She went in through the back door, and before she even got out of the kitchen she was greeted by Sabah and Alida, yelling, “Miss Lina, Miss Lina, Torby’s back and he’s not a Peace Officer anymore. Can he stay here with us? Can he?”
“Oh, sure. We’ll fix a bed for him up on the roof. There’s still some room up there.” She kept walking, brushing them aside.
“I don’t think he’d like that, Miss Lina,” Sabah said, frowning. The little twit had taken her seriously. She shouldn’t expect these kids to recognize sarcasm.
She reached the sitting room and took in the scene. Torby sat in the only armchair, his shoulders slumped, the picture of dejection and despair. But as she proceeded into the center of the room, he looked up, saw her, and rose to his feet.
“Miss Lina,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “It’s good to see you. I probably shouldn’t have come here, but I have nowhere else to go, and you and Bryte and the Methenys have been so kind to me. I guess I mainly needed to be with friends.”
“So they let you go on a pretext. Figures,” Lina said. “We knew the peacekeepers here have been corrupted by the miners’ bribes. You were too honest for them. You’re better off away from them.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t know what else I can do,” he said.
“Well, for starters, you need to work to make the townspeople see how crooked the Peace Officer Corps here is. We need to find a way to guarantee the orphans’ safety. We can’t do that as long as the miners are free.”
With a shocked look he said, “But I’m just one person, so how can I do that?”
“By finding allies, so that you aren’t just one person. You know your squad leader turned you in, right?”
He nodded. “Yes, I know that.”
“What about your partners, Officer Puckley and Officer Sagist?”
“I’m not sure about Beck—uh, Officer Sagist. I’m sure Officer Puckley—Bo—is okay.”
“He hasn’t been fired too, has he?”
“Gods, I hope not. So far as I know, he hasn’t.”
“Well, then, you need to talk to him, get him to feel out others in the force. Find who’s trustworthy and who isn’t. Then you enlist those you can trust to get the truth out. You need legal help. You need to get in touch with higher authorities. You need—”
“What’s going on here?” Dr. Metheny strode into the room. “Cara came and got me and told me Torby’s in trouble.”
“He just found out what a rotten outfit he’s been a part of,” Lina said, impatient at being interrupted.
“Miss Lina’s telling him what to do,” Fedrek spoke up, showing that the orphans weren’t missing a thing.
And of course, Dr. Metheny had to hear Torby’s plaintive report again from the beginning and express his sympathy and his dismay at the unfair treatment he’d received.
“Life isn’t fair!” Lina interjected, stopping the outflow of sympathetic murmurs from the gathered throng. “Yes, you were treated unfairly. Get over it. We’ve all been there.”
Dr. Metheny scowled. “Aren’t you being a bit harsh, Miss Lina?” he said. “After all, the young man’s had a bad shock.”
Lina scowled back. “Doctor, look around this room,” she said, turning to sweep her arm in a wide circle, taking in everyone. “Tell me who here hasn’t had a bad shock. And far worse. Look at these children and what they’ve been through. And though you don’t know it, Bryte and I have had rough times, too. Bryte especially, though she doesn’t talk about it. We’ve both seen terrible things. We’ve even been in the Dire Realms and survived it. And Torby’s crying over losing his job? And I’m being harsh? No. You haven’t seen me when I’m really being harsh.”
“The Dire Realms? Honest?” Oni blurted, her face registering awe.
“The Dire Realms aren’t even real,” Erle scoffed. “They couldn’t go there.”
Lina bestowed a withering look on him. “They’re real, believe me,” she said. And seeing that Dr. Metheny looked skeptical, too, she added, “Or don’t believe, as you please. It doesn’t matter to me. Bryte and I know very well how real they are.”
All eyes turned toward Bryte, who looked unhappy at this turn of the conversation. She nodded, though, and said, “Yes, but we’re talking about Torby’s predicament, not anyone else’s. Yes, we’ve all had bad experiences. Let’s not get into which have been worse. Let’s decide what to do about Torby. Could we hire him as a security guard?”
“We could if we could afford to pay him,” Lina said. “Right now, though, all our money is going for groceries. Torby can stay here if we can find room for him. We need to repair the roof that burned so we can use that area. And we need to fix them up quite a bit. That all costs money. Torby would be useful for guard duty and for other things, but he’s also one more mouth to feed. I’m open to suggestions as to how we can pay for all that.”
They all knew that she had been contributing heavily to the grocery funds, but Lina had told no one that her parents were no longer sending her a regular allowance. Now that she was out of school and on her own, they expected her to earn her own way. She had almost exhausted the money she’d set aside for this trip—an amount that she’d expected to be sufficient to take her to her ultimate goal of reaching Hillcross. She hadn’t really thought beyond that, but now she had to face the possibility of being unable to achieve that goal. That worsened her foul mood.
Dr. Metheny cleared his throat, drawing her attention. “Miss Lina,” he began a bit hesitantly, “Serene and I have been discussing the possibility of remaining here to care for the orphans. I’ve learned that Marquez needs doctors. There is one small clinic managed by a doctor and his wife, who is also his nurse. A couple of other doctors have practices, but I believe if I set up a practice, I could draw plenty of patients and thus have a decent income—not enough at first certainly to provide for all that we need here, but it would help. We care very much about these orphans. We lost our daughter, our only child, to a rare illness when she was just Cara’s age, and these children have filled the void she left in our lives.”
That news cheered Lina a bit. Before she could offer a word of thanks, Petrus spoke up.
“I’m old enough to get a job,” he said. “I’d hoped to get some kind of apprenticeship until I wound up here. An apprenticeship wouldn’t bring in any money, so that’s out, but I’m not afraid of hard work.”
This offer from a boy she’d observed to be full of anger touched Lina. “You shouldn’t have to give up your dreams.” Lina had dreams of her own, ones she did not intend to abandon. These orphaned children also deserved to dream of a better future and have hope of fulfilling those dreams one day.
A silence followed Lina’s declaration to Petrus, everyone perhaps considering the unlikelihood of fulfilling dreams, given their current situation.
Dr. Metheny’s plan of setting up a private practice with a clinic offered a glimmer of hope. On its own it wouldn’t be enough, at least right now. They needed funds right away. They’d been using the purse of money the mother and daughter duo had given them, but that money was gone. She had the rough gems that Bryte had purloined from her stint in the mine. They might have some value. It was a slim hope, but one she intended to explore at her earliest opportunity. Bryte had shown her the very valuable bracelet she had found on the evening she left Tirbat and kept though she knew who had lost it. They hadn’t dared to try to sell it because, as distinct as it was, someone might recognize it as a bracelet that had been lost by a very prominent citizen of Tirbat. The owner could possibly have put out a description of it and offered a substantial reward for its return.
Bryte’s voice broke the silence. “Just before Torby came in, Nia and I were talking about something that maybe Torby could do.” She paused, then continued, directing her words to Lina. “We haven’t found any money in the house, but the Coopers must have been getting a lot of money from the mine. Maybe they were banking all their funds, but it occurred to us that they might have some hidden here
somewhere. Someone trained in search techniques, as we thought Peace Officers probably were, should go through this part of the house—the rooms they kept for their exclusive use—and make a thorough search. Torby, could you do that?”
Lina frowned, not sure that was a wise suggestion, but Torby perked up.
“Yes, I could. I’ve had training on how to search buildings for secret hiding places.”
“We could all help,” Fyodor piped up. “Fedrek and I are good at finding things.”
Bryte shook her head. “You probably are,” she told the boy, “but this would be a job for a trained adult.”
Lina couldn’t help smiling at that. Torby might well have gone through the training, but he lacked experience, and she very much doubted he’d ever conducted an actual search of the type required. She refrained, however, from correcting Bryte, guessing her young friend had another concern.
Instead, she said, “Let’s let Torby get to it right away. And I think we should all stay out of those rooms long enough to let him do it.”
“Well, Melusine is still in bed recovering,” Dr. Metheny reminded her. “She’s occupying one of those rooms. I believe it’s the one that was Mother Cooper’s. And I’ve been using another for my examining room. I’ll can clear my things from that one if necessary. But Torby can start in the room Teddy’s been using. That room, I understand, was Rale’s.”
“Too bad we don’t know where the rest of the crew lived,” Lina said, recalling that the children had told her they’d been guarded by three women besides Vee Cooper’s wife, who probably had lived here with him, and three men besides Vee Cooper and Rale. So Rale, Vee’s wife, and six others were holed up somewhere, a continuing threat to the current occupants of the Cooper home.
Thinking of that, she remembered that it was time for someone to take Teddy’s place for guard duty. Teddy should have come in by now. Most likely in his coyote form, he’d lost all track of time.
She headed for the back door, but a loud noise from the front of the house stopped her. The roar of some sort of motor sent her hurrying back to peer out of the front room window.
As she looked out, the noise sputtered to a stop. It had come from a large, motorized bicycle, the kind she’d heard called a motorcycle. She’d rarely seen one. They’d become popular during the time she’d spent in Tirbat, where the contraptions had been banned, considered too dangerous on the capital city’s curving roads and the ramps that connected the city’s seven tiers.
Getting off the cycle’s wide seat and striding to the front door was Peace Officer Beckwith Sagist, and the frown on his face portended more bad news.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BECK’S BAD NEWS
Teddy-coyote knew he was supposed to stay within sight of the house most of the time, and never go beyond certain points where he could neither see the house nor be near paths that might be used by anyone approaching the house. But he had heard something that piqued his curiosity. He’d skirted the mound of stones that covered the corpses of Mother Cooper and her son Vee and was loping away from it when he heard a scrabbling sound as of someone digging through stones. Could Cooper or his mother still be alive and trying to dig their way out of the grave? If anyone had been there trying to dig into the grave, he’d have scented the person first and then seen him or her.
He headed back toward the mound and approached it cautiously. The scent of putrefaction came to his nostrils first and then another scent. One he quickly identified. Rats! Digging through the stones. If they uncovered the bodies …
He abandoned caution and hurled himself at the sleek, black creatures—four of them—digging into the cairn. He pounced on one and caught it in his mouth. The others scattered. He shook his captive until he felt its neck snap and its body go limp. He dropped it next to the cairn and scouted around for its companions, picked up their scent, and charged after them, well aware that if he abandoned the chase, they’d return after a safe interval and bring reinforcements.
They sped through the sparse ground cover and vanished into a burrow. He stopped at the entrance to the burrow and tried to dig, but with a front paw missing, he soon realized the effort was futile. He loped back to the stone cairn to be certain no more rats had come there. Seeing none, he also made sure that the rats he’d chased off had not dug through the stones and exposed any bit of what was beneath them. They’d disturbed several of the stones but not enough to reveal anything. To the coyote, the strong odor of decay provided evidence of the bodies under the stones. Would human senses pick up the scent? Maybe he should find out. He shifted, stood up on two legs, and assumed his human form.
Teddy grinned inwardly at the thought that his coyote clearly believed its was the predominant form. He regarded the cairn critically, bent, picked up some of the stones the rats had dislodged, and set them firmly back into place. He sniffed. Yes, he could smell it, not as strongly as his coyote had, but enough so that anyone looking for a trace of the Coopers would find the cairn suspicious and dig into it. He was just deciding to bring up that danger to Miss Lina when he heard his name being called. He’d probably been out longer than his shift required.
He hurried toward the house, found Bryte waiting at the back door. Her worried frown told him something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
“Peace Officer Sagist came by a little while ago to warn us,” she said. “Their chief has ordered a search of the house and surrounding area. I think they suspect that Cooper and his mother are dead. They’ll be here soon. We’ve got to think of something we can do, some way to get rid of them before they find the bodies.”
“If they see that cairn, they’ll be sure to check it out. I just came from there. I could smell, well, what’s under there.”
“As it is, Beck warned that they’re going to tell us we have no right to be living here,” Bryte said. “I mean Lina and I and the Methenys and the Wilcoms. Lina asked Beck who the peacekeepers think should be taking care of the children, and of course they said the Coopers. Seems Mother Cooper and her son are the legal guardians of the orphans, and that’s why they want to find them.”
“So what’ll happen if they don’t find them?” Teddy asked as they entered the kitchen.
“We better worry about what’ll happen if they do,” Bryte said, leading the way through the kitchen as she spoke. “Remember, the miners have been paying the peacekeepers to overlook their mistreatment of the orphans. They’ll label us ‘murderers’ and arrest us before they do anything to punish the miners.”
“That cairn is way too obvious. There’s not a chance they won’t find it, ” Teddy declared as he and Bryte came into the sitting room.
Lina broke off her conversation with Beck Sagist and turned to Bryte and Teddy, her expression grim. “The Peace Officers will be here at any moment. We don’t have time to move the bodies. We have to do something to keep them from spotting the cairn. Any ideas?”
“Maybe if you and Teddy both shifted and led them on a chase away from it?” Bryte said tentatively.
Lina shook her head. “Too dangerous. They’ll be armed. We’d probably both be shot.”
Teddy shuddered. He could run fast and dodge well, and it wasn’t easy to shoot a moving target, but losing his lower arm made him less reckless than he had been.
“Well, what can we do?” Bryte asked in a tone that implied no expectation of an answer.
At that moment with an ostentatious screech of brakes the peacekeepers’ motorized wagon halted right in front of their door.
“Nothing now,” Lina said. “We’re out of time.”
“I’d better not be seen here,” Officer Beckwith said. “They’ll know I came to warn you. I think I can get away without their seeing me. I moved my cycle around back.”
“They’ll hear the motor,” Lina said. “Better hurry. I’ll tell the children to make a lot of noise.”
He nodded and rushed to the back of the house, while Lina summoned the children and told them to race around and holler at each other
, a project which they embarked on happily and didn’t stop even when the Peace Officers pounded on the door.
Seeing Cara among them gave Teddy an idea. “Stall them,” he called out to Lina. He headed for Cara, grabbed her, and said, “Cara, I need you to do something, and it’s very, very important. Will you come outside with me?”
She looked up at him and nodded, giving him a trusting smile. He took her hand and led her swiftly away from the confusion filling the sitting room, into the kitchen, and toward the back door. Before he reached it, Nia swooped down on them.
“Where are you taking Cara and why?” she demanded.
“Nia, I need Cara to do something. She won’t be hurt. Just trust me, please.”
“What do you need her for? She’s the youngest child here. What can she possibly do?” Her hands on her hips, Nia stood between him and the door, glaring at him. “I won’t let you put Cara at risk for some hare-brained scheme.”
“It’s no hare-brained scheme. Nia, we have to stop the Peace Officers from searching the grounds, and Cara is the our only hope of doing that.”
“Cara is! That’s nonsense!” She reached out to grab Cara away from him.
“It’s not nonsense,” he insisted, holding on the small girl. “Cara can make it rain.”
“Make it— You’re crazy!”
“No, she can. She’s done it before. Haven’t you, Cara?”
The little girl stuck her thumb in her mouth and looked down at the floor. It was the first time since their escape from the mine that he’d seen her revert to that infantile gesture.
He tried to reassure her “It’s not a bad thing, Cara. It’s a good thing. And it’s something nobody else can do.”
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