“The Gin have accepted the transfer,” said Joseph. “I have to say, I’ve never seen someone do that with such ease, Mr. Sinclair.”
“I have had practice.”
“Of course. Last time I saw you, you were so young. I forget.”
Clae ignored Joseph’s abashed chucking, turning to offer the Gin to Laura. “Put this in the bag.”
“Yes, sir.”
Despite its smooth surface, Laura got a prickly feeling where she touched the new stone. Unnerved, she hurried to put it away. Meanwhile Joseph had handed off his own Gin and shook hands with Clae.
“It’s truly an honor to have you here. I’ve heard some great things since last we met. You’ve really become a well-known name in Terual. Even our contacts in Zyra and Ruhaile marvel at your progress.”
Clae grunted.
“Well, in any case, let’s talk. You all can go back to your schedules.” Joseph glanced back at his group.
Most of that group split up. They gossiped quietly as they left the shop, but the Blairs and three others stayed behind. Joseph gestured for Clae to go toward the door at the back.
“If you’d like, miss, you can stay out here and mingle. I’m sure the others are eager to get to know you.”
“Oh. All right,” mumbled Laura.
She was nervous about being separated, but this was what she’d been waiting for. This was the chance to connect with other Sweepers. While the pair disappeared into another room, she walked up to the other five.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she greeted, speaking more quietly than normal, but she was anxious.
“Nice to meet you, too,” replied another young woman, who didn’t look much older than her. “It’s troublesome traveling with cargo like that, so it’s a relief you made it.”
“There was a little bump in the road, but we managed.” Laura tried to remember this woman’s name and failed miserably.
“Well, you’re here now.” The woman smiled.
Laura felt embarrassment and shame bubbling in her chest. She had no idea how to start a Sweeper conversation. In her experience it was Clae barking at her or explaining something to Okane, not trying to dig things out of people. She didn’t want to just ask “how’s work,” because that would just sound stupid.
“So that was Sinclair, then.” The woman glanced back at the door with a gleeful look.
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Oh, we’ve heard things,” the woman giggled.
“What kind of things?”
The woman leaned closer to the elderly woman beside her and made a tittering sound.
“Oh, she hasn’t heard,” she whispered, too loudly for it to be real.
“I suppose he must not talk about it, then!”
“Talk about what?” demanded Laura.
“Oh, nothing.” That teasing grin on the woman’s face was really annoying.
“If it’s really nothing, why are you talking about it?”
The woman looked a little put out, but continued. “It’s that sordid family affair of theirs. All the deaths and such.”
Laura knew Clae’s father had died on the job, but she made it sound as if they were all gone. And what was “affair” supposed to mean?
“I’ve never heard of that. I mean, he said something about the risks of the job being the breakdown of the family business, but—”
“Is that what he told you?” The woman looked delighted again, and Laura had the feeling she was going to hate this gossipy woman in the future. “This really is sordid!”
“Sordid Sinclairs, sure. You want to elaborate?”
“Oh honey, you’re kind of blunt, aren’t you?” The woman frowned. “The boys don’t like that in a girl.”
So they preferred squeaky gossipers instead? Idle talking was one thing, but these women were the mean kind of gossips. Laura wouldn’t be surprised if they talked about scars, too.
“Elaborate? Please?”
“Fine.” The woman rolled her eyes. “How do I break this to you?”
“Give it to her straight,” cackled the old lady.
“How straight?” She giggled again.
Laura looked over at Melody, hoping for assistance from someone a little less silly, but Melody simply watched like a hawk from the counter. Helen stood by her, fussing over Leo and paying them no attention. The other women twittered between themselves some more, then turned back to her.
“There were five Sinclairs, once upon a time. Three of them died, one ran off, and the last one was a twisted little monster child. Guess which one you got landed with?”
Laura felt a lot of things about that. First off she was stunned, because she hadn’t thought about how much death was involved in that family. Secondly, she was offended because of that obvious insult about Clae. Third, she didn’t know what to think about all of that happening to him as a child.
“I’m sorry?” That was all she could think of to say.
“Unthinkable, right? Scandalous, right? I know. He didn’t tell you anything, did he? Of course, I hear he’s still twisted. I don’t know how you work with him.”
“You hear,” Laura retorted grumpily. “He’s obnoxious, not twisted.”
“Oh?” chirped the woman, and Laura realized she’d just opened a new door for gossip. Just not a door she liked.
“What about you, you’ve got to have some eccentric Sweepers here too, right?”
“Not really,” the woman said dismissively. “How crazy is he?”
“Not a lot. Why are there multiple floors here? Do people live up there?”
“Nobody lives up there. Come on, Sinclairs!”
“It’s obvious she doesn’t want to talk about that. Drop it,” ordered Melody.
The women fell dead silent at her words. After a long while the old woman murmured, “You know, I think we could do some fine-tuning upstairs. Come along, dearie.”
The two of them went up the stairs in the corner, leaving the others behind. Laura drifted over to the counter. Melody watched but said nothing. Leo, on the other hand, seemed very interested.
“Hey.” He grinned at her. “You’re from Amicae, aren’t you?”
He mispronounced it. Well, he said it the proper way, like “ahmeekay.” Only foreigners pronounced it like that.
“I am,” she replied anyway.
“Does your city really lie to everyone about walls protecting them from kaibutsu?”
It wasn’t as if Laura had any hand in setting that up, but she still flushed with shame. The expression was enough of an answer, because he laughed.
“And your city actually believes it? That’s hilarious!”
“We’d change it if we could, but we’re not too keen on being thrown in jail,” Laura said shortly. Was this standard? Did Sweepers actively mock each other’s cities at these events and then expect some kind of camaraderie? She glanced at Helen, but the woman made no attempt to correct his behavior.
“I’d change it anyway,” said Leo. “I’m not scared of things like that.”
“Right,” Laura drawled, unimpressed. “So, you’re a Sweeper apprentice too? What kind of things do you do here?”
“Mostly clean,” he groaned. “I get to clean and put things away. I never get to do anything fun like the others.”
“No infestations for you, then?” She was only mildly surprised. There were a lot of apprentices—taking them all on a job would be dangerous and difficult.
“No. Do you get to do that?”
“Clae’s been bringing me along since day one.”
At Clae’s name, Helen’s face darkened. Leo didn’t notice.
“Lucky!” he moaned. “My dad’s not letting me on missions until I’ve been here three years.”
“I’m sure he’s just worried about you.”
“Worried.” He rolled his eyes. “He shouldn’t be. I can take care of myself. If other Sweepers can—”
“In his defense, Clae didn’t have much of a choice. At the time I was the onl
y other Sweeper. He needed some help.”
Leo looked a little put out.
“Why did you take the job?” Helen’s voice was sharp, and Laura was taken aback by the question.
“Because I wanted to be a Sweeper. I wanted to help protect Amicae. Why else would anyone take the job?”
“You shouldn’t have. There’s a reason he can’t be trusted with an apprentice.”
“Well, he’s got two of us now and we’ve been doing just fine.”
“You should’ve left him alone,” Helen muttered darkly. “Let the mobster Sweepers take over. They’d do a better job.”
Laura looked at Melody for some kind of explanation, but the blank expression didn’t help at all. This woman was worse than Clae.
“Is that Sinclair really crazy?” asked Leo, looking at his mother, and she replied, “Sinclairs can’t be counted on for anything. His father proved that well enough.”
He took this as a yes and laughed, “You work with a crazy man?”
“He is not!” Laura retorted, fed up and glaring. “How do you have any right to judge what kind of person he is? You don’t know him. As far as I can tell, you’re all hapless gossips here! Except you, you don’t talk much.” The last sentence was deadpanned to Melody, who didn’t react at all.
“I’m not a gossip!” Leo objected angrily.
“I’ve known him.,” said Helen. “And I know you’re an idiot for getting involved. You too”—she turned her nose up at Melody—“but at least you had the sense to leave it. There’s something wrong with them. The whole lot of them.”
“You don’t know shit,” Laura hissed.
“Whoa,” Leo snickered. “Don’t bite our heads off.”
“Maybe if you had any semblance of manners I wouldn’t have to!”
Leo’s laughter stopped. “Hey, just because you’re overprotective—”
“You’re insulting her coworker. It’s entirely within her right to be angry,” Melody butted in.
“We’re not insulting,” said Leo. “We’re just talking.”
“Oh yeah? How about I call your dad a batty little ingrate?” said Laura.
“You can’t just—”
“Is there a problem here?”
Clae’s voice cut the air like a knife. All the fight went out of Laura in a whoosh. She felt ashamed. She’d been thinking about how great this would be, but she ended up blowing up at a bunch of idiots like a testy child. She stared at the ground as two sets of footsteps grew nearer.
“We heard some raised voices out here. Is something wrong?” asked Joseph.
“Your family is being offensive again,” Melody informed him.
“She’s yelling at us!” Leo whined.
“Leo.” Joseph’s voice sounded so sad, so disappointed, that Laura felt guilty too.
Leo fell silent and shuffled his feet. Joseph walked past and up to Helen. He took her hand and said, in that same sad, sad tone, “Helen. I thought we were going to be nice and civil. They’re our guests and they deserve our respect.”
Helen just looked at him. Completely unapologetic.
“Laura?”
Laura glanced up. Clae stood right next to her. He gave her a look, but not one of his usual, critical looks. More like an it’s okay, I kind of approve type of look. It made her feel a little better.
“I hope we will all get along now,” Joseph wheedled. “No more arguing. Just mutual respect. Everyone in this room is an excellent Sweeper of outstanding merit, and we should all be treated as such.”
“Okay, Dad,” Leo muttered.
“Good.” He patted the boy on the shoulder and turned to Laura and Clae. “I apologize for this. We’re normally very professional.”
“It’s okay.” Laura could tell that he at least respected Clae and expected others to do the same. She wasn’t going to think badly of him as she did his family.
The two head Sweepers stayed in the main room. They sat in some of the chairs and talked about Sweeper things, mostly the effectiveness of various weapons against the monsters. They talked about the size and shape of grenades to use (apparently Eggs were only a variation: the same bomb could come in the shape of plain circles, cones, cylinders, even squares, and had different names depending on shape), how that affected their potency, change in colors, the whole shebang. It was more information than Laura had ever heard before. She sat near Melody to listen in and paid rapt attention. They talked about grenades practically the entire day. Joseph mentioned this apprentice or that apprentice and this helper or that one in his stories, but Clae never mentioned names. Laura found that strange, especially when he kept bringing up dead apprentices with her, but then these people already thought he was incapable of having an apprentice. Best not encourage them. While they kept talking, Helen and Leo entertained themselves with books and notes. Melody sat and stared, seemingly not listening to anything, and Laura decided she was kind of creepy.
They were going on about kin-filled bullets when a delivery team brought in a familiar wooden crate. Joseph was intrigued by, if uneasy about, the machine gun and its use, while Clae explained how it had worked on the train. At the mention of that infestation and felin, Helen’s lip curled, like she couldn’t believe they’d been so stupid that they had to face danger getting here. Laura glared at her as darkly as she could manage. Clae, on the other hand, spared the audience only infrequent glances, and always his eyes avoided Helen, as if he pretended that she didn’t exist if he couldn’t see her. At long last they wrapped up their talk.
“It was a pleasure talking with you today, sir. I’m glad to get your insight on this. We’ve been having some errors with our equipment, so we’ll see if we can adapt some of your style.”
“It might not work the same way with your Gin combination.”
“You’ve made it work astonishingly well for the past few years. Perhaps we’ll get some of your luck.”
“Perhaps.”
“Indeed. Well, good night then. I look forward to seeing you in the morning.”
Clae and Laura left. It was dark outside and the streetlamps were lit again. The dim lights of an automobile cruised past as they entered the guesthouse. Almost as soon as the door shut, Laura spoke.
“I see why you don’t like Helen.”
“Oh?”
“She’s so rude! And she’s got no control over that child and she’s got to be a gossip, and she won’t apologize for anything! Just looking at her face makes me angry.”
“Some say her face looks like mine.”
“It’s not. I mean, I guess there’s something in there, but they’re not the same.”
He snorted as if the idea was hilarious. Laura watched him move around the little kitchen for a while.
“How did you two know each other?”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Still.”
“That woman blames me for what happened to her.”
“What happened to her?”
“The reason she left home. She needed an excuse, and I turned out to be the perfect scapegoat.”
There was bitterness in his tone. Laura’s opinion of this woman dropped even further.
“Do I have to talk to her at all anymore? I don’t think I’d be able to without snapping. She just makes my blood boil.”
“You don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to. Melody’s like that, they like her.”
“Right, Melody. She’s a little creepy. How’d you meet her?”
“I came to Puer shortly after becoming head Sweeper. She was the only reason Helen didn’t throw me out, made sure I got listened to. She’s unconventional, but not unkind.”
Laura had sensed no great kindness from her apart from blunt statements, so only shrugged in response. “Will tomorrow be like today?”
“For the most part. There’s some sort of dinner planned, though. Big social gathering.”
“So all those apprentices are going to get gathered up again?”
“The apprenti
ces and some of the more important people in Puer. Politicians and the like. Our arrival is an excuse to throw a rich party.”
Clae turned on the stove to heat up the kettle. One hand remained in his pocket, resulting in the now-familiar click of a pocket watch in restless fingers.
22
THE FAMILY BUSINESS
The next day they arrived later at the shop: more around nine than seven thirty. That was partly due to the fact they had to find breakfast, and also because they were putting it off as long as possible. Joseph welcomed them in and brought Clae over to the chairs once more while Laura took a seat by Melody. Helen and Leo weren’t there, but there was a girl cleaning the place. Laura tried to say hello, but the girl kept her head down and went on sweeping. There wasn’t much talking apart from that between the two bosses. This time they talked about Gin combinations and kin-treatment of clothing. Sometime around three, Joseph announced they were leaving.
That was how Laura found herself in what had to be the First Quarter. They were at a big party location. There was a huge dance floor with branching paths and gazebos, with railings along the sides draped in amulet-powered twinkling lights. A long banquet table on the side of the dance floor stood laden with rich food. The partygoers looked like something out of a film, all decked out and bobbing along to the sound of a band in the corner. All of this was right on top of a big pool of water. They had a lake for their entertainment. To reach the dance floor Laura and the others had to be ferried by little boats, and now that she was here she didn’t like it. She looked like a sewer rat compared to the ladies in their fashionable dresses and makeup. The food was good, though, if nothing else.
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