by Merry Farmer
“Great. So what do we do with him?” Kinn asked her. He made a fist, grinding it into the palm of his other hand. A vicious grin curled his lips.
“Community service,” Grace answered. Her expression was too calm, much too even.
Kinn dropped his arms and gaped at her. “Community service? Grace, come on.” He rolled his shoulders, one hip dropping. “At least let the punishment fit the crime.”
“It does,” she insisted with iron determination. “He let hundreds of people die, so now he should help dozens of people to live.”
A chill went through Danny as Grace coldly repeated what he had pledged to her earlier. It had been more than just a promise. Grace, his Grace, was playing games.
“I still don’t have a clue what you mean,” Kinn said. He crossed his arms.
“No, you don’t,” she sighed. Her words were about more than crime and punishment. Kinn didn’t catch the innuendo. “Once his hands and feet heal,” Grace’s voice caught and she cleared her throat before going on, deliberately not looking at him, “put him to work with Jeff, shoveling paths, chopping wood, mining coal.”
Danny’s brow shot up. Stacey sat straighter at his side, mouthing the word ‘coal.’ They exchanged an awed glance. Coal was a game-changer.
“Have him distribute it to people’s homes. Consider it hard labor. If it’s a good enough punishment for one of Kutrosky’s men, it’s good enough for him,” Grace finished.
Kinn wasn’t convinced. He winced and rubbed the back of his neck. He glanced to Danny, flexing then balling his hand into a fist. “I was kinda hoping we could make an example of him.”
“No one can die, Kinn.”
Kinn’s back snapped straight and he dropped his arms to his side, gawking at her. “Joe, you mean.”
“Whatever.” She feigned casualness but her eyes flickered to meet Danny’s. “The point is, no one can die.”
“I wasn’t planning on killing him, Grace. God, you always treat me like I’m some sort of violent criminal. He’s the violent criminal.”
Kinn gestured to Danny. Danny sat still, wearing his most benign expression. He blinked when Kinn frowned at him.
“You two have a lot more in common than you know,” Grace murmured.
Danny fought to keep his face from flushing as his blood-pressure soared. She was punishing him, all right. Punishing him and more.
“Hey.” Heather waltzed into the middle of the argument and grabbed a pitiful-looking piece of old fruit from a basket beside the well. “What’s everybody up to? When’s dinner?”
Jonah trailed behind her, eyes darting around as if he expected to be attacked at any moment.
“Well you made yourself right at home, didn’t you?” Kinn vented his frustration on her.
“What’s your problem?” Heather balked. She made a face at him and leaned against the well to take a bite of her fruit. Her glance shot straight to Danny. He could just make her out at the edge of his clear vision. Her eyes sparkled and her lips twitched.
“You.” Kinn marched up to her. “You’re my problem.”
“Hey! What’d I do?” Heather stood and threw her arms out.
“Look at you. I send you home with Grace to keep out of trouble and you go and get yourself knocked up. Did you do this to her?” Kinn rounded on Jonah.
“Um…I….” Jonah stammered, glancing into the well as if it were an option for escape.
“Every woman over there is either pregnant or has a baby,” Heather defended herself and Jonah.
“You’re not a woman, you’re a child.”
“Oh yeah?” Heather pushed away from the well, arms still wide, chest puffed as if inviting him to take a swing at her. “You wanna bet, meathead?”
“Don’t make me teach you manners.”
“Think you could? ’Cause I sure don’t.”
“Oh my God,” Stacey murmured to Danny as the argument whipped around in circles. “We’re in hell, aren’t we?”
“I think we just might be.” Danny sighed and sagged in his spot.
“You can’t order me around,” Heather shouted at Kinn, drawing the attention of the handful of others in the room. Some of Kinn’s people looked embarrassed for her, while others seemed ready to cheer her on. “I don’t live here anymore. You’re not my dad or my boss.”
Grace slipped closer to the bench where Danny and Stacey sat, Scruffy following her. She drew something wrapped in a scrap of leather from a pocket and handed it to Danny without looking at him. He took it, his hands already red and blistering against the smooth cream of her skin.
“Maybe I should be.” Kinn crossed his arms and stood towering over Heather. “You never got in trouble when you were under my watch.”
“I never had any fun when I was under your watch either.”
Danny unwrapped the leather. It contained his glasses and a scrap of fabric. His heart thumped against his chest. Even without putting his glasses on, he could see the fabric was a map drawn with some kind of blue-black ink.
“After the next snowfall,” Grace said so that only Danny and Stacey could hear. “Before dawn when the snow stops. Go there.”
He glanced up to meet her eyes. They were hard, determined. He wanted so badly to see love and softness there, but all they contained was frost. He nodded. Her expression began to crumble toward tears but she sniffed and pulled herself together, marching past him with Scruffy on her heels.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” Kinn dropped his argument with Heather and rushed after her as she left the far side of the longhouse.
“To talk to some of the men about finding cabin space for them to sleep in tonight,” she gave her explanation without looking back. “And then to consult with Mina and Julia about our grain supply.”
“Grace, wait.” Kinn caught up to her and their conversation faded out of earshot.
Once she was gone, Danny slid his glasses on. His eyes stung for a moment as they readjusted. Only the physical world became clear. The rest was as murky as ever. He winced and rolled to rest his arms on his knees, face hidden as he hunched over and panted through the pain. Every part of him hurt, inside and out, and now Grace had given him a mission, a red X at the corner of her map.
Chapter Five – Escape
Danny had never prayed so hard for snow in his life, but as if to spite him, the skies remained a clear blue shot with the coral-hued rainbow of Chronis’s ring and the temperatures hovered just above freezing for days. The sun made the air humid with melt. All through the forest around them, clumps of snow fell off of branches where they’d accumulated over months. Layers of ice formed on top of the packed snow after nights of freeze, only to melt again in the morning. Kinn’s camp was filled with cracks and thumps and the buzz of activity.
“At least we’re getting a good look at how the other half lives,” Stacey grumbled across the table where she and Danny ate lunch—under guard—four days after they’d been taken prisoner. “Make the best of a bad situation, right? Keep your eyes peeled for stuff we can do once we’re home.”
“Sure,” Danny answered. He couldn’t have cared less about innovations amongst Kinn’s people. They would have done more in their settlement if they’d had more people.
The haggard man from Kutrosky’s camp, Jeff, sat several feet down the bench at the same table with his own guard. He ate with singular focus, blocking the rest of the world out. Danny had been strategizing for days how to speak to the man, to find out from him where Kutrosky had gone and how he could find him.
Danny chewed a mouthful of stew and glanced from Jeff to the crowded longhouse. Nearly a hundred people packed the insulated room for lunch. They made orderly lines, waiting to be served by the women near the oven and to return their dishes when they were done. Grace stood between the two lines, giving directions that men and women alike followed. His suspicions about her position in the village were proving true. If she was the de facto leader, why would she leave that to be with him? He stabbed his spo
on into his stew, chipping the earthenware bowl.
“Grace!” Kinn’s shout split the room’s hum of idle conversations. “Get the hell over here.”
Danny scowled and sat straighter, free hand balling into a fist. Kinn stood in a group of soldiers at the far end of the longhouse. His companions didn’t seem all that happy. In fact, at the moment Kinn looked more like the hunched and irritable corporal being busted to private by the governor than a man in firm command.
“Now!” he bellowed, loud enough to shake the rafters when Grace didn’t come.
The two men guarding the table shifted and sucked in their breath. They exchanged dubious glances, but kept their mouths shut. The room’s idle chatter took on an anxious hush as Grace frowned over her shoulder at Kinn, spoke softly to the small group she was working with—that unique blend of apology and determination in her eyes—and turned to head across the room to Kinn. People whispered to each other in her wake.
Danny’s scowl deepened as he shifted to study Kinn again. He didn’t need his glasses to see that the idiot was as bad a leader as…as he was.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Stacey was watching him with a wry grin when he faced the table.
“No, you don’t.” He lowered his eyes to his bowl of stew.
“You’re wrong.” She leaned across the table. “She’s not happy here. She wants to go home.”
He shoved a piece of rustic bread in his mouth to stop himself from snapping a reply.
“I want to go home,” she went on.
“Everybody wants to go home.” Danny sighed. Jeff raised his head and narrowed his eyes at Danny. “Well, almost everybody.”
The one person who was happy right where they were was the only person who could lead him where he wanted to go. Just his luck.
“Jasper needs me,” Stacey went on. “Gil needs me. I miss them so—” She swallowed the quiver in her voice then cleared her throat. “God, my tits hurt like overinflated balloons. I gotta find a kid to nurse.”
She stood, snatching up her dishes, and marched away from the table. The guards let her go. They weren’t there for her.
Danny kept eating. Jeff ignored him. The guards shuffled their feet in tense silence. They didn’t murmur to each other, like a good number of the other people in the room were doing, but they clenched their jaws and huffed out a breath now and then. One had his crossbow slung over one arm instead of held at ready. The other guard didn’t have a weapon at all. Not that Danny was in any position to consider fighting them with his hands and feet as red and blistered as they were.
Jonah approached his table and slid into the spot Stacey had vacated.
“Hey, Danny.”
“Jonah.” Danny nodded.
Jonah glanced warily at the guards. They were paying attention.
“Some place, huh?” He looked around at the crowded room. “Makes our pavilion look a little pathetic.”
He didn’t answer. The urge to tell him off was too great.
“You know they’ve done some mining up to the north of here,” Jonah went on. “Just a little bit, coal and someone found a vein of iron in one of the caves.”
In spite of himself, Danny’s pulse quickened. Grace had said they’d found the ore. He’d forgotten. She’d been right about it holding the potential to rocket them into a much more advance stage of civilization.
“They’re just stockpiling it right now, though God knows why.”
One of the guards failed to conceal a grim laugh. Jonah shot him a wary look and went on.
“Think of all the things we could do with it.”
“All the time,” the guard murmured, barely audible.
“If anyone knew how to use it,” Danny answered, downplaying his excitement.
“Yeah, but the survival book—”
Danny cut Jonah off with a sharp scowl. Jonah pressed his mouth shut, lowering his head to the lump of cheese he carried. He bit into it, keeping quiet. Jeff glanced sideways at them, then went back to his food.
The conversation lingered, even without words. Iron meant tools. It meant weapons. With a smirk and a huff of laughter, Danny imagined what he could do with a sword. He could find Kutrosky and hack his goddamn head off is what he could do.
Right after he played savior, at Grace’s request. He sighed and lowered his shoulders.
“Hey.” Heather greeted him and slid onto the bench with Jonah. “I got something for you.”
She passed a small, shallow bowl full of something green and sticky across the table.
“It’s a salve for your hands and feet,” she said. “Want me to put it on for you?”
Her twitchy movements, the way she avoided his eyes, was a dead giveaway that she was nervous. Which meant she was up to something. Which meant they were in for a rough day.
“I think I can manage a little salve,” he said. He dipped two fingers into the bowl and rubbed it over the red and swollen flesh of his hands.
“They don’t have anything close to a healer like you, but this one woman, Alice, has kind of been doing what you do, studying plants and all. She thinks that will help.” Heather watched eagerly as he coated his hands. “So maybe you’ll heal quick?”
He met her eyes. She was anxious for him to heal. If anyone wished him well because they cared about him, it would be Heather, but the tightness around her mouth and the energy in her eyes said she had an ulterior motive.
“Hopefully,” he answered. If the salve did work, its effects weren’t instantaneous.
“You know, you and Alice should talk to each other at some point,” Heather went on. “Share all the stuff about moon medicine you’ve come up with. I know she would love to—”
“Why the hell are you letting these three talk to each other?” Kinn’s booming voice interrupted their quiet moment. As he strode across the room to the table, Grace working to keep up with him, the guards jerked to attention. “You.” He pointed at Heather. “Scram. And you.” He glared at Danny. “Back to work. What Grace wants, Grace gets.”
He twisted to give Grace a smarmy grin over his shoulder. There was far more acid than honey in the look. Grace barely acknowledged him, crossing her arms over the pregnant swell of her belly. She met Heather’s eyes. Both quickly looked away.
In no mood to cause a scene, Danny stood, a smirk curling his lips. What Grace wanted, she got, all right. More than Kinn knew.
“You too,” Kinn ordered Jeff. “Get your sorry traitor’s ass off that bench and get back to work.”
Jeff rose without question, leaving his bowl and half-eaten lump of bread at his place. He and Danny shrugged into their parkas as the guards stood at unblinking attention.
“What’s got you so worked up?” Heather spoke on behalf of all of them. She stood, one hand on the bump of her belly, and skirted around the table.
“I’ve had enough of you,” Kinn growled.
“Come on, Jonah.” She reached for Jonah’s hand and slipped away from the table with him.
“Hey! I did not tell you you were dismissed.” Kinn marched after them.
The soldiers exchanged the faintest of grins. Danny’s heart swelled with pride.
The joke was over in seconds. The soldiers jumped into action, steering Danny and Jeff away from the table and out into the cold afternoon.
Clouds had filled in the expanse of the blue sky bit by bit through the morning, giving a depressing, overcast heaviness to the forest. Danny and Jeff were marched away from the center of the settlement, to a stretch that was being cleared at the far southern end. It was littered with fallen trees, which Danny and Jeff had spent the morning sawing branches off of and chopping for firewood. From the moment Danny picked up his axe after the respite lunch had provided, his hands burned with pain. Heather would be disappointed to know how slow the healing process was.
Half an hour later, he was sweating and shaking and his half-healed hands stung.
“That green stuff works,” Jeff told him.
Danny took t
he excuse to pause in his chopping. “What?” The man hadn’t spoken a word to him in days. Why now?
“I said that stuff she gave you for your hands works. You should have used more. Thought I would lose some toes when I first landed here, but I didn’t.”
In spite of the searing pain, Danny’s pulse thumped harder. “When did you come here?”
As if flipping a switch, Jeff shut down and turned away, focusing on his work.
Danny cursed inwardly and adjusted his grip on his axe. He hefted it above his head and smashed it down on a chunk of wood. The force of the reverberation sent pain shooting through his fingers and he cried out as he lost his grip.
One of the guards came forward and bent to pick it up and hand it back to him.
“Take a break if you need to,” he said.
Danny snatched the axe away from him. “I don’t need a break.”
The guard shrugged and backed away, shuffling across the churned snow to say something to his buddy. The two of them fell into a conversation in hushed voices, walking out of Danny’s earshot and turning their backs.
Danny adjusted his grip on the axe handle and smashed it down again, gritting through the pain this time. He focused his thoughts away from his hands and feet, onto the pouch in his pants that now contained bullets and the map Grace had drawn for him. It showed this area of the forest in crude detail, the red X marking something in the upper right-hand corner. He didn’t need to be a scientist to know Grace was plotting, Heather along with her.
“Why did you come here?” Again, Jeff’s voice surprised him out of his thoughts.
“What do you mean?”
Jeff inched closer. “Why did you leave the safety of your village to come here? It wasn’t for food. Kutrosky’s scouts reported that you have plenty.”
Danny loosened his grip on the axe, standing straight and gaping at the man. “Kutrosky knows where we are?”
Jeff nodded.
The simple gesture was as jarring as if he had turned a cartwheel and dove into the snow. He shifted his weight, brain spinning to form questions.
“You were caught trying to raid this settlement, weren’t you?” he asked.