Vision in Silver

by Anne Bishop

  Well, yes, she could work the pump, and water did come out. It wasn’t a trickle that could be lapped, and the bucket that should have been under the spout to catch the water wasn’t there. Eventually they got their drink, mostly from licking the water that was dripping off each other.

  “Sorry,” Meg said. “There must be a trick to it.”

  Simon stood there, unable to shake off the water because the movement would make his shoulders and forelegs hurt.

  Someone coughed lightly.

  He tried to pivot and almost lost his balance.

  Nathan said.

  Vlad let out a gusty sigh that sounded more like a laugh. “I leave the three of you alone for just a little while, and look what trouble you get into.”

  Simon growled.

  “The bucket gets blown around, so it’s kept in the toolshed,” Vlad told Meg, pointing to the small structure.

  “I wasn’t coming out to do anything except look at the garden,” she said. “But Simon and Nathan wanted a drink.” She looked at the Wolves. “You’re very wet.”

  “They’ll dry,” Vlad said.

  Simon grumbled.

  Vlad said, no longer sounding amused.

 

 

  A Hawk passed over Simon, a reminder that there were terra indigene keeping watch.

 

  “Vlad?” Meg said, looking from the vampire to the Wolves.

  “Business meeting. Simon is needed,” Vlad said easily.

  “But he should rest today,” she protested.

  “I know, but this can’t wait.”

  She wanted to protect him, and that pleased Simon in all kinds of ways because he wanted to protect her too. But a leader couldn’t always be protected, so he started back toward the Green Complex and Vlad’s apartment.

  Vlad talked to Meg for another minute, then caught up to him.

  Vlad said.

 

 

  Telling himself to be satisfied with that, Simon walked into Vlad’s apartment. When he saw who else was in the room, he knew this wasn’t just about yesterday’s attacks but something more . . . and worse.

  * * *

  Meg opened the door to the summer room beneath her apartment and waited for Nathan to go in. She hoped all the cuts on his face and forelegs would heal without scarring. It was upsetting enough to think of Henry, as man or Grizzly, with one scar along his right cheek. She didn’t want Nathan to look in the mirror every day and be reminded of human betrayal.

  What did the Others think about her scars? Did the old scars matter to any of them except the few who understood what the number of scars meant to her life-span? What about humans? Was it difficult for them to look at her scars? She didn’t have any on her face, but the shorts and short-sleeve tops that were practical to wear in the summer revealed some of the scars on her arms and legs.

  None of the humans who were her friends had said anything. Not to her anyway. What about the deliverymen? By wearing summer clothes, was she advertising that she was a cassandra sangue? With the plight of the girls who had been released and abandoned, and the mounting number of deaths caused by their inability to cope with the outside world, more people would understand the significance of evenly spaced scars. Wouldn’t they?

  Although, now that she thought about it, the blood prophets weren’t being mentioned on the news or in the newspapers anymore. Now the news was about the foods that would be added to next month’s ration books and the shortages that were being predicted—and the accusations that the Others were to blame for the decrease in available food and the increase in prices. That didn’t have much effect on her. Except for pizza, she bought all her food from the Market Square stores, which were supplied by terra indigene farms, but Merri Lee and Ruth had said a couple of times that they were glad they were allowed to shop in the Market Square and even more relieved that they would receive a share of the food grown in the Courtyard.

  “Arroo?” Nathan queried softly.

  How long had she been standing there, holding the door open?

  “Busy brain,” she said, entering the room. Picking up the book she’d left on the table, she chose the new lounge chair that faced the Green Complex’s courtyard. Merri Lee and Michael Debany had given her two lounge chairs as a housewarming present. Ruth Stuart and Karl Kowalski had given her a small round table and two chairs that provided her with a place to eat or work on a project.

  Someone, probably Vlad or Tess, had done a little rearranging in order to move the Wolf beds into the summer room.

  After a confirming sniff to determine which bed was his, Nathan lay down, put his head on his paws, and dozed off.

  Meg didn’t know where her human friends were today. In mourning, certainly. Were they at the MacDonalds’ house, helping Lawrence’s parents and Theral do whatever was done at a time like this?

  She had seen videos, and sometimes live demonstrations, of girls being abused or even killed, but she didn’t have many training images of men being killed. Instead, there were images that, put together with another image, would mean a kind of death. A wrecked car and a sympathy card. A gun and a cremation urn. Not that the Controller or Walking Names had told the girls what those combinations of images meant, but eventually she and Jean had figured it out.

  Did the blood prophets who were floundering see that kind of combination of images as they made their final, fatal cut?

  Meg shook her head as if that would dislodge the thoughts. When she realized she was rubbing her arms to relieve that pins-and-needles feeling, she also realized Nathan was awake and watching her.

  “It’s all right. The prickling is going away,” she told him, which was true.

  “Arroo.”

  Despite being hurt, he was still on guard. In her own way, so was she.

  Meg opened her book and tried to read. But she couldn’t settle into the story because she kept thinking of Henry carving a new bear for Lizzy. Here in the Courtyard, they looked after one another.

  Lawrence MacDonald’s friends were looking after his family, but what about Jenni and Starr? Was there some way she could take care of them?

  She polished coins until they shone. A small token, a gesture of sympathy for the loss of a sister. And . . .

  A big paw pushed against her thigh with considerable force.

  Meg gasped. Nathan stood next to her chair, looking like he was about to howl his head off.

  “I’m fine,” she said, although how could she be fine if she’d just had a vision without cutting? That had happened only once, before the attack on the Courtyard earlier that year, when she’d been making deliveries during the day and suddenly thought she was driving at night.

  “Rroo!” Decisive disagreement.

  “I’m fine,” Meg insisted. “I was thinking.” She raised her hand to give him a reassuring pat and keep him quiet, then remembered not to touch his face. “I was thinking.”

  “Arroo?” Not convinced yet that she was fine, but listening.

  “This is different, and I’m not sure how to explain it.”

  Nathan sat next to the lounge chair and waited.

  “I was thinking about Jenni and Starr and if there was anything I could do for them. And then I s
aw something I could do. I thought it was a vision because I have visions. But it wasn’t really a vision. It was my mind supplying an answer to the question by showing me doing something nice for them.” Excited, she swung her legs over the side of the chair, which put her nose to nose with Nathan. “It wasn’t blood-prophet thinking, it was regular-girl thinking!”

  He sniffed her face and apparently decided there was no cause for alarm.

  “Could you tell Julia Hawkgard that I’d like to see her?”

  Nathan cocked his head. When she didn’t say anything else, he went back to his bed and lay down. A minute later, Julia showed up.

  “Is something wrong?” Julia asked.

  “No,” Meg assured her. “I just need a few things from the Market Square, and my knee . . .” She gestured to the bandaged knee. There was nothing that wrong with her knee. All she needed to do was avoid bending it so far that she would split the healing cut. She could have walked or driven her BOW, but Nathan would have come with her no matter what she said, and he needed to rest.

  “Oh. Sure,” Julia said. “What do you need?”

  Meg told her what she wanted. While she waited for Julia to return, she wondered what the Others thought about her request. Maybe Julia thought it was something peculiar to humans. Or maybe the Hawk had understood the reason for the request. Either way, Julia returned swiftly with all the items.

  While Simon was at his meeting and Nathan snoozed, Meg sat at the table in the summer room and polished two rolls of dimes until every coin shone.

  * * *

  Simon wasn’t sure if Blair and Elliot shifted to Wolf because it was Earthday and they customarily were in this form on the day that was free of contact with humans, or if they didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable about being the only one who wasn’t in human form for this meeting.

  Either way, once he chose a spot in Vlad’s living room and lay down, Blair and Elliot settled on either side of him. Vlad, Nyx, and Erebus Sanguinati sat on chairs that faced the Wolves. That left Henry and Tess sitting at opposite ends of the room.

  “There aren’t many entries in the book that are of interest to us, so I’ll just read those bits out loud,” Tess said.

  “Diary,” Vlad said. “That kind of book is called a diary. Where did you get it?”

  “I took it from Lieutenant Montgomery’s apartment. It was in a drawer with the Lizzy’s clothes, so it’s likely that this came with her—and after Nyx and I read it, we realized this was the reason someone is still after the girl.”

  “The Lizzy is young,” Erebus said. “What could one so young write down that would have so many hunters on her trail?”

  “The Lizzy didn’t write anything,” Tess replied. “Elayne Borden, on the other hand . . .”

  Simon said, eyeing the diary as he would an angry rattlesnake.

  Tess read the entries. When she finished, Simon waited to hear what the rest of them would say, but no one spoke . . . unless he counted Blair growling.

  “This confirms what the terra indigene already figured out, but now humans in government should be told why their people won’t have enough food, why some possessions will be difficult to buy,” Henry finally said.

  “You think the humans in government don’t already know?” Vlad sounded skeptical. “It’s the rest of the humans who need to know that, as far as the HFL movement is concerned, the humans who have first claim on food live in Cel-Romano, and the humans in Thaisia will get the scraps, if there are any. Hunger will push them into trying to take more land from the rest of Namid’s creatures.”

  Elliot said.

  “Most of what was written is personal,” Tess said. “I doubt it would be of interest to any human except Lieutenant Montgomery.”

  “What is important to the terra indigene can be distilled into a couple of paragraphs that will confirm to our leaders which humans are responsible for the shortages of food and materials,” Vlad said. “That’s all human governments need to know too.”

  Elliot said.

  Simon said.

  “We’ve been making decisions for a lot more than Lakeside lately,” Henry countered. “At the very least, the whole Northeast Region will abide by our decisions.”

  Simon stopped. Was Montgomery not quite their own, or was he part of the human pack now?

  Silence as they all thought about this.

  “Two copies of this diary will be sufficient,” Erebus said with a nod toward Elliot. “One for Lakeside and one for Toland. Vlad, when this meeting is finished, you will call Stavros. Tell him there are things he needs to know that cannot be discussed over the telephone.”

  Vlad nodded. “I’ll call him and ask him to catch the next available train.”

  Elliot said.

  Simon said.

  No one spoke as they considered the implications. Humans had little understanding about the terra indigene they could see. They had no understanding at all about the earth natives who lived in the wild country.

  “Train. Train,” Tess said. “When she spoke the last prophecy, Meg said that word twice. The Controller and his . . . people . . . spent years training her, so everything she says in prophecy has meaning.”

  “Stavros will be coming by train,” Vlad said.

  “And so will someone else. For good or ill, I think we should expect a second visitor.”

  Simon grunted with the effort to get to his feet.

  “I’ll go over to the Three Ps now and make the copies of the diary,” Tess said.

  Since there was nothing more he needed to do at this meeting, Simon hobbled to the door, then had to wait for someone to open it. He wanted to walk a little and rest a lot. He wanted to curl up with Meg and get petted while she watched a movie.

  He wanted to be strong and well enough to protect, just in case the second visitor who was coming to Lakeside turned out to be an enemy.

  * * *

  Jenni Crowgard returned to her apartment in the Green Complex early that evening. The Crowgard had spent the day together, mourning the loss of Crystal, not dissimilar to the way the humans had gathered to mourn the loss of Lawrence MacDonald.

  Will the Crows open Sparkles and Junk tomorrow? Meg wondered. Or will they abandon their shop in the Market Square?

  Feeling awkward, she knocked on Jenni’s door . . . and tried not to stare when the Crow answered.

  Jenni’s black hair, usually shiny and well groomed, hung dull and unkempt around a face drawn by grief.

  “I have something for you and Starr.” Meg held out a small decorative box, one of the items Julia Hawkgard had picked up for her.

  Jenni took the box and stared at it for a full minute before lifting the lid. She poured a few dimes into one hand. “Shiny,” she whispered. “Coins
aren’t always so shiny. Crystal liked shiny coins. She kept them in a bowl on the counter.”

  “I know. That’s why I polished these. I thought you could add these to the bowl in her honor.” Meg stopped. “I don’t know how to help, and I want to help.”

  “You helped. You warned Simon, but we didn’t listen when he said we had to leave. There was so much shiny, so many treasures to look at and touch, we didn’t want to listen. He had to wait, had to argue with us, and that gave the humans time to attack.”

  “Those men had planned to attack the terra indigene. It wasn’t your fault, Jenni.”

  The Crow poured the dimes back into the box. “Doesn’t change things. Crystal is dead. MacDonald is dead. And we have learned, again, that humans can’t be trusted.”

  The anger in Jenni’s eyes chilled Meg. “Jenni . . .”

  “Our Meg can be trusted. Our Meg would not betray us.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Neither would Merri Lee or Ruth or the other humans who work here.”

  Jenni shrugged. Meg thought that was a very bad indication of how angry the terra indigene were about this latest clash between themselves and humans.

  “Merri Lee and Ruth wouldn’t betray the Crows or any of the terra indigene,” Meg insisted. “Neither would Debany or Kowalski. They wouldn’t.”

  Jenni stared at Meg. Then, finally, “Crystal being killed in that place. It wasn’t their fault either.”

  Meg nodded, relieved to hear that much of a concession.

  Jenni hesitated, then stepped back to close the door. “Thank you for the shinies.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Rubbing her arms, Meg returned to Simon’s apartment—and wished she could believe that nothing was going to happen.

  CHAPTER 52

  Earthday, Maius 27

  The girl waited for Jackson or Grace to fetch the dishes from her evening meal. Earlier in the day, she had opened the shutters that covered her window, wanting more light. A screen covered the window, and white paper was tacked outside the screen, preventing her from seeing anything. But she had heard them talking, growling. Upset.