He unbuttoned his jacket.
“Do you have a price on your head, Mr. Seventh?” I asked.
He paused in the unbuttoning, glancing at Neds, who shrugged.
A smile tugged the corners of Abraham’s lips. I didn’t like being laughed at, but the smile did a world of good for his face. “It’s just Abraham.”
“All right,” I said. “Abraham, is there a price on your head?”
He pulled his jacket open but did not take it all the way off. He hadn’t bothered putting on his bloody shirts, although he’d wrapped his belly in bandaging. Not enough cotton, though. In the short time he’d been wearing it, the blood had soaked through.
“Not on my head, no,” he said. “I am secured, claimed.”
“Stitch out in the hedge?” Left Ned said. “That’s not secured. You deserted House, didn’t you? It’s why you’re busted open and looking for a peace offering to take back to your top man. It’s why White is out beating the sticks looking for you.”
“Watch your step, Mr. Harris,” Abraham warned amiably. “My House stands with me and my actions. Does yours stand with you?”
“No fighting in the house,” I said. “You don’t like each other. We’ve established that.” I pulled the bandage knot apart and let the wrap fall loosely around his waist. “So, you’re not a criminal. Are you on the run? A slave?”
“I am galvanized,” he said in a soft tone that told me neither if that was a good thing nor a bad thing.
I dipped my fingertips into the jelly and the humming warmth of it resonated up through me. It had to do with the chemical makeup of the stuff, the blend of strange minerals and warped nanos natural to this land. The mutant beasts ate it out of the vegetation and rodents. When we fed Lizard, those minerals and odd tech filtered into its scales, which we harvested and boiled down to make the jelly.
“What does that mean, galvanized? I mean, I can see the thread that holds you together, but I don’t know much more about you.” I meant it to be small talk. But he took so long to answer, I glanced up at him.
“It is how I was made,” he said in the way someone would explain that rain came from the sky. “Built piece by piece. Stitched,” he said, “like you.” He nodded toward my wrist, where the stitches shone a faint silver at the edge of my sweater.
“We aren’t the same,” I said.
“Oh?”
I don’t know why I’d said that. The last thing I needed was to point out that I was different. I glanced up into his eyes. He was waiting, patient as starlight.
“I just mean you’re something of a celebrity, aren’t you?”
“Yes. All of us are. Except you.” He said it as if I would fill in my story, tell him how I’d been made and why I’d been hiding out all these years. I had no intention of telling him anything more about me.
“So, there’s more than one of you . . . of galvanized?” I latched onto safer ground in the conversation.
“Twelve.” He held my gaze. “Thirteen now.”
“I don’t count myself as galvanized.” I reached out with a large glob of jelly on my fingertips. “Lots of people go under a doctor’s needle and thread. I’m just like anyone else who’s been mended. This might hurt a bit.”
“It won’t,” he said. “Nothing does.”
I didn’t care how tough he talked. This was going to sting.
I slathered the jelly against his wound carefully but firmly enough that it would hold to his skin and sink in between the stitches.
He pushed back and up out of that chair like I’d set him on fire. Took three steps away and pressed one wide palm over the stitches.
“What is that?”
“Jelly,” I said, slow enough for a three-year-old.
I held up the jar again, and the scent of licorice and lemon that masked the heavy antiseptic tang wafted through the air.
“I felt it.”
