Blightborn (29 page)

But he doesn’t know where to start. He doesn’t get the time to decide, either, because behind them, a clamor—

A door opens, and Killian strides out, whistling. Chest bare, covered in a faint sheen of sweat, his hair a-muss. A man with a smashed-flat nose and a long, rat-tail braid of blond hair follows after: his first mate, Billy Cross.

“Something’s up,” Rigo mutters darkly.

Cael steps away from the back of the trawler and starts to drift toward the small commotion. Rigo hobbles after. The other raiders sleeping on deck wake up, snorting and grumbling and winding their way toward the noise.

Killian continues to whistle.

The watchwoman, Hezzie Orden, calls down from the crow’s nest: “Something going on, Cap?”

He grins up at her, face captured in the starlights of the midnight sky. “Oh, just something your elevated gaze missed, Hezzie.”

He roots through a wooden box, tosses a telescoping spyglass to Billy. The first mate and he walk up to a platform on which sits one of the trawler’s big sonic cannons—

Cael’s hands twist into fists.
It can’t be.

Could Lane have . . .

Killian sits in the chair mounted to the cannon.

Billy stands next to him.

The first mate cranks a lever, and the gun extends out over the edge of the ship on a set of toothy tracks—as the tracks drift outward, the gun moves across them to meet their end.

Now the gun sits ten feet over the edge of the boat.

Giving them a clear shot for—

Boyland’s yacht
.

The first mate pops the glass to his eye and pulls it out with three quick clicks. The glass lens at the end shines green. Cael calls out, yells for Killian to stop, stepping forward as Billy angles his gaze well beyond the aft of the ship and starts calling out numbers. Killian begins to adjust a smaller crank right above a pair of big triggers. As he does so, the gun barrel drifts a few inches left, a few inches up. . . .

“Killian, no, wait!” Cael takes another bold step forward—

The raider captain leans back, still smiling. He wiggles a finger toward Cael. “Someone want to grab that gentleman? Careful, now; I suspect he’s a slippery little squealer.”

Rigo calls after, panicked: “Cael! What’s going on? Watch out—!”

Suddenly arms wrap around Cael’s midsection. Big arms. He looks back, sees the bearded sonofabitch whose nose he broke back at the depot.

Cael yells out again—the man clamps his hand over Cael’s mouth.

The man’s forearm presses tight against Cael’s chest. Mashing the stem-and-leaves of Blight.
Please don’t notice it under there. . . .

“Pair of sails lined up,” Billy says.

Killian answers, “Ready to fire at your request, Mr. Billy Cross.”

The first mate offers a thumbs-up.

Killian gives him one right back.

Then he whoops and cackles and squeezes both triggers.

The sound coming off the sonic cannon is like a shrieking wind born of a real bad piss-blizzard. Like any sonic weapon, it fires no projectiles—all Cael sees is a distorting lance of air hurling forward like a nearly invisible spear.

Killian whoops again, and some of the raiders gathered applaud, though they surely don’t know what they’re applauding.

Cael stomps on Beard-o’s foot and breaks away from the bear-crushing grip in time to meet Killian face-to-face as he backs off the gun.

The first mate steps in between them, brandishing something that looks like a pick you’d use to chip shavings off an ice block.

But Killian puts his hand on the man’s chest, eases him back. “It’s all right, Billy. Cael was just coming up here to say he was sorry.”

“Bullshit,” Cael spits as much as he says. “Why the hell’d you do that?”

“My question is, why didn’t
you
tell
me
we were being followed?”

“Because I figure you’d do something like that!”

Killian shrugs and smiles. “I guess that’s fair.”

“You don’t even know who that was.”

“No, I do not. But I can’t have unknowns following behind us in the dark.” Loudly now, so that everyone can hear it, the raider captain says, “We’re on a mission of justice, Mr. Cael. Surely you understand that?”

More applause.

“I don’t,” Cael says quietly. “What
is
the mission? Travel from depot to depot? Robbing them blind? Killing their workers?”

The smile doesn’t fade, but Killian’s stare hardens. “Tell you what, Cael. Even though you failed to
illuminate
me as to the presence of our little shadow out there in the corn, you still proved yourself a damn fine watchman. Unlike Hezzie, who obviously couldn’t spot a moth even as it landed on the
tip
of her godsdamn nose. You want the job?”

“I . . .”

From up above, Hezzie protests, and Killian gives her his middle finger, which, surprisingly, shuts her up.

“Good. It’s yours. Then soon as we can get you your own boat, we’ll get you on it. Meantime, starting tomorrow, the crow’s nest is your home at night.” A reward, or a punishment? Cael doesn’t know. Killian starts to walk away but then turns around. “Oh, and you want to know what our mission is? Well, noonday tomorrow I’ll clue you in. How’d that be?”

Cael says nothing. He can find no words. He can only think of Wanda out there in the corn. And Gwennie up there in the sky. Rigo without his leg. And betrayer Lane, somewhere in the belly of this boat.

Cael sees Rigo staring, and he doesn’t have words.

Lane feels like he should be sleepy, but he’s anything but. Feels like instead of having had a glass of gin he’s had about two pots of Busser’s famous black-tar coffee—which as Lane understands
it isn’t really coffee at all; it apparently comes from little seeds or black beans or something.

He lies there on Killian’s bed. Behind him, the windows of the stern compartment look out over the midnight corn seemingly receding, as if it’s the land that’s moving, not the massive boat.

He knows he just screwed over Cael.

He knows Cael’s gonna be mad.

Mad as a goat who had his feed taken away.

But right now he doesn’t care.

He
can’t
care, even though he knows he should.

The sick feeling inside is gone. All that’s there is a kind of giddy elation—as if every part of him is hooked to a fleet of kites flying high.

He’s wanted this for a long time.

He’s liked boys since he liked anybody. But in the Heartland, you don’t get to like boys if you’re a boy. Or girls if you’re a girl. Because there’s a way of doing things and that way is Obligation and marriage, and the wife squeezes out a litter of children, and, if you live long enough (many don’t), those children squeeze out their own squealing litters and on and on.

Funny thing is, the Heartland folk have been roped into that rodeo for so long they think it’s their idea. They all seem to forget that the Obligations are something the Empyrean wants. Something the Empyrean
enforces
.

That made Lane feel very alone for a very long time.

He always suspected there were others like him, though. Kids talked. Hell, adults talked, too. Some folks said the old
Tallyman, Murrill Franklin, was into men. Or into boys. Then came the day Franklin was gone and the Tallywoman, Frieda Wessel, was setting up in his office. Wasn’t long before the rumors were bouncing around like a pebble down a hill: somebody found Franklin in one of the corn silos outside of town with a boy named Tyrell Polcyn (older brother to Alia, who is Lane’s age). The stories people told. That Tyrell was seduced. That Franklin had him tied up and was doing things to him. Others said maybe Tyrell wanted it, maybe invited him out there on the idea that Murrill was into that sort of thing.

Whatever happened, one day Murrill was just gone.

And it wasn’t long before Tyrell killed himself.

Cut his wrists the long way on the tines of a thresher bar, bled out in a barn while a pair of sick cows looked on.

And
that
for Lane was life in the Heartland.

So, to be here, in the bed of a raider captain—a damn fine raider captain with a wicked hook of a smile and eyes that dance like fireflies—is just about the nicest place Lane can imagine himself.

Though there in the back of his mind, the whispered threat:
This can’t last. Don’t get comfortable. They all leave you in the end. . . .

From somewhere up above: the sonic blast. Like a flock of blackbirds screeching all at once.

It’s enough to jar him from his thoughts. Particularly the poisonous ones. But only for a moment. He closes his eyes for a time and wakes up again with Killian rubbing his chest with the flat of his hand. Killian tells him it’s all fine: Cael is good; the situation is handled. They kiss. Lane feels his body stirring anew.

BLOOD CHOKE AND BROKEN STICKS

IT COMES OUT OF NOWHERE
, screaming like a banshee—and by the time Wanda’s pulling herself from within the twisting corridors of failed sleep, everything’s already gone to King Hell. An explosion—then a rain of splinters down upon her. Then something’s got her in its grip, some foul, twisting thing darker than the night itself and redder than blood. She grabs at her face and tries to pull it off—realizes she’s got a handful of torn and tattered sail.

That’s when she hears Mole screaming.

She’s up. In the dark. Stumbling forward. Boyland’s there, too, a light in his hand shining over the wreckage of mast and sail. Mast into matchsticks. Sail into swatches of fabric caught on the wind and blowing out over the corn. All he says is “We’re hit; we’re hit,” and then he’s pulling away sail and netting and yelling for help, and Wanda runs and tries to help him lift the shattered mast off Mole—

At first she thinks it’s just the sail pooled beneath him, but the red catches the light, trapping it in its liquid surface, and she realizes too late that what’s beneath Mole is what’s spilling out of him.

Then she really sees: it’s his arm. Thank the Lord and Lady, it’s just his arm. But when Boyland lifts Mole and Mole screams, there’s the white bone sticking out, the limb bent the wrong way, his face draining of blood just as the shattered deck darkens with it.

Mole’s screams are living things, full of electric pain and snapping, sparking panic. In the band of light across his face, his eyes rotate in their sockets until they fall on her, pupils as fat and twitchy as horseflies, and in the middle of his screams he gasps words. No—not words. Her name.
Wanda, Wanda, help, help
. More screams.

She doesn’t know what to do. A wave of realizations crash against her like buffeting winds:
I am unprepared for everything. I don’t know how to do anything. I can’t help. I can only hurt
. And then she’s mad at herself for making this about her, for being selfish enough to think about
her
problems,
her
woes while a young boy is screaming at her feet.

Suddenly, there’s a shape behind Mole.

The hobo. Eben. He’s lifting Mole up. He’s got the boy’s neck in the crook of his bent arm, his other arm pressed like a hard bar against the back of Mole’s neck. Mole begins to make a choking noise, thrashing about—

Wanda screams. Steps over the wreckage of the mast and begins clubbing at the wild-eyed hobo, clawing at his
head, dragging the swaddling off his face and revealing the still-glistening wounds there—

He gives her a hard boot to the stomach and knocks her down.

Boyland’s yelling now. She sees him standing there, the sickle knife in his hands, but all she can do is try to rock forward and catch her breath—

Mole slumps. Slides down the hobo’s legs to the floor.

Boyland rushes at Eben.

The hobo doesn’t have time to react—he tries to step out of the way, but Boyland’s there, knife raised, dropping the vagrant to the deck—

“He’s asleep!” the hobo yells.

“What?” Boyland asks.

“I put—” The hobo shoves Boyland off him. “I put the little mouse to sleep. Him thrashing about like that was just going to break the arm further. No time to do anything else but knock him out. Now get the hell off me before I cut off parts of you and feed them to the corn.”

Eben knows he’s overstepped, threatening the thick-necked bull when the boy’s got his back up. But to his surprise the lunk is more concerned over the boy with the broken arm. The now-
sleeping
boy, thanks to Eben’s blood-choke—press in on both sides of someone’s neck and it cuts off blood flow, and then they sleep the sleep of the Saintangels.

Later, when they’ve put the boy on a pallet of sacks toward
the aft of the land-yacht, they discuss what to do next—the boat crawls forward, buoyed by hover-panels and pushed on by a pair of small, cage-bound fans, but already it’s clear that the raider fleet will outpace them quickly.

“They spotted us,” Boyland says, marching back and forth. He growls and kicks a coil of rope, nearly trips on it. “Godsdamn raiders.
Godsdamn thieving-magpie raiders
.”

Wanda asks, “Wh—what are we gonna do?”