Scavenger Blood

by Janet Edwards

  Aaron was by far the more sensible choice for me. Donnell’s vision of the future for the alliance was that one day I would lead it, with Aaron as my deputy. A marriage between us would appease those unhappy about having a female leader.

  I wasn’t going to say yes, but I wasn’t going to say no either. “Aaron, I agree that you need to keep your promise to your wife, but that promise wasn’t really about marrying. It was about finding someone to help you care for Rebecca, and act as her protector if anything happens to you. That person doesn’t need to be a wife. It could be a guardian. I’d be happy to agree to be Rebecca’s guardian until the time when either you find someone you wish to marry, or Rebecca no longer needs my help.”

  Aaron seemed startled. “You’d do that for me, Blaze? You’re sure you don’t need time to consider the decision?”

  “I’d do that for Rebecca, and I’ve already had time to consider the decision. When our search party heard the whistled message about Cage having a sniper rifle, we knew at least one person was likely to be dead. I can’t think like Cage, so it never occurred to me that he’d kill Rogue to destroy the alliance. I believed you were dead, and my instant reaction was that I’d make sure Rebecca got the best available care.”

  I paused. “Now I’ve thought things over, and decided that if anything happens to you, then the best available care for Rebecca would be to adopt her myself. I understand only too well the situation she’ll be in if she loses you.”

  I grimaced. “I was eleven years old when I lost my mother in the London firestorm. I escaped to New York with my brother, Seamus, and my best friend, Hannah, and the three of us moved from London division to join the Resistance. I only had two weeks to get to know my father, and adjust to my new life, before Seamus betrayed us all and left.”

  Showing the off-worlders the apartments that had belonged to Hannah and Seamus had already brought back memories of that time. Now I felt all the old pain and loss as I continued speaking.

  “I wasn’t technically an orphan back then, and I wasn’t a physically vulnerable toddler either, but I’d lost my mother, my brother, and my home. Seamus’s betrayal destroyed my relationship with my father, so all I had left was Hannah, and she was secretly spying on me for Cage.”

  I shrugged. “If you agree to it, Aaron, then I’ll be Rebecca’s official guardian, but it doesn’t matter whether the arrangement is formal or not. If anything happens to you, then I’ll take care of Rebecca anyway.”

  Aaron took my hand. “Thank you. This is the perfect arrangement for me. In time, if neither of us finds anyone else, perhaps ...”

  He let the sentence trail off and released my hand. I was tired of keeping secrets. I had absolute trust in Aaron, and wanted to tell him about my relationship with Tad, but this wasn’t the most tactful moment to do it. Besides, there were other things I needed to do before dawn.

  “Perhaps.” I firmly changed the subject. “I need to find that lantern now.”

  Aaron opened the store room door and turned on the light. “Why do you want a lantern?”

  “I’m going on the roof to salute the Earth Resistance flag. It’s going to be dark up there before dawn.”

  Aaron raised his eyebrows. “It’s going to be cold as well as dark, and I think it’s still snowing as well.”

  “That’s why I brought my coat.” I pulled on the coat, and then studied the shelves of the store room.

  Aaron sighed and strode to the back of the room. “The lanterns are over here.”

  He picked one up, turned it on to check the power cell was working, and handed it to me.

  “Thank you. Can you go downstairs and tell Donnell that ...?” I hesitated. My idea was highly unlikely to work, so there was no point in mentioning it. “Tell Donnell that I’ll be down soon.”

  Aaron nodded, and I headed for the short flight of stairs that led to the roof. When I reached the door at the top, I turned on the lantern, took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped out into the softly falling snow.

  I was standing on the roof of the Resistance wing of Parliament House now, with the dark shape of the Resistance flag fluttering at the top of the pole directly in front of me. On one side of me, I could see a vast gap and then the shadowy shape of the Manhattan wing of the building. On the other side, there was a matching gap to the Queens Island wing of the building, but its roof was lit by half a dozen lanterns that encircled a snow-covered rectangular object.

  The first part of my idea had been right then. Everywhere inside Parliament House was very warm now the power was on. Much too warm for keeping a body that might have to wait days for burial. The people of Queens Island had put Rogue’s coffin on the roof.

  I took two steps forward, and turned. Yes, the second part of my idea was right too. A figure enveloped in a black, hooded coat was sitting on a chair in the shelter of the doorway. That figure was surely Raeni keeping vigil over Rogue’s body.

  I took another step forward, so the lantern light gave me a glimpse of the face under the black hood. Yes, that was definitely Raeni, and she was alone with the door closed behind her, but I needed to be extremely careful now. If I did anything that Raeni felt showed disrespect to her vigil or her dead, then a past friend would instantly become a future enemy.

  I faced the flagpole again, put down my lantern, and gave the hand on heart salute of the Earth Resistance as I’d done so many times before on this roof. I stood there for a full minute before taking a scarf from my pocket and covering the lantern.

  I waited again, then removed and replaced the scarf several times, so the lantern sent out one long flash of light, one short, and another long. The Morse code signal for the letter K. When the alliance women went fishing, they did status checks every couple of hours to make sure everyone was safe and well. Those checks involved using their whistles to repeat this signal in turn, so it echoed along the riverbank and back again.

  Message sent, I picked up my lantern again and waited. Raeni couldn’t have missed seeing those flashes of light on the dark Resistance roof. She would hopefully accept my signal as a respectful gesture of support and concern from a friend, but she might not respond. If she didn’t, then I daren’t push the situation further.

  I saw the dark figure stand, walk across to one of the lanterns, and pick it up. There were flashes of light. The letter K echoed back to me. I kept my eyes on the lantern, hoping for more, but a full minute went by with nothing. I gnawed at my bottom lip, wondering if I dared to send another message. If I did, then it would have to be as brief as possible.

  I was still considering potential messages, when a whole series of flashes of light came from the Queens Island roof. I kept my eyes fixed on them, working out the message with paranoid care.

  It said two words. Banqueting Hall.

  I picked up my lantern, and turned to go back through the doorway and down the stairs. When I reached the sixth floor of the Resistance wing, I hesitated. Should I tell someone what was happening? Donnell and his officers would all be down in Reception by now, but I could go back to my apartment and explain to Tad. Doing that should only delay me for five minutes, but it was getting dangerously close to dawn.

  I decided there was no time to waste, and headed straight for the main staircase of the Resistance wing. I clattered down a couple of flights of stairs, then hurried along a corridor that led to the central area of the Parliament House. The wings of the building were all six floors high, containing a complex labyrinth of rooms and corridors, but the central area of Parliament House just consisted of three massive, high-ceilinged rooms, one on top of the other.

  Reception was at the bottom, the centre of the scavenger alliance daily life, with the glass wall that was – probably for security reasons – the only window in the central area of Parliament House. Above Reception was the splendour of the Parliament Chamber, once meeting place of the United Earth Americas Parliament, and now only used on rare occasions for alliance general conclaves. Right at the top was the old Banqueti
ng Hall, which the alliance had never used at all, because it had been far safer to have the cooking fire in the marble depression in Reception.

  The Parliament House had been designed to allow people to reach all three of those rooms from every wing of the building. While the doorways to Reception had once had security checkpoints at them, and now only had curtains, the two higher rooms were guarded by the same sort of steel security doors as on the entrance to the sixth floor of the Resistance wing.

  When I reached the steel door at the end of the corridor, I put my hand on the security plate, and it slid open. I went through into a pitch-black void, closed the security door behind me, used my lantern to find a bank of switches, and turned on a few random lights.

  It was at least three years since I’d last been here, bringing tools for Machico to repair a fault with one of the security doors, but the Banqueting Hall looked exactly as I remembered it. The ornately carved wooden tables and chairs were covered in a thick layer of dust. The matching, grime-encrusted wooden partition ran across the width of the room, blocking off the narrow food preparation area by the front of the building. The filthy floorboards were criss-crossed with the preserved footprints of visitors from years ago.

  There were seven steel security doors around the room. Three doors on each side of the room that led to wings of the building, and a single door in the centre of the back wall that led to the old staircase from Reception. Since that had been turned into a chimney, the gaps at the edges of its door were sealed with thick black tape to keep out the smoke.

  No, I realized that the Banqueting Hall didn’t look quite as I remembered it after all. The chairs by one of the far tables were in disorder, and a mass of new footprints marked the dusty floor. Weirdly, a lot of them were by the centre door on the far side that led to the Sanctuary wing. The one that had been welded shut after the murder in Sanctuary eighteen years ago.

  I frowned and went across to inspect the door. There were steel shards and blobs of metal on the floor, where someone had worked with a combination of heat and sharp tools to cut through the places where the door had been welded shut.

  I tried putting my hand on the door plate, but there wasn’t even a flicker of light in response. It had probably been broken during the original welding process years ago. Security doors didn’t have handles, so I took the gloves from my coat pocket and put them on before risking putting my fingers in the gap alongside the door and tugging at it.

  The door slid open with startling ease, and closer examination showed it had been carefully oiled. I stood staring at it for a moment, before sliding the door shut again. Why would anyone go to the trouble of cutting through the welding on that door? What Donnell had said last night showed he’d no idea this route from Sanctuary had been reopened.

  I gave a bewildered shake of my head and peeled off my gloves again. I must tell Donnell about the mystery of this door later, but right now I needed to focus on what I should say to Raeni. I hoped she would come to meet me herself rather than send a messenger. It would be far easier to speak freely if I could see her reactions to my words.

  Several minutes passed slowly by. Whoever was coming, they were taking their time about it. I was getting hot now, so dumped my lantern on a nearby table, slipped off my coat, and hung it on the back of a chair. I glanced hopefully at the Queens Island security door, but it was still firmly closed.

  I sighed and started roaming restlessly around the room, studying the portraits of past dignitaries that lined the walls, their colours dimmed by a sheen of dust. The largest of them all was, of course, a portrait of the original Thaddeus Wallam-Crane who’d invented portal technology. Someone had used black paint to add a comic moustache and eyebrows to it.

  I wondered what Tad would think of that embellished portrait, and decided he’d laugh. I was regretting not taking the time to tell Tad where I was going. Donnell was expecting me downstairs at first light, and if I was late then ...

  I heard a scraping sound behind me, turned, and saw Madra appear through the Queens Island security door, wearing a black, wide-sleeved, hooded coat, and with her arms full of black fabric. I was disappointed that Raeni hadn’t come, but was opening my mouth to recite a cautiously worded message when Madra spoke first.

  “Put this on quickly.”

  She thrust the black fabric at me, and I saw that it was an identical coat to the one she was wearing. I gave her a confused look, but obediently put it on.

  “We’ll both have our hoods up,” she said, “with them pulled forward to hide our faces like this.”

  She pulled up her hood, and I copied her, my brain struggling to make sense of what was happening. I could only think of one reason for her wanting me to dress like this, but it was surely impossible.

  “There are gloves in the right coat pocket,” said Madra. “Put them on because the lights of your gun mustn’t be seen.”

  It was true then. Madra was preparing to take me to talk to Raeni, in person and on Queens Island territory! I numbly took the gloves from the voluminous coat pocket and put them on.

  Madra took two large candles from her own coat pocket, and handed one of them to me. “Hold the candle reverently with both hands. If we meet anyone, they’ll see we’re going to stand vigil for Rogue. They shouldn’t speak to us, but if they do then keep your head bowed and let me do the talking.”

  Madra turned to lead the way through the Queens Island security door. I automatically followed her, but stopped as I reached the doorway. It was over six years since I’d arrived in New York. For every day of those six years, I’d been slavishly obeying a long list of alliance rules, so now they were engraved somewhere deep in my mind.

  The most important of those rules was never to step across the lines on the Reception floor that marked the territories of the other divisions, because retribution would be swift and brutal. Even messenger boys were only allowed to enter the territory of other divisions in certain carefully specified situations, and couldn’t do more than step through the curtain so they could attract attention and hand over their message.

  I was no messenger boy, and stepping across the wrong line in Reception, or through the curtain of another division, would be a trivial fault in comparison to the crime of walking through the security door ahead of me. I would be entering the highest floors of the Queens Island wing, which was the heart of their territory.

  If something went wrong, and I was caught in there, then the alliance rules made me subject to unlimited punishment. I had an Armed Agent weapon on my arm, and might be both willing and able to shoot Major if necessary, but I couldn’t massacre the whole of Queens Island division.

  Madra turned to look impatiently back at me. “Are you coming or not?”

  Raeni obviously didn’t want to leave her vigil over Rogue’s coffin. If I wanted to speak to her, then I had to go with Madra. The unwelcome thought occurred to me that I’d told no one I was doing this. If I vanished without trace, then Donnell, Tad, and everyone else who cared for me would never know what had happened.

  I reminded myself that I was entering the Queens Island wing at their leader’s invitation. At least, I hoped Raeni was still their leader.

  I stepped through the door into Queens Island territory.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The corridor connecting the Banqueting Hall to the Queens Island wing looked identical to the one connecting it to the Resistance wing, but all my other senses were screaming that I was on forbidden territory. Something about the faint background sounds, the scent and taste of the air, even the feel of the coat I was wearing against my skin, sent my heart racing at double speed.

  Madra led me past several closed doors, then – exactly as would have happened if I’d been walking along the matching corridor in the Resistance wing – we arrived at the main staircase. Now sight joined the rest of my senses in screaming warnings at me. The walls of the main staircase in the Resistance wing were the original white they’d been painted, while the walls here blazed
with coloured images of a boat, the chosen symbol of Queens Island.

  As I followed Madra up the stairs, the boat images gave way to a section of wall where a host of comments had been scrawled. There were a few random jokes, but most were references to Queens Island members, some complimentary, some insulting, and some incomprehensible to an outsider like me.

  We reached a turn in the stairs, and I saw a list of names had been painted in red on the wall. Madra turned to spit on them in passing. I frowned in bewilderment, then saw a couple of the names and understood. These were the names of people who’d been discarded from Queens Island. At the bottom of the list, a name had been covered over with white paint, but enough red still showed through for me to tell that Raeni’s name had once been there. Of course it had once been there. Major had discarded Raeni from Queens Island, but she’d returned to take his position as leader.

  We were nearing the top of the staircase now, and there was a longer list of names, this time in black paint. Madra blew a kiss at them, and again the sight of familiar names told me the reason. These were the people who’d left Queens Island not through dishonour but through death. I bit my lip as I saw Rogue’s name had already been added to the list.

  Madra turned to enter the sixth floor of the Queens Island wing, and I saw something that made me halt in shock. As in the Resistance wing, there was a steel security door here, but it had been removed from the doorway and left leaning against the wall.

  “The security door is broken,” I gasped in alarm.

  Madra gave me a puzzled look. “Yes. It’s been broken for years.”

  She walked on. I made myself turn away from the broken security door and follow her. I reminded myself that I wasn’t in the Resistance wing. This security door wasn’t the one that gave me a reassuring sense of safety whenever I reached the top of the Resistance staircase. I’d no need to panic about it being broken.