I blinked. Mindy preened, clearly waiting for me to be the first to speak.
“You . . . found a friend,” I said finally. “Who’s your friend?”
“Priestess, I present to you a representative of the Lost Catechisms,” said Mindy, her whiskers pushing even farther forward. “His are the descendants of those who remained behind when the Patient Priestess and the God of Uncommon Sense were forced to leave the Obedient Priestess and the God of Bitter Honesty behind as they struck out across the Great Water. For did not the Patient Priestess say, ‘Charles, I know you’ll never forgive us, but please believe me when I say I love you. Ask the mice. They remember’?”
“Wait.” I would have shaken my head, but that wasn’t exactly easy, considering I was on the floor. “Wait just a second. Are you saying there are Aeslin mice here? Like, here-here? At the Covenant?”
“Yes, Priestess,” said Mindy patiently.
“Whoa,” I breathed.
It’s a matter of family record that my great-great-grandparents had been forced to leave their two elder children behind when they left the Covenant: Charles and Ada Healy had been under the age of consent, and the Covenant hadn’t been willing to let them go. The thought that a branch of the family colony might have chosen to stay, even knowing how much danger they were putting themselves in, had never crossed my mind. But of course they would have stayed. Of course. Where there were members of our family, there were Aeslin mice.
I focused on Mindy. “Did you—did the colony—know about this when they sent you with me? That there might be other Aeslin here?”
“We suspected, Priestess,” she said, with a quick, almost human nod. They’d picked up the gesture from us, along with so much else about the way they lived. “Those who chose to stay and chronicle the lives of the Obedient Priestess and the God of Bitter Honesty knew they might never have a close relationship with their gods, for they were to be raised Outside the Family, by those who Did Not Understand. But still, we had a duty, and Duty Must Be Fulfilled.”
The strange mouse glanced at me, head still bowed, like he was trying to assess my reaction.
I held very still, largely because my first response was the strong desire to leave the room, find any distant cousins I had in the building, and punch them until my knuckles hurt. Aeslin mice put their faith in us, in every sense of the phrase, and all they ask in return is protection, the occasional plate of cheese and cake, and the security of knowing their gods love them. The mice who’d chosen to stay with Charles and Ada—them and their descendants—had given up those things for the cold comfort of doing what they saw as their duty to the family. They had been neglected. They had been ignored. And it wasn’t fair.
“What’s your name?” I asked finally, in a soft voice.
The strange mouse made a chittering noise and twitched his tail in a complex pattern, accompanied by a half-swivel of one ear and a systematic bristling of his whiskers. It took about as much time to perform as my own name would take to say: Aeslin are nothing if not efficient.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t have the anatomy to say that—I’m sorry—so I’m going to have to give you a nickname if I’m going to identify you. Is that acceptable?”
The mouse puffed up like I’d offered him a medal and a pony. “To be so named, to be so nicked, would be the greatest of honors.” He hesitated before adding, shyly, “Priestess.”
And there came the urge to punch the world again. I kept my voice gentle, and said, “Then I’m going to call you ‘Mork.’ Are you okay with that?”
He puffed up further. “It is an Honor, Priestess!” he squeaked loudly.
Too loudly. Chloe’s snoring broke, becoming confused snuffling. I looked over my shoulder. She rolled over and went back to snoring. I returned my attention to the mice.
“You have to be quiet,” I said. Mindy was glaring at Mork. I shook my head. “Go easy on him, he’s just excited. Mindy, what’s the goal here? I can’t smuggle a whole colony home.”
“We have Made Contact,” she said, irritation forgotten now that I was speaking to her again. “Mork will travel with me across the Great Water, and he will speak to the Council of Lineages, and we will decide among ourselves what is to be done. Now that we know they were not Lost, merely Misplaced, we can begin planning properly.”
She was such a small mouse, talking so earnestly about finding a way to reunite her people, even though they were continents apart. It would have been inspiring, if it hadn’t been so damn terrifying.
It might also be useful. Aeslin mice saw everything, heard everything, and remembered everything they saw and heard. Depending on where the colony lived in the building, Mork could be an invaluable resource.
I’d worry about that later. “Apart from your lost colony, what have you found?” I asked.
“They do not suspect your origins, Priestess; they are still confirming that you are as you claim to be, but they do not question the shape of your eyes or the color of your hair,” said Mindy. “There is one here who is related to you—”
“The Impassioned Priestess,” supplied Mork. “She dedicates herself to finding and destroying her colony’s lost ones.”
I could only think of one person who would fit that description. “Margaret Healy,” I said grimly. “That’s great. That’s just awesome. What’s she doing here?”
“Assisting in the education of the young,” said Mindy. “You will need to mind yourself in her company.”
“Got it,” I said. “Anything else?”
“The kitchen stocks a wide assortment of cheeses,” said Mindy.
I smiled. “I believe it. Mork, it was lovely to meet you.”
“Likewise, Priestess,” he said reverently.
“Mindy, keep looking. We need to know anything the Covenant is planning for North America, and everything they think they know about us. Nothing is too small, all right?”
“Yes, Priestess,” she said. She bobbed her head once, then turned and ran into the shadows under the bed. Mork lingered, studying my face like it was the most impossible thing he’d ever seen. Then he ran after her, and I was alone with Chloe, and Chloe’s snoring.
I climbed back into bed and stared at the ceiling. It took a long, long time for me to go to sleep.
The sound of the door slamming woke me. I sat up in the bed to find Chloe already gone, and a note on her pillow:
ARE ALL AMERICANS AS LAZY AS YOU? BREAKFAST DOESN’T WAIT FOR SLUGABEDS, YOU CLOD.
She hadn’t signed it. To be fair, she hadn’t needed to. She obviously hadn’t come anywhere near my bed while she was getting ready—that would have woken me immediately—and since she hadn’t opened the door until she was leaving, there hadn’t been anything else my brain would register as an automatic danger sound. Chloe was the only possible person who could have left that note. Chloe who snored all night, and then was shitty about me sleeping in.
Chloe, whose nose would probably make an awesome crunching sound if I got the opportunity to accidentally punch her in the face.
If the Covenant had a dress code—and let’s face it, the Covenant probably had a dress code—no one had gotten around to sharing it with me yet. I dressed as fast as I could, yanking on jeans and a sweatshirt and running a brush through the tangled mess of my hair. I still felt naked without a weapon. I was still smart enough not to carry one. This was enemy territory, no matter how much it tried to look like a boarding school for weirdos; if I put so much as a knife in my pocket, I risked blowing everything.
My family knew they’d been asking a lot of me, asking me to do this. They had. But I don’t think any of them really understood what it would be like for me, opening a door and stepping into a hallway with no way to defend myself, no knives or guns or cleverly concealed pit traps. My older siblings have been complaining about playing with me since I was a little kid and realized they would gang up unle
ss I escalated things as fast as possible. What they’d never seemed to realize was that I was smaller than them, and already on the outside of the closed unit they formed. I’d been trying to protect myself. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.
Here, now, I couldn’t protect myself, and I couldn’t count on anyone else to protect me. All I could do was continue forward, and hope I could build up enough momentum to let me get away.
Thankfully, I’ve always had a good memory for directions. I followed the hall to a stairway, narrower and shabbier than the one at the front of the house, and descended it to the room where I’d eaten dinner the night before. Then I stopped, dumbstruck.
The room was massive, easily the size of the high school gymnasium where I’d learned to do a double-tuck back handspring. But the night before, dinner had been me, Leo, Chloe, and Reginald, sitting in an awkward foursome around the edge of one of the long dining tables, making awkward conversation over lamb stew and home-baked biscuits. Apparently, that was either because I’d been in some sort of social quarantine, or because everyone else had been hiding.
They weren’t hiding now. The room was packed with people, ranging in age from a large group of teenagers that surged around two full tables—and each table could seat at least twenty people—all by themselves, to a cluster of decorous, much calmer senior citizens. There had to be a hundred and fifty Covenant members present. Most were seated, but some were still in line for what looked like a breakfast buffet, chatting among themselves as they waited for their turn.
I realized the people nearest where I’d frozen were looking at me, some curious, some wary, none of them especially unfriendly. There was no uniform: while the teenagers were all dressed in some variant of black and white, with skirts and slacks combined with plain polo shirts, everyone else seemed to have gone with the “whatever I want” school of fashion. A few men wore kilts. One of the women—Kumari, I presumed, although she was too far away for me to be sure—was wearing a sari. They looked like they’d dressed to be comfortable, not to impress.
My legs didn’t want to start working again. I forced them, descending the last of the stairs before anyone could come over and ask if I needed help. A little cluelessness was all to the good, but I needed to avoid letting it look like I was scared of these people, even though I was. They’d been remarkably accepting so far, maybe because my cover story was solid and believable, and maybe because they were the honey badger of evil asshole organizations: they were big enough that they didn’t need to give a fuck. If I tried to challenge them, they’d take me out, no fuss, no muss, and certainly no chance of my surviving the experience.
But Timpani wouldn’t be afraid. Timpani would see these people as the key to avenging her family. I tried to keep that in mind as I walked across the room to the buffet line, ignoring the way people turned to watch me go. This was . . . this was ridiculous. There was no way all these people lived here. There had been a crowd in the gym, but it hadn’t been anything like this. I should have seen more of them the day before, unless the Covenant had sent everyone on a holiday to London or something to keep them from being seen by the new girl. That didn’t make any sense at all. This was their home. Why would I be allowed to turf them out?
Rescue appeared in a semi-expected form: Leo, stepping up next to me in the line, with a glass of grape juice in his hand. He was dressed similarly to the teenagers, which made me suspect that he was spending the day at Penton; Reginald would never have allowed him to go to work dressed like that.
He was still looking at me like I was a useful tool. That was good. That meant I would never make the mistake of relaxing in his presence. He was nice enough, but something about him still made my skin crawl.
“Bit of a culture shock, hmm?” he asked, sipping his juice. “There was a . . . project on yesterday. Had most of our people out in the field, and then Grandfather asked those who came home to keep to their quarters and to the areas you’re not cleared to enter yet, to give you a bit of time to settle.”
A project. That, coupled with Chloe’s attitude the day before, could only mean one thing. “They were hunting?” I asked, trying to project curiosity, hoping it would cover my disapproval.
It must have worked, because Leo nodded, and said, “Yes. A bit of nasty cropped up over in Bristol. I can’t tell you much about it—you’re not even an initiate yet—but I can tell you the city is safe, and the mothers can sleep easy, knowing that nothing will come up through the sewers to steal their sleeping children away.”
There were so many things it could have been, with the data point of “up through the sewers,” and it wouldn’t do me any good at all to dwell on them. I couldn’t raise the dead. I could only try to make sure there would be fewer casualties in the future—and that started with me. I forced a smile.
“Good,” I said. The line moved. I moved with it. “Is it usually so crowded around here?”
“No—like I said, there was a project yesterday. Some folks came in from their usual postings for that. Everyone loves a guaranteed win. Others are here to discuss, well, you. You’re a special one, Annie. We don’t get that many recruits seeking us out. Usually, we have to go and find them. Add the carnival background, and well. You could open a lot of doors for us, if we handle things correctly.”
“Carnivals are important?” I asked.
“You probably don’t realize, since your family’s human, but a lot of monsters hide in traveling shows. It’s easier to be a freak when there’s a banner to convince people that you’re faking it. If you can infiltrate those places, you can be an enormous asset.”
“Whatever it takes to avenge my family,” I said firmly.
Leo grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
The buffet was surprisingly varied, as long as what you liked for breakfast involved butter, frying, more butter, more frying, and possibly a soft-boiled egg. I stared in dismay until Leo took the plate from my hand.
“Let me,” he said, and led me down the length of the serving table, dishing up portions of various things. He handed the plate back when it was full. I transferred my dismayed stare to its contents.
“Is this a joke?” I asked. Mushrooms have no place on a breakfast plate. Neither do baked beans, or fried tomato, or whatever that slice of squishy black stuff was. There was bacon, but it was outsized and soggy-looking, and there was a dismaying absence of potatoes.
“No, this is a celebratory breakfast for our brave warriors, and half of these things won’t be here tomorrow, when we go back to eating normally, so you ought to tuck in now.” Leo smiled encouragingly. “It’s all right. I promise, nothing’s poisoned. You’re special, but you’re not worth killing half the field agents in England to take down.”
“You sure know how to flatter a girl,” I said, and followed him obediently back to a table. Reginald wasn’t there. Chloe was, and she looked mildly dismayed to see me. I offered her my sunniest smile. “Morning, Chloe. Thanks for letting me sleep in. Hey, did anybody ever tell you that you snore? You should maybe get that looked into.”
Chloe’s jaw dropped. “What?” she demanded. “How dare you—”
“Relax, Chloe; everyone knows you snore,” said Leo, settling into a seat. “It’s why there’s always an open bed in your room, even when the rest of us are sleeping two to a bunk. Honestly, I’m surprised she’s that nice about it. Or looks that well rested.”
“Carnivals can be noisy,” I said. “I just had to tell myself it was the noise from the road, and I was fine.” That wasn’t quite true—sleep had involved a lot more sticking my head under my pillow and praying—but it sounded good, and sounding good was key.
Chloe sulked. Actually sulked, sticking her lower lip out like a toddler and slouching in her chair. “It’s not fair,” she said. “Everyone else got to go chasing beasts through Bristol, and we had to sit here and babysit your little American girl. If she’d shown up just two days
later, I’d have already been in the field.”
“But she didn’t, and I wouldn’t have been in the field anyway,” said Leo. He glanced to me, and explained, “I’m a researcher, sworn to the pen and the page. I prefer to keep my hands and my cuffs clean, and support the Covenant in other ways.”
“He means he can’t hit the broad side of a barracks,” said a new voice, immediately followed by a woman with auburn hair sliding into one of the free spaces at our table. She had a plate of food, a cup of tea, and a face I could have picked out of any crowd in the world, because I’d grown up surrounded by variations on the same theme.
Margaret Healy looked at me, polite indifference writ across her features. For the first time, I was grateful to be the odd man out in my family’s genetic party game, because judging by the total lack of recognition in her eyes, she didn’t take me for a Healy. But give her a dye job, and she could have been my older sister.
“You must be the new American recruit,” she said. “Have they started putting you through your paces yet?”
“I did, um, some assessment yesterday,” I said. “I don’t really know what comes next.”
“Annie, this is Maggie Healy, one of our field specialists,” said Leo. “She’s on assignment to Penton right now, to help with the training process. She’ll be working with you on your marksmanship and general fitness.”
“Oh,” I said. So that was the punishment for blowing a field assignment: demotion to P.E. teacher for the new kids. I couldn’t decide whether that was unconscionably cruel, or just cruel enough.
Then I remembered Mork, and the way he’d looked at me, like he’d never been allowed in the presence of a Priestess before. Margaret’s punishment was nowhere near cruel enough. It never could have been.
“I’m sure we’ll get on fine,” said Margaret, apparently taking my shortness for worry. “Just do everything I say without question or complaint, and I’ll have you ready for the field in no time.”
“What if I’m not suited for fieldwork?” I blurted the question before I had time to think about it, and it was all I could do not to wince. I forced a weak smile, and amended, “I mean, Leo did the training, and Chloe says he can’t do it, and I just . . . I want to know that I’m doing some good. My family deserves that.”
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