Vision in Silver

by Anne Bishop

  Moonsday, Maius 28

  “Sweetwater,” the girl said as soon as Jackson entered the room with her next meal.

  He set the plate and the glass of milk on the desk before turning to give her his attention. “What about it?”

  She could barely sit still with wanting to know, but now that he was here, did she dare ask? “You’ve seen it.”

  “Yes. It’s outside.”

  “I know it’s outside. Everything is outside. But you’ve seen this place. You took pictures of it.” Something about the place pulled at her, settled her, lifted her. She wanted, needed, confirmation that this wasn’t a made-up place, that the photographs weren’t some kind of trick, because she could live in that place. Truly live beyond the four walls of a room. He said she could ask for anything she wanted, but she wasn’t sure she could ask for that much.

  She felt her courage wilting under his stare.

  He moved until he stood by the bed and could see the photos that she’d put in order so that the land flowed properly. Then he crouched so she didn’t have to look up at him.

  “Sweet blood,” he said gently. “We live in the terra indigene settlement at Sweetwater. This”—he touched one photograph, then raised his other hand and pointed at her covered window—“is outside.”

  She trembled.

  “Do you want to see it?” Jackson asked.

  She nodded.

  He stood, walked to the door, and opened it. “Come on.”

  She hesitated in the bedroom doorway, then rushed to follow him, barely noticing the big room that might have been the main living area if it had had any furniture.

  Another door. Sunlight beyond an open, roofed area. Porch. Steps. And then . . .

  She stood in one of the photographs. Grass and trees and the mountains rising as a natural barrier. The glint of sunlight on water. She wanted to touch it all, smell it all.

  “That’s far enough,” Jackson said.

  She turned to look at him, feeling crushed. Then she noticed the distance between them. Not that far, not really, but he still stood on the bottom step and she didn’t remember moving away from him. “But . . .” A weak protest.

  “A pup doesn’t stray far from the den on her first outing. There’s a lot to learn, so she explores a little more each day.” When she didn’t move, he added, “Come back now.”

  She obeyed because she didn’t know what else to do.

  “Sit there.” He pointed to the top step.

  She sat—and Jackson sat beside her.

  He allowed her to sit on the step in the sunlight for a little while. He didn’t say much. He couldn’t tell her the names of the different trees. Wolves didn’t care about such things, but the Intuit village down the road had a bookstore and might have books that named such things if she wanted to learn about them.

  She wanted to learn.

  When he’d decided she’d had enough sun for her first day out of the den, he didn’t make her go back to her room. She sat on the porch, and he brought her the meal she’d forgotten about. She watched how the little bit of the world that she could see stayed the same and yet kept changing, just as she had to change position on the porch to remain in the shade.

  Jackson stayed with her the whole time, fending off the young Wolves who wanted to give her a thorough sniff and might accidentally scrape her skin with a nail as they jostled one another.

  Finally tired of looking, seeing, feeling, she agreed to go back to her room—especially when she saw Jackson remove the white paper that had kept her from seeing out the window.

  “You can see more tomorrow,” he said when she hesitated in the bedroom doorway.

  “Hope,” she said, hearing a truth in the word.

  He cocked his head. “What?”

  She gave him a brilliant smile. “My name is Hope.”

  Elayne Borden’s Diary

  “What’s a man like him doing with someone like her?”

  “I don’t know what he sees in her.”

  Sometimes I hear those words as Nicholas and I walk past the audience who have come to hear him speak, me on his arm, trying not to show too much how thrilled I am to be the one he’s chosen.

  I felt so ashamed after Monty left. To everyone who mattered, I was the lover of the cop who had killed a human in order to save a Wolf. How could I live with that? And Lizzy, with the other children slapping her and calling her hurtful names for something that wasn’t her fault.

  Then Nicholas came into my life—a man from a wealthy, distinguished family in Cel-Romano. He dazzled me just by wanting me. He said he knew from the moment he met me that I was different from any other woman he’d ever met, and that coming to Toland and meeting me was fate.

  I was with him when he made his speeches promoting the Humans First and Last movement. I was with him when he attended banquets hosted by the crème of Toland’s society. He took me to parties that even Mother couldn’t wangle an invitation to attend—which impressed her greatly.

  Mother no longer snubs me in public, no longer gives the impression when I visit her that I am as much of an embarrassment as something smelly that’s smeared on the bottom of her shoe. Now that Nicholas is living with me, she’s even encouraged my brother, Leo, to watch Lizzy on the evenings when Nicholas and I have an event.

  I am vindicated. I have shed the disgrace of my middle-class police officer lover, shed the doubts that I would be welcomed again in the level of society my family enjoys. Being Nicholas’s lover puts me several rungs up the social ladder, and now it is Mother who has to ride my coattails to attend the poshest parties.

  Nicholas talks about taking me and Lizzy to Cel-Romano to stay at his family’s estate. He wants them to meet me, wants them to get to know me. And Lizzy too. He always includes Lizzy in our plans.

  He is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

  He came back from a meeting reeking of that skanky slut who had been hanging on him after his last speaking engagement. And what did he say when I accused him of sleeping with her? “Don’t be so provincial, Elayne. A man of my background is entitled to diversions outside the comforts of home.”

  Is that what I am? A comfort? Someone to screw if a diversion isn’t available?

  Did he give her that ugly ring made of white gold and diamonds that she was flashing around? Is that why she was giving me sly looks, because Nicholas hadn’t given me anything with sparkle? Gods, he doesn’t even offer to help pay for the food he eats—and the man has expensive tastes. Nothing but the best for Nicholas.

  But Mother smiles at me. She smiles and smiles, so pleased to see me with a man like Nicholas Scratch. But her eyes don’t smile. They never have; not like they smile when she looks at Leo.

  She doesn’t like me. She tries to hide it, and for so many years, I believed the reason she didn’t like me was because there was something lacking in me. I thought if I could just be what she wanted, do what she wanted, she would approve of me the same way she approves of Leo. But she won’t because she doesn’t like me, and she doesn’t love me. I’m not sure she ever did.

  Sometimes I think her chest is made of ice, and she has to stay emotionally cold in order to hide the smell of a rotting heart.

  “What’s a man like him doing with someone like her?”

  “I don’t know what he sees in her.”

  When did I begin to ask myself those same questions?

  I heard Nicholas talking on the phone. I didn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but what he said was enough.

  Thaisia will experience food shortages—grains, flour, I don’t what else. Why? Because a farming association is selling their harvest to Nicholas, who is shipping it to Cel-Romano, because food equals victory, whatever that means. But here, some families won’t be able to afford a loaf of bread, assuming there is any to buy.

  How can there n
ot be something as basic as bread?

  Humans first and last. I think I’ve figured out which humans will come first.

  I always wanted my mother’s love and approval. I never got either one, but she made sure she kept me under her thumb enough that I kept trying to get them. The only time I acted for myself, the only choice she hadn’t managed to control, was when I fell in love with Monty and we moved in together. My mother didn’t speak to me for several months as a punishment. Those were the happiest months of my life.

  Gods! I found a bag of jewels inside Boo Bear. Lizzy had mentioned playing hospital and Boo Bear needing an operation, but Leo had shrugged it off, and I’d had too much to drink after a quarrel with Nicholas—who had sent me home early because, he said, I was causing a scene. But the way that skanky bitch was looking at me as he escorted me out, I knew he was planning to sleep with her tonight.

  Then there’s Lizzy using up all the adhesive bandages on that damn bear . . .

  Jewels. I wanted to believe they were glass, something Lizzy had picked up somewhere. I wanted to believe she’d hidden them inside Boo Bear after Leo told her a story about how he used to hide things in his toys when we were kids so that Mother wouldn’t find what he wanted to keep secret.

  But that ugly white gold and diamond ring is in the bag.

  And I remembered that Leo would hide things in my toys, especially things that would get him into real trouble if anyone knew he had them.

  Has he done the same thing to Lizzy?

  Leo and Nicholas. Are they stealing during the benefits people were holding for the HFL movement? Are they working together, or is Nicholas unaware that Leo is using him?

  Is Leo using Nicholas? Or is Nicholas using all of us?

  I tossed Nicholas Scratch out on his sorry ass. I packed his bags and had them sitting outside the apartment door. He’s too aware of his reputation to indulge in a shouting match through the door. That’s probably why Leo showed up a little while later “to talk some sense into me.”

  Leo was sweating, and he was trying to look around without being obvious about it.

  Three guesses why he really wanted to see Lizzy.

  Mother called. I shouldn’t have answered, not when I was so angry and scared. She started in on me, with her cold criticism, and I lashed out, screaming that I knew everything about the underhanded deals and I was going to tell the whole fucking world that Nicholas Scratch was a liar and a thief and I could prove it.

  Then I hung up and realized what I’d done. She would tell Leo. Of course she would. And Leo would have to make the problem go away in order to stay in Nicholas’s trusted circle.

  And he would need to make the problem go away in order to get his hands on Lizzy and retrieve the jewels he’s hidden in Boo Bear.

  I won’t let that happen because he’ll hand her over to Mother. Let Mother raise Lizzy? Never.

  Can’t trust the police. I’ve seen too many of them at Nicholas’s speeches and events. Can’t trust anyone. Except Monty. Have to get to Monty. He’ll know what to do.

  CHAPTER 57

  Moonsday, Maius 28

  With Lizzy safely asleep in the efficiency apartment’s single bed, Monty sat on the closed toilet and read the entries Elayne had made in the pink diary with gold stars. Had the look of the diary been a cunning choice on her part or an unconscious return to the girl she had been?

  O’Sullivan was right: the entries were a rant, a cry of unhappiness with a couple of bits of information that would have been dismissed. Nothing worth dying for.

  If that farming association hadn’t made a grab for more profit by jacking up prices and claiming a shortage of crops too soon, no one would have known until there really was a shortage. Maybe that hadn’t been their idea. Maybe that had been the decision of the HFL, who wanted to stir up trouble and generate more followers for their cause. What better way to stir things up than to tell people they were going to go hungry because animals controlled the land?

  On the way back to the station, Captain Burke had speculated that the terra indigene wouldn’t block the transport for foodstuffs completely from one region of Thaisia to another, but he suspected there would be strict limits from now on about the size of the truck that could be used to transport food, strict limits about the quantity that could be shipped by any train. And shipping anything by water . . . There were already reports of ships adrift on one of the Great Lakes, minus crew and cargo.

  And the ships trying to cross the oceans? Vlad Sanguinati had walked them to their car after the meeting and had said, too casually, “The Sharkgard and Orcasgard will be watching from now on, and they will report any ships that have committed a breach of trust.” When O’Sullivan had asked who they would report to, Vlad had smiled. “Think of the Atlantik as Lake Etu’s big sister.”

  An Elemental who could command the power of an ocean? Monty shuddered at the thought of it—and felt a dreadful curiosity about what she might look like.

  Setting the diary on the bathroom floor, he unfolded the single sheet of paper that he’d found between two pages that had been partially glued together.

  Monty,

  It’s too late for a lot of things, at least between you and me. I’ve had some time to think, and I understand some things now.

  My mother never loved me. She loved the potential I represented, what social doors my achievements might open for her. I was some kind of scorecard in a way that Leo never was. I just never saw it clearly until now.

  I don’t remember my father, don’t remember a time when he lived with us. I don’t even know where he lives, but I think Mother goes to visit him occasionally—her naughty secret. I don’t remember his voice, and thinking about how you read to Lizzy every night, I realized she will never say that. Your voice, your presence in her life . . . I took that away from her, telling myself it wasn’t important.

  I’m trying to be careful, trying to move quickly without seeming to do anything unusual. But now that I’ve kicked Nicholas out of the apartment, Leo has been checking up on me. And after I pulled the suitcases out of the storage bin, Lizzy has been beyond excited, even though I haven’t told her anything except we’re going to visit you and it has to be a secret from everyone, including her grandma and Uncle Leo. But I think Leo suspects I’m planning to run. So we have to run tomorrow.

  I have a lot of regrets about the choices I’ve made in my life. But, Monty, my biggest regret is that I didn’t move to Lakeside with you when you asked me to.

  Elayne

  Monty folded the paper and tucked it in his shirt pocket as tears ran down his face.

  Elayne had been an accommodation for Leo and Celia Borden, a stalking horse that had provided a reason for why someone like Leo Borden would be rubbing shoulders with a man like Nicholas Scratch.

  It wasn’t his case, wasn’t his jurisdiction. There was no proof beyond the entry in the diary that Leo had a reason to go after Elayne and knife her in the train station. There was no proof that he put a bag of jewels in Lizzy’s bear.

  Nicholas Scratch didn’t know how much Elayne really knew about the shipments to Cel-Romano or the jewels that were supposed to be the payment for those goods, so anything that might inconvenience the HFL movement had to be destroyed or retrieved. But Scratch hadn’t counted on the reaction of the terra indigene. Since the man hadn’t cared about Lizzy, why would the Others? A big miscalculation on his part.

  Monty scrubbed his face with his hands.

  He’d never be able to prove that Leo had killed Elayne, and he didn’t think Felix Scaffoldon was going to try very hard to solve the case, not when Nicholas Scratch was going to be doing plenty of damage control once the HFL’s involvement in the food shortages was revealed. He didn’t doubt Scratch would spin it to at least neutralize the damage to the HFL. But having a member accused of murder? No.

  Monty picked up the diary and got to his feet, fe
eling the weight of the world on his shoulders. Then he went into the living area and looked at Lizzy, fast asleep and hugging her new friend.

  Henry Beargard had carved the wood for the head, paws, and feet, which were sewn to the jeans and plaid shirt that the Courtyard’s seamstress had made. A stern-faced bear. A warrior rather than a cuddly friend. As much a weapon as a toy.

  Lizzy had named it Grr Bear, a name Monty thought quite appropriate.

  A few hours ago, Simon Wolfgard had told him—told all of them at that meeting—that the terra indigene were considering the extinction of the humans living in Thaisia. Yet those same beings had made a special toy for his little girl, understanding what she had lost.

  Do you know what happened to the dinosaurs? The Others is what happened to the dinosaurs.

  A joke Captain Burke had told him his first day on the job in Lakeside. Except it wasn’t a joke. Burke had known that, at least to some degree.

  And now so did he.

  Captain Burke,

  Leo Borden was found in the water near the Toland docks yesterday. His throat had been cut. Inside a secret pocket in his jacket, investigators found two emeralds and a white gold and diamond ring of distinct design that match items recently stolen. Police speculate that a falling-out among thieves might have led to Borden’s death. ITF tried to question Celia Borden about her son’s associates. However, neighbors said she left home two days ago and has not been seen since.

  —Agent Greg O’Sullivan, ITF

  P.S. Felix Scaffoldon didn’t show up for work today and no one has heard from him.

  CHAPTER 58

  Windsday, Maius 30

  “This morning’s top story . . . Government officials throughout Thaisia claim they had no knowledge or involvement in the deal to sell grains and other foods to the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations while claiming shortages at home in order to drive up prices. The farming association that was fingered by an anonymous source is denying any wrongdoing, but officials say there will be an investigation and this particular association, owned by a group of businessmen, will be under careful scrutiny from now on. Meanwhile, independent farmers and other farming groups who are not currently under investigation say that, barring natural disasters, they anticipate the usual yield from their crops this year.