Twenty-seven

I packed up Jai Li’s undies and a few nightshirts, grabbed a couple of books, some packs of needlepoint floss that had fallen under the coffee table and a couple skeins of yarn; I wanted to start knitting some gloves. That was my next project before I thought about tackling something complicated like socks or, heaven help me, a sweater.

I called out to the farm to make sure Jai Li was ready to go out to Black Briar. We were going to visit Katie, see if talking to her would help in any way. Jai Li wanted to make her a new cross-stitch and I was going to knit while I talked. Okay, talk between rows. If I tried to talk while I knitted most days, it ended with swearing and tinking. That’s the polite way of saying unknitting. I had other words for it that were not for polite company.

Sitting with Katie would be peaceful and unnerving at the same time. Not relaxing, exactly. More of a helpless time where I gave up the urgency and the need to solve everything in favor of just being with my family, being in their presence.

I rolled into Circle Q and packed an overnight kit for me and the girl, just in case. Jai Li asked about the Ducati which was stored out at Black Briar. She asked if we could ride it home later.

“Well, honey,” I started, but I looked over at the women of Circle Q who all gave me that mom look that told me I was about to do something really stupid. I think Edith would’ve punched me if I tried, Mary just looked disappointed that I even considered it, and Julie shook her head, giving me the boss look that told me I was contemplating a child protective services-level event. Tough crowd.

“When you’re older,” I said, poking her pouty lip with one finger and smiling. “You won’t like it, it’s very loud.”

She made a face, and shrugged.

Whatever, she signed. That was one I’d picked up. Girl had a bit of sass in her.

I know how to pick my battles. Most of the time, anyway. So we drove out in the truck. Jai Li twirled through the radio stations, bypassing anything I found to be palatable, to land on something that made me think of bubble gum and sock hops. I grinned as she bopped along, wiggling and dancing in her seat belt. Would’ve been enjoyable if the music didn’t make me want to scream.

Jimmy was out working with the horses and Deidre was in town with Trisha getting groceries when we arrived. The farm was pretty quiet. Stuart was at the house with the nurse, watching Katie, but he’d gotten a call from work, so he was glad I was there to relieve him.

Jai Li and I set up shop in the room, taking our normal places and began working on our individual fiber projects. It scared me sometimes how absolutely quiet the girl could be. I had to look up and make sure she was still in the room. Of course, when I dropped a stitch (which I did twice in two rows) or started reducing when I wasn’t supposed to, I swore, which made her giggle.

I may have said a few minor swear words just to check she was still breathing throughout the afternoon, but the girl’s giggles were better than alcohol for buoying my spirits.

Nancy and Gary from Trisha’s squad had the troll twins under wraps, but when they woke from their nap, Bub came in to alert Jai Li. There was no holding that girl in the room with that news. There was tag and hide-and-go-seek to be had in the world. She tucked away her needlework as fast as her little hands would move and hastily kissed Katie on the cheek.

“What about me?” I asked, as she dashed past. She rolled her eyes, ran back over, and patted me on the leg, not even pretending to give me a kiss. Then she dashed from the room, grabbing Bub’s hand on the way and dragged the four-foot kobold down the hall. I quite enjoyed his laughter as well.

“They’re good kids,” I said to Katie, knowing she wouldn’t respond.

I told her about the meeting with Gletts and Skella. Reminded her of the first time we’d met the elves, lamenting the missed weekend when they’d poisoned us so they could try and steal Gram. Good times.

“I’ve been thinking,” I told her, setting my knitting aside and taking her hand in mine. It was warm, but stiff. The nurses moved her limbs every day and kept a set of pressure stockings on her legs which inflated and deflated at regular intervals. It was supposed to help keep blood clots away. There were too many machines in that room. The noise was driving me bonkers.

“We should move,” I told her. “The apartment is really too small, and Jai Li needs her own space. It would be nice to have our own room again, you know?”

This wasn’t the first time we’d discussed it. But we’d been ignoring the conversation while Katie was still teaching. She loved her kids, loved being a teacher, and didn’t want to leave them while school was still in session. Of course, all that was moot now. The school had brought in a sub for the rest of the year, and Katie was in a coma.

Jimmy came in a little while later and poked his head into the room. “Saw Jai Li terrorizing the boys,” he said, grinning. “Thought I’d find you in here. Where’d Stuart go?”

“Got called back into work,” I told him.

Katie’s breathing was slow and steady, the sound of her breather a counter point to the heart monitor and the leg cuffs. It was a cacophony.

“Been meaning to talk to you, anyway,” he said, straightening up. “Mind if I come in?”

I shrugged and waved him to an open chair. He turned around, sat facing me, and took off his ball cap, running one hand through his hair. He pulled out a long piece of hay and tucked it in his shirt pocket.

“Gunther has done some poking into the Mordred crew,” he said. “His order knows a bit about them. Pretty hard to be active in this region and not be noticed by the monks, ya know?”

“Have you ever met them? The monks, I mean. I know he was raised by them as a tyke, but aren’t they like cloistered or something?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s strange. They live in a monastery over in Seattle, near Montlake. Over by the gardens there.” He waved his hand. “Not that it matters. They rarely leave the place. I have no idea how they know so much and keep an eye on so many things when they never leave the property, but that’s a mystery for another time.”

I smiled at him, letting him ramble.

He smiled back and paused, looking at me. “You letting your hair grow out?” he asked.

I sighed. “Not you, too. Jai Li was pointing that out the other day. I just haven’t had time to take care of it. Is it that bad?”

He laughed. “Hey, I don’t care how you look. That’s between you and my sister.” He glanced at Katie and the smile died on his lips. “Damn it, Sarah. What are we going to do?”

“Maybe we could contact the dwarves,” I offered, thinking. “Maybe they could make a box out of crystal like they did for Snow White.”

“Keep her preserved?” he asked, smiling again. “I don’t think we know the same dwarves,” he said. “But you can ask Rolph what he thinks about the idea. I just want my little sister back.”

“She’s not so little anymore, Jim.”

He reached over and placed a hand on her blanket-covered ankle for a moment, then jerked his hand back as the cuffs began to expand again.

“I hate this,” he groused.

We sat there for a few more minutes, watching her.

“What about the Mordred crew?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“Good and bad,” he said, turning his head toward me slowly. “Your boy, Hague, is who he says he is. Newly recruited, veterinarian, and all the rest. But the rest of them, the old guard. They’re something else entirely.”

“Gottschalk is an old school witch, right?”

He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Russian, been here since before the gold rush.”

“That’s old.”

“And she has ties back to Minsk. Gunther’s crew thinks maybe she’s tied to the dragon there. There’s no clear connection, but she’s got some powerful allies in that region. The kind of allies that can make people disappear, explode, spontaneously combust, or generally kill themselves in nasty and creative ways.”

“Lovely. So, bad guys?”

He shook his head. “Not clear. No friends of Nidhogg, that seems to be clear. They were routed out by Qindra’s mother before she died. Several of their cells have been destroyed since then, but our guys don’t think Nidhogg and her crew knew they were all part of the same faction.”

I got up and went around Jimmy to look out the window. You could see the fence from there, the one that we’d secured with magic, the one that the necromancer had breached. We’d resealed it once we learned what had happened, but it felt vulnerable.

“Do you feel safe, Jim?”

“No,” he said, immediately. No hesitation. “But I asked my dad that same thing before he and mom left for Europe. He said that when you felt safe, that’s when you were in the most danger. Made you careless.”

I stared out over the fields toward the road, thinking. Nidhogg had named me her Fist without talking to me about it, and I hadn’t spoken up to argue against her. “Something’s happened, Jim. Something I need you to know about.”

He didn’t say anything, but the tension in the room went up several notches.

“It’s Nidhogg,” I went on. “She’s offered me a deal. A deal to protect us, protect Black Briar.”

“Bullshit,” he growled, standing.

I didn’t look over, but I heard his chair scraping across the floor.

“She named me her Fist,” I went on. “We met with that dragon from Portland, Frederick Sawyer.” I caught a glimpse of Jimmy in the window, vague and distorted. He stood by Katie’s bed, his shoulders hunched and his hands in fists.

“There’s more going on than we’re aware of,” I continued. “It was me, Nidhogg, her witch, Qindra, whom you’ve met.”

He nodded without thinking.

“Also Frederick Sawyer, the dragon guy, and his assistant, Mr. Philips.”

“That was the guy the blood cult snatched as bait, right? Guy they dangled from the side of the mountain to draw Sawyer out.”

“Yeah.”

I could hear him breathing, trying to calm down. He thought I should’ve killed Sawyer that night, killed Nidhogg. Or given it my best shot. We’d argued about it later.

“They aren’t the only dragons,” I said. “There are more like Jean-Paul out there. Dragons that seek carnage and battle. Those that want to make open warfare on the dragon council and break the Veil. Rebels and anarchists who want to shatter the world order and send us all down into chaos.”

I turned, looking at him. His eyes were wide.

“There’s a war coming,” I said. “They haven’t said it outright, but I can feel it, Jim. All this activity, all these players coming out of the woodwork.”

I stepped over to Katie and brushed my hand across her cheek. “In the meantime, she’s lost. Her spirit is somewhere in the Sideways and I can’t find her.”

He sat in the seat I’d been in earlier and put his face in his hands. “I can’t lose her, Sarah. I’ve already lost our parents. And Deidre’s paralyzed. And Maggie and Susan, all the others …”

I could hear the anguish in his voice. The strain of trying so damn hard to keep things together.

“And we don’t have much magic,” he continued, looking up, his face red and his eyes shining. “Trinkets and a few weapons. Trifles.” He paused. “If Nidhogg named you her Fist and she tells you to come after us, what then?”

I shook my head. “No deal. I told them you were clan, you were family. You, the Flight Test crew, Julie, Mary, Edith … my family. All safe, all have my protection.”

He looked at me, his fear and anger warring with one another.

“We’ll never be safe, Jim. But we’ll have powerful allies.”

“I don’t know,” he said. He stood, squeezed Katie’s shoulder and walked to the door. “Do you trust them, Sarah? Honestly?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I do. I trust Qindra, and I think Nidhogg is scared. She keeps talking about the wheel being broken. Remember, I told you when I first met her. She thinks it’s her fault, for leading the rebellion against Odin and his lot. She thinks she broke the wheel and that’s why the world is going to shit.”

“And you want me to ally with her?”

“No, I want you to trust me. I’m taking that responsibility. I just want your support. I want your guidance and your advice. You’re my Seneschal, Jimmy. I need you. Katie needs you. Our daughter needs you.”

He drew a deep shuddering breath, cricked his head to the side, popping his neck. “You love my sister,” he said finally. “You came back for her, you protect her. That makes you family.”

He stepped forward and held out his hand. I grabbed his forearm, a warrior’s grip.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, eh, Beauhall?”

I squeezed his arm and shook.

“You never know,” I said. “The players are shifting. I think we need to be damn careful with the Mordred crew. Shall I ask Qindra about them?”

He stepped back, his face lost in thought. “Don’t give anything away, but dig around. We’ll set up a meeting with them.”

I remembered the business card from Katie’s pencil jar at school. “I think Katie met with Charlie Hague sometime before she collapsed,” I said, thinking back.

“Definitely want to talk to them personally,” he said. He was pulling himself back together. I knew he wasn’t happy, but he was going to cope.

“Very soon,” he continued, turning back into the hallway. “I’ll keep you up to speed.”

I sat back down beside Katie and picked up my knitting. Jimmy was golden as far as I was concerned, but we were all dancing in the shadows. I hated not knowing, and so did he. Two peas in a pod. Made me grin. I sat there for a couple more minutes, but my mind was racing and I was restless. I dropped my knitting in the basket, kissed Katie on the cheek, and went out to the front of the house. I called Jimmy back in from the deck where he was watching the kids run around like wild things.

“Need to get the girl back in time for dinner,” I said when he looked back at me. “You know how important schedules are to a little one.”

He made a face, but nodded. At least he didn’t try to talk us into staying again. I called to Jai Li, let her dash in and grab her cross-stitch and kiss Katie goodbye. She returned with my knitting as well. Guess I could work on it back at Circle Q or something. Then we piled into the truck. She waved at the twins and Bub. They all three chased the truck to the end of the and jumped up and down, waving as we pulled out onto the main road.

I noticed that none of them went past the fence. Maybe they were aware of the protections on the farm. Maybe they felt them in some way. Or maybe they’d been forbidden by the adults to go past a certain marker and they were just good kids.

Nancy wasn’t too far behind the twins, so I knew they wouldn’t run out into the road. Not that it got much traffic this far into Black Briar territory. There were bonuses to being at the end of a road and shoved up against federal lands. Allowed for some decent isolation.

As I drove through Gold Bar I thought about our allies. Who did we really have besides Black Briar? Who could we really trust? Maybe Mordred were bad guys. Didn’t make Charlie one. He just may be a patsy. I’d keep an eye out for him.

In the meantime, I needed to talk with Qindra. Time to get some more information on exactly what the hell was going on.