“I don’t, my lady.”
“But if you loved Judah, how could you be okay with being around me?”
“My lady, as a creation you didn’t choose this fate. Things are the way they are.” She exhaled deeply. “My wish for Lord Judah is that you would treat him as if you valued him. Lord Judah is the brightest, most talented man of our generation. I was considered very lucky to be his betrothed.”
My heart broke for Arlee. Being deselected must have been one of the worst moments of her life. In the back of my mind I could hear my sister, Riley, telling me to put on my big girl panties and choke up some compassion. Both Arlee and I were in this when neither wanted to be. It wasn’t fair to blame Judah and Arlee for what they couldn’t help, but even knowing that didn’t quell the rebelliousness that began as a slow burn in my chest. After all, I didn’t want Judah and she did.
“The way things are can be changed, you know.”
Arlee’s eyes widened. “My lady, such talk isn’t helpful.”
I looked around us for camera and microphones. “Why? Are we under surveillance?” My face whipped back to face her. “Is someone watching us to make sure that we behave?”
“My lady, the House of Beck doesn’t need to monitor its citizens. We are taught that if we don’t want to be caught doing something, then we shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
“Of course not,” I said softly.
“Also, the Original People don’t collect images and sounds and save them in the devices that humans call computers. We believe that there are better ways to modify behavior for a harmonious society.”
“Like using the Approvals?”
“Yes, that would be one way.”
Or to make people responsible for each other’s lives whether they liked it or not. I wanted to question this notion further, but Sean and Judah came back into the room. I had no idea where they had been, and I didn’t miss the long look that Judah and Arlee exchanged. I watched Judah’s face, and he seemed relieved. The tension melted from his shoulders and the lines in his face softened.
“My lady,” he said in a voice thick with emotion. “If you please, I’ll show you and Lord Sean to your quarters.”
“Where were you?” I asked Sean.
“Judah took me on an invigorating romp around the palace. I think having a Sworn Enemy here is causing some excitement. The very sight of me caused three little children to start crying.”
“It seems like excitement isn’t something they’re used to around here.”
Judah led us down a long hallway that was open on one side to a courtyard. We walked for a long time past countless fountains and waterfalls and some neatly tiled streams. Many of the deeper ones had creatures that looked like a sort of fish. Other water features jetted up playfully from the tiles, like something I had seen at a water park to entertain the children.
“Is the Original Home a place with lots of waterfalls?” Sean asked Judah.
“It is, my lord. Shizanna doesn’t rotate the way the Earth does. The Original People lived in a mountainous temperate zone between the hot dry area that was always in the sun and a frozen area that never received sun. The temperate zone was windy and had many rivers and streams from melting mountain snow. The Great Mechanic Ratanga has remade that world here as best he was able.”
“How do you get all the water down here?” Sean asked.
“We take the water from the ocean the humans call the Atlantic, my lord. It is desalinized and sanitized to make it safe for us. We return the wastewater to the ocean through the thermal vents. The heat sterilizes it and removes any trace of our existence. We don’t want to use fresh water because we don’t want to do anything that affects the humans’ environment.”
“It seems like a long way to go for water,” Sean said.
“We reckon distance differently from the humans, my lord.”
“You reckon a lot differently,” I said. “Who are the Mechanics?”
“They are the ones who take care of running the mechanical systems of our world, my lady. They created your ladyship and your lordship,” Judah said. “They make up one of the three legs of the table that our world rests on, the Mechanics, the highborn, and the lowborn. You will know Mechanics by their uniforms and lack of hair. The First and Second Mechanics wear circlets. They have their own building and rarely find a need to come here.”
“When do they come here?” I asked.
“When they are looking for new members, my lady, and when they’re needed at meetings.”
Some of the citizens of Geminay were coming out of the palace hallways to watch us being escorted to our quarters. They kept their cat’s eyes on us, mostly standing in groups, always standing quietly to watch us pass. None spoke to Sean or me, but all gave him a sort of salute, which I guessed was due to his rank. I couldn’t deny that the presence of all these people and their silent stares unnerved me. Sean moved along without seeming to notice.
Then a man emerged from the crowd. His clothing, an ankle-length robe cinched at the waist, shimmered with silver and gold. A circlet of diamonds twinkled on his bald pate. He stood head and shoulders above the highborn. His complexion was the palest shade of blue, almost human. Behind him stood a cadre of men and women similarly dressed. Like the man with the circlet, they were hairless and looked to me like silvery dolls, expressionless and still. Suddenly the leader came toward us so quickly that I was afraid he intended to run Sean and me over.
The man stopped in front of us, brandished a dagger, and shouted, “You, the Sworn Enemy of the House of Picard! You will come with me!”
Sean recoiled, but the man seized his shoulder. Two of the man’s entourage also drew daggers.
“No!” I shouted and grabbed the man’s wrist.
The man bellowed and raised his arm, lifting me high over the tiles and trying to shake me loose. His cadre swarmed around us, shouting. One of the men threw his arms around my waist and tried to pull me away. Another, who was wearing gloves, grabbed my fingers and started prying them off. Sean had clutched this man’s wrist and three of his helpers swarmed over Sean and wrestled him to the ground.
This was too much for me. I screamed, elbowed my attackers in the face, and launched myself at the men who had Sean. The second my hot and hungry palms touched the back of their necks, their energy started flowing into me and they went limp. I stopped as soon as they were unconscious. Once my hands broke contact with them, my palms began to burn for another, a sensation that surprised me. The man wearing the circlet jerked Sean in front of him and held a glass dagger to his throat. I realized that this man had to be a Mechanic.
“You will let him go,” I said in a quiet, conversational tone, as I took slow steps toward them. The energy pulsed through my nerves like jolts of electricity. The Mechanics’ energy in my veins was vibrant and delicious. It formed shimmering globes around my hands.
“Kill her! Kill her!” the Mechanic shouted as he walked backwards, pulling Sean with him. “She’s drunk with blood lust. She’s a dangerous animal!”
“No! No,” Sean cried, fighting the Mechanic. Then Sean put his hands on the Mechanic’s wrist.
“Another missusan?” The Mechanic blinked, as if puzzled, then turned to me in fury. “You made him that way, didn’t you, Lady Darcy? But he’s weak. He’s not like you. He’s lucky.” The Mechanic pressed the knifepoint into Sean’s skin, bringing forth a ruby of blood. He looked at me with greedy eyes. “How much do you care for our Sworn Enemy? How much would you do to save this boy?”
I moved like a flash of lightning and put my hand on the Mechanic’s neck.
“Everything,” I said as I drained him.
As the Mechanic weakened, his cadre shouted with outrage. One of them threw a glass dagger at Sean and me, but it bounced off us as if we were surrounded with metal. The Mechanic began to sag, his body turning the color of putty before his knees buckled. He fell to the floor, dropping the glass dagger, unconscious. Some of the crowd screamed and others fled or hid behind fountains and curtains.
“My lord! My lady!” Judah shouted. “Please, don’t hurt the Second Mechanic. Please, let him go. Let him go. He didn’t come here to hurt you.”
Sean and I shared a glance before releasing the Mechanic. I knew he was still alive because I could feel his heart beat in my fingertips. My intention hadn’t been to kill him, but I wasn’t going to let him have Sean.
“He attacked us, in case you didn’t notice the glass daggers,” I said to Judah. “And he’s alive. They all are.”
Judah wasn’t listening to me. His eyes were on Arlee, who leaned against the wall as if she couldn’t keep her balance. Then she gave a weak tug to a silver and gold rope with a red tassel and sank to the floor in an untidy pile, her knees to her chin and her pretty clothes rumpled all around her. Judah turned back to me.
“You saw what happened,” I said, unsettled by the accusing look in Judah’s eyes. “He came at us with knives and was trying to drag us away. That’s exactly what happened in the vice principal’s office this morning. Sean almost died.”
Judah knelt down next to the Mechanic and took note of the deep purple handprint that I had left on the man’s skin. The place where Sean had touched him was only slightly blue.
“Where are those healers?” Judah shouted hoarsely.
The words were hardly out of his mouth before two men and two women in brown and green striped tunics and trousers trotted into the area. Striped pillbox hats crowned their heads accentuating their faintly blue skin. They had tan aprons over their clothes and carried no sort of equipment, no stretcher or bags. The four knelt next to the man, two on each side, pulled up his sleeves, and put their hands on the bare skin of his arms. The Mechanic started to stir, and the four people became even bluer. As the Mechanic grew stronger, they grew weaker. One of the women began swaying as she knelt. Her eyelids drooped and she began to look sleepy.
“What’s happening here?” I asked, alarmed.
“They are returning to him the life energy that your lordship and your ladyship took,” Judah said, speaking hardly above a whisper. “In Geminay this is how we heal. We don’t sew people like cloth or give them chemicals the way the healers on Earth do.”
“But the healers look so weak,” I said, growing concerned as another of the four people swayed.
“They heal by giving their energy to others,” Judah said, not fazed by their alarming weakness. “It is the opposite of what a missusan does.”
“But that man’s energy went into Sean and me. These healers aren’t giving him back his own energy.”
Judah was unmoved. “They’re not, but we have to save the Mechanic, don’t we?”
“What about her?” I snapped, pointing to one of the healers who had grown so weak she sagged to the floor.
“This healer trades in her life energy, my lady. It’s what she does as a healer.”
“But doesn’t she heal at her own expense?” Sean asked.
Judah seemed puzzled by the question. “Yes, I suppose so. She trades in her own energy, my lord.”
“You mean she sells from her body.”
Judah raised his eyebrows at Sean. “She sells the energy but keeps her body, my lord. The rest is irrelevant.”
I became indignant watching the healers weaken as the Mechanic grew strong and hale. I didn’t know why, but it bothered me. His color improved, though he didn’t regain consciousness. He grew healthier, younger, fresher, and the healers were like sponges left out in the desiccating sun, growing dry and stiff.
“How will she be replenished?” Sean asked.
“She won’t be, my lord. She diminishes in her role as a healer. Healers give energy. Only missusans can take it.”
And healers weren’t the only ones who could give it, I thought. I knelt next to the exhausted healer and took her hands in my own. Her flesh felt cool and dead, like the fingers of a rubber doll. I willed my warmth into her hands and waited for the slight tickle of electricity and scent of ozone. At first nothing happened, and I wondered if I would be able to transfer energy to a healer, but then the sensation of warmth flowed down my arms. I did the same to the other healer who had fallen. The other two healers watched silently.
“My lady, the energy you give belongs to the Lady Naomi and Lord Sylvan. They are the only ones who are authorized to spend it,” Judah said sternly. “If you are going to give energy, you should give the Mechanic back what you took from him.”
“No way, not after what he tried to do to Sean and me.”
“The Second Mechanic meant you no harm.”
“Then what did he want?” Sean asked.
“I can’t say, my lord, but I do know that since we’ve come to Earth, there has been no known murder by a Mechanic.”
“Then maybe you can explain why they came at us with glass daggers,” I said.
Judah raised an eyebrow at me. “They held their daggers up as a traditional show of strength. Until today I’d never heard of anyone who took that as a threat, my lady. The only killers in our world are assassins and missusans, and usually they are one and the same.”
So I was a killer in this world, I thought. When I judged by her color that the healer had been restored, I released her. She glowed with vitality and became as bright and dewy as Sean and me.
“You will thank the Lady Darcy for the gift of the yellow sun,” Judah said sharply.
“Thank you, my lady,” she said, whispering the words. “My lady is very generous.”
“All may depart,” Judah commanded to the Original People who were still in the vicinity. Judah must have been someone of importance because none lingered or dared to refuse. The healers withdrew first, scurrying through doorways like fleeing mice. The Mechanics’ footmen approached cautiously and helped the Mechanics to their feet. All three Mechanics seemed confused, almost childlike. Their shocked and outraged entourage spoke to them in low whispers as they escorted them out.
Soon Sean and I were alone with Judah and Arlee. I thought I should speak up again and offer an explanation for what had happened, but Sean didn’t say anything. His face was set and preoccupied. Arlee stayed against the wall, her hand on her neck as she took deep breaths. An awkward silence filled the hallway.
“If you please, my lord and lady,” Judah finally said to Sean and me, ushering us along.