by Andy Graham
Ray felt an icy feeling slicking through his veins. “Milly was left-handed?”
“Worse, she was ambidextrous. I don’t know if she ended up at that camp or not. But that’s when I joined the Resistance. I keep hoping one of the waifs and strays that keeps turning up in Effrea now you trashed that camp will be her. But I guess I’ll have to keep hoping a little while longer yet.”
“What about your husband?”
Lynn’s answer was interrupted by a clatter of dishes. Martinez came out of the kitchen and dropped the food down on the table. The rest of the group tucked in, stuffing the food into their mouths with their fingers, draining soup from the bowls with no spoon.
From the expression on her face, Ray got the impression that Lynn had already said more than she intended. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “About your kids.”
“I do. Tell me you’re going to put Stella’s family back together, then promise me you’re going to rip this government’s head off and shove it where the devil wipes.”
She held her hand out. Her palm was callused and hard.
“With pleasure.”
“Now, eat up and I’ll tell you what little else I know.”
Ray forced a mouthful of food down his throat. He had no appetite left but didn’t know when his next meal was going to be.
“The last sighting we have of Stella’s family is the Bridged Quarter of Tye.”
Ray’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. The soup in it rippled to the thump of his heart. “The Bridged Quarter? No wonder you don’t want Martinez in there.”
Kayle’s eyes cut from Ray to Lynn and back. She lowered her voice and gestured to the rest of the party. “Are you sure you want to take these guys in there? Kayle here’s a born fighter” — he inclined his head to her in a nod of respect — “the twins may be OK but I’m not sure that kid, Sebb, has even heard of puberty.”
“Those boys you brought up weren’t much older when they went to war.”
“My sons are dead.”
“Your sons had to fight. These people choose to fight. They have their reasons, just as you do.”
Her eyes probed his. “Remember what you just said, Ray. Things are going to get a whole lot darker before the final storm hits us. Now, if I were you, I’d get a move on.” Her eyes swept over Ray’s serape, Kayle’s six-shooters. “Or should I say saddle up?”
Ray pushed his soup away. “Lynn, I need to know something about my mother. She said—”
The front door banged. Lynn jumped. Kayle was on his feet, his twin revolvers in his hands in a second. Ray was a moment behind him. His ankle snickered flashes of heat at him. Sebb stood, tripped and smacked his head on the table on the way down to the floor.
“Who in the seven hells is that?” Martinez said from behind the bar, a heft of steel piping in his hand. The sheet metal security plate the other side of the wooden door shook. Light rippled from the centre.
“Go. Out the back. The way we came in,” Ray ordered.
The twins picked Sebb up, one to an armpit, and dragged him away. Kayle followed, his fingers hovering over the hammers of the revolvers.
The door hammered again.
“Wait up,” Lynn yelled. “Martinez, stall them.” The ex-10th legionnaire, face grim, stamped over as loudly as he could, shouting apologies about losing the keys. Lynn grabbed Ray’s hands. “You got to do the impossible now, Ray. For all of us.”
He hurried after his ragged band of rebels. As he eased the door shut, he heard Lynn’s voice. “You!” she said, the hysterical edge in her voice sounded wrong. “What are you doing here?”
30
It’s for You
Lynn slammed the door shut. “What did you think you were doing, coming to the front door like that? Why didn’t you use the back like any normal fugitive? You could ruin everything.”
Rose Franklin slid the bolts home. “Where’s my son?”
“Gone.”
“How long ago?”
“Just about now. Don’t bother trying to catch them, even with that limp of his, you’ve no chance.”
“Not unless Sebb has forgotten his lunchbox,” Martinez muttered.
Stella hissed something foul under her breath about what she’d like to do to Ray. Martinez winced.
“Lynn,” Rose said, “this is Dr Stella Swann and her daughter, Emily.”
“I know who she is. Hello, Stella,” Lynn said with a grin at Emily. “I remember the night you met Ray Franklin in my bar. He got rid of that idiot who’d been plaguing us like a one-man herd of warts.”
Stella, face rigid, held out her hand.
“Put that away.” Lynn wrapped her arms around the younger woman and embraced her. As Lynn held the younger woman close to her, Rose saw the tightness in Stella’s shoulders ease. Lynn released her grip. “With what’s going on with your family, we’re way past handshakes.”
“Thank you.” A faltering smile spread across Stella’s face.
“Not at all. Physical contact and real emotion. That’s what most people need, not electronic smiley faces, fancy words and flow charts. A guy who used to drink here claimed the over-intellectualisation of society is a scourge to match the willfully stupid. Besides,” — she winked — “the occasional hug’s good for business.” She squatted down. “How about you, are you hungry, Emily?”
Emily wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs, looking at Lynn through one eye.
“I’ve got lots of really nice food here which needs someone to eat it.”
“Ice cream?” A second eye appeared.
“Maybe. Which flavour do you like?”
“Everything. But not vanilla or strawberry or anything blue or stripy or stuff with bits in. Only chocolate.”
“Emily,” Stella chided gently.
Lynn tousled the little girl’s hair. “Fussy eater, are you?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.
“We can’t afford ice cream very often.” Stella sounded apologetic. “Birthdays, Midwinter’s day and sometimes Hallowtide. Emily likes to make the most of it. She’ll stash the ice cream and eat it in tiny spoonfuls over a week.” A smile crept onto her face. “Her brother seems to inhale it.”
“Please can I have some chocolate ice cream, please?” Emily asked.
Lynn looked at Stella. She nodded. Emily jumped up and down on the spot. Rose, watching quietly, felt tears burning in her eyes. Tears that fuelled the hate tumbling through her veins.
“I’ll do it,” Martinez said.
“Thanks, Tino.”
“I’m not doing it for you, Lynn.”
The ex-legionnaire headed to the bar, dragging his leg behind him, making a game of how bad his limp was and how much he needed Emily to help hold him up.
“If I can ever pay you back,” Stella said as they disappeared, “just let me know. Anything.”
“Let’s get your two boys out of Tye and then you can thank me.” Lynn dusted down her apron and gestured them through to the waxed table. “Now, Rose. I’m guessing that you arriving after Ray means that something’s wrong in the Franklin household again.”
“I’m not going after Ray.” Rose slid a manila envelope across the table.
Lynn scanned the words on the page. As she read, Rose watched the woman’s face become drawn. “Where did you get this?” Lynn asked.
“The sister.”
“If this is true,” Lynn said, “it could bring down the entire government, not just Bethina Laudanum.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do. I’m going to spread this information in any way I can: the Light Net, whispers, even flyers if I can find enough paper.” Rose took the letter back, holding it in shaking fingers. She handed it over to Stella.
“I need a drink,” Lynn said.
Stella’s mouth pressed into a grim line as she read the letter. “Me too.”
Moments later, Lynn set a corked bottle in the centre of the table. “We can’t use the official beer kegs or spirit optics. The government�
�s central computer won’t let us. But I’ve got a fine range of bathtub brandies and other palliatives that the authorities turn a blind eye to.”
The women clinked glasses and downed their shots. Stella spluttered her drink back into the glass and rubbed her breast bone. Lynn knocked back another. Rose watched, hawkish, as Lynn filled her glass a third time.
“I’m no fan of Laudanum,” Lynn said, “or any of the others. But Ailan will be ruined if you decapitate the government with nothing to replace it.” She gestured to the paper. “Even if it’s unverified, this information will cause chaos if you leak it. A government should not have that kind of power. Exerting that kind of control over people is so much worse than just limiting the number of children people can have.”
“Which is exactly why I need to do this. Every generation needs its revolution.” Rose struggled to keep her voice calm. “My father was part of the Silk Revolution. Our generation is well overdue a change. As is Stella’s.”
“At what cost? Even a dictatorship, which this government is in everything but name, is preferable to anarchy. Why not use this to bargain for the changes you want? Since David Prothero died—”
“He was murdered.”
“Maybe, possibly, I don’t know. But chaos is not the solution. Society doesn’t do well on uncertainty.”
Rose stabbed the table with a finger. “You’ve been one of my closest allies. I know what you’ve lost, what you sacrifice for our cause. This” — she waved the paper under Lynn’s nose — “could bring us everything we’ve worked for: a society that works for all of us, free choice, a future. Don’t you dare back out on me when we’re so close.”
“Who’s going to rule, Rose? You?”
“If I have to.” She sat back and folded her arms.
“Ailan doesn’t need another leader-in-waiting propping up ideals with promises they won’t be able to keep, promising money they have no access to, claiming yesterday’s dreams can be tomorrow’s reality.”
“I’m not making any promises.”
Lynn’s laughter took a long time to fade. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”
Emily came scurrying across the bar floor. She crawled into Stella’s lap, clutching her ice cream in one hand. Rose’s eyes lingered on the two of them as she picked through the handful of memories of her children that she could recall. Most of them were of Ray watching her leave. She found herself wanting to reach out and stroke Emily’s hair.
“Rose?” asked Lynn.
She jerked herself back to the present. “The info on this letter has to be true. I just know it is.”
“Gut instinct is not the most reliable form of evidence, Rose,” Stella said.
“As opposed to all the evidence sold to the government by the drug companies?”
“Please, you two,” Lynn said. “We don’t even know if what the letter talks about is possible.”
Stella’s face was pale. “It could be. But if it is, controlling families like this . . .”
There was a lopsided scuff of feet. Martinez had started mopping the floors. His strokes brought him in a close arc to the three women.
Stella teased the bowl of ice cream out of her now sleeping daughter’s grip and placed it on the table. “I need to go.”
“And are you going to face down Bethina Laudanum, too?”
She shook her head. “No, Lynn. I’m going home. I need to pick up some stuff for the kids.”
Rose slapped her hand on the table. Stella shushed her and pointed to the sleeping girl.
“I told you on the way here, it’s too dangerous,” Rose whispered. “I’m not sending Ray and the others in to rescue your family only to lose you in the process.”
“I think Ray sent himself, Rose.” Stella’s voice was cool and professional. Her eyes told a different story. “My husband’s badly asthmatic, he’ll need his meds.” She stroked Emily’s hair. “And my kids could do with a few of their toys to ease the process.”
“They’ll survive without.”
“With all due respect,” Stella said in a voice like a whip about to crack. “I’m not going to take parenting advice from you.”
Rose cheeks flushed an angry red. “What about Emily? You going to take her?”
“She can stay with me,” Lynn said. “I miss having kids around the place.”
“Lynn!”
“My home. My rules. We have a safe house and ice cream with no bits in it.”
With Emily transferred to a bed in the safe house (and the ice cream back in the freezer), the three women stood around the waxed table.
“Thank you, Lynn,” Stella said as she buttoned her coat. “Rose, seeing as we’re going into Tye after Ray and the others, I’ll meet you at the Ward at two a.m. They don’t meet today. It saves me coming back here.”
“That only gives you just shy of three hours.”
“That’ll be enough.”
“What about curfew?”
Stella levelled a flat stare at the older woman. “I’m a doctor. I work night shifts. I still have my pass. The police are usually sympathetic to medics and other emergency service workers. We’ve patched so many up, they cut us a lot of slack. I’m not above bribing people with medicine if I have to and I used to go to that stupid Ward on my own. I’m no hero but I know how to get around after dark. The worsening power problems will make it easier. Happy?”
“You’re going to Tye at night?” Lynn asked.
Rose held out her snub-nosed pistol. “At least take this.”
Stella laughed “I’ve been there enough times to know that area of Tye is safe enough. If I go armed with a gun or a knife, I’m just asking for trouble.”
“Stella, this is not going to end well.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll face it on my terms. Now, once you’re done spreading rumours and deciding who’s going to be running the country tomorrow morning, meet me at the Ward. And if Emily wakes up, tell her I love her.”
A round of quick embraces and exhortations to look after her daughter, and Stella was gone. Martinez resumed his mopping.
“This is an unacceptable risk. It’s not going to end well,” Rose said.
Lynn poured herself another shot. “Which? Stella trying to save her family or the secret hidden on that piece of paper?”
“Stella, she’s headstrong and foolish.” Rose jerked her thumb at the door.
“We all need to do what we think is right, but I can’t say as I like the roles any of us are playing.” Lynn took another swig of the bathtub brandy. “It’s a nice idea, though, riding to the rescue like that. The unlikely hero who saves the day. You know the story of Greenfields, where the militia of Axeford rode to save Tear. I could see myself as one of their number.”
“They all died, Lynn.”
The phone rang behind the bar. A jangling, clanking noise that set Rose’s teeth on edge.
Martinez picked up the receiver. The colour drained from his face. “It’s for you.”
Lynn held out her hand. Martinez shook his head. “Not you. It’s for you, Rose.”
“Me?” She could feel the hair rising on her neck. “Who is it?”
“The President. Bethina Laudanum.”
31
Frames
Stella’s flat had an emptiness to it that put her on edge. The things that drove her crazy on a daily basis were now the things she missed the most: the mess, the bickering, even her husband’s almost annoyingly stolid presence. It reminded her of the show homes that were paraded on the TV and the internet — all beige and white perfection with stainless steel fittings that had been scrubbed clean of any personality.
“You’re being silly,” she said. “It’s still your home.” The last word came out tasting of dust. Ray had been right in the sea towers, there was now the very real possibility that life would never be normal again, that this would never be her home again.
Her bed was unmade, sheets twisted into knots, pillows scattered and misshapen. Had the Unsung taken her h
usband while he slept? Had Dan been snatched from his bed? Stella had lived through some things recently that she could never have imagined, but to experience that? The numb terror he must have felt being woken and dragged from his bed while still half-awake and half-dreaming?
She laid a hand across the cold sheets. In truth, their bed was only a mattress on the floor of the front room. With the limited space they had, they’d made the choice to sacrifice their privacy to give her a small office and the kids a room of their own. The idea had been for her to be able to work from home and the children to be able to spend time alone in their room. The latter had never happened. The small front-room-cum-kitchen-cum-bedroom was the focal point of the flat. No matter where everyone started out, they all ended up here. By day it was a riot of childhood exuberance and squabbles; by night she and her husband tried to contort themselves around one or two children who took up more space than seemed possible, kids who burrowed heads and feet into their parents to make sure they were still there. That had been one of the things that had driven her to the Kickshaw without her wedding ring the night she’d met Ray. The night that changed her life.
The tickling feeling of guilt at the back of her brain intensified. Stella gritted her teeth and shook out the sheet. A small cowboy hat and pirate costume fluttered out. The room was filled with mindless chatter again, the excited babble of children happy just being who they were, the curmudgeonly grumblings of her husband. She could see her own hassled shadow sprinting to another shift in the hospital, grabbing food with one hand and tousling the kids’ hair with the other. There was the smell of washing powder, her husband’s aftershave. For a fleeting moment, her flat was her home again, then the cowboy hat fell on the floor with a sound like the snap of a guillotine.