Authors: Ilona Andrews
Bayou Moon (6 page)
Derril ran up to take the reins from her, his eyes wide.
“Is Richard here?”
Her cousin nodded. “In the library.”
“What about your uncle Kaldar?”
Derril nodded again.
“Good.”
During the ride, her fury had crystallized into a plan. It was a ridiculous plan, but it was a plan. Now she had to convince the family to follow it. By the last count, the Mar clan consisted of fifty-seven people, including the kids. Some of the adults had seen her in diapers. They listened to her father. Making them listen to her was an entirely different matter.
Cerise locked her jaw. If she had any hope of seeing her parents again, she had to catch the reins her father had dropped and grip them tightly now, before the family had a chance to think things over and argue with her. She had to hold them together. Her parents’ lives depended on it.
Cerise walked up the stairs. Mikita followed at her heels.
She paused by Aunt Murid, who was standing at the door. Six inches taller, dark-haired, dark-eyed, Murid rationed words like they were precious water in the middle of a desert, but her crossbow never failed to make a point.
Cerise looked at her.
Are you with me?
Are you with me?
Murid nodded slightly.
Cerise hid a breath of relief, swung the door open, and stepped inside.
“No hesitation,” her aunt murmured behind her. “Walk like you mean it.”
The library lay at the end of the hallway. The largest room in the house, with the exception of the kitchen, it often served as the gathering place for the family. By now, the news of her parents having gone missing would have spread throughout the Rathole. The library would be full. Her aunts, uncles, cousins. All listening to her as she came down the hall.
Cerise took a deep breath and strode down the hallway, not caring about tracking mud.
She walked into the library, cataloging the familiar faces. Aunt Emma, Aunt Petunia—Aunt Pete for short—Uncle Rufus, in the chairs; Erian to the left, his slender blond body draped over a chair; Kaldar, his dark hair in wild disarray, leaning against the wall; half a dozen others; and finally Richard, the oldest of her cousins, tall, dark, with the poise of a blueblood, waiting by the table.
They all looked at her.
Cerise kept her voice flat. “The Sheerile brothers have taken Grandfather’s house.”
The room went quiet like the inside of a grave.
“Lagar Sheerile showed me a deed of sale to Sene Manor signed by my father.”
“It’s a forgery,” Aunt Pete said. “Gustave would never sell Sene.”
Cerise held up her hand. “My father and mother are missing. Lagar said they were taken by the Hand.”
Richard’s face paled.
“The Louisiana spies?” Kaldar, slim, his hair dark like Richard’s, peeled himself from the wall. Where Richard radiated icy dignity, his brother lived to have fun. He had wild eyes the color of honey, a silver hoop in one ear, and a mouth that either said something funny or was about to break into a grin, sometimes just as he sank his blade into someone’s gut. Richard thought like a general, while Kaldar thought like a criminal, and she desperately needed both of them on her side.
Kaldar leaned forward, a hard, vicious light sparking in his eyes. “What the hell does the Hand want with us?”
“Lagar didn’t say. As of now, the feud is officially on. I need riders sent to Uncle Peter, Emily, and Antoine. We’re pulling everyone into the Rathole. Someone needs to warn Urow, too.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Uncle Rufus said.
“Thank you.” Cerise wished she knew exactly what to say, but whatever words she had would have to do.
Here we go.
“We must take back Grandfather’s house. First, my parents disappeared there. If any clues exist, they would be at Sene. Second, I don’t have to tell you that the Mire runs on reputation. We’re only as strong as others think we are. If we allow the Sheeriles to bite off a chunk of our land, we might as well pack it in.”
Here we go.
“We must take back Grandfather’s house. First, my parents disappeared there. If any clues exist, they would be at Sene. Second, I don’t have to tell you that the Mire runs on reputation. We’re only as strong as others think we are. If we allow the Sheeriles to bite off a chunk of our land, we might as well pack it in.”
No arguments. So far so good.
“Kaldar, how much time do we have to dispute the deed?”
Her cousin shrugged. “We have to file the petition with the Mire court by tomorrow evening. The court date could be anywhere from ten days to two weeks from then.”
“Can you stall?”
“I can get us a day, maybe two.”
Richard’s narrow lips bent into a frown. “If we go through legal channels, we’ll lose. To dispute the Sheeriles’ deed, we have to have the original document granting the Sene Manor to Grandfather. We need his exile order. We don’t have it.”
Cerise nodded. That document and many others had perished four years ago in a flood that had nearly demolished the storage buildings. She’d thought about that on her ride over as well.
“Can we get a replacement?” one of the younger boys asked.
“No.” Kaldar shook his head. “When Louisianans sentence someone to exile, three copies of the orders are cut. One goes straight to Royal Archives, the second is carried by the marshals who transport the exile and is surrendered to the Border Guard when they reach the Edge, and the third is given to the exile. The Border Guard isn’t going to fall over themselves to find that order for us. We’ll never get close enough to ask. They’ll shoot us and string our corpses on the trees along the border.”
“Every exile carries the order?” Cerise asked.
“Every adult,” Kaldar said. “What are you getting at?”
“There were two adult exiles, Grandfather and Grandmother,” Richard said. “Grandmother’s order wasn’t among the papers ruined in the flood. I know, I sorted through them. Where is it?”
“Hugh,” Aunt Murid said.
Cerise nodded. “Exactly. Before Uncle Hugh went into the Broken, he took certified copies of all archival documents with him for safekeeping, including the original copy of Grandmother’s order. I remember this because Mother cried when she gave it to him.”
Richard narrowed his eyes. He was the most cautious of all of them, the most reasonable, and the one who always kept his calm. You might just as well try to rattle a granite rock. The family respected him. If she convinced him to buy her plan, the rest would follow.
“Hugh is in the Broken,” Richard said. “You can’t go after him, Cerise. Not now.” “I’m the one who makes runs
“I’ll do it,” Kaldar said. “I’m the one who makes runs there anyway.”
“No.” She loaded enough steel into her voice to make the lot of them blink.
Erian looked ready to say something but clamped his mouth shut.
“The Hand took . . .” Cerise wanted to say
my parents
but checked herself. She had to remove the personal part out of the equation, or they would just decide she was hysterical. “Gustave and Genevieve for a reason. They must want something from them or from us. They will be watching us. That’s why we must pull everyone into the main house now, before they pick us off one by one.
my parents
but checked herself. She had to remove the personal part out of the equation, or they would just decide she was hysterical. “Gustave and Genevieve for a reason. They must want something from them or from us. They will be watching us. That’s why we must pull everyone into the main house now, before they pick us off one by one.
“It takes three days to get to the Broken, and that’s with shortcuts and a good rolpie to pull the boat. The person who leaves runs the risk of walking right into the Hand’s spies.” Cerise looked at Kaldar. “You’re a thief, not a fighter. Erian is too hotheaded, Aunt Murid doesn’t know the way, Mikita has no survival skills, and you, Richard, can’t pass through the boundary into the Broken. You have too much magic. The crossing will kill you.”
She surveyed them. “That leaves me. I went with Kaldar the last few times, I know the way, and of all of us, I have the best chance of surviving a fight with the Hand.”
Richard was on the fence; she could see the hesitation in his eyes. “We just lost Gustave. If we lose you, we’ll lose our strongest flash-trained fighter.”
“Then I’ll just have to survive,” she said. “We have no choice, Richard. Tomorrow, as soon as Kaldar files the dispute and we have a court date, I have to leave. If you or anyone else can find a different way around it, I’ll be happy to hear it.”
For a long moment silence held, and then everyone spoke at once. Richard said nothing. Cerise looked into his somber eyes and knew she had won.
FOUR
THE Great Bayou Swap Meet met at a giant plastic cow wearing a straw hat. At some point the cow must’ve been black and white, William reflected, but years of rain and wind had bleached it to a uniform pale gray. He surveyed the gathering of stalls and makeshift booths, selling everything from cloth dolls and old baseball cards sealed in plastic, to dinner sets and tactical knifes. To the right, some guy screamed himself hoarse, trying to find a buyer for his Corvette. To the left, a skinny woman in a booth decorated with a velvet painting of Elvis muttered non-stop to a pair of macaws in a cage. The birds, wet from the damp air, huddled together and probably plotted to kill her if the cage was ever opened.
This was the Mirror’s brilliant strategy. William shook his head to himself. Getting into the Mire from the Weird was near impossible: the boundary was thick with traps and heavily patrolled by the Louisiana Guard. Instead, the Mirror had arranged for him to sneak in through the back door, through the Broken. His instructions were simple: travel to the small town of Verite, located in the lovely state of Louisiana. Attend the Great Bayou Swap Meet. Wait by the cow at precisely seven o’clock. A guide would come and take him into the Edge. Great plan. What could go wrong?
If there was one thing he’d learned in his years of military service, it was that everything that could go wrong, would. Especially considering that the guide was a free-lancer.
A homeless woman wandered over and took up a post by the cow’s hind legs. A layer of grime obscured her features. She wore a dirt-smudged tattered field jacket that once must’ve belonged to some soldier in the Broken. A black ski cap hid her hair. Filthy jeans stuck out from under the jacket, tucked into what looked like a surprisingly solid pair of boots. Her scent washed over him. She smelled sour, like she’d rolled in a batch of old spaghetti. For all he knew, she was going into the Edge as well, and he’d have to smell that rotten tomato sauce for the whole trip. Last Sunday he’d watched a documentary about the Great Depression on the History Channel, and she would give any of those hobos a run for their money.
This was just getting better and better. He had nobody but himself to blame, William thought. He could be back in his trailer right now, drinking good coffee. But
nooo
, he had to be a hero.
nooo
, he had to be a hero.
The Mirror had given him a four-day crash course on the Mire, Spider’s crew, and the operation of about a thousand gadgets they had stuffed into his rucksack. His memory was near perfect. All changeling children going through Hawk’s were trained in memorization. They were meant to become soldiers, who were expected to remember mission maps and objectives. His memory was exceptional even among changelings.
William had practiced in the Broken out of habit, memorizing random things he read and watched, everything from gun catalogs to cartoons. He could recite the first hundred or so pages of an average paperback after having read it once. But the amount of information the Mirror had crammed into him strained even his brain, and now it hummed as if some phantom bees had made a hive in his skull. Eventually his mind would come to terms with the information, and he’d either learn it permanently or allow himself to forget it, but for now it was giving him a hell of a headache.
A man walked out of the crowd, heading for the cow. About forty, with gray hair cut in what would’ve been a mullet if he wasn’t balding, the man walked with a slight limp, dragging his left leg. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, a gray flannel shirt, and a Remington rifle. Looked like a 7400 from where William was standing, but he’d have to see it closer to be sure.
The man stopped a couple of feet away and looked him over. William raised his chin and gave him a flat stare. The newcomer struck him as an enterprising sort of man. The kind that would slit your throat for a box of tissues in your bag while you slept.
The man turned to the woman, gave her a long once-over, and spat into the grass. “Here for the Edge?”
“Yes,” William said.
The woman nodded.
Yep, he would be spending the next few days in the company of that enchanting stench. Could be worse. At least she didn’t reek like vomit.
“Name’s Vern. Follow me.”
Vern limped his way from the swap meet into the brush. The hobo followed. William shouldered his rucksack and went after them.
They hiked through the brush for about twenty minutes when he sensed the boundary. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
Vern turned around. “Here’s the deal. We cross into the Edge here. You die in the crossing, that’s your problem. Don’t count on any CPR and shit. If you make it through, we’ve got a two-day trip up through the swamps. Both of you paid half. The second half is due when we land in Sicktree. If you give me any trouble, I’ll shoot your ass and won’t worry twice about it. You change your mind and want off the boat, you get off in the swamp. I ain’t turning back, and I ain’t issuing no refunds. We clear?”
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