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Authors: Laura Giebfried

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The memory left him and he stepped back, his eyes fixed on the spot where Simon was still struggling to stay afloat. The daylight was highlighted in white streaks on the water splashing up around him, and his huge blue eyes were brighter than the sun beaming down to pour sweat across his hairline.
It's a cat,
he told himself numbly, willing himself not to be sick while he watched.
Just a cat.
Or a rat, even. It wouldn't matter soon – not once it was dead.

He picked up the bag marked
Simon
and slowly made his way down to the bank, trying hard not to imagine how the tiny body would look curled up in the bottom of it when he placed it there to bring back to Ratsel. As he walked, he suddenly turned around and crossed back to the bridge where the stuffed rabbit still laid on the metal beams. He picked it up and carried it with him to put in the bag, as well. The nurse had asked him to make sure the boy had it on his way home, after all, the albino considered, and he always kept his promises.

 

Ch. 19

 

“Can you at least explain why you two buried the body in Matt's yard?” Mason asked, halting just before pouring himself a cup of coffee. Fields had insisted on getting out of bed the day after awakening, and Mason – realizing that he couldn't argue with her – had brought her to the kitchen and propped her up in one of the chairs.

“It made sense – at the time,” she replied, giving a shrug. It was rather lopsided given her injury, but she managed to turn her grimace into a careless expression all the same. “The estate was empty, so we had plenty of room and privacy to dig the hole, and what with his father having diplomatic immunity and all, we just figured ...”

“That if someone ever decided to plant another shrub, they wouldn't question why a femur was in their way?”

Fields gave a smile.

“To be fair, his mother's begonias thrived that year. All that natural fertilizer really did the trick.”

“Well, I'm glad to know that burying a dead body helped you two discover your green thumbs,” Mason replied, his voice dry but his eyes twinkling. “Now if only you had used that knowledge when I was lecturing about the Battle of Uhm Valley in West Oneris, you might have passed my class.”

“The only thing I learned from university was that I can virtually sleep anywhere, at any time of day, and on any surface,” Fields said. “Sorry,
Professor
.”

Mason took a sip of his coffee, peering at her over the rim of the mug. He had spent so many years adamantly trying to get people to refer to him by his new title rather than his old one, and yet he found that he hated the sound of it whenever Fields used it. He didn't particularly like that she referred to him by his surname, either, but understood why she had long refused to use his given one: Matthias was a mouthful, and any chance of shortening it made it the same thing that she called her best friend.

“Besides,” she continued, “I had an ongoing lesson in warfare throughout my childhood – if that didn't help me study about the Battle of Uhm Valley, nothing will.”

“Your father was always that bad, was he?” Mason asked.

“Andor? He was a fanatic, but for the most part he was just annoyed that I didn't listen to him. He was only a real issue after he made the connection that Jasper and I have metal hearts. The war was a reference to Merdow's ideas of entertainment.”

Mason made a face.

“I never liked him.”

“Did you ever meet him?” Fields asked, seemingly trying to draw up where the two men's paths might have crossed.

Mason took another sip of coffee to give himself a moment before answering. He had not, in fact, met Merdow, nor even heard much about him other than the information that he had attempted to draw out of Caine, but he knew that Fields had been planning to marry him at one point or another, and that was quite enough reason to despise him.

“Not officially. You two had … broken up by the time you and I met, I think.”

“Yeah, Merdow wasn't too keen to be around me after the rumors that I'd killed Andor started up,” Fields said unconcernedly. “Funny, you'd think he'd have kept his distance after I broke his back, but he was determined.”

“To marry you.”

“To be Andor Sawyer's son,” Fields corrected. “I'm not sure that Merdow ever liked me more than I liked him – which is saying quite a bit, since I always got the urge to drink gasoline before seeing him. You know that he gave me a dead dog for my sixteenth birthday?”

“How romantic.”

“My thoughts exactly. He'd set up a pitfall trap for squirrels or something, but the neighbor's Maltese wandered through first.”

“Did he wrap it, at least?” Mason asked, his concern for Fields' previous relationship lessening immensely. “Or did he make you wander out to the yard to get it?”

“No, he put it right where I would see it: in the middle of my bed. Only, he dressed it up in one of my old doll's clothing first, so I didn't realize what it was until I went to toss it off the pillows –”

Mason made a retching sound and set his coffee down, no longer in the mood to drink it, and Fields reached across the counter to swipe it from him. There was a rather satisfied smile edging onto her face that he just managed to catch before the mug moved up to her lips to hide it, and for a moment he imagined that they were simply enjoying the quiet of the morning like they used to do before she had disappeared up to Hasenkamp without a word. And yet, regardless of the circumstances surrounding her injury or the nagging inkling that something awful was approaching them, he at last felt at peace with himself now that he had admitted who he had once been, and it allowed him to feel at peace with her, as well. He had lost his nerve time and time again to lay bare the things that he had hoped to say to her, but he wouldn't lose it this time.

“Did Matt say whether or not he'd made a decision about the charging facilities when you spoke to him?” Fields asked, staring at her coffee as she swirled the contents of the mug around rather than looking at him.

Mason hesitated.

“He said he was going through with it, yes.”

“Well, I won't pretend that I'm surprised,” she said indifferently. “He hates the Mare-folk as much as anyone.”

“I'm not certain that he knows what he thinks, Ladeline. Or how he feels, for that matter.”

“Maybe that's worse.”

She traced her hand over the rim of the mug, still not looking at him. She looked rather beautiful in that moment, he thought, even with her hair falling out from its long braid and the mud that had caked itself in it, because despite her hard expression there was something soft in her eyes that he seldom saw very often.

“Do you still have the notebook?”

“It's not like I could get rid of it,” Mason said darkly. “Though I certainly considered it. It's not really something I like to have in my possession.”

“So you know what it is?”

“I have my theories.”

“And?” Fields persisted, giving him a look that matched her impatient tone.

“And I'm still debating whether or not I'm going to tell you,” Mason replied. “You never share your secrets with me, after all.”

“Come on, Mason – you know plenty of my secrets by now.”

“By default. You've never told me any of them yourself, though.”

“I would have,” she argued, “only someone else always beats me to it.”

“You had plenty of opportunities, Ladeline. How much longer were you going to make me wait? Forty years?”

“Of course not,” Fields quipped. “Thirty at the most.”

“Alright, then here's a new chance for you. Tell me what happened to Andor Sawyer, and I'll tell you what the notebook is.”

Fields' jaw shifted as she debated with whether or not to agree with the bargain, and she swirled the remaining coffee in the mug around as she thought. Finally setting it back down, she slid it back across the counter to him.

“Alright,” she said. “But you have to tell me about the notebook first.”

“Why?”

“Because you trust me more than I trust you,” she said simply, “so you ought to go first.”

“I'm not sure that that's fair,” Mason remarked, but, seeing that he had lost, consented to the deal anyhow. “A year or so after I was discharged from my job, the Spöken rounded up a team of the top Mare-doctors for a special project – some of whom were former colleagues of mine. They weren't allowed to talk about what they were doing, but they dropped enough suggestions for me to piece it together.”

He paused and looked at Fields.

“The research was on how to deactivate the metal hearts – preferably by means of a large scale operation, like a way of poisoning the water supply that would affect the Mare-folk but not the rest of the Onerians. And, by the looks of it, they found it.”

He tapped the cover of the notebook, but Fields didn't look convinced.

“But if they'd really found how to kill all the Mare-folk, they'd be doing it by now,” she said. “Just because I hid Andor's notebook doesn't mean I stopped them from going through with it: other Spökes knew about the research, and they could have gotten the Mare-doctors to compile it into another ledger for them.”

Mason gave a wry smile.

“They
could
have,” he said, “only after the Mare-doctors did the research, the Spöken executed them.”

“What're you talking about?”

“How many Mare-doctors have you heard of around here, Ladeline?” Mason asked. “Oneris turned on us the same way they turned on the Mare-folk. Some of them fled to the Wastelands while they could, and others ...” He trailed off, a dark, unsettled look lingering behind his eyes. “Let's just say that the fact that I got forced out when I did was lucky.”

“But why kill them? Why not let them take other professions like they did you?”

Mason scratched a finger across his lip, debating whether or not to answer.

“The only reason I can imagine is that the Mare-doctors … found out certain things,” he said at last. “Things that would change how Oneris views the Mare-folk.”

“What sort of things?”

“I wouldn't know exactly,” he replied. “It was Andor's research that uncovered it, from what I heard.”

“But you have your guesses?”

“I do. But guesses don't amount to much, and I wouldn't put it out there unless I was sure.”

“And there's no way to be sure?”

Mason gave an indiscriminate shrug, but Fields pressed on.

“What about the notebook? Do you think the answer's in there?”

“More than likely. I doubt that they could find a so-called cure without first finding out exactly how the hearts work, including how they're charged.”

“But if not?”

“Then it's more likely that the information died with the Mare-doctors.”

“And none of them escaped? None of them got wind of what was happening and fled to Hasenkamp?”

Mason ran a hand over his head as he shook it.

“I don't know, Ladeline. I wouldn't hold out hope.”

She pressed her chin to the tops of her folded hands, staring vacantly out the window for a moment as she thought, and her eyelids were heavy as though she was falling into a sleep thick with dreams.

“Are you happy that you stayed in Oneris?” she asked him.

“Happy? Oh, sure,” he said, his voice offhanded as he shrugged the remark off. “I'm constantly watched by the government, get to teach a history course that's been changed to suit the light that Oneris wants to see itself in, and find myself continuously lying in order to hide what my life was previously like. I'm very happy.”

“But you stayed,” Fields said. “You didn't have to. You could have fled to Hasenkamp.”

He couldn't read the note in her voice, though he found himself wishing that he could far more than anything else. A part of him thought that the task would be less difficult now, as though when she had been shot and he had peered inside her chest to dig the bullet out, it had given him the ability to look inside her eternally. But he had had to sew her back up again to stop the bleeding, and she was just as closed off as ever before.

“Yes. I stayed,” he said, though his voice was quiet, and he wasn't even sure if she had heard him.

“So this is the only research that's been conducted on how to kill the Mare-folk, and I hid it for ten years?” Fields said, raising her eyebrows momentarily. “I would pat myself on the back, provided that I could.”

“Have you thought of where you'll hide it now? Another wall inside a diplomat's house, or someone else's begonia garden, perhaps?”

“I was thinking of bringing it up to Hasenkamp, actually,” Fields said. “Maybe the Mare-doctors there could make some sense of it.”

“I wouldn't count on it, Ladeline.” He dropped his eyes to the counter, wondering if the thought of her leaving again truly surprised him or just simply hurt him, and hoped that it was the former. “When will you leave?”

“It depends. When will I be well enough to?”

“If I said several decades, would you believe me?”

“I might believe you,” she said, “though I doubt I'd listen to you, all the same.”

The professor nodded.

“Well, your heart's fine,” he said. “It's just the damage that the gunshot did to your back that you have to worry about. But if you can receive medical attention up in Hasenkamp, there's no reason you can't leave immediately. It'd do you more good than waiting around here without it.”

“I'll leave tomorrow before dusk, then.”

He forced himself to keep from frowning, hoping that it would mask at least some of what he felt.

“Does this mean you won't be telling me how Andor Sawyer died before you go?” he asked.

“I don't think I'll have time before I go, no.”

“Of course,” he replied, and though his voice was low, he couldn't keep the disappointment from it.

Fields watched him steadily.

“I could tell you on the way, though,” she said. “– if you came with me.”

His eyes snapped back up to her, and he wasn't sure what to think other than that she had given him the answer that he had wanted but failed to realize that he craved before that moment. And maybe the Mare-doctors in Hasenkamp would know more than he did, and would confirm the suspicions that he had only gotten whispers of once he had traded his title in for that of a professor, and things would change at last after all. Because if it was true, then Fields wouldn't have to be bothered by what she was or was not anymore, and might consent to let him do more than just accompany her on her way to and from the things she was hiding, and would lead him out of the shadows that the cold, metal buildings in Oneris cast them into.

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