Blightborn (43 page)

“Anything.” He means it. And that shocks him. A voice in the back of his mind reminds him,
This is the Maize Witch, godsdamnit! She isn’t human anymore; can’t you see that?

“The flotilla. They’re going to try to destroy it, aren’t they?” she says.

“I think so.”

“I need you to get something off the flying city for me.”

“Name it.”

“I need you to get my son.”

He hears his own voice—surprisingly small and soft—ask her how he’s supposed to find one boy (one
man
, she says) in a whole city floating up in the sky, and she tells him,
I’ll help you
, and she commands him to hold still, and something slides out of her mouth and enters his—a long vine down his throat. He
starts to gag; he tastes the copper tang of blood but then the sweet taste of crushed berries—

Then the snaking vine has left his throat, and he gasps.

“My blood calls to my blood,” she says.

Suddenly she pulls away, her whole body stiffening.

She looks as if she’s in pain.

Her pupils are gone. Hidden behind a milky sheen, like white sap. Then the rheumy cloud is gone and her pinprick eyes return to view, and she says, “Someone is coming. We are about to be attacked.”

THE BUTCHERS

THE SICKLE IS HEAVY
in Boyland’s hand. He hides in the dead corn, lying flat on his belly with the spyglass held in his other hand. He stares at the narrow, white house in the distance.

For a long while they urged themselves along with oar-poles, moving ploddingly slow through the stalks, and then a heat haze seemed to part like a curtain, and in the spyglass he could see it: the tall house pushing itself out of the ground like a crooked tooth and the green growth all around it.

First they thought,
Well, here’s a place to stop, ask for food, try to figure out just where in the gods-blasted Heartland they
were, but then he anchored the boat and started scouting, and lo and behold—

Godsamn Cael McAvoy
. Coming out of the back of the house toward a pair of buildings, past a half-dozen giant . . . well, Wanda called them “effigies,” but he’s not too sure what that means and
he doesn’t care; they look like giant figures made of straw and stick, like sentinel scarecrows standing vigil. They creep him the hell out. What matters isn’t what those are called or who lives in that house. What matters is
godsdamn Cael McAvoy
.

This is his chance.

Wanda hunkers down behind him. “You really saw Cael?”

“Oh yeah. How’s Mole?”

“He’s asleep again.”

Boyland grunts. “Those Annie pills are potent.”

“Well, we’re almost out.”

“We’ll worry about that once we have your boyfriend.”

“He’s my Obligated, not my boyf—”

“I don’t care, Wanda. Dang.”
Stupid girl. Giving her heart to that shitbird, McAvoy.
Boyland gives the spyglass one last look-see before putting it down. “Seems pretty quiet. I figure we go, kick down the door, drag his ass out before anybody even knows what happened.”

“
That’s
your plan? Just storm in like you own the place?”

He rolls his eyes at her. “You got a better plan?”

“Well. No.”

“There it is then. If it makes you feel any better, go ask the hobo what he thinks. Maybe we got a real
battle strategy-ologist
traveling with us, huh?”

Wanda grouses at him. But she ducks back through the stalks that separate them and the yacht. Boyland gets that fluttering inside that he usually feels before he comes up on a sweet cache of scrap or scavenge. Now he gets to drag that murderous cur into the dirt so the Empyrean can toss his ass off whatever flotilla they like. Boyland hopes he gets to watch.

But then Wanda comes back and says, “The hobo’s gone.”

“What? Shut up.”

“Eben Henry is not on that boat.”

“Well, maybe he’s off takin’ a squirt.”

“Ew, and no, I don’t think so. He took his bag.”

“Well, hell. He was an asshole anyway. We don’t need him. He’s just a crusty old hobo with a burned-up face. What good would he have done us?”

Eben Henry knows who that house belongs to. He knows who this whole damn Dead Zone belongs to. He’s met her. Many moons before. When he was a younger man. And she was an older woman. And this is not where he wants to be.

But as soon as he heard brick-headed Boyland say that Cael McAvoy was there—well, that twines all their fates together, braided like a patch of five-finger creeper.

She’s got powers, though, the Maize Witch. She’ll know they’re here. Which means he’s got to make an opportunity for himself.

He clings to the underside of the yacht like a spider. The hover-panels to the left and right of him are still humming, vibrating so loud he can barely hear anything but for the way his teeth seem to be singing.

Soon enough he sees the shuffling of feet—

Her people. Hell, they’re not people at all. Not anymore. They’re just . . .
the Blight.
Lost to it, taken by it, no longer human. They have
her
inside them. The Maize Witch: Old Scratch’s hell-born daughter.

Her Blightborn do anything she says.

And now they attack.

It isn’t long before he hears Wanda cry out. Then come Boyland’s shouts of rage as he tries to fight back—that dumb turd would fight back against a motorvator if it rumbled at him too loudly.

Boyland’s cries are cut short. Then he gurgles. Then nothing but the sound of her people dragging the bodies along. Through the corn and away.

Finally, they’re gone. Leaving him with the boat. And the boy with the broken arm. Eben drops to the ground, arms aching, face still hot as if it’s covered with ants. Part of him thinks to swing himself up onto the boat and just stick the stupid kid a few times with the knife—one across the neck then a punch of the blade through his temple—but there’s still something about him. . . . He just can’t do it. It might be a mercy, but again he thinks of his own son. Now dead and gone. Thanks to Arthur McAvoy.

He wants to kill so badly.

Mole will not be part of his tally.

Others deserve his knife. Cael McAvoy, most of all. Not just for his father. But now, for the face that Eben has to wear.

Won’t be long before the Maize Witch realizes she didn’t get them all. Her powers are imperfect, but one way or another her mojo will sort him out.

Which means it’s time to move.

He hops into the yacht and revs up the hover-panels.

PLANKWALKERS

“I THOUGHT HE LOVED ME,”
Merelda says, staring off at a nowhere point. Her lips are dry. Her eyes bloodshot. “I thought I could get him to help us.”

“Guess you were wrong,” Gwennie says, a black mood acting as dark rider. She fidgets, standing there. Hands bound above her. Merelda’s are, too. The plastic ties bind them to a long length of pipe. “You always were naive.”

The wind whips. Gwennie knows where they are. She last saw her father here. Pushed down the gangplank. Tilting beneath him until he fell.

She knows what’s coming soon, because the peregrine told her. He said,
I’m going to execute the both of you. Traitors to the Empyrean and all that. I’ll throw your mother and your brother overboard first. Just so you can see. Like I promised
.

Gwennie told him, wait, she can help him. She can tell him
where the raiders are—a ploy, a delaying tactic, all part of the plan.

He just laughed.

Said he already knew where they were.
Thanks,
he said,
to your friend and mine, La Mer
. Then he marched out Merelda, who looked largely untouched but harrowed just the same. He sat her down and bound her, too. Told them they were both to die and that all the raiders on the flotilla were dead.

Gwennie did not weep. But it felt as if she were a rotten tooth scraped raw. All scratched enamel and exposed nerves.

Merelda. She escaped the raiders. Ran to her boyfriend.

“They used drugs,” she said. “They injected me with something and then . . . I couldn’t stop talking.” And she wept, trembling like a dangling leaf in a sudden breeze. And now here they are.

Gwennie hates her.

Hates
her.

And still a little part of her says,
Forgive her. She thought she was doing the right thing. She didn’t think we’d end up here
.

But that’s the key, isn’t it?

She didn’t think
.

Now nobody will come for her. She has no leverage to save her family. Davies and Squirrel are a lifetime away.

The plan is dead. And so are they.

Unless she can do something.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Merelda says. “I just . . .”

“It’s
fine
,” Gwennie snaps, but the venom she can’t hold back comes across as clear as a snakebite. “No good worrying
about it now.” She almost thinks to tell the girl that they need to get out of here somehow—but she’s afraid Cael’s sister will ruin it.

“Maybe he’ll have mercy on us.”

Gwennie’s jaw clenches. “Maybe he’ll have mercy on
you
. I don’t think the rest of us will be so lucky.”

She sees the peregrine approaching. With three of his Frumentarii guardsman—men who are not dressed so lavishly as the
evocati augusti
but dressed instead like Adrian and his sister. And then she sees: one of them
is
Adrian’s twin sister, isn’t it? Through the face shield she sees Adriana’s wicked smile.

This is revenge for her.

How can I fight them? I have no chance. . . .
She has no gun, no knives, nothing.

She hears her mother pleading. Her brother weeping.

The guards bring them out. Her mother looks haggard. Worn down to a nub, a pencil sharpened past its usefulness. Her brother is a live spark. Screeching, thrashing, kicking.
Fight,
she thinks.
Fight!

Gwennie cries out. They see her. Her brother tries to run to her, but Adriana catches the boy by the hair, yanks him back. Gwennie screams at the bitch. Shrieks,
You’re going to kill him!

Adriana just laughs.

The peregrine steps in front of them. Hands clasped behind his back.

“You’ve made quite a mess of things,” he says, pursing his lips. “But today we are afforded the chance to clean up all this and go on with our lives. We do not abide terrorists. We cannot,
because what message does that send? It only emboldens those who hope to exploit our mercy. And so we do as we must; we tamp down our most merciful instincts and—”

“You’re a monster,” Merelda says.

If only you’d realized that sooner,
Gwennie thinks.

The peregrine walks to Cael’s sister. Cups his hand under her chin. Strokes her cheek. He leans in and kisses her forehead. The look on his face makes Gwennie wonder if it’s sincere—did he really love her? The gesture is enough, she thinks, to soak up any of the poison Merelda has in reserve—

Or so she thinks, until Merelda spits in his eye.

He blinks. Scowls. Wipes it away with the bend of his wrist.

“Well,” he says. “You can take the girl out of the Heartland, but you can’t take the Heartland out of the girl.”

“You’ll pay for this,” Gwennie seethes.

“With a good night’s sleep, I think.”

He snaps to the guards. “You two, take the mother to the edge.” He points to the woman. “Adriana, grab this one. Cut her down, hold her over the edge. I want her to watch as her mother falls. I’ll set up the camera.”

Everything seems to happen slowly—bubbles caught in honey, warping, distending. Adriana comes over. Flicks a knife. Starts to cut Gwennie down, chuckling.

Gwennie’s mother calls to her: “Gwendolyn! Don’t look. Close your eyes.
Don’t look
.”

A guard breaks away, begins extending the gangplank.

The peregrine sets up a small camera with a hover-panel beneath it. It bobs out into the air, tethered by a small, golden
chain. Its lens telescopes. Focuses. Watches.
Transmits
. Likely to everyone. Even to those below.