by Anne Bishop
She wouldn’t have gone with them even if she did need help, but it made her feel better that help was available for the other humans who worked for the terra indigene.
When the police officers left, she locked up the front room and continued sorting mail until Tess arrived to help her with clothes shopping and laundry. That turned out to be a more pleasant experience than she’d expected.
The only thing that marred the evening was when she looked out her apartment window before going to bed and spotted a man standing across the street, watching her.
CHAPTER 5
Eight ponies showed up the following day, looking for mail and carrots. Meg filled their baskets, handed out treats, and breathed a sigh of relief that she had just enough carrot chunks to go around. She wasn’t sure they could count and would know if the last pony only got one chunk instead of two, but it wasn’t a chance she wanted to take.
She waved when they trotted away, then closed the door, washed her hands, and got back to sorting. Apparently, Watersday was a light day for deliveries from human businesses, but the number of trucks with the earth native symbol on the cab more than made up for it. They didn’t stop at her office, though; they continued up the access way between the Liaison’s Office and the consulate to the delivery area for the Market Square.
According to Merri Lee, the Lakeside Courtyard served as a way station for terra indigene who wanted to enjoy human goods without having to deal directly with humans. Meat, dairy, and produce came in to the Courtyard from the farms run by the Others; clothes, books, movies, and incidental products that appealed to them went out.
Meg looked at some of the old packages. The labels said IN CARE OF THE LAKESIDE COURTYARD. Should those be going out to terra indigene settlements with the other merchandise? She didn’t want to bother Henry, who usually didn’t answer the telephone anyway. And she certainly didn’t want to call the big, bad Wolf. But she had to ask someone, so she called the bookstore and listened to the phone ring.
“Maybe he got run over by a tree,” she muttered as she imagined a log rolling down a hill and flattening a certain Wolf. It happened in some of the videos she had watched, so it could happen. Couldn’t it? The thought cheered her up, so she pictured it again, changing the log to a rolling pin that rolled out the Wolf like a furry piecrust.
“Howling Good Reads,” said a male voice that wasn’t his.
It took her a moment to realign her thoughts. “This is Meg Corbyn.”
“Do you want to talk to Simon?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
She tried to think of a question that anyone at the store could answer so she could hang up before someone told him that she had called. Then she looked at the packages.
Rememory. A woman locked in a box—a surprise to be delivered as a special gift. Except no one had known what was in the box, and no one had recognized the urgency of finding it when the box hadn’t been delivered as promised.
The girls might not remember a prophecy at the time they spoke the words, but the images weren’t lost. They were absorbed like the training images, connecting something remembered with something present. Jean called those images rememories because they were more than training images but less than personal memories.
There wasn’t a woman in any of the packages that had been left in the sorting room, and a life wasn’t lost in any of those small boxes. But each of those packages was stained by disappointment.
“Could someone tell me if any of the packages I have at the office should be going out on the earth native trucks with the other deliveries?”
A pause. “Someone who isn’t Simon?” the voice asked cautiously.
“Yes.”
Voices were muffled by a hand over the receiver, but Meg could still hear the emotion in those voices and wondered how much of a problem she was causing for whoever was working at HGR today.
The silence that followed was so full she thought she’d been disconnected. Then the voice came back and said, “Vlad will come over and look.”
“Thank you.”
She hung up and went back to sorting. She wasn’t sure Vlad would be any better than him, but at least Vlad hadn’t yelled at her. Yet.
* * *
Vlad leaned against the office doorway and gave Simon a smile that made the Wolf’s canines lengthen and his fingernails change into hard claws.
“I’m going to the Liaison’s Office,” Vlad said pleasantly.
“Why?” Simon snarled.
“Because it seems Meg is good at holding a grudge and doesn’t want to talk to you. And you must feel she has a reason for that grudge. You wouldn’t have spent all morning doing paperwork you don’t like if you didn’t have to make up for something.”
“I don’t have to make up for anything!”
“You stirred things up plenty yesterday.”
“She stirred things up.”
“You can tell the story any way you like,” Vlad said, pushing off from the doorway. “That’s not going to change what is.”
“Bite me.”
“You’re too sour today. I’d rather . . .”
Simon shot to his feet.
Vlad stared at Simon, then held up his hands. “I’m going over there at her request to answer her questions—nothing more. You have my word on that, Wolfgard.”
It was foolish to fight with a friend when he knew Vlad was pulling his tail because of his behavior yesterday, and it was worse than foolish to fight with one of the Sanguinati. But it took more effort than it should have to accept Vlad’s word.
Forcing himself to shift all the way back to human, Simon sat down and picked up a pen as if everything was settled. “If you have to sample someone, do us all a favor and bite Asia Crane.”
Vlad laughed. “Now you’re just being mean.”
* * *
Based on the pictures she had studied as part of her identification training, Vlad would have been labeled the tall, dark stranger, the dangerous thrill.
He scared her. His movements were more sinuous than the other earth natives she’d seen. They practically shouted they were predators. With Vlad, she didn’t think humans realized the danger until it was too late.
And yet he was courteous and didn’t crowd her while he checked the labels on the boxes she had set aside, and agreed that they should go on the trucks delivering supplies to other terra indigene.
He called Jester and asked for a pony and sled to transport the packages, explaining while they waited that the drivers would know better which packages should go in which truck.
Jester arrived with a pony named Twister, and he and Vlad loaded the packages into the small sled. Then Twister pulled the sled to the area where the trucks were parked.
“If there is nothing else, I must get back to the store,” Vlad said with a smile. “Simon is doing paperwork today, so it’s better for the customers if someone else deals with them.” As he walked away, he added, “But I expect the Wolfgard will be ready for a break and some fresh air around lunchtime.”
Which meant the Wolf might poke his nose around the office and find something else she had done wrong—at least according to the whims of Simon Wolfgard.
“What are you going to do with these packages?” Jester asked, looking at the ones still on the handcart. “Do you want me to send Twister back for them?”
“No,” Meg said quickly. “I thought I would take out the BOW and deliver these in person. You did say I could do that as part of my duties.”
“Yes, I did.” The laughter in his eyes told her plainly enough he knew why she didn’t want to be around during the lunch break. “Have you unhooked the BOW from its energy cord yet?”
She shook her head. That was just one of the things she hadn’t tried to do yet.
“Then I’ll do that and
bring it around for you this time.”
“Would it be all right if I take the map with me until I learn my way around?”
No laughter now. “It’s not something you want to misplace.”
Or give to anyone else. “I’ll be careful with it.”
A different kind of laughter filled his eyes now. Sharp, almost predatory. “Why don’t I get another copy for you at the Three Ps? It’s just across the way. Lorne is a human, but he’s dependable despite that.” Jester’s smile told Meg plainly enough that not all humans who had worked for the Others had been dependable. “Three Ps stands for Postage, Printing, and Paper. Lorne sells different kinds of stationery, as well as the stamps needed to mail things outside the Courtyard. And he prints the Courtyard’s weekly newsletter.”
“You have a newsletter?” Surprise made her blurt out the words.
“Of course we have a newsletter. How else would we know which movies are being shown at the social room in each residential complex? How else would everyone know about the new books that arrived and are available in our library?” Jester pressed one hand to his chest. “How else would we learn from Ms. Know-It-All’s column, ‘Others Etiquette’?”
“An advice column?” Meg stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“We don’t kid about Ms. Know-It-All,” he replied. Then he snatched up the map and left.
Meg stood where she was, trying to sort out the words and the change in Jester’s attitude when she asked if she could take the map. He’d brought her the map in the first place and warned her to be careful. Now he was telling her where to make copies and that she could buy stamps to mail letters to people outside the Courtyard. Was he trying to get her into trouble?
A test, she thought. Maybe lots of other people had seen the map. Maybe it wasn’t as big a secret as she had been led to believe. Maybe this was a way for the Others to decide if they could trust a human. And maybe any human who fails this test is never seen again. I’m going to die in this Courtyard. I know that. Is it because of the map or because I fail some other kind of test?
A couple minutes later, she heard the beep beep of the BOW’s horn. Pushing aside all thoughts of tests, she put her coat on, opened the sorting room’s delivery door, and began loading the back of the vehicle.
The BOW really was a box on wheels. It had two seats in the front. The rest of it—what there was of it—was a cargo area.
Plenty of room for a Wolf in the back, Jester told her after he dropped the copy of the map on the passenger’s seat and returned the original to the sorting room. Like she wanted a Wolf breathing down her neck while she was driving—or doing anything else.
Did they all think if they kept mentioning Simon she would forget how scary he had been yesterday? Maybe fear wasn’t something the Others retained, but humans certainly did.
Even humans like her.
It was a little before noon when she locked up the office and got in the BOW, making sure she had her pass in the side pocket of her new purse, where it would be easy to reach.
When Jester tapped on the window, she rolled it down.
“You all set?” he asked.
“All set.” She hoped she sounded confident. She really wanted him to go away before she put the BOW in gear.
“I’ll tell Tess you’ll be by later for your meal.”
She wondered what else he was going to tell Tess, but she smiled and said, “Thanks.”
The laughter was back in his eyes when she made no move to shift the gear to drive. Then he walked away.
Recalling training images of car interiors, she found the lights and the windshield wipers. She found the dial that controlled the heater. Shakily confident that she would be fine—as long as she didn’t have to do anything but go forward—she headed out to make her first deliveries.
After a couple of minutes of white-knuckle driving on a road that had been plowed, more or less, Meg began wondering if the pony and sled wouldn’t have been a better idea. The pony wouldn’t be inclined to slide off the road. Not that the BOW wasn’t a game little vehicle. It growled its way up an incline, struggling to find the traction it needed to get to the next piece of level ground.
From what she could tell from the map, she was on the main road that circled the entire Courtyard, so it should be sufficiently cleared all the way around. As long as she didn’t stray off it, she should be fine. Besides, the thought of going back and running into Simon was reason enough to keep going forward. That and not knowing how to drive backward.
It wasn’t her fault she’d never driven in snow—or in anything else. A sterile, restricted life meant the girls had no other stimulation except the images, sounds, and other visuals in the lessons, and what was used as reference for the prophecies could be verified because it was assumed all of the girls saw and heard the same thing. And it had been proven by the Walking Names that that kind of life made the girls more accepting of any kind of actual stimulation because they were starved for sensation.
Would the cutting be as compelling if there were other ways to feel pleasure, other sensations?
But that sterile life was her past. Now she was gaining the experience of driving in snow, and as long as she didn’t run into another vehicle or end up in a ditch, the Wolf had no reason to criticize.
The road forked. The left fork curved toward the Owlgard Complex and the Pony Barn. The right fork was the main road and had a sign that read, TRESPASSERS WILL BE EATEN.
Meg swallowed hard and continued on the main road, passing the Green Complex. Then she passed the Ash Grove and the Utilities Complex. Finally she reached the ornate black fences that marked the Chambers, the part of the Courtyard claimed by the Sanguinati.
She tried to pull up some memory about that name, was sure she knew something about them even though the girls had been taught very little about the Others. But Jester’s warning when she was packing up the BOW was clear enough.
The fences around the Chambers aren’t decorative, Meg. They’re boundaries. You never push open a gate and step onto the Sanguinati’s land for any reason. Anyone who enters without their consent doesn’t leave—and I’ve never known them to give their consent.
What unnerved her about the words was the certainty that they applied to the rest of the terra indigene as well as humans.
But she didn’t have to break the rules to deliver the packages. When she pulled up to the first white marble building positioned in the center of its fenced-in land, she saw nine metal boxes outside the fence, painted black and secured to a stone foundation. They didn’t have individual numbers, so they must be used by everyone who lived in the . . . Was that a mausoleum? It seemed small if the handful of names with this particular address actually lived inside.
She opened the door of the first box. Roomy enough for magazines and other mail of similar size. Another box was wider and the packages she had fit well enough. She put packages in three more boxes, then got back into the BOW and went on to the next building.
Four packages for the residents of this part of the Chambers. This time, as she closed the door of the last box, she noticed the soot around the mausoleum. Or was that smoke? Was something on fire inside?
She leaned into the BOW and fumbled for the mobile phone Tess had arranged for her to have. She had dutifully put in the contact numbers for Simon, Tess, and the consulate. But whom should she call to report a fire? How did the Courtyard handle emergencies?
Then the smoke drifted away from the structure with a deliberate change of direction—toward her.
She stopped fumbling for the phone, got into the BOW, and headed for the next fenced area.
This mausoleum didn’t look any different from the other two, except there was a smaller one built close to the fence separating the two structures. The walkway from the gate to the elaborately carved wooden door was clear of snow,
as was the marble stoop.
Smoke drifted close to the fences.
Jester didn’t say she wouldn’t be harmed if she was on this side of the fence. He just said being harmed was a certainty if she went inside the fenced area.
Maybe they would appreciate someone finally delivering their packages?
Tucking her pass inside the coat pocket, she got out of the BOW, raised the back door, pulled out the packages, and filled several of the boxes.
Then she pulled out a package for Mr. Erebus Sanguinati. It was one of the packages shoved farthest back in that corner of the sorting room, so it had been there for weeks, maybe even months.
It wasn’t a heavy package, but it was square rather than a rectangle, making it too high to fit into the metal boxes. She chewed on her lower lip, wondering what she should do.
“Something wrong?”
She stumbled back a step. She hadn’t seen anyone approach, hadn’t heard anyone, but a beautiful woman with dark eyes and black hair that flowed to the waist of her black velvet gown now stood near the fence that separated the two mausoleums.
“I have a package for Mr. Erebus Sanguinati, but it won’t fit into the boxes.”
“You’re the new Liaison?”
“Yes. I’m Meg Corbyn.”
The woman didn’t offer her name. Instead, she looked toward the larger mausoleum—whose door was now open just enough for someone to peek out.
“You could leave a form saying there is a package being held at the Liaison’s Office,” the woman said.
“It’s been at the office for a while,” Meg replied. “That’s why I thought I should deliver it in person.”
The woman’s smile was more lethal than encouraging. “You could leave it in the snow. The previous Liaisons would have—if they had been brave enough to come at all.”
Meg shook her head. “Whatever is inside might get damaged if it got wet.”
A sound like dry leaves skittering over a sidewalk came from the larger mausoleum.