She’d turned down the offer of a wedding dress, and she’d brought her gram’s, handed down to her. It was all hand crocheted, which was probably a revelation to our stylists, who likely hadn’t seen anything like it before—old enough for the cotton string it had been made from, and the cotton lining, to have turned a creamy color. Long sleeves, floor length, and made with a lot of love by an expert needlewoman. I wondered if it had been her grandmother, or grandmother’s mother, who had made it. And where she had gotten that much cotton string.
Mark insisted that as many of us as wanted to come should be there. That was about half of the Elite—not that the other half didn’t want to be there, but they were out on calls or sleeping after night calls—and some of the friends he’d made in the regular Hunters. We made a pretty respectable showing, and if Jessie was uneasy around us, she had the good manners not to show it.
The ceremony itself wasn’t anything surprising, and the preacher man was very mannered. He was quite solemn, and this was close enough to the “traditional” wedding ceremonies I knew—though back home, most of the time the bride and groom write their own. He didn’t get enough time to preach a sermon, though, which was probably all for the best. That train could only make up so much time, and it had a schedule to keep.
We could see Mark’s people piled up behind the preacher in what looked like the recreation car. They struck me as being awfully serious for something that was supposed to be joyful, but then…maybe to them the joyful part didn’t come until after the vows were said. I thought I could tell which set of parents belonged to Mark and which to Jessie, but truth to tell, there was strong resemblance among everyone I could see, so it was hard to be sure.
The business was over in about ten minutes. The preacher man said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife; you may kiss the bride,” and Mark planted a pretty chaste sort of kiss on her. Then the preacher said, “I present to you, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Knight,” and there was a spatter of applause on the train end, and then the screen blanked out as they turned to face the rest of us.
We applauded (a lot more vigorously), which seemed to be the right sort of thing to do. Mark beamed. Jessie smiled nervously. The staff brought in a big, fancy white cake they’d made specially for the two, all covered in sugar flowers, which made Jessie blush and smile a little more genuinely and look as if she was pleasantly surprised by the fact that we were all being nice to them.
Or maybe that was me being mean. She could have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that the wedding hadn’t gotten interrupted by a callout.
Anyway, it hadn’t escaped my attention that Jessie came from people like the Christers of Hope Harbor and Gilead and Nazareth-town. Like my own people, we were used to making do and using up; the whole “just go to the comp for it” business was hard to get your head wrapped around. And actually using the comp? Only the folks at Safehaven, Anston’s Well, and the Monastery used comps regularly. Everyone else did their learning and reading out of books, unless you were tech-gifted. So I’d had this notion to make something for Jessie, and every time I thought something mean about her, I’d go and work on it as penance. When it was my turn to come up and congratulate them, I chastely kissed Mark on the cheek, then handed her the book I’d made.
She took it and was clearly puzzled. “We’re both turnips,” I said as she opened it to glance through. “I know it was brain-twisting for me to figure out how to get stuff and find stuff around here, so that’s instructions on, well, everything.” I noticed she was sporting a brand-new Perscom on her left wrist. “Perscom and comp terminal,” I added. “Remember, Mark’s Elite, so you guys can ask for just about anything you need or want.” I had no fear she was likely to request gold and diamond tiaras or anything stupid like that. It was far more likely she’d do without rather than be thought greedy.
Her eyes just lit up. “Thankee!” she said, now looking genuinely happy. “I hate to keep askin’ Mark, and he’s off Huntin’ so much….”
I smiled at her. “Well, it’s pretty much laid out for a turnip by a turnip, so you should be able to navigate your way around it all right.”
Mark turned up the shine on his smile, so much I almost got blinded. I took my leave of both of them to make way for the armorer, and went and collected a piece of cake and some strawberries.
Eventually, Kent meandered back over to me. Scarlet was complimenting Jessie on her dress, with just enough envy that Jessie would know the compliments were genuine. “You’re our resident turnip expert,” he said, without preamble. “What do we do with her? I don’t want her sitting around with nothing to do all day and—” He shrugged.
“And brooding, or getting hysterical, or watching too much vid feed on the Hunter channels and getting her head who knows how twisted up,” I finished for him. “Or worse, doing nothing but reading that Book of theirs, and deciding we’re all ungodly. If she’s anything like the Christers back home, she’s been raised to think that doing house stuff and garden or farm stuff is all she’s fit for, and there’s not that much house stuff to do around here.”
Kent let out his breath as if he’d been holding it. “Bloody hell. This’s the first married Hunter we’ve had here since I became senior Elite, and all the ones before that had been Apex Cits. I honestly don’t know what to do with her to keep her out of mischief.”
“House stuff, garden stuff, cooking stuff,” I said truthfully. “That’s pretty much all they do, besides religious stuff. All my friends back home would be bringing you lists of what they were good at or plaguing you to put them in some lesson or other, but that’s not how Christer girls work. They wait to get told what to do, generally by a man.”
Kent cursed under his breath and ruffled his hand through the long hair on the top of his head. Then it looked like something occurred to him. “You know what? I’m going to make her Rik Severn’s problem. He’s the Personnel man, and he can figure out what to do with her.”
That sounded sensible to me, so I nodded. I didn’t want to stick my nose into this too far. It really wasn’t my place, and I didn’t want to make things uncomfortable for White Knight the Hunter or Mark, the transplanted Christer.
It looked like I’d got off on the right foot with Jessie, but there was no telling how she’d react if Knight and I started partnering up a lot. If my own friends back home were capable of thinking I’d gotten a swelled ego because of being a Hunter in Apex, there was no telling what a strange girl stuck in a strange place was likely to make up out of her head because I was working with her husband.
So, just to make sure she didn’t start making up things right off, I caught Mark’s eye, waved good-bye, and headed back to my room, putting myself on the night-duty roster while I was at it.
“Bya,” I said, looking down at the third dead Psimon, this one at my feet. “I am getting seriously sick of this.”
This time the discovery had come as more of a shock, since I’d literally stumbled over the body. I just hadn’t expected a third body in practically the same place as the first one had been.
The Hounds had been tracking Nagas that we’d flushed out of a side tunnel, and we’d been paying attention to them and not necessarily looking for anything else. This time the body was right at an intersection, and I didn’t see it until I had turned the corner.
Nagas first. I’d already “contaminated” the scene, assuming that PsiCorps actually cared about that, so once we tracked the last of the snakes and killed it, this time I could come back and look the body over at close range. And vid while I was doing that. And get the ID. This time there was no point in staying so far back I couldn’t get a reading.
I have their scent, said Myrrdhin. Go the other way.
I left the body and turned down the opposite branch of the intersecting tunnel. We’d managed to intercept the Nagas just as they were magicking open the door into the service tunnel, and they’d turned and slithered off instead of fighting. Either they had just seen the size of my pack and figured fightin
g was not an option, or we were getting a reputation among Othersiders, since this was the first time, ever, that any Othersider had tried to escape instead of attacking us.
Myrrdhin and Shinje and Hold were the ones who’d found the scent after we’d lost it in a spot where someone, a street cleaner most likely, had dumped a big load of water down one of the sewer grates. That had effectively killed the trail, so we’d had to split up into four subteams. Now all of the others were streaming past me on the run to catch up with Myrrdhin’s group. I didn’t insult Myrrdhin’s intelligence by telling him not to start anything until we got there. I just chambered incendiary rounds as I ran.
And when I finally arrived, with my shotgun loaded and off the safety, Myrrdhin rewarded my assumption by being just on my side of another junction, the rest packed up at his back.
I think they are trying to get into another service tunnel to hide, the Hound said. I smell magic as well as snake.
I got my net spell ready. We didn’t have much time; if they got into that service tunnel, we’d have the devil’s own time getting them out. If they used the service tunnel to try to escape, we’d need the whole Elite team down here to find them and corner them. I thought fast. Bya, you and my Alebrijes except for Dusana sneak in as close as you can get, then bamph to the other side of them. Once you do that, we’ll rush from this side. We’ll get them caught between us, and I’ll net them.
Bya nodded, and he and the others…faded. They didn’t go invisible, but they lost their bright colors and turned the exact same color as the ’crete of the tunnel. Then they plastered themselves against the wall. If they moved slowly, there was a good chance they could get close enough to make this work.
We waited, watching as the Hounds crept slowly away, then out of sight around a curve. And waited. I really hated waiting, especially when I couldn’t see what was happening.
Now! Bya “shouted,” and we all rushed down the tunnel and around the curve.
Only to see that the Nagas, instead of retreating, had rushed Bya’s half of the pack as they materialized just beyond them.
Dammit! My stomach lurched. And I felt it like a knife in the heart when I heard one of my Hounds yelp in pain. This had just all gone FUBAR. I cast the net anyway, hoping that when the Nagas discovered they were trapped, they’d turn their attention to the net instead of the Hounds.
It sort of worked. And being encumbered by the net spell restricted their movement enough that they couldn’t put the full force of their muscles behind the blows of their swords. “Go!” I yelled at the other Hounds, and they leapt forward to the defense of their fellows.
It got very chaotic and ugly, and there was more yelping, which hurt almost as much as if I was the one getting slashed. It didn’t stay ugly long, thanks to my incendiary rounds, which very quickly changed the Nagas’ minds about attacking, but by the time they were all piles of ash, and I had dropped the net spell, Bya, Shinje, and Kalachakra all had some ugly, deep gashes, going all the way down to the bone.
So we delayed a bit more, while I poured manna into them to heal up their hurts, while the rest stood guard. I was cursing myself the entire time, apologizing to them out loud and crying a little. Nothing makes me feel worse than when I let my Hounds get hurt.
Finally, Bya grabbed my wrist in his mouth. Stop, he said. Stop blaming yourself. We are partners. We know what we are doing; you don’t force us to do what we wouldn’t do on our own.
“Yes, but—” I said, sniffling, and still feeling guilty as sin.
Stop, he ordered. And so I didn’t object. But I still felt horrid.
He licked the tears off my face, and I blew my nose on a rag, and we all got up off the ’crete, put ourselves back in scouting order, and went back to the dead Psimon.
This one was a man. And like the second one, he was old. He was bald, but his scalp was covered in age-spots, he was wrinkled, frail-looking, and painfully thin. Now that I was right on top of him, I couldn’t see any signs of dragging, hauling, or even signs that anyone had touched his body since he fell here. Nor could I see any signs of damage on him, not even a bruise.
There was also not a trace of magic, and I looked.
I sighed and called it in, got vid and the ID off his collar, then began trudging back to my exit, since I knew I was about to be ordered out.
This time the coldly officious Psimon wasn’t waiting for me, and I had taken the precaution of ordering a pod before I climbed out. The pod was waiting and I got into it. No one had told me that I had to wait around for the Psimon, and I didn’t intend to.
It almost felt like the dead Psimon had been planted there for me to find. And that just got altogether too creepy for me. I needed help here, and Kent wasn’t going to be able to give it to me. I had not been ordered not to talk about this incident, so if anyone found out that I talked to Uncle about it, with his help I might be able to skate on a technicality. I also called my uncle from the pod rather than waiting to get to HQ, where someone might intercept me—feigning that it was a social call. He took it anyway, though I had to wait a little.
“How long has it been since you had a home-cooked meal?” I demanded when he took my call.
He blinked at me in surprise. “Quite some time. I rarely cook for myself. Why?”
“Because I assume you spend time somewhere other than your office, and if you can get someone to deliver groceries, I’ll meet you there and cook for you, like a dutiful niece should,” I said. He raised an eyebrow, and I nodded. We were getting really good at reading each others’ nonverbal cues.
“Send me your list, and program your pod for the Arbors. I’ll tell the door-comp to send you up.” I had no idea where “the Arbors” was, but generally, any building that had a name rather than an address tended to be…appropriately fancy.
So I sent the grocery list of things I would need for spaghetti and salad, informed HQ I was paying my uncle a personal visit over supper, got the okay, and told the pod “the Arbors,” then sat back and watched the city in the sunset.
The sun was just touching the horizon when the pod pulled up at a tall building in the Hub. I got out and walked straight up to the door, holding up my Perscom to the scanner beside it. A vid-plate lit up with a bland male in a suit. “Elite Hunter Joyeaux Charmand, you are expected,” said what sounded a bit like a synthesized voice. “Please proceed inside and to the elevators.”
The heavy metal doors swished open, and I walked into a lobby: marble floors, marble walls, marble seats, and a lot of plants. There were vid-screens showing news channels on the walls to the right and left, and a bank of elevators at the rear. No need to ask which one I should take, there was one waiting, with the door open.
When the elevator doors opened again, I was in foyer in the middle of four hallways. Each hallway had two doors on it; each door had a little nameplate outside of it. I found the one that said “Charmand” and presented my Perscom to the scanner; the door opened for me.
And…well, the apartment beyond was like something out of a pre-Diseray vid about very rich people. After seeing the lobby, I expected a lot of glass and metal and stone. Instead—
The walls looked exactly like the peeled-log walls of one of our community halls back home, varnished and gleaming a ruddy gold, with a high, log-beamed ceiling. The floor was wood, covered in what looked like the hides of buffalo and bears. The furniture appeared to be made of more peeled logs, with comfortable cushions of stuffed leather, and added pillows in warm fabrics. The light came from a chandelier that apparently was constructed of a mass of antlers, and table lamps with square stained-glass shades.
Back home, all this would have still cost a spectacular amount of money. Here? I couldn’t even begin to calculate it.
“I’m in the kitchen,” my uncle called from somewhere inside.
I followed his voice and found Uncle in a kitchen that matched the rest of the apartment. He was taking food out of a box.
“I’m assuming—” I began.
&nb
sp; “Psi-shields second to none, installed by people I personally trust,” Uncle said as I took out what I needed from the well-stocked cupboards and began making spaghetti sauce.
“Good,” I said with relief. “I have some vid to show you. And I got a couple ID codes too.”
“You go clean up. The bathroom is through that door,” he said, and nodded to his left. I transferred the vid from my Perscom to his directly, and did so.
Once cleaned up and changed into the loose pants and top I found in the bathroom, I told him everything I knew while he helped me make dinner.
Anyone who was watching us through the panoramic windows would only have seen uncle and niece cooking together, since we kept our backs to the windows the entire time. And I could feel a very faint buzz in the back of my skull that told me Uncle’s Psi-shields were strong enough for me to notice.
I was pretty sure he knew how to watch a vid on his Perscom without letting anyone spying through the windows see it.
“Well,” he said as we made salads while the sauce cooked, “you’ve done more than I hoped for. Far more. Keep up the good work.”
“No one’s trying to blame you for these deaths?” I asked. “Or the Hunters?” I gulped. “Or me? Because this last one…if I was writing a drama-vid, it would have been a setup to make me look guilty.”
He smiled slightly and said, “I wish to draw your attention to ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’”
I don’t know how he knew I’d devoured every single Sherlock Holmes story we had in the Monastery archives, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. The dog, in the story, hadn’t barked when it should have…and what Uncle was implying was that PsiCorps probably should have been looking hard for someone to blame the deaths of three Psimons on.
Elite: A Hunter novel Page 19