“That’s why I trust you,” Pilar says. “The Trina back then woulda known that the kids ain’t safe as long as Heather’s in charge.”
“Okay,” Trina says. “And that’s why I trust you. Now we just gotta escape … again.”
Trina maps out the dark of the room in her mind, counting the few objects still in it. She remembers what she read on one of the plastic bags the Parents must have used on their grass: explosive. That gives her an idea.
“Okay. There’s half a candle left hidden under my bed, and a quarter litro of vodka. We mix it with the fertilizer and pack it around the lock, and—”
“You right, that does sound complicated,” Pilar says, as if to someone else in the dark, in a completely different conversation. There’s a little bit of a giggle in her voice. “So, like, twenty minutes? I’ll see you then.”
That conversation ends, and Trina feels Pilar shifting her attention toward her. “What the hell was that, Pilar?”
“That was our ride,” Pilar says, using an old expression. “He woulda been here sooner, but there was something about the donkeys.”
“What are you…?”
“Just wait, okay? Let the Priestess do her magic for once.”
Time disappears in the dark. Trina thinks of her memories of Pilar, most of them negative. When Pilar helped overthrow Trina. When they faced off over Jemma and Lady at the Waking. Trina had blamed Pilar for that, but now she can’t stop thinking of that Waking because she knows it was her own fault.
Trina talked Lady into becoming a Mama early. She saw Lady go with Li. She felt in her gut exactly what would happen, because with a boy like Li that’s exactly what would happen, always; they think of hate, not love, not even sex. She felt it because it had happened to her. She felt it and still she made sure Lady followed through.
She should have blocked them from entering the bedroom that night. Instead she rushed to the Mamas’ house late, too late—too late for Lady. She could only punish the rape when she should have stopped it.
Never leave the Holy Wood empty.
That’s what she told Lady. She had believed it, because it’s easier to believe for someone else. It wasn’t Trina’s body that had to get in the way of Li’s. Trina doesn’t normally allow herself regrets. This is the only one.
What she should have said was Always keep the Holy Wood safe.
Minutes or hours later, there’s a soft knock on the door, and then the familiar scrape of the key. “Heather’s coming back,” Trina says. Probably to torture them.
“Not Heather,” Pilar says, and the door clicks open. The boy standing there holds two delicate metal rods in his hands, the other ends in the lock. He has opened the door without a key.
Trina barely recognizes the boy as the same kid who fled the Holy Wood years ago. The Half Holy. He wears a tattered dark suit, satin on the collars. His hair is plastered down and parted. He’s inked a thin mustache above his lip. Trina knows enough about him to know that he dresses like one of the old actors, Long Gone even before the End.
Pilar hugs the Half Holy, tight. There’s an extra second when Trina sees something pass between them. Some kind of spark. “Half Holy?” Trina says, as if not to startle him.
“Let’s go,” he says. “The Hermanas will be back in five. Or maybe never. They really aren’t good at their jobs.”
Trina and Pilar follow him in silence through the night. He takes a new path, one that leads east for hundreds of yards. He disappears under a bush between two houses, and Trina follows him to see they’re standing on a staircase that cuts down the hill. It’s one of the staircases the Parents built to help them climb the hills, tucked between houses.
At the bottom of the staircase, far enough away from the Holy Wood, Pilar says, a little awed, “How’d you find this staircase?”
“More importantly, how’d you find us?” Trina says.
Half Holy shrugs. “I know where the Holy Wood is. Ain’t been gone that long.”
“You know what I’m talkin bout,” Trina says. “You knew where to find us. And Pilar knew you was coming. How?”
“We was talking to each other,” Pilar says.
“You never even met each other,” Trina says. Everyone knows the Half Holy never leaves the Flat Lands. Everyone knows Pilar never leaves the Zervatory.
“We just met right now,” Pilar says, and Trina blinks in confusion. “We was talking in our heads.”
* * *
Pilar explains how she was dreaming of the Last Lifers, surrounded by blood and fire. They fought the Holy Wood, side by side with the Palos. Everyone screamed. In the middle of it was one calm face with a painted-on mustache, taking in the scenery.
“We was dreaming the same dream,” Half Holy says.
“You dream like she does?”
“Nah. She pulled me into hers,” he says.
From there, they learned how to find each other in their sleep, and then when they were awake. Two lonely kids with no one else to talk to. So they started talking.
“How?” Trina says. “You really magic?”
“It’s the Haze,” Pilar says.
“What? Why you call it that?”
“It calls itself that.” The Haze is some sort of invisible field, Pilar says, some powerful thing that lives in and around everyone. It tells people things, gives them visions. Pilar says it talks to others, too, shows them visions.
Trina grunts. “The way you get dreams—everybody in the Haze do that?”
Pilar shakes her head. “From what I learned from the Haze, it seems to speak to everyone in the language they understand,” she says. “My language was dreams and darkness and prophecy.”
“It don’t talk to me much,” Half Holy says. “But sometimes I hear others talking or thinking. Makes me feel less … me. It’s good to know you ain’t the only one of you.”
Trina has only thought of this kid as a legend. The kid who left the Holy Wood and lived. But she forgot why he left: because everyone shunned his mother, a refugee from the Downtown, and then him. He was only half of a Holy Wood. He must have been alone his whole life.
“There’re others who sees it? Who else?” Trina says.
“When Pablo had his visions, that was the Haze. Jemma saw it, too. I think that’s one of the reasons she left,” Pilar says.
“She alive?” Trina says. She isn’t sure if she should have asked. Apple has to have Ended by now. But if Jemma and Lady are still alive …
“I don’t know. I saw her once, traveling south beyond the edges of Ell Aye. But now she’s hidden. I think the Haze has its own purposes for her in this war, too.”
Jemma. Annoying Jemma, wrapped up in the war for survival against their enemies. Maybe the last war. For a moment Trina thinks she should track Jemma down, join her. But no. She needs to fight the war here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE END OF THE KING
Tashia stands next to X on the top of the Horn, watching over their Kingdom. Well, X’s Kingdom. But increasingly its burdens seem to fall on them both.
She looks down to the base of the fake snow–covered mountain, and sees Othello and John in the shade of a tree, playing dominoes.
“You’re gonna have to get rid of Othello and John,” Tashia says.
“Just because they oppose me?” X says.
“Yes. Because they only oppose you,” Tashia says. The Ice Cream Men came to them a week ago and told them that Little Man was the tiny captive she’d brought in with the Angelenos, then they left to bring back weapons. Since then, Othello hasn’t stopped whispering about the failings of his king. And of Tashia. “You should probably get rid of me, while you’re at it. I’m not helping you, being close to you,” she says.
“They’re just looking for a reason to blame you for something,” X says. “You didn’t know you brought in Little Man.”
“We know that,” Tashia says. “The rest of the Round Table doesn’t seem to.”
“The Round Table has other problems,” X says. “They’re dealing with the food shortages.”
“Made worse by the rations Othello and John stole,” Tashia says. A week’s worth of rations disappeared yesterday. Everyone knew it must have been the two of them, but no one would admit to seeing it.
“We can’t prove that yet,” X says.
“We don’t have to. We know,” Tashia says. “Listen, X, you think they’re all still following the codes of the Table. You’re the only one left who is. They’re just trying to get to you,” she says.
“Someone already did,” X says, and kisses her neck. It sends signals all the way to her toes.
“Uh-uh,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because you aren’t listening to me. And because I’m not going to be the King’s hookup,” she says.
“It’s called the King’s consort,” he says, playful.
“I’m not going to be the King’s anything,” she says. He drops back, stung long enough to let it show. But she means it. She’ll hook up with him on her own terms.
“You need to arrest them,” Tashia says. She’s not done with Othello. “Get the men loyal to you, and throw them into the boats until you find proof.”
“I’m not going to do that,” he says.
“You should,” she says.
The alarm drums sound.
She’s been expecting to hear them for weeks, ever since she discovered the Ice Cream Men Massacre. She hears gunshots. She hears the banging of a thunder gun and shouts and, over it all, the bleating of the cows.
“You want to take the fast way or the faster way?” X says, looking at her.
“The faster one, obviously,” she says. Most of the machines in the Kingdom were Grease’s ideas, like the rollertrain that lifts the Knights up the Horn, then speeds them down again. But this is hers. There’s a cable that stretches down from the Horn to the roofs below. Tashia saw a picture of it in the Parents’ time. A woman dressed as a fairy glided down it at night. It must have looked like magic. Tashia decided what it really needed was a chair to ride.
At the edge of the platform on top of the Horn is the chair, a steel-and-wood structure that Tashia had the Smiths bolt together. It wasn’t as good as what Grease would have made, but it will seat both Tashia and X. They climb in, and push out into the abyss.
She’s never quite ready for that drop, but it thrills her as nothing else ever has. Maybe it is magic. They sail downward as the kids of the Kingdom look up, coming to rest seconds later on the roof of one of the buildings of Main Street.
They pound down the stairs to find Mia, waiting there with their horses. Tashia and Mia are the only two true sisters in the Kingdom, born from the same mother. Tashia watches over Mia as her own child. Mia tells them what they already know.
“The Biters came for the herd,” she says. “Othello and John are already out there.” Mia can barely say John’s name, she hates him so bad. She should, Tashia thinks. John had taken her—no, raped her—because that had been a Knight’s privilege.
“My soldiers, too?” X says. He means, the ones that are still loyal to him. Mia nods, and they mount their horses.
The slaughter is over by the time they reach the herd. A third of the herd are lying in the grass, bleeding, moaning. Another third are trapped against a high wall, milling and looking for a way to escape. The final third are just gone.
Othello is looking out over the herd. When he sees the King arrive, he dismounts slowly, stiffly, with the leg that Jemma nearly destroyed. Tashia smiles to see him wince.
Tashia and X dismount among the bodies of the cows. Tashia looks down at one of them. Its shoulder is so torn with bullets that there’s almost no meat on it. “Whose watch was this today, X?” she says, forgetting to call him “King” in front of his Knights. “They did this in broad daylight.” Not only does she not see the guards who are assigned to the herd, but she doesn’t see the cowboy who always accompanies them in case they spook.
“Some of Othello’s friends,” X says. Othello has a group of younger soldiers and guards who follow him around. He gives them some of the riches that come to a Knight, and his swagger seems to rub off on them.
One of the guards runs panting through the herd. “Biters!” he says. “They came in quiet this time. We couldn’t stop them!”
“Biters!” Othello says, pushing into them. “Biters again? We’re no longer safe in our own Kingdom.”
More soldiers and Knights seem to have gathered, and they add fearful voices. Tashia feels them pressing down against her. But she shakes her head.
“Where’s their lances, boys?” she says. “These cows have all been shot. You think Biters would hunt without their lances?”
The King nods. “The Biters can’t ride, either. How would they have stolen the cows?”
“Maybe they weren’t stealing them,” Othello says, thoughtfully.
“Why?” X says.
“Maybe they just wanted to scare and kill,” Othello says, and his voice fills with menace. “That’s why they came during the day. They knew they could do it because they’ve attacked us before, and we didn’t punish the Biters for it. They will keep coming and coming—because our king is weak.”
There it is. This is what Othello has been waiting for. He must have had his followers drive off the cows, shooting enough to make it look like the Biters. He’s putting the Kingdom in danger just to get back at X.
“It’s time for a king who respects the old ways,” Othello says, looking at Tashia. “A king who fights our enemies inside and out.”
“If you want a new king, I’m ready to fight any time,” X says. “I’ll see you in the Night Mountain.”
“You’ve shown me there are other ways to solve our differences beside combat,” Othello says. Suddenly, there are weapons everywhere. The Knights who are loyal to X have their swords out, but so do all the guards and Knights who couldn’t be found before. And there are many more of them. Even John holds a pistol.
That’s why Othello drew X outside the wall, out of sight of the Kingdom. He doesn’t need to convince the Kingdom. He just needs the numbers to be on his side at this moment. Now he can go back to the Kingdom with any story he wants.
Tashia breathes in once, and her body grows still. Her mind goes clear. X is done. The only thing they can do now is survive long enough to fight back.
