Crucible Zero

by Devon Monk

  I knew zilch about her in this time, though. Well, I knew she had just showed up on my doorstep with Abraham and Foster First, the latter of whom was also galvanized, and albino pale, white-haired, huge, and silent.

  Sallyo lifted her fingers. “I wouldn’t say no to food, if you have any.”

  “Tea’s customary,” Left Ned said. “But you’ll pay for food.”

  “You know I’m good for it, Harris,” she said.

  “I know you’re good for nothing, Sallyo.” That was the coldest, hardest thing I’d ever heard out of Right Ned’s mouth.

  “I’m sure we have plenty to share,” I said into the weighted silence. “Foster?” I asked the seven-foot-tall gravedigger, who stood next to Abraham, silently scanning the people in the room. “Would you like some tea? Or cocoa?”

  His red eyes lit up. “Cocoa?” His voice was low and gravelly, as if left unused for so long, it had gone to dust.

  “Let me see what we have.” I pointed at the table. “Go ahead and sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” I gave Abraham a look. “You too.”

  Abraham waited to see what Quinten was going to do.

  Quinten stared at me a moment longer, then holstered the gun he’d drawn.

  Abraham strolled over to the table and sat down, his long legs taking up a lot of space.

  “You too, Quinten,” I said as I turned to the cupboards. “We’ll all feel better after a bit to eat. So,” I said, “there’s a price for killing my brother and me?” I opened the cupboard where we usually kept baking goods and was tearfully relieved to find the cocoa there.

  I’m not going to lie. Coming back to a world that was not quite the same world I’d lived in all my life was spooky on so many levels, it was overwhelming. If I thought about it for too long, if I lingered on the consequences of having both gained and lost everything I loved, I was going to be asking for a panic attack.

  And that little time twitch outside I’d just experienced wasn’t helping my nerves any.

  Better to stay busy, keep everyone talking, and find out how to remove myself and my brother from the wanted list.

  “There is a reward for finding you,” Abraham said. “But that is not why we came here.”

  “Now, now,” Quinten said. “No need to lie. We know what you do. We know what you are.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Case,” Abraham said. “What are we?”

  “Mercenaries. Bounty hunters. Galvanized,” Quinten said.

  “Not to mention murderous, thieving bastards,” Left Ned muttered.

  Foster growled softly.

  “The only reason you are here is to collect on that price,” Quinten said.

  “Well, that’s good news!” I said.

  “The price on our heads?” Quinten asked.

  I turned with a jar in my hand. “No. We have cocoa.”

  Left Ned sucked a little air between his teeth with a snick sound. Right Ned shook his head as if he still hadn’t gotten used to words coming out of my mouth.

  “Anyone else want some?” I shook the jar. “We have plenty.”

  “We came,” Abraham said, completely ignoring me and instead leaning forward toward Quinten, his legs pulled back so he was in a better position to spring into a fight, if need be, “to warn you. To warn her.” He nodded toward me. “Nothing more.”

  Sallyo shifted a bit too, and I noticed one of her hands had disappeared under the table. Probably to draw her gun.

  Damn it. We did not need a shoot-out.

  “Good,” I said. “Great. Then my brother, Neds, and I will take you at your word, Abraham.”

  “You don’t speak for me,” Left Ned said.

  “Matilda,” Quinten admonished, as if I were a child who had interrupted while the adults were handling business.

  “We welcomed them into our home,” I said. “No one gets shot. Understand?”

  The tension in Abraham, the coil of anger, shifted to a hard sort of caution. It was like watching someone close all the shutters on a glass house. Everything about him went dark, flat, but there was still a lot of emotion leaking through his walls.

  “Also?” I pointed at the gun Left Ned still had in his hand. “I asked you once to please put that down. This is the last time I’m going to ask you. Next up, I’ll make you put it down.”

  He looked over at Quinten, and to my surprise, my brother nodded.

  “Might as well,” he said to Neds. “She has questions she isn’t going to let go unanswered. And, frankly, so do I.” Quinten took the time to make eye contact with each of the strangers in the room. “You are welcome to a meal. But I would advise you not to pick a fight. This is our land, and that makes us the law here. We don’t have to stand up in any court and tell them where we buried the bodies. Do we have an understanding?”

  “We have an understanding,” Sallyo said, placing both hands on the table. “And you have my curiosity. Ask your questions.”

  Abraham still hadn’t moved. His eyes flicked and dismissed Neds, then settled on me, tracking my every movement as if I were the dangerous one here.

  That was interesting.

  “Hold on. Let me get cocoa for Foster, because I promised.” I put some milk on the stove to warm, then opened a few cupboards and checked the bread box and icebox for food. “It looks like we’ll be having a cold lunch.” I pulled out cheese, pickled eggs, meat, and rolls.

  Quinten paced over to the table, and Abraham’s attention switched to him.

  “There are some sauces on the lower shelf,” Quinten said as he pulled out a chair and sat, purposely putting his back to Foster. It was a very clear sign that he was in the mood to be trusting.

  Thank you, brother.

  Foster First locked gazes with Abraham. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they could read each other’s thoughts. But galvanized weren’t telekinetic or magical. At least, they weren’t in my time.

  Abraham nodded, and Foster walked across the kitchen, his steps betraying just how heavy of a creature he was.

  Sallyo used her foot to scoot out a chair for Foster to sit next to her.

  “Shee-it,” Left Ned said. Then he finally pushed away from the wall and took a seat at the table, resting the shotgun at his knee.

  A genius, a smuggler, a two-headed man, and three stitched monsters sit down for tea, I thought to myself.

  “So, who wants us dead?” I asked as I pulled out the jars of sauces, then the meat and cheese, and set them all on the table. I added an empty plate for each person.

  “We don’t have details,” Sallyo said.

  Okay, so she was the boss of this party. Good to know.

  “Are you sure about that?” Left Ned asked. “It’s not like you to take a job without them.”

  She shrugged. “I have a contact. Who has a contact. Who has a contact. It goes back to House Fire. I know that much.”

  I poured the warmed milk, cocoa, and sugar into a big mug. “What’s House Fire?”

  Quinten cleared his throat into the silence. “You know House Fire, Matilda,” he said slowly. “Half of all the Houses that rule the world joined under that name. The other half joined under House Water, remember?”

  “Right,” I lied. I did not remember that, because it was not how things were in my time. “Fire, Water. Must be all the excitement has my mind slipping. Sorry.” I dug through our pantry for marshmallows, but couldn’t find any, so I dropped a stick of cinnamon candy into the mug.

  “Here we go.” I handed the mug to Foster.

  His face lit up like a kid at a fair, and he very carefully took the cup into both his huge hands. “Thank you, Matilda,” he said in that rolling rumble of his.

  “You are very welcome.”

  He closed his eyes and inhaled the steam rising off the cocoa. When he opened his eyes, he took a sip and savored it like fine wine.
/>   I sat between Quinten and Neds, and put some cheese, bread, and sauces on my plate because, seriously? Time travel and being a wanted criminal were hungry business.

  The room filled with the scents of a picnic lunch, rich chocolate wafting through the air mixing with the tang of pickling spices and the buttery warmth of bread, invoking—for me, at least—warm, safe feelings.

  Quinten spoke up. “So, you’re working for House Fire, but don’t intend to collect the ransom money? I haven’t met any mercenaries who go out of their way for free.”

  “Especially you, Sallyo,” Right Ned added. I noted neither of the Harris boys were eating. They were watching Sallyo like she was a snake ready to strike.

  “Oh, I’ll get paid. Even mercenaries go out of their way if the job is worth it. And since this job is half finding you and half delivering something to you, I’ll make out just fine.”

  He scowled, but didn’t say anything more.

  “What delivery?” Quinten asked, his hands away from his plate so he could draw his gun quickly if he needed to.

  Yeah, I’d stopped eating too. For all I knew, they had bombs strapped to their chests, and their answer to Quinten’s question would be explosions.

  Please don’t let it be explosions.

  “A letter,” Sallyo said.

  “Takes three killers to deliver a letter?” Left Ned asked.

  “It does when the price for delivering it is so . . . generous. No one pays top credit for the safe jobs.” She reached toward her jacket, and I heard the clack of hammers jacking back as both Quinten and Right Ned pulled guns under the table.

  Sallyo stilled, but she was still smiling. It was almost like she enjoyed her line of work. “And I believe I’ve just made my point. The letter is in my jacket. I’m going to pull it out now.”

  “Slowly,” Quinten said.

  Sallyo slipped her long fingers into the fold in her jacket, her eyes on Neds alone. There was something heated in the way she looked at him. Something almost sensual and daring.

  Had they been lovers in this time too?

  She drew out an envelope and placed it in the center of the table, turned so the red wax seal that was intact across the back of it was clear to see.

  Pressed into that red wax was the symbol of a sun.

  “House Fire,” Quinten said, probably for my benefit.

  “I was told to deliver it to you, Quinten Case, and if not you, to Matilda Case,” Sallyo said, settling back in her chair and watching my brother’s expression. “I was also told I would make a lot more money if I could drag you back with me.”

  Quinten had not moved. His eyes were focused on that letter. “Who sent you?”

  She shook her head. “All I know is a contact had a contact who had a contact who wanted this letter delivered.”

  Quinten’s gaze flicked up off the envelope to me. I probably looked as tense and sweaty as he did. No one should know Matilda Case was alive. And certainly no one in House Fire.

  Foster slurped the last of his cocoa and set the mug down with a satisfied sigh. He plucked the candy out of the cup and slipped it into his mouth.

  “Open the letter,” Abraham said.

  I reached for it, but Quinten pulled it toward himself. He already had a pocket knife open in his hand and sliced through the top edge of the brittle paper.

  Yes, we were all terribly curious about what the letter contained. But I knew Quinten; he wasn’t going to let anyone see it until he’d had a chance to read it first.

  True to form, he stood and paced across the room, far enough away that none of us could see anything that was written on the single piece of paper he unfolded.

  I couldn’t look away from him. But I felt someone watching me. I glanced over and into Abraham’s hazel gaze.

  “Why did you want me to find you?” he asked.

  I took a few seconds to sort through all the things that had happened and all the things that he knew had happened, and finally realized what he was asking. “You mean all those years ago when you were in jail?”

  Right Ned frowned my way. He didn’t know I’d gone back in time, riding this body to when she was really only eight years old, and sharing the body and mind with Evelyn. He didn’t know I had to do it to save the world, to mend time.

  “Yes,” Abraham said. “You knew the Wings of Mercury experiment was about to happen, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He sat back, as if giving me room to prove my statement was true. “You told me if I didn’t find you, the world would end.”

  “Maybe it already did,” I said softly, “and we just didn’t notice.”

  He bit his bottom lip, his eyes narrowing. “I searched the world for you, Matilda Case.”

  “You searched the world?” That was probably the most romantic thing I’d ever heard in my life. “For me?” And that was probably the dumbest thing I’d ever said in my life.

  “Son of a bitch,” Quinten said, interrupting my stupidity.

  He pulled his handgun in a smooth, swift motion and aimed it at Sallyo’s head.

  Abraham turned his gun on me under the table and grabbed my wrist above the table.

  He jerked his hand back as if he’d just touched fire. He fisted and unfisted his hand, a scowl darkening his face.

  I gave him a steady look. I knew what had happened. When he touched me, his ability to feel, to have full sensation, returned.

  I could make him feel. Pleasure or pain.

  Quinten didn’t notice our little exchange, since he was too busy threatening to blow Sallyo’s brains out. Or if he did notice, he didn’t care. “Who is Slater Orange?” he demanded.

  That name shot ice through my veins. My heart started beating too hard, and a wash of heat raced over my skin so quick, I was left shivering after it.

  “I don’t know him,” Sallyo said, avoiding a direct answer. “That isn’t the name of any of my contacts.”

  “You have five seconds to tell me the truth,” Quinten said.

  “He’s the head of House Fire,” Sallyo said.

  “Bullshit,” Left Ned said.

  “Rumors say he took over last month when Ina died of the One-five plague.”

  “Sure are a lot of heads of sub-Houses specifically dying of the newest plague,” Left Ned said.

  Quinten shot him a “shut up” look.

  “Rumors?” Quinten demanded of Sallyo. “What else do you know?”

  “Nothing else.” She shrugged. “Although I’m interested in what you know about those deaths, Neds Harris.”

  “No,” Quinten said. “We’re asking the questions. Who is Slater Orange?”

  “I told you I don’t know him.”

  “Slater Orange is a galvanized,” I said. “Like us. Like me.”

  “Not even close,” Abraham said. “He is nothing like us.”

  “Quinten,” I said, “you really need to listen to me. I know him. I’ve always known Slater Orange.”

  That seemed to sink down through his anger and reach the parts of his mind that were still capable of reason.

  “How long is always?” he said to me, even though he hadn’t moved the gun away from Sallyo’s head.

  “All my life,” I said, hoping he understood what that meant. “And he is a very, very dangerous man.”

  Quinten took a breath, then lowered his gun.

  Abraham still had the gun pointed at me under the table, but I didn’t care. I’d been shot before and survived it. We galvanized could really be killed only by several bullets through our brains.

  “What does the letter say?” I asked.

  “That if we don’t turn ourselves in—you and me, Matilda—with the cure for the plague, Slater Orange will begin bombing one House Earth compound a day, starting ten days from now. He was certainly confident you’d find us i
n time,” he said to Sallyo, his voice low with anger.

  “I am the best at what I do,” she said.

  “Can he do that?” I asked. “Can a head of a House bomb House Brown—I mean, House Earth? He has the um . . . technology, weaponry, and resources?”

  “Yes,” Right Ned said.

  “All right. Then we need to warn them,” I said. “We need to warn House Earth. Now.”

  “Is it true?” Abraham asked Quinten.

  “What?”

  “Do you have the cure for the plague?”

  “No.”

  Good God. Quinten was lying. I’d known him long enough to catch the subtle hints of when he wasn’t telling the truth.

  “Then why would House Fire think you did?” Sallyo asked. “Accusing someone of hiding the cure for the plague is a rather specific charge, don’t you think?”

  Quinten still hadn’t holstered his gun. “I have no idea what the Houses think. Nor do I care.”

  “It appears they care about you. Expensively so,” she said.

  Quinten stiffened, his head high, and looked down his nose at all of us still sitting at the table. I knew that brilliant mind of his was sifting through possibilities, connections, solutions. I just didn’t know which problem he was trying to solve, since he seemed to have gathered a kitchen full of them.

  “We need to warn House Earth,” I said again. That was the most important problem we needed to solve, and fast. I stood. Abraham stood with me, his gun still aimed at me.

  That got Neds on his feet. Sallyo too.

  “There are people out there,” I said, “a lot of people who are going to be killed if we don’t figure out why Slater thinks Quinten has the cure. We need to warn House Earth about the bombings. We need a plan for them to escape or survive the attacks. And right now we need to either trust each other or go our separate directions. This isn’t just about the prices on our heads or the money we can make. This is about the loss of innocent human lives.”