Murder of Crows: A Novel of the Others Read online

  The Intuits might be human, but their instincts were, in some ways, closer to those of the terra indigene. And their ability to sense things before something happened? How did that compare with Meg’s ability to speak prophecy? “I wonder if the Intuits know anything about cassandra sangue.”

  “When you escort this Roger to Great Island, you should ask them.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “Phineas Jones is here to see you.”

  The Controller gathered up the papers on his desk, put them in a folder, and put the folder in the bottom desk drawer before he said, “Send him in.”

  Phineas Jones was a short man with sandy hair, faded blue eyes, and a sweet smile. He wore an off-the-rack suit with a waistcoat that was a little tight over his rounded belly and one of the bow ties that were his trademark. He looked like he belonged in a sepia print, a photograph of someone who lived a few generations ago. And that was one of his major assets: Phineas Jones looked quaint and harmless. His abilities as a mesmerizer made him the most successful procurer of blood prophets in all of Thaisia.

  For more than twenty years, Jones had talked parents into giving up a troubled girl for her own good, and by the time the family realized the contact information they had was bogus and they had no idea where their daughter had gone, Jones had packed up and moved on. And the girl ended up in a compound in some other part of Thaisia.

  Even if a family wasn’t willing to give up a child, Jones sold the information about the family’s location and habits, making a straightforward abduction that much easier.

  The Controller didn’t like Jones and certainly didn’t trust him. But they’d done business on occasion. After all, families who carried the cassandra sangue bloodline could be difficult to ferret out—until the girl began cutting and called too much attention to herself.

  “I was surprised to hear from you,” Jones said as he settled in the visitor’s chair. “It’s my understanding that you’ve been running a successful breeding program and would have little use for my services.”

  “Even the best breeding program benefits from new stock now and then,” the Controller replied.

  “Is that what you’re looking for? New stock? Or perhaps a reacquisition of previously owned property?”

  So Jones had heard about cs759’s escape and the failure to reacquire her. “New stock. Doesn’t have to be prime grade.”

  “My, my. That wasn’t what I expected. Several other gentlemen are looking to acquire new stock. It seems a number of girls have become unreliable all of a sudden. But those men are all looking for the best that’s out there.”

  “I already have the best,” the Controller replied. “What I’m looking for is variety.”

  Jones thought for a moment. “I think I’ll poke about in the eastern part of Thaisia. Haven’t been there in a while. I’ve made some excellent finds in some of the sleepy hamlets in the Southeast Region.” Then he smiled that sweet smile. “Although with spring so close, the Northeast will be coming into bloom. And I recall there was an incident near Lake Etu last summer. Something about a girl drowning in the river?” He gave the Controller an expectant look.

  “I don’t recall hearing anything.”

  “Could be nothing. Accidental drownings happen all the time.”

  Of course, if it hadn’t been an accident, if the girl had jumped into the river to escape the visions she didn’t understand … Families that had blood prophets either hid among normal humans in solitary fear or gathered together. So a blood prophet in one family could lead to other girls living in the same area who were also cassandra sangue.

  “Fine,” the Controller said. “Go east. See what you can find. I assume you’re splitting your expenses among all your potential buyers?”

  “For the most part,” Jones replied. “Expenses for obtaining a particular girl for a private acquisition would be paid by the buyer.”

  “Of course.” He considered a moment. “Some trouble will be stirring around Lake Etu. Just something to be aware of when you’re traveling.”

  “Trouble tends to stir the pot and bring what is hidden to the surface.” Jones stood and tugged his jacket into place. “Well. I must be off. I’ll call you when I have a potential delivery.”

  The Controller watched the man leave the office. He had sent trained fighters to the Lakeside Courtyard to reacquire Meg Corbyn. They had failed. More than failed. Perhaps Phineas Jones’s quaint looks and mesmeric abilities could do what guns and explosives could not.

  Jean pulled the broken needle out of the seam of her slipper. It wasn’t much to work with, but she’d taken it while the Walking Names were distracted by another girl having a fit of hysterics.

  No water in the girls’ cells. Nothing but a bedpan if a girl couldn’t wait for her turn to be taken to the toilet. And with the Walking Names preoccupied by what might be happening outside the compound, they weren’t following the schedule as diligently as usual, especially now that some of the girls had seen things so terrible even the euphoria hadn’t shielded them completely from the horror.

  She knew about terrible things and horror. The wounds that were inflicted on her to harvest her blood produced visions too. But they gagged her because they wanted her pain, so she saw the terrible without anything to shield her mind.

  She didn’t know if she was halfway crazy or all the way crazy now. Her mind worked. What she overheard, she understood, and she overheard plenty because the Walking Names no longer paid attention to her presence and talked about the other girls they had to deal with—girls who were breaking down mentally because of what they had seen.

  Girls talked about cities in ruins, about fields burning, about people killing each other for the last bags of food in a store, about corpses damming a stream that provided the drinking water for a village. They talked about glass jars full of smoke, and a community swimming pool full of severed heads. For the past few days, it didn’t matter what the client asked about, whether it was business or politics or the best time to plant crops. The questions didn’t matter because all the girls were seeing things too terrible to forget.

  She’d seen those things too, but the streets and buildings she saw didn’t match any of the training images for cities or towns in Thaisia, and the street signs were in a language she didn’t recognize.

  The Controller and other men like him had set something in motion. They thought prophecies would help them control the world and everything in it. They hadn’t considered that they wouldn’t be able to control how people felt.

  The Others weren’t anything close to human, but they had feelings too. They had lots of feelings.

  Jean wet a spot on her nightie’s hem, then rubbed the needle clean as best she could. Pricking the skin deep enough to draw blood wouldn’t give her enough, but a scratch made by a needle would draw attention because the Walking Names would know it wasn’t caused by a razor or a beating.

  There was one place they wouldn’t think to look.

  Hooking the side of her mouth with one finger, she put the needle in her mouth and dragged the point along the lower left-hand side of her gum. As the blood welled up, she wiped off the needle and carefully put it back in the slipper, fighting against the building pain and the need to speak. As long as she didn’t speak, she would remember the visions, remember the prophecy. But without spoken words, there would be terrible pain instead of the euphoria.

  The Walking Names. The ones who touched me today. What is going to happen to them?

  She swallowed the blood and the pain … and saw the first visions of the prophecy.

  Too much. Too terrible.

  She grabbed her pillow and covered her face. Then she whispered, describing the images to no one. Euphoria rolled through her body as she spoke, replacing the pain and clouding the images as she described them.

  When the prophecy ended, Jean lowered the pillow.

  What she’d seen. It was coming here. Maybe not all of it, but enough.

  Shivering, she lay down on h
er narrow bed and pulled up the covers.

  She tried not to think about how the Walking Names were going to look one day. Instead she focused on the last image that came to her as the prophecy ended. She had stopped speaking out loud by then, so this image was clear in her memory.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she pondered the significance of seeing her own hand holding a jar of honey.

  CHAPTER 11

  On Earthday morning, Monty left the Universal Temple and walked down Market Street toward home. As he did every Earthday, he stopped at Nadine’s Bakery & Café and picked up enough food for the day. Kowalski had invited him over for the midday meal, and he intended to go, but if something came up and he couldn’t make it, he wanted a bit of fresh food in the house.

  Besides, stopping at Nadine’s was a way to feel connected to the people in his neighborhood and hear the gossip on the street.

  On Windsday evening, he and Captain Burke were the only people in Lakeside who knew the residents of Jerzy were going to be evicted. By Thaisday, the television news was broadcasting the terra indigene’s decision coast to coast. On Firesday, Lakeside radio talk shows were full of outrage that humans could be thrown out of their homes, and did Elliot Wolfgard want to comment.

  Elliot Wolfgard’s only comment was that, like anyone who rented property to a tenant, the terra indigene were within their rights to refuse to renew a lease if the tenants proved themselves to be unsuitable. That caused enough histrionics that Captain Burke put all his men on standby in case a mob formed to move against the Courtyard.

  His concern proved unnecessary. As soon as the sun went down on Firesday evening, a storm swept through the city. High winds and sleet encouraged everyone to stay home. Lightning struck with such precision that it almost took out all the radio and television stations. The next day there was no mention on the TV news of anything happening outside the Northeast Region of Thaisia, and all radio talk shows were replaced with music.

  Warning given. Warning heeded.

  So today at the temple and on the street where he’d become a familiar face, several people watched him because they knew he was a policeman, but no one approached and asked him the question that was on everyone’s mind: if provoked, would the Others really evict the two hundred thousand people living in Lakeside?

  No one had asked the question. Probably because everyone already knew the answer—and feared it.

  He left Nadine’s with a beef potpie, a container of soup, and a small braid of bread—the kind of food his ex-lover Elayne used to call Bulky Belly. The food probably would put on some bulk, but he craved some physical comfort.

  The terra indigene’s decision was final, and there was nothing the human government in the West Coast Region could do. One way or another, the humans in Jerzy would be gone by the end of the month.

  Monty entered his apartment, toed off his boots, then put the food away before taking off his overcoat. While waiting for his order, he’d overheard two men talking about how rent on apartments all along the West Coast and Northwest had doubled in the past few days. That confirmed what Captain Burke had heard through the police grapevine.

  As he hung up his coat, Monty felt grateful to have a one-bedroom apartment with its own bathroom that he didn’t have to share with anyone.

  Plans for new multistory apartment buildings were being tabled in many cities where government officials suddenly had to consider if the land should be used for farming or grazing in order to feed the people already within the city limits. Efforts to lease more land from the terra indigene for new farms or towns had been unsuccessful. And, according to Captain Burke, negotiations to drill new oil wells and gas wells had ended abruptly the day after the attack in Jerzy. So there was no new land for food and no new sources of fuel to heat the houses or supply energy for industries.

  Most likely, the small human settlements within the vast tracts of wild country controlled by the Others were Intuit villages. Most people didn’t know the particulars about the inhabitants of those settlements, but there was plenty of talk about the places themselves. While not as technology deficient as Simple Life communities, they weren’t civilized places to live because they were completely controlled by the terra indigene. No human government whatsoever to speak for the human population!

  The last new human-controlled village had been built more than a hundred years ago. The Others hadn’t given up a single acre of land to humans since then. And now, Monty suspected, angered by the events in Jerzy and the drugs that were harming their own, the terra indigene would pounce on every excuse to rid Thaisia of the two-legged pests. Unfortunately, the human-controlled parts of the world that had the same level of technology as the larger Thaisian cities could barely support their own people and had no surplus for outsiders.

  Sighing, Monty quickly scanned the Lakeside News. The home section had started a series of articles about tub gardens and raised beds for vegetables. He took it as confirmation that, at least for the coming summer, food that couldn’t be grown in the Northeast would be expensive—if it was available at all.

  Nothing to be done about it today, he thought as he set the newspaper aside and dialed Elayne’s phone number. If he timed it right, she and Lizzy should be returning home from temple right about now.

  The phone rang four times before he heard his little girl say, “Borden residence. Who’s calling?”

  He grinned despite the ache in his heart. “Don’t you sound grown up.”

  “Daddy!”

  Lizzy’s squeal eased the ache a little until he heard Elayne saying something in the background followed by a reply that was definitely a male voice.

  “Can I come visit you, Daddy?” Lizzy asked.

  “Of course you can, Lizzy girl,” he replied.

  “Give me the phone,” he heard Elayne say harshly. Then Lizzy, now in the background, saying, “Daddy says I can come and visit.”

  What was he hearing in his daughter’s voice? Unhappiness? Or something closer to desperation? What would make a young girl desperate to get away?

  “What’s going on?” he asked as soon as Elayne came on the phone.

  “Don’t make this harder,” Elayne said, her voice low and fierce. “She’s already being difficult about our summer plans, and thinking she can run off to you anytime she doesn’t get her way isn’t going to help.”

  “Don’t make what harder? What summer plans?” Anger began a slow burn in his chest.

  “It’s none of your concern,” she said, using that dismissive tone of voice she’d been using with him whenever he asked about Lizzy.

  “She’s my daughter, so it is my concern,” Monty replied. “I can’t send the support checks if I don’t know where Lizzy is.”

  “You send them here, as usual, and they will be forwarded.”

  “No, they won’t. I send them to where my daughter is residing or I don’t send them at all.”

  “You want me to take you to court over child support?”

  “If that’s what it takes to get an answer. And then I and a judge and the attorneys will all know about your summer plans.”

  A startled silence. Then Elayne huffed, “It’s not as if I’m doing anything unseemly.”

  Monty said nothing.

  Another huff. And maybe a bit of uneasiness in the sound?

  “I met someone, and our relationship is serious.”

  That was fast, Monty thought. “So he’s living with you and Lizzy? Is that what serious means?”

  “You’re not part of our lives any—”

  “Not part of yours, but I am, and always will be, part of Lizzy’s life,” Monty snapped. “What aren’t you saying, Elayne? Not saying is your specialty—you always try to get people to agree to something by omitting the details that would change an agreement to a refusal.”

  Another silence. “Nicholas is a motivational speaker and very influential in the HFL movement.”

  HFL? Monty pondered the letters for a moment before shock had him clutching
the arm of the chair. “Humans First and Last? You kick me out and then take up with someone wearing a target on his back? Do you realize what people spouting Humans First and Last are doing?”

  “They’re the leaders who will help the rest of us get what we deserve,” she replied hotly.

  Did it even occur to her that “what we deserve” could have more than one meaning?

  “Nicholas came all the way from the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations to give a series of talks here in Toland,” Elayne said, having regained her typical cold dignity. “When he returns to his family’s villa, Lizzy and I will be going with him and will be staying with him at least through the summer.”

  “What’s his full name?” Monty asked.

  An odd pause. “Scratch. Nicholas Scratch. Of course, that’s the alias he uses for his speaking engagements. It’s a necessary precaution since his family name is well-known and he has several relatives who are wealthy as well as influential. As is Nicholas.”

  His anger turned to ash. Anger wouldn’t get him anywhere with her, so he would try to appeal to her own self-interest. “Do you understand what’s going on in Cel-Romano? The food shortages, the rationing? Things are not good over there, Elayne.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Nicholas wouldn’t have invited us if that was the case. You’re just trying to spoil things for me again.”

  The reminder that Elayne didn’t currently have the kind of social clout that should have attracted an influential man from an influential family had him thinking like a cop instead of a father. A woman desperate to climb the social ladder would be an easy mark for a man who didn’t want the expense of living in a hotel for the duration of his speaking engagements. Had Nicholas Scratch come over to Toland at someone’s invitation, or had he crossed the Atlantik in the hopes of making some money? Easy enough to say you come from a wealthy family if no one can verify that fact.