“Now,” Slater Orange said. “Let us negotiate your life and the life of that poor, helpless creature.”
3
Settlers cleared that land, staked their farms, built their homes. They did not know a dead comet lay beneath their soil until they dug up its grave and discovered what it had left behind.—1712
—from the journal of L.U.C.
Ijogged across the porch and into my kitchen. Neds and the stranger were gone, leaving behind a good-sized puddle of blood on the floor.
Grandma still sat in the corner, knitting away, the little sheep, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, having curled up to sleep at her feet. She was singing about sawbones at the grave and hope begging for mercy’s gun. For a sweet old gal, she sure did have a bloody taste in music.
“Where’s Neds?” I asked as I dug in the cupboard and pulled out the jar of scale jelly.
She blinked watery eyes and lowered her knitting—still the same cream-colored scarf she’d been working on for months. It was near long enough to wrap a person head to foot with a good yard or so left over, but she insisted it wasn’t long enough yet.
“Which Ned, dear?” she asked.
“Both of them.”
“I think he was moving that dead body that came to visit,” she said. “Don’t know why a body would want to die on the kitchen floor. Bedroom floor, maybe. Or porch. Wouldn’t be too bad to die on the porch, would it? If you could see the sky.”
“He’s not dead,” I said. I hoped.
“Oh, that’s good.” She glanced around the room, then whispered, “Is he a ghost come to haunt? All these years later, I have my regrets. Of course, we all do.”
“Not a ghost either, so no need to regret anything, Grandma. Just sit here. I’ll be right back.”
That was about as much sense as I could get out of her these days. Sometimes she’d clear up and every word out of her mouth was right on target. But most the time she was wrapped in that aging mind of hers, singing that one bloody song, living those old, regretful memories, while fingers counted off her remaining time in loops and stitches.
“Don’t step in the blood on the floor, though,” I said as I headed out of the room. “I’ll mop it up in a second.”
She went back to her knitting and song again. “Coated with blood, knife cut to the bone, filling the cup that peace drank alone . . .”
There was a time when her hush-little-baby tune was about Papa buying mockingbirds and golden rings. Now it was verse after verse of sadness and pain.
I didn’t know how much she remembered of my parents being killed. She’d never spoken a word about my father or mother in fourteen years. But she’d never been the same since, really. I suppose neither of us had.
The spare room was next to Neds’ room, which used to be my father’s office.
Grandma and I bedded on the other side of the house—I in my parents’ master bedroom; she in the room that used to be mine when I was a girl.
The entire upper floor of the house was empty and dusty and had enough space we could put up a traveling sideshow if we wanted. That space had come in handy now and then, when we’d hosted House Brown families on the move who had lost their stakes to the creep of cities or had their farms swallowed up by House claims.
It was part of why I kept Quinten’s communication network going. Those of us in House Brown were nomads, living on the fringe, unwilling to buckle to the rules and regulations of the other Houses. Unwilling to give up our lives and freedom because the rich and powerful decided to tell us how to live.
House Brown had no voice among the other Houses. Which meant we had only each other to count on for our safety and needs. Clear and fast communication was vital for the survival of thousands. I wasn’t the only communication hub in the world—there were four others—but I was the only one in North America. And if the Houses found out what I was doing here, found our network and equipment in the basement, they’d shut us down and put thousands of people at risk.
Which was why I needed to get this galvanized man off my land, pronto.
I caught up with Neds in the hall. He’d hooked his arms under the stranger’s shoulders and was walking backward toward the spare room, sweating hard as he dragged the man.
“You change the sheets?” I picked up the man’s boots, helping to carry him. He weighed twice what I expected. No wonder Neds were sweating.
“Yes,” Right Ned grunted. “Did you get everything?”
“I think so. Brought some bandaging just in case. And the jelly. It did good for me when the pony put a hole in me last year.”
Neds stopped next to the bed, which had an old quilt and blanket pulled all the way down to the footboard and fresh, fold-creased sheets stretched out across it.
