Sadie had laid her hat down on the table in front of her. She wanted desperately to go to Sam because she was worried about her and her unborn baby's welfare, but she stayed because we needed her.
Myste was wearing her shadow hood, although it laid on her shoulders like a collar and she kept her eyes downcast so she didn't have to meet anyone's gaze. I'd come to realize she did that often when she wanted to ponder events and people and make a decision on them.
Chas was as bright as a piece of new metal as he regarded them. I could tell by his face that he was ready to leap to their aid. He'd offer himself in a moment if I didn't warn him with a look. In many ways, he was like a young puppy wanting to please everyone. Endlessly positive. He would've given into the opening bid right away without wondering if it was a trap.
Marlin wore his trademark beanie cap and beneath it, his face looked much thinner. His plaid shirt covered over yet another T-shirt, this one had the words The Tragically Hip written across the front in a font that looked like a fountain pen had scratched into the material and lots of hand written lyrics surrounded it. I noticed he'd found his music player again and while it was not humming with the tinny sound of music, it was tucked into his pocket and I could see the bulge of the white wires peeking over the top.
For a man who had no bag and baggage, he certainly had his choice of clothing. I wondered where he kept it all.
I wondered all sorts of things about Marlin. He kept to himself a lot, not giving information about his past freely. Much about him was still unknown, and yet he was giving of himself to the town. It was hard to ask more of him than he was already giving.
Last of all, was Lance. He hadn't shaved in days and the smoky stubble must have felt itchy because he kept scratching at it. I knew he preferred to be clean-shaven. His buzzed cut was getting leggy.
He sat beside me as rigidly as I did. He too knew there was something up with these men. Neither of them was asking for what they should be. Neither of them was asking for anything they knew we would give them.
The moments stretched out like a strip of hot taffy as I considered how well I had come to know these people. I wasn't sure if it was because I'd spent my lifetime assessing character or if I just really had come to feel as though they were family and that I cared to know these things.
The truth, whichever way I sliced it, was that they were family. And these men were not. I didn't trust those who hadn't earned it.
"You can't possibly expect us to give you our fighting men," I said finally and I stood up, more to be on an equal level as them. I didn't want anyone looking down at me.
I walked my way around the table to face them. The envoy from New Topeka edged away from me, shouldering the iron lamp stand in his haste to get out of my way.
"You're here for another reason," I said. "Why don't you want to tell us what it is."
The first man, the one from New Topeka, squared his shoulders. He was a broad bloke with long greasy hair. His sharp nose reminded me of a hawk's beak. In fact, his brow had a hawkish look too.
"Well?" I said and crossed my arms over my chest.
"It's your fault Hunter Wolf is declaring war on us," he said. "It only seems fair that you send us your men."
I laughed. "Fair?" I said. "When has this world ever been fair?"
I'd never felt any sense of fair play. Not since my grandmother died. The few years she'd managed to instill some sort of decency in me had been siphoned out by those men who had taken over my home and raped my mother to death before turning to me. The small amount that might have crept back in had been stolen by the men I'd met along the way when I'd fled her home with the blood of one of those men on my hands. Then again by Hunter's obsession with justice.
In the name of fair play, I'd suffered most of my life, waiting and hoping someone in this world would find it in their nature to give it. I'd taken advantage of those who begged fair play. I'd cast judgment on those who couldn't show it.
But it wasn't true fairness. There was no compassion in this world to spark a sense of equity in the first place.
I rounded on the other man, the envoy from New Albuquerque.
"And you?" I said. "You're asking the same."
He nodded. A blond curl fell into his eye. He was young, I noted. He probably had volunteered in the hopes of gaining some incredible barter when he returned with a troop of reinforcements to his township.
"We've been sent conscription notices," he said.
"Conscription notices?" I said. "From whom?"
The man from New Topeka answered.
"Who in the hell do you think?" he said. "We are either going to be forced to fight against you or you can help us resist."
I sighed and everything in my body went limp. I spun around and caught Lance's eye. I read in his face what I felt in my own. So Hunter wasn't just pulling an army of Ruby Skulls that he was drafting and giving power to. He was collecting up fighting men from across the nation all to bring down the hammer on this small town.
"I guess we're a force to be reckoned with," Gal said from beside the door. She smiled at me with her whole face.
I loved that about her, that she could see the silver lining in a storm cloud. She held her arm stiffly from when she'd been struck during the battle in the mines, but she was healing well. Marlin said she'd regain almost all of her mobility and skill. She'd be able to smith for another few decades.
"That's one way of looking at it," I said.
I chewed my lip, thinking. Gal had made an astute assessment even if she had done so as a joke. Hunter didn't want us to survive. He wanted the rest of the nation under his thumb. And he wanted us gone.
"Why don't you sit down?" I said to the men. "You look hungry."
I rounded on Chas and suggested he visit the cook to bring in dinner. The sun had begun to set and I could see the orange cast to the sky through the window.
"We'll break bread together, and we'll talk about how we can supply you with men."
I thought Lance would interrupt but I held my hand up.
"We will supply them with volunteers," I said, but my eyes told him it would be in a round about way.
The men pulled their chairs, scraping across the floor as they sat. Both of them put their hands in front of them on the table, palms down.
I noticed they were doing so in echo of the rest of my knights. It was almost an unconscious effort to show a lack of violent intent. I could respect that.
"So how many will you send us?" the envoy from new Topeka said.
"Yes," the other envoy ran his palms along the table, testing the feel of the char and the knots in the wood. "We need probably a thousand men or more."
I heard Sadie choke on her side of the table not because of the number requested, but for an entirely different reason if I knew her the way I thought I did.
"I know," I said, turning to her. "Leave it to a man to think it's only men who can fight," I said.
"Damn straight," she answered.
I knew that somewhere between New Denver and wherever her wife Sam was hiding, that Sadie had a bunker stashed with bullets and guns. I also knew she kept that information quiet. No one but the two of us knew it.
I also knew she kept those weapons to protect herself and her ponies as they traveled the nation spreading news and delivering mail. Her motto was if they had to draw a weapon on a man, that man didn't live to tell she had a weapon in the first place.
I hadn't asked her yet if she would supply those things if it came to full out war, because whether or not we won, the possibility of weaponry that could take so easily someone's life without the intimacy of seeing the consequences, just didn't seem right.
That kind of killing power always seemed more honest if used defensively. If we won, I wanted Sadie and her ponies to maintain their vocations. And they needed to keep themselves safe while they did so.
But that didn't mean that these men had the right to believe women were weak.
I leaned back in my chair
, letting the legs rise in the front as I balanced on the back two.
"Why don't we discuss how we can help each other instead of us helping you."
"That's not what we came for," said the man from new Albuquerque. "Do you know what will happen to us if we refuse Hunter?"
I crossed my arms.
"I have a pretty good idea."
Lance leaned around me to face the man.
"If you really think that Hunter is after you because of this small town, then you must realize that he's declaring war because of Skye. She's a threat to him. It's not just this town he's angry with. He's out for vengeance. And he knows Skye is the only one who stands in his way."
I watched the New Topeka envoy's jaw seesawing back and forth. I had the feeling he didn't like the thought that a woman was leading this brigade of dissidents.
"We can work together," I said. "Maybe we need to make a pact, like a treaty, where we join forces and go wherever it is that is necessary. If Hunter attacks you in New Topeka, we come to your aid. If Hunter attacks us here in New Denver, you come to ours."
He sucked the back of his teeth in disdain.
"And how exactly are we going to know where he's attacking? By the time he comes you'll be too late."
"We set up rally points."
I pointed at Sadie's hat as it rested between to her hands on the table. "We use the pony outposts to spread the word. An army the size you say Hunter is planning to send, can't possibly move without being noticed."
Sadie piped up. "I want that man defeated as badly as anyone else. More so. My ponies will do what they're told. No questions asked."
I swung my gaze to the envoy.
"All of that is just mere details," I said. "We need an agreement. The rest we can work out. We have resources. You have resources. Surely we can work together."
"And how will I know that you're acting in good faith?"
I wanted to say that he would have to trust me. But I didn't trust him. I trusted few, in fact, and all of them in this room. In my experience, respect and trust had to be earned and there was never anyone who was able to pay the price.
Even so, I needed to give him something. If I was to help him come to my side, I needed to risk something.
The only thing I had of value was information.
"We have additional help," I said. "Of a magical nature."
I saw Lance's eye fall to the sword on the table and I shook my head subtly at him. I wasn't about to risk that sort of information. No one needed to know the sword's nature.
I put my chair back down on all its legs and leaned across the table, all the better for him to see my eyes. I knew he'd want to read into them the truth.
"We met the wood nymph queen. Lance and I. She and her subjects are willing to help us."
The envoy from New Albuquerque gasped, but the other jumped to his feet, knocking his chair backwards on the floor as he stood.
"I've lost innocent people to those nymphs," he said. "They've killed at least a dozen good men. Do you know what it's like to see a man hanging from a tree by its roots that have somehow risen from the ground and wrapped around his neck and entire body? Do you know what it's like to watch it constricting the life from a man like a python until all of his breath is gone?"
He shuddered. "It's worse than grotesque. It's worse than terrifying."
I tried not to show my revulsion for the image he painted. Instead, I read his face, the way I knew he was reading mine.
"And what did you do to help?" I said. "If it was so terrifying?"
He averted his gaze, choosing instead to look at the table.
"It doesn't matter," I said. "We've all done things to keep ourselves safe. To stay alive. But those things must change if we're to survive. We need to help each other."
""You trust them?" he said, his eyes snapping back to mine, his voice strained.
"I trust no one," I said. "But I gave my word. And at least perhaps someone can trust me."
I thought we might be getting somewhere, the man sat down in his chair, rigid but trembling, and with the set expression on his face. He might not like it, and indeed he might find a way to retaliate, but for now he would listen and hear me out.
Except he wouldn't get the chance.
The chandelier above my head, one that I had thought dead made a high-pitched sizzling sound. Then the lamp by the door popped as though something had blown through it.
And then the lights came to life and turned the room so bright it left us all squinting.
-8-
A crackling sound came next, like the static you feel when lightening is gathering in the air and preparing to let go. I looked around the room, thinking at first I was the only one who heard it, but the way Marlin's jaw went slack, I realized he knew the sound better than anyone.
He pulled the ear buds from his pocket and looked at them something akin to confused curiosity. He gave them a shake. Twisted them in his fist.
In the next instant, I heard a voice so familiar and clear that it could have been in the room with us. I could picture the man's face as though he were standing there, Hunter's voice. Unmistakable. Except it was loud. Inhumanly loud. And it reverberated through the room, swelling with energy so strong it couldn't have just been powered by human vocal cords and vibration.
"People of new Denver," it said. "You have put in place of leadership an enemy not a friend. Skye Shadow has made deals with the Order of Shadows. An organization determined to keep us from being free. They turned off our power a generation ago. Because of their belief that technology has no place in this world, we toil unnecessarily. We are bound to the earth instead of soaring free.
"I'm here to help. I'm here to free you and let you live a simple, easier life. You don't have to gather an army to fight me. Join me instead. It's Skye and the Order of the Shadow who are your enemy. Resist them. Join me.
"You have twelve hours to deliver her."
And then the strange crackling stopped. Hunter's voice went dead.
I hadn't realized I had bolted from my seat and was standing until I felt my back press against the wall. A humming sound that lifted the hairs on my arms seemed to be coming from above me. The chandelier was lit. Every bulb in the room but one blazed. The lamp at the door glowed yellow, as though it was struggling to work.
The whole house seemed to be vibrating.
"Sweet Jesus," Myste said.
As I swung my gaze to hers, I realized she didn't even know she had spoken. Her eyes were wide. Her fists clenched at her sides as she too stood against the wall. In the next instant, she pushed herself away from the wall and bolted toward the door. She yanked it open the beating of her footfalls as she ran down the hall made the lamp's light waver against the wall.
"Gone to check on the EMP, I suppose," said Marlin almost casually.
I looked askance at him, astounded at his calm.
"What in the hell is going on?"
Marlin scratched at his ear with a crooked finger.
"You heard him," he said. "It seems as though Hunter has made his first move."
I raked my gaze over the room to find Lance. Besides me, only he knew the weight of this event.
"The nymphs," I said. "I made a vow."
His face had paled and I could tell from the way he stood, pushing his chair back purposefully, that he was anxious. He lifted his sword from where he had lain it on the table.
"We need to help Myste get that EMP back on line," he said.
Sadie rose too, offering her help. Chas and Gal made for the envoys' arms, shouldering them out the door, saying they needed to find a safe place to wait while we figured out how to handle the situation. They made no protests. Their faces looked terrified and unprepared to process the chaos.
Marlin had disappeared, presumably to woo a few nymphs into being lenient.
We eddied through the building, down the hallways, and into the streets. While many of the homes had been built after the Shadows overran the government and depl
oyed the second EMP, protecting all the nodes like a dozen miniature Cerebruses. Some of them had been built during the brief but happy period between the first and the last. That meant most of the town wasn't powered, but a couple of the buildings gave off a sort of bluish hue as though power pulsed inside but couldn't turn on.
A glow in the distance in the early evening sky indicated that Old Denver had come back on-line too. I imagined that great library lit within. I had a moment of yearning, when I could sit in front of the fireplace with a gas-less light and flip through dozens of text-filled pages.
Then I remembered all of the frayed wires in walls that had been torn open or crumbled down.
I didn't think all of that light was coming from electricity. No doubt some of it was coming from fire.
"What in the hell is going on?" I said. "How was he able to throw his voice like that?"
I could feel Marlin's energy next to me.
"A generator, no doubt," he said. "Loudspeaker system."
I swung my gaze to him. "Loudspeaker?" I said. "Is that another one of those Tragically Hip songs?"
Marlin had a habit of using his favorite music to interpret what was happening, and I wouldn't put that nonsensical word past him.
"I'm afraid not," he said.
He put his hands on his hips as he surveyed the street. Something caught his eye just beyond where the woods began. "It's like a sort of public announcement system from the time before Cliff Arnold set off the first EMP. It enables you to broadcast your voice to a wide system. I don't think he was just doing it from within the town, though. He's out there somewhere."
He squinted into the glow coming from a large spotlight fixed into the branches of a tree and tracked past it into the woods.
Something in his posture bothered me. It was as though he wasn't just searching the darkness, but that he saw something in the darkness that bothered him.
"Can you see him?"
"I see dark magic," he said. "And other magic. Different. Brighter."
In that instant, a shriek came from the center of town. Then another. And another. A chorus came up, and it moved ever closer toward us until we could trace it like a wave. I was already running toward the town's center when the first stone struck my face. My hand went up in surprise to feel where I'd been hit, and I tripped over a thick cord that sent me sprawling to the dirt.
Queen of Skye and Shadow complete box set : Queen of Skye and Shadow Omnibus books 1-3 Page 28