“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” he said, rolling his eyes as he smeared blood over his other hand. “It’ll heal soon enough.”
She knew that he healed. That was one of the first truths she’d bullied out of him. Knowing that someone could heal after an injury and watching them injure themselves were different things, though. Her heart tightened up and quivered. She had to fight the urge to knock the knife out of his hand.
“Next time, warn a girl? That trick’s gonna take some getting used to.”
“Fine. Next time, I’ll tell you,” Mal said, curling and flexing his fingers several times to keep the blood flowing. He held his arm out so that he didn’t drip all over his own boots. “Are you ready?”
She pulled her goggles down over her eyes with a snap of the elastic band.
“You bet, boss.”
“On my mark.” Filling his lungs, he nodded at her and then bellowed, “HELP!”
And Zip ran.
Running at night was a skill that had taken her years to get the hang of, and she still wasn’t an expert on it. Her night vision wasn’t terrible, but she was still running blind through the woods. She was quick enough on her feet that she either plowed through whatever got in her way, or she corrected her trips before she hit the ground. A sensible person would have figured out a better way of running through the forest at night, but trampling things had worked out pretty well for her so far. It got her to the edge of the campus in under a minute.
The Maillardet Academy campus was big enough that sometimes, Zip forgot that they were walled inside. The first couple of years after the old professor built the place, he had a heck of a time keeping people away. They were curious at first, wondering what he was doing with a bunch of orphans and runaways in the middle of the woods, but that curiosity soured once it was clear that Maillardet’s Foundation for the Future of Humanity wasn’t going anywhere. After three kids died in fire set by an anti-poster group, Professor Maillardet started building the wall.
The outermost fence was ten feet of solid rock. As it loomed closer, it seemed at least twice that height. Her gut said that she was a fraction of a second away from a collision course, but Mal had said that she could do it. She had to believe that he wouldn’t tell her to splatter herself like a bug on a windshield. She had to believe that he wanted them both to succeed. She had to believe her Alpha.
A split second before impact, Zip planted the sole of one foot flat on the wall and pushed. There was a little bit of a seasick lurch as everything shifted, but she followed Mal’s advice and kept running. It felt like the rest of the world had been flipped on its ear while she stayed the same. She was up and over the fence in a heartbeat and a half, but the relief of getting to the other side made her knees shaky.
Mal had been right. With enough of a work-up, she could run up walls. This was a game changer.
She was still feeling the warm glow of her wall-crawling triumph by the time she made it to Wakerobin. It was only a little bit bigger than Foundation, but that was big enough to support a fast food joint. The neon sign hanging over the drive-through blinked YE OLDE LORD OF THE FRYES in sizzling pink letters. A cartoon box of fries bearing a smile and a crown beamed down at her from the painted front window. Zip smiled back at it as she skidded to a halt.
Inside, the restaurant was haunted by a lone minimum-wage slave. His hairnet was topped with a paper crown. He didn’t look much older than her, though the scraggly patch of hair on his chin was a sad attempt at seeming mature. He had a second hairnet protecting his chin, the ends hooked over his ears.
“Hi there! Have you got anything on the menu that’s new? ‘Cause all I’m seeing is stuff that’s ‘ye olde’.”
The tired-eyed guy just puffed a sigh in her direction. It wasn’t energetic enough to be annoyed.
“It’s, like, fresh or whatever,” he said with a limp wave of his hand.
Fortunately, Zip had a titanium-lined stomach. If she could chew it, she could eat it.
She freed the wad of cash from her sportsbra, slamming it down on the counter.
“Four Beast Baskets with fries, please. And four Piggy Patty Meals, plain. Oh! And-a-Savage-Strawberry-Shake. To go, please.”
If he wondered what a girl like her wanted with all that food, he didn’t say so. He just looked at her, looked at the cash, and then took the money and rang up her order. Waiting for him to get the food fried, grilled, and bagged took longer than running the fourteen miles from Maillardet’s to Ye Olde Lord of the Fryes, but Zip kept herself occupied by looking at the weird decor. It was one part tropical island, with a grove of plastic blow-up palm trees, and one part medieval castle. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. Wakerobin was an odd little town.
“Order up!” The guy at the counter said, with all the cheer of a street crier announcing a coming plague. The big paper bag that he handed her was translucent with grease blooms, and not tearing into it immediately taxed Zip’s self-control something fierce.
Now, the trick was getting back before the fries got cold. Tucking the bag under one arm like a football, she pulled her goggles back on and started running. The return felt twice as long as the first leg of the trip, since she was starting to lag. Her stomach just couldn’t understand why she was waiting to eat until she got back home. It gurgled and demanded that she make a pit stop, but Zip ignored it. Mal had been clear that she couldn’t stop for anything, not even walls, so she had to follow his plan.
The fence was easy, this time around. When she wasn’t terrified of a head-on collision, the gravity-tilt of running up a vertical surface made her adrenaline surge and sing until she felt like she was floating. It was a great new trick, and she planned to explore what she could do with it. As she got close to the boys’ dorms, she saw another opportunity to try out her wall-running looming ahead. Mal hadn’t specified how she was supposed to get into his room, and the doors were all locked up tight. He lived on the third floor, so she figured out which lit window was his and went for it.
As it turned out, it was easier to run up ten feet of wall than it was to run up three stories’ worth of wall. She made it past the second row of windows before she started to falter; she had to jump to make it to the third. In the stretched-out second where she was fully airborne, she realized that while the light was on inside Mal’s room, his window was shut. She hesitated, muscles seizing, but she managed to grab hold of the edge of the windowsill before it slipped past her fingertips.
Zip dangled from the ledge by one hand. She couldn’t help the semi-hysterical laughter that squeaked out of her; she blamed it on the lightheaded giddiness that meant she was about ready to pass out. If she blacked out and fell, she’d have to explain to Nurse Bliss what she’d been doing outside of the boys’ dorms well past midnight. It wouldn’t have been the worst rumor-spawning thing that Zip had done, but the benefits to being known as the girl that broke her legs storming the boys’ dorms didn’t begin to outweigh the cost of another strike.
But before she could imagine the possible worse-than-death fates that would follow that, the window opened and a strong hand grabbed her forearm. He pulled her up with one yank, and Zip managed not to flatten the bag of food as she tumbled gracelessly inside.
Mal had changed clothes, she noticed, and his hair was wet from a shower. She was glad that he’d rinsed off, since the stink of blood would have cut into her appetite, and she really wanted to enjoy the first fast food meal she’d had in years.
“We did it!” Zip whisper-laughed breathlessly, waving the oil-stained paper bag at her partner. “The plan worked!”
She wouldn’t have gone so far as to say that Mal looked happy, but he did seem pleased by their success.
“Of course it worked. Professor Baker has launched a blackbear hunt in the southernmost part of the campus. If you hear any talk about the attack tomorrow, don’t worry. I started the story.”
“You told her you got mauled by a bear?”
“She hardly would have been convinced i
f I had blamed the injury on a lesser beast,” Mal pointed out with an expressive eye-roll. “There will probably be a wild animal safety assembly before all is said and done, but that’s a small price to pay.”
Opening the bag, she sat down on the floor and started sorting out the burgers and fries. The menu had advertised a little bit of royalty in every bag, but she hadn’t understood what it’d meant by that. The Good Lord had a sense of humor, because tucked beneath the napkins was a flimsy cardboard crown.
“This is for you, your highness,” Zip said, handing him his food and majestic headgear.
“Charming,” Mal said, tossing the paper crown on his desk. He must have been in a better mood, because she’d expected him to shred it on sight.
“Well, you are the Kinglet,” she teased, taking a big bite out of her first burger. It tasted like salt and grease and victory. She savored it.
But Mal looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“An inaccurate moniker, if you rely on that secondary meaning,” he mumbled, taking his time in unwrapping his meal. “I would only be crowned king in the event of the Queen stepping down from her position of power. Which she will never do.”
“The Queen is, um.” The first couple of words had popped out before she could clamp her teeth down on them, so Zip had no choice but to finish the thought. She’d been avoiding the subject for months, since Mal hadn’t volunteered the information, but she couldn’t let the substitute strategy teacher dramatics pass by without saying something. “She’s your mom, right?”
“Yes. She is.”
She’d heard that he was the Queen’s son, but exchanges like the one in strat confused Zip. She’d never met a son who talked to his mother like that, and Professor bint Balqis seemed so remote and removed. They looked like they were related, though. Mal had inherited her dark skin. Her gracefulness, too.
“I guess she doesn’t believe in neptunism, huh?”
“Nepotism, Zipporah.” Mal cleared his throat. “And if she gave me preferential treatment, there would be backlash. So it’s better like this. I won’t improve if I’m not challenged.”
Any other time, she might have pointed out that his argument with the Queen hadn’t had much to do with preferential treatment or challenging him to improve, but the unhappy slump of Mal’s shoulders said more than his words could. She was starting to learn that truths had to be dragged out of Mal Underwood slowly. It had to come at his own speed, or it didn’t come at all.
“I’ve seen your papers. You get some of the best scores in all of our classes. How’re you supposed to do better than that?”
“If I knew, performing to their standards would be a simple task, wouldn’t it?”
He looked so frustrated, she felt bad for him.
“A lot of us think you’re pretty amazing,” Zip said, worry-mowing through the rest of her fries. “For what it’s worth, I guess.”
“It’s— there is so much that they expect of me. I’m the son of the Queen and the Rook. They all expect ‘great things’ of me. What is that even supposed to mean?” His volume steadily increased, resentment choking out his calm. “How can I possibly recover from a score of sixty-seven?”
She took that one like a blow to the ribs.
“’Specially with a partner like me, right?”
For once, it was like Mal realized that he’d said something hurtful. He opened and closed his mouth, glancing away.
“You aren’t terrible,” he said, begrudgingly. He rubbed his thumb over the scarred knuckles of his other hand. “Most of the time.”
Almost an apology and almost a compliment. She smiled, though it made her chipmunk-full cheeks ache a little.
“The way I figure,” Zip said after she’d swallowed and wiped a smudge of mustard off on a napkin. “’Great things’ have gotta mean more than ‘great grades’. Otherwise, there won’t be any hope for me at all.”
“How much do you know about my father?”
The subject change gave her a little bit of whiplash. She handled the question carefully, like it was full of ticking wires. If talking about his mother was like sashaying across a field of eggshells, bringing up his father was like a hoedown over a pile of landmines. Zip’s pulse quickened.
“Well, I know that he was a public hero called the Rook. For a while, at least. And I know that he was one of the founding members of the Set. One of the first mentor heroes in the sidekick program, too. His ‘kick was Little Bird.”
They were safe, hard truths. Facts. Public knowledge about people that’d been public heroes, once upon a time.
“Marshal,” Mal said, stirring his milkshake with his straw. “His eldest.”
“Yeah, ages ago. But you were his ‘kick, too, right?”
“Only briefly.” Mal bowed his head. His wet hair fell forward, so she couldn’t see his eyes. “I...I can only assume that you’ve heard the rumors.”
She had. It was impossible to ignore such a hot topic as What Happened to That Underwood Guy, but he didn’t need that confirmation. She settled on a different truth instead.
“I can’t stand gossip. I’d close my ears if I’d been born with flaps on ‘em.”
“Admirable, if extreme. Everyone has their own take on the matter, don’t they?” Mal said, bitterness turning his words dry and brittle. “Truthfully, very few people knew who my father was. Most would not have recognized him beneath the cowl— in fact, there is only one picture of him in the Academy that shows his face, and it’s hidden in plain sight on the memory board in the mess hall. He was a shifter, you see. A blue-band. He was never a very good hero, but he was an excellent spook.”
“A spook?” Zip echoed, trying to time her questions between big mouthfuls. She hated to be rude, but she couldn’t wait until Mal was finished with his story to continue eating.
“An intelligence agent, usually,” he explained, taking a bite that he methodically and thoroughly chewed before swallowing. “A mercenary, sometimes. My father’s morals were as flexible as his shape, when he needed them to be. But he was not an evil man.”
It sounded like he thought he had to defend his father to her. Most people expected that of him, she figured. The thought that he’d been told to his face that his dead dad was a bad guy made her sad for him.
“If he’d been bad, the Commander and the Queen wouldn’t have been his friends. That’s what I’ve always thought. My daddy used to say that you can tell the cut of a man by the company he keeps.”
Mal didn’t say anything to that, but he nodded.
“There were two aspects of my father’s personality that defined who he was— who he truly was, at his core. These personality traits were the reasons his enemies feared him and his allies trusted him, even when his actions were at their grayest. Once the Rook established a target, he would find them no matter what. His determination was unerring. They feared him because they knew that if he had them in his crosshairs, there was no stopping him. There was no hiding from him. He would come for them sooner or later, and they would not see his strike coming.” Mal set down his half-eaten burger. “My father could wear anyone’s face. Anyone’s.”
She knew some of that stuff. Everyone did, really. According to most of the people flapping their lips about the Rook, he was some kind of bogeyman. There were some who thought that he’d kidnapped his own son for almost three years, even. More than just some, but like Zip had told him, she tried not to hear the gossip. Each story was darker and more far-fetched than the last. Was she really supposed to believe that the Rook had kidnapped his own boy and held him in a cave for years?
“I’m sorry that people spread those awful rumors. I really am.”
“If I allowed others to determine who I am, I would believe that we are sixty-sevens,” he said, stiffly.
Zip didn’t miss that we. She almost stumbled over it.
“People’ll say a lot of things about you if you let ‘em. Doesn’t make it true. See, there’s three types of people out there, boss. There’s the peo
ple who think they know you, the people who sort of know you, and the people who really know you,” Zip said, ticking off the types on her greasy fingers. “Gossipers are gonna say what they’re gonna say. Acquaintances and allies’ll talk, too. There might only be a handful of folks that really get you all the way, but those are friends. And them? They matter.”
Mal got still and quiet and small, his shoulders hunched in.
“If we...” He began haltingly, staring down at the floor instead of looking at her. “If we are to be more than allies, you and I, you should know some things about my family. I suppose.”
Zip held her breath. She waited. There were some things worth exercising restraint over, and Mal choosing to talk instead of growl was one of them.
“The truth is— the truth is that my father was not a bad man, but he was not a well man, either,” said Mal, his gaze wandering out the dark window. “As I said, he was a mercenary in his younger years. He made enemies. Patient, ruthless enemies. When he married my mother and went public with his identity, one of his oldest and cruelest rivals, Tygr, saw it as an opportunity. Tygr was an arrogant man. He wanted to prove that my father had been tamed by his wife and children, and that he was weaker for it.”
Zip thought about the single, looping word that the Queen had written on the board.
Retaliation.
There hadn’t been a single hypothetical thing about the story that the Queen had told the class. Well, except for the idea that it could hypothetically happen to Ernest’s partner, too. Or any public hero with a kid. Zip would have been lying if she’d said she hadn’t imagined dead freckled babies during Professor bint Balqis’ cautionary tale. She didn’t know if she’d ever end up having kids someday— since she wasn’t sure what her body would do with a baby in it, among other babymaking obstacles— but nobody liked to be told that wanting that made them a selfish person.
“Before I was born, my brother, Matt, was kidnapped and murdered while under Marshal’s watch. Father apprehended the killer within two hours of finding Matt’s body, but he followed the rules and surrendered him to the authorities. Marshal did not agree with his decision. In his mind, incarceration was not punishment enough, so he took his own pound of flesh.” Mal fiddled relentlessly with his straw. He chewed the tip all up. His hands trembled as he rolled the straw between his fingers, but she couldn’t tell if it was out of anxiety or anger. “Marshal killed Tygr. Which, as I’m sure you are aware, is a punishable act of vigilantism. To escape punishment for his crimes, he left home that night and did not return.”
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 19