I spied Lance funneling through the crowds toward me. He had washed up somewhere and found a clean shirt. I could feel my heartbeat speed up just at sight of him.
"You need to see this," he said.
"Unless it's a plate of crispy bacon and a tankard of beer, I don't care what it is."
He scooped a few apple slices from a tray and a glass of lemonade from another.
"This will have to do," he said and held a slice of apple aloft near my mouth and pressed the glass into my hand. "Open up."
He waggled his eyebrows at me and slipped his free arm around my waist. I resisted the urge to melt into his side and instead nibbled at the corner of the fruit.
"Golden Delicious," I said. "Sweet."
"It's not bacon but it should hold you till you see what Musk has here."
He said it with such a sense of intrigue that I couldn't resist. I let him lead me, he threading our way through the swarms of people. Several kids grabbed for me as we went by. A few women tried to pass me slices of warm and crusty bread.
I shook my head, politely trying to extricate myself as I followed Lance to the house.
"I hope you're not planning to show me a dungeon," I said.
I wouldn't put it past Colton. I hadn't seen him on the field and I wondered where he was.
Lance chuckled.
"If you don't know what it is, then I doubt you've been deep into the bowels of his house."
We entered a room through a wooden slatted door with an iron handle. Beyond, was a bank of windows and broad table. It was huge and circular and it was made of what looked like cypress wood that had been charred in some fire.
Gal, Dallas, Chas, Myste, and Sadie all sat around it.
I was happy to see Sadie and would have gone to embrace her except she wouldn't meet my eye.
"Marlin found it," Lance said.
He pulled out a chair and bade me sit. I noticed there were two others empty. One for him and one for Marlin, I guessed.
I smiled to myself, almost unable to keep the pleasure from my voice when I spoke.
"This is unreal," I said.
I tried again to catch Sadie's eye. She wore her pony vest and the broad brimmed hat lay before her, dusty and grimy looking, on the table. She'd ridden here in haste, apparently.
"Not just unreal, ridiculously convenient." Lance said.
"You know what this looks like, right?" I said to him.
He gave me a blank look. I scanned the people sitting around the table in front of me. To my left was Dallas. To my right, Sadie. No one spoke.
I ran my finger along the brim of her hat and hooked it.
"None of you know what this looks like?"
The hat spun on my finger until she retrieved it and hung it from the edge of her chair back.
Blank stares all around. Sadie placed her pistol on the table in front of her.
"It looks like Colton Musk had a taste for expensive things," she said and laid her palms on the table. She ran them over the smooth surface.
"What would he want with such a big table? It's not like he invited anyone over to dinner."
I shook my head, remembering that probably no one here had read of the old legends. Probably no one was able to make the connection. I wondered how many of them could even read.
It made me squirm in my chair. Was this some sort of indication that we could make something bigger? We had the original Marlin, the original Excalibur. I'd met the Lady of the Lake. I'd heard once that there are no coincidences. That happenstance is really just opportunity recognizing its opportunity.
I knew I wasn't Arthur. This wasn't the promised kingdom and I not the foretold king. But I was all this world had. We were all it had. And if fate was going to supply me all of the materials that legendary king had at his disposal to shape his world into something better, then who was I to judge it.
I placed my palms down on the table as well.
My pinky finger touched Sadie's and the finger of my left hand reached out for Dallas.
Everyone followed suit, even Lance sat down on the other side of the table, facing me. He too spread his hands down on the surface. They might not know what this table represented, but they knew camaraderie when they saw it.
Everyone's fingers were splayed, stretching out, pinky fingers touching pinky fingers.
"We're a motley band," I said, clearing my throat. "But it seems as though this world would like to have a few good men and women it can trust."
I swung my gaze to each one in turn.
"Maybe we're knights of a new order. We've taken up the task of keeping this town safe. We prevailed despite the odds.
"I think we should promise our swords and our weapons to the service of good."
Lance murmured his agreement. "I swear it," he said.
One after the other each lifted his or her right hand, palm facing me. They swore to protect the people to the best of their abilities. Then they laid their palms back down on the table.
It felt anticlimactic, actually. Unreal. And yet I couldn't help thinking that a few words could be forgotten easily. Hadn't I taken vows before? With Hunter? Hadn't I broken them?
Words disappeared into the ether unless they were written down. Hadn't I known exactly how well that worked? Written words were what drove me to the library week after week. Running my fingers over the ink in ancient texts and even in aged novels had helped me escape, helped ground me and believe in something greater.
Words, whether fiction or non, helped form me.
Gave me hope that things could be better things out there.
My gaze pinned to Lance's. His black eyes held mine and I felt support in them like I'd never felt before.
"We need some sort of oath. Something tangible. A physical reminder."
I asked Chas for his blade. It was a long and sturdy knife with a black leather grip and a pointed tip.
I used it to scratch my name into the charred surface of the table as everyone watched, no doubt silently assessing my actions. I hoped with silent approval.
I ran my finger in the grooves when it was finished. The lettering was crude, but it gave me a sense of satisfaction.
I looked at Sadie.
"Will you claim your spot at the charred table?"
"Hell yeah," she said.
One after one, I watched as each of us dug out their names into the wood. It would be our place. Each one of these chairs and each place setting would be where we would sit and discuss what needed to happen. From there we would help the nation find the good in themselves, protect them, uphold true law, not the kind of justice Hunter believed in.
It was satisfying to see them sitting around the table, all of them.
I looked from face to face and realized that the Lady of the Lake had been right. I certainly was not alone. And neither were the people of this town. We could draw everything together. We could find peace and thrive and we could spread that throughout the nation if need be.
The motley knights had lain whatever weapon they had to hand on the table next to their signature. Chas had put down his knife. Sadie had put down her pistol.
Of all of them, Myste was the only one whose signature was unpartnered. I wondered if her bow was too unwieldy to place on the table.
I caught her eye, expecting nothing more than her usual composed stare. But she looked sheepish. And sheepish wasn't an expression that looked good on her.
Her gaze flicked away from mine and I turned to Sadie, realizing that they both had the same expression.
"Is it Sam?" I asked her. "Is she in danger still? Is that what's wrong?"
Sadie did look at me then.
"She'll be in hiding until she has the baby or Hunter is dead," she said. "She won't be safe until then."
Of course. I'd been caught up in the magic of it all. We'd fought back and won. But Hunter was still a threat, and now he had worse magic than his blood blade. He had a sorcerer. A dark one.
"Not just Sam," I murmured. "No one is safe until he's dead.
We'll make it happen this time."
"I've been out these last two days, delivering supplies and letters," Sadie said. "I came back because I have news for you. News you need to hear. It isn't good out there, Skye," she said.
"It isn't good in here," Chas said with a chuckle. But it was a nervous one.
I leaned back in my chair, chewing my lip. Sadie wasn't one for hyperbole.
"How bad is it?"
"Hunter has left his mark all over the nation. The ones who might have wanted to show kindness, who might have wanted to fight the ridiculousness of his mandate... Well, it's a mess."
Lance directed his gaze toward her. "How so?"
"Instead of helping each other, they're using Hunter's sense of justice to turn on one another."
Sadie swung her gaze back to me. "If you want something, you accuse a person who has it of doing something criminal."
"False accusations is a crime," Gal said.
Sadie thumped her fist on the table and it vibrated beneath the blow. I felt it against my palms.
"But who is left to accuse the false accuser when the sentence has been passed?" she demanded. "Who speaks for the truth?"
"The crucible," I muttered. Everyone swung their gazes to mine.
"Three and a half hundred years ago, at the Salem witch trials, twenty innocent people were sentenced to death because of malice."
"That sort of thing isn't malice," Lance said. "It's evil."
"Whatever it is," Sadie said. "It's happening. Hunter has recruited more and more would-be Rubies except this time he's not vetting them."
Her face got a pinched expression. Her fists on the table clenched next to her name.
"He's taking anyone. And the people who are applying are those who would use his sense of justice for their own ends."
"I'm not sure what we can do about other towns," Chas said. "We've got our own troubles right here."
Lance pushed away from the table and slung an ankle over his knee.
"I agree," he said. "We have to manage what's happening right here. Right now. But we can't just let the other towns go to seed. We need to gather the men. Show them what it means to be human again."
"At least the better side of humanity, and not the baser," Myste mumbled. "But let's not rely on men, shall we? We need good women too. I'm not sure men have the best track record when it comes to chivalry in times of tribulation."
She sounded resentful and I wondered if she was a reader, if she spent as much time mulling over history books as I did fiction.
"We'll fight Hunter, all of us," I said. "And when we rid the world of Hunter and his threat, we'll find a way to install some sort of true justice. One with compassion. And then we'll spread that message."
Myste shifted in her seat. "I can do all of that but I won't fight," she said.
Sadie turned to her, a faint note of fury and resentment making her voice throaty. "What are you doing here then if you won't fight."
"Not won't. Can't."
I held up my hand when everyone started to argue and the room became too chaotic to hear individual voices. One by one, they noticed and went quiet.
"Explain," I said.
"It's against my vows."
"Vows?"
She nodded. "As a Shadow, I follow the edict that I must not fight for others. I follow no one but the Order."
"You're lying," Sadie said. "The Order of the Shadow has gone underground. We haven't seen them since the uprising."
"Look around you," Myste said. "The EMP still works. The world is coming to life again. You think that's accident? We are not underground. We are living among you. We are watching you."
From anyone else, it might have sounded ominous, but from Myste, it sounded strangely comforting.
I knew all about the Order of the Shadow, everyone in the nation did. It was they who protected the concept of zero technology. They who overran the rebellion that brought technology back into the world and pushed them into the underground. The government buried itself in bunkers because of the Shadows.
The Shadows were responsible for us living in the dark ages.
What I knew about the inception of the order was precious little and only from my grandmother. She'd been part of the old world, back during a time when there was more dry land than there was now. She'd lived through the no-fallout war, the one that terrified the world enough to eject their nuclear weapons into space. Her stories about an Internet and lights that came on and went off by voice gave me dreams of a world of wonder and terror.
I'd been young, so young then, but those dreams were vivid enough to be branded into my memory. Such technology that we'd never imagined had been part of her daily routine and then it was gone. Planes fell from the skies. Cars crashed in the streets.
People died all over the world.
All because of a man named Cliff Arnold, who set off an EMP and stopped the earth's trajectory toward technology worship in its tracks.
I had heard about the Order of the Shadow, but I'd never met a member. I gaped at Msyte and was vaguely aware of the tension that cloaked the room as everyone else did the same.
It was Sadie who responded first. She pushed her chair back as she stood. It scraped the floor with a noise that must have been an echo of how she felt. How we all felt.
"You're a member of the Order of the Shadow?" she said. "Where's your damn hood?"
"We don't wear them all the time," she said. "We need to blend in."
"Blend in?" Lance said. "For what reason?"
Myste turned her bald gaze on him.
"I told you. So we can watch you. So each member can report what they see. So when people get the foolish idea that they can use technology again, when and if they decide to attack any of the nodes and bring down the EMP, that information can be relayed to me."
"To you?" Gal said. "Why you?"
"I'm not just a member," Myste said. "I'm their commander."
-7-
"Sweet Jesus," Sadie said.
Myste just stared at her, not even blinking, but Sadie didn't give up. She pressed on, her voice growing more shrill with each word.
"You believe what Cliff Arnold did was right?" she said. "You're willing to keep us in the dark? You're the reason the damn Ruby Skulls aren't just a band seeking justice anymore. They've become militant. They order towns to hand over resources and kill those who don't pay tribute for their protection."
She leveled her gaze at me. "It's what I needed to tell you, Skye. Hunter isn't just out for justice and vengeance. He's created an organization that's grown past his intentions. He's outgrown his own reach for justice."
She laid her fingertips on the table and I could see she needed to do that to support herself. Those fingers trembled until they touched down.
"Sam is in hiding because of Hunter and his Ruby Skulls. She can't show her face. I might not be there when the baby is born."
She looked askance at Myste but barely moved her head to do so. She kept her posture rigid, as though she was fighting off the urge to lunge at the woman.
"And you sit there calmly and say you won't fight because you believe in a world some zealot created."
"Not just some zealot. Cliff was my father," Msyte said quietly. "He had many children. He sired them all over the nation and trained us, brought us up to believe in him and the cause. So, yes. I do believe the world is a better place without technology."
Sadie clenched her fists by her sides.
"You said, was. Is he dead?"
Myste nodded. "He was killed during the Great Turmoil."
The Great Turmoil. A period of time when earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions turned the entire West Coast into a string of islands.
"Good," Sadie said, sinking back down into her chair. She looked spent. Whatever had happened to her because of Cliff Arnold, I guessed had just seen its zenith and denouement in those moments she stared down Myste.
"If he's gone," she said. "Then the Shadows have no reason to keep going.
"
"We have more reason," Myste said. "My loyalty is absolute. You can either accept me or you can exile me, but I'm a Shadow because I believe in it. The same as I believe in Skye. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe in her."
I swallowed down my unease at her admission and leaned back in my chair. We needed everyone if we were to defeat Hunter. I'd lived in this world devoid of technology all my life. What did it matter to me what happened in the past unless I didn't learn from it. Unless none of us learned from it.
I cleared my throat.
"If the Ruby Skulls have really become what you say, then we need all the support we can get." I turned to Myste. "You say you want to help," I said. "And we're happy to have you."
She sent me a curt nod and sank back down into her chair.
Gal stretched her arms across the table to lay her hands down on Myste's.
"So you believe the EMP should stay in place," she said. "The world should remain in darkness."
Myste crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward, her expression a mask.
"What would we do with electricity right now?" she said. "All of the infrastructures are overrun. They haven't been maintained in decades. And even if we had it, what do you think Hunter would use it for? You think it would be to bring peace and survival to the world?"
I chewed on my bottom lip.
"The earth is healthy again," she said. "That's a good thing."
"The earth might be healthy," I said. "But it's people are not."
"People are not entitled to it. Not if they can't keep the earth they live on healthy." She crossed her arms over her chest.
"Maybe they could be," I said. "People are horrible now because the law that tries to rule them has been warped."
Myste pushed away from her chair, and stood up. "People are always horrible, Skye. Always. If given the chance they will care about themselves only. That's what separates us from the animals. We think. We feel. We're selfish."
"I don't believe that," Gal said. "There's good out there. Just look at what we've done. There's good. I know it. We just have to look for it."
Gal seemed so earnest, so desperate to prove that there was goodness in humanity. Hadn't I wanted to believe the exact same thing? What if the true magic in the world was that it remained good despite humanity? Did I want to leave that possibility dying at the roadside.
Queen of Skye and Shadow complete box set : Queen of Skye and Shadow Omnibus books 1-3 Page 18