Curio (5 page)

“I trust you're making progress with the mountain people. I expected you to be more convincing. How many years have you been attending them now?” He gestured to
the slow-moving line winding in and out of the dispensary. “Why would they choose to die when health awaits them in Mercury City?”

Father looked like he wanted to speak but said nothing.

“It seems much requires my attention here in the Foothills Quarter.” Adante swept the surroundings with a bored expression that contradicted his words, but his green eyes sparked when they landed once again on Grey.

CHAPTER

4

G
rey stepped out of the dispensary and gulped the air, but the sickly sweet smell of potion and the piney scent of wound salve followed her out the door. Her head swam until a mountain gust carried away the odor and left her shivering.

With the help of a female neighbor, she'd gotten the unconscious Josephine through the line. Under the gaze of two potion-head deputies, the dispensary worker had meted out the Bryacres' rations as well as the Hawards'. Now Grey and her helper returned Josephine to the bench.

Father and Granddad joined them, forming a semicircle around Josephine's still form.

“You'll be taking all your ration today, Jo.” Father's whisper cut into Grey's heart.

“She'll be angry when she wakes up.” Grey knelt by the bench. “I bet she intended to give it all to Whit when he comes home.”

Granddad crossed thick arms over his chest. “What Whit needs is a mother strong enough to nurse him through his recovery.” His eyes narrowed onto Grey.

She lifted her chin. “I'll give her all of it.”

Granddad held her gaze, no doubt perceiving her intention to give Whit her entire ration. A brief smile quirked his mouth. “Good girl.”

When she'd poured every drop of the purple liquid down Josephine's throat, Grey straightened to find her father and grandfather stiff, their attention focused down the street. She caught the flash of shiny black as a now familiar tall figure moved by a storefront.

“What does he want?” She almost added “with me,” but didn't dare call more attention to her family of renegades. One thing was certain: Adante's absorption with her stemmed from more than Chemist obsession with law breakers. He'd scrutinized her in the store yesterday, before she and Whit violated the city codes.

Father motioned to the neighbor who'd helped Grey with Josephine. “We'll get Jo home somehow. You go with Granddad to the shop today. You'll be safe with him, and it'll keep you occupied better than waiting at home for Whit.”

He handed one bottle of potion to Grey, his eyes holding hers in an unspoken warning. She clutched the ration, waiting for him to command her to swallow it. He didn't, turning instead to make arrangements to get Josephine home.

“Let's go.” Granddad headed in the opposite direction on Reinbar Avenue.

She pocketed her ration and averted her eyes from Adante as they passed by his position on the other side of the street. The bottle weighted her coat pocket, bouncing against her thigh as she walked.

Granddad kept to his usual brisk gait, his movements deft. Despite his pace, he never risked even a careless brush of the sleeve. He nodded to everyone they passed. A few blocks ahead, dayshift miners gathered at the station. Grey searched for a lanky frame amongst the shorter figures. But of course, Whit wasn't there.

Her stomach growled as they crossed the street at the corner where Reinbar and Colfax formed a T. A display in
the bakery window set her mouth watering, but an “Open After Ration” sign still hung in the shop door. An image of Josephine's hollow face rose amidst the heap of golden rolls and loaves. She would soon know which was worse: gnawing hunger or the misery of consuming indigestible food.

After they passed the bank, Grey steeled herself for the assault of Madam Maude's Crimsonery. Behind the glass a headless mannequin displayed a knee-length red frock. Grey rubbed her neck and looked away, but the white, limbless form remained as real and terrible to her as it had on her tenth birthday. For a month after her first trip to the crimsonery, she'd checked the mirror every day, touching her face and stretching her arms out, then peering down her blouse for any sign of stiff bumps forming on her chest. As her body changed, not all at once and not into the hard form of a dress dummy, she wondered why such a natural transformation must be labeled dangerous. The Council rhetoric on reproduction and population monitoring did little to erase the stigma she felt.

Grey made a now habitual inventory of her blossomed figure and winced. Much good the scarlet had done Whit.

The Colfax Street clock read quarter to seven when they reached Granddad's shop. As he withdrew his key ring, Grey found her favorite knick-knack in the display window—a painting of a stone figure with a raised fist and a crowd of people huddled behind it. This time instead of lingering on the imposing statue, she studied the throng of dark-haired, pale faces—so like the people in her quarter. So like Whit. If only her defiance could've kept him safe. She squeezed her own fingers into a tight ball. A hardening sensation spread from the center of her body outward, like living rock lined her muscles.

A shrill sound interrupted the process. Grey pressed a hand to her midsection as the phenomenon faded, half expecting
her skin to change beneath her fingertips. But she detected no transformation on the outside. Another signal pierced the air.

The warning whistles from the factories in the south followed them into the shop and up the center aisle. Grey picked up a new item, a mantel clock carved in the form of an owl. The block shape looked nothing like a real bird, but she rolled her shoulders, shrugging off the sudden image of raking claws. Setting the curio down, she followed Granddad to the waist-high glass cabinets forming a three-sided box around the back of the room.

He moved about his store, distracted, touching certain tools as if they marked the place where he'd left off the project. Grey followed, lighting lamps and depositing her coat in the back room. When she returned, Granddad stood at the end of one counter, staring into the corner at the murky curio cabinet.

Grey stood next to him. “What is it?”

The shop door swished open and they both swiveled toward the front of the store. Haimon navigated the jumbled shelves. He paused, his iron eyes nipping between Grey and Granddad. “What's happened?”

He must've read her expression or Granddad's nervous energy.

“Grey violated curfew last night.” Granddad made it sound like she'd received top marks in school rather than broken the law. “She's drawn Adante's attention.” He and Haimon exchanged an unreadable look.

“They took Whit.” Grey's voice came out husky.

Haimon rested an arm on one of the shelves, propping up his gaunt frame. “I'm sorry.”

She scanned the parallel scars climbing his neck toward his ears and marring the colorless skin visible below the cuff of his jacket sleeve. Haimon knew plenty about a punisher's
blade. “I—It should have been me.” She clamped her lips. Why did she keep insisting on taking Whit's place?

Her words had a strange effect on Haimon, who bolted out of his informal pose and stepped forward, intent on Grey as though he studied a specimen through a microscope.

“A word, Haimon?” Granddad strode into the back room.

Grey busied herself with a tray of clock parts as Haimon slipped between the display cases and pulled the curtain closed behind him. She sorted tiny gears and springs, her ears trained on their conversation.

Excitement tinged Granddad's voice. “Everything is changing, Haimon. We're at a turning point.”

One of the steam engine delivery trucks rumbled by on the street outside. When the noise faded, Granddad's words tumbled in an urgent torrent.

“I believe Defender blood is dominant. When Grey tried to protect her friend, she kindled the mark—I'm sure of it. If her Defender nature overcomes the condition she inherited from her mother, then Grey is the key we've hoped for.”

Haimon cut in. “The key to a new potion, or—”

“The key to everything. But I won't risk breaking the treaty by bringing him back. It would mean a declaration of war—a war my son and I could not win. Yet.”

“But it wouldn't be just you and Steinar anymore.”

“Four Defenders against the entire Chemist Council?” Granddad's tone stretched with unease.

“I would stand with you.”

“I know, my friend, but we would fall. And where would that leave our efforts on the new serum? Where would that leave the people? So many lives lost.”

The creak of wood covered Haimon's reply. Grey's hands trembled and she dropped the tiny screw she'd held on to the floor. She had Defender blood? How could her grandfather
belong to that long-gone race? The last of the Defender clans disappeared in the Cleanse a hundred years ago. But it appeared they hadn't. Granddad—a Defender—somehow must have escaped the purge.

“I'll be down for the first draw,” Granddad said. Then came the scuffle and scrape as he concealed the entrance to the underground lab. In a moment he pushed through the curtain, his wide shoulders filling the cutout doorway. She stared as though she'd never seen him before. Her family was different, yes. Father and Granddad were anomalies in Mercury City, even rebels. But Defenders? Her textbooks called the race violent and cruel.

Granddad lowered himself onto a stool near the cash register. When Grey finally perched next to him on the other high stool, he pulled a paper-wrapped package out of a pocket inside his vest and set it on the counter between them. He unwrapped two oat cakes and a small apple.

Grey's stomach contracted but she shook her head. “I'm not hungry.”

He gave her an odd smile, took one of the cakes and slid the rest, package and all, toward her. “Then hold on to it for later.”

“But what if—?” She didn't finish. Only time would tell which parent she took after.

At Granddad's nod, Grey accepted the food and stored it in her coat pocket next to the full ration bottle.

With the afternoon quiet and her chores done, the ache in Grey's chest grew, threatening to squeeze out everything but Whit's actions, his punishment, his absence. She dragged herself over to watch Granddad repair one of the Council-issued
typewriter balls. He tested the L key he'd just replaced. The little button clicked, but no letter appeared on the pane.

“Is this part broken too?” She tapped the glass, which didn't glow like the one she'd seen last night.

“No.” He leaned back. “It'll work with a bit of Chemia.” He spat the last word out like a swig of sour milk.

Grey turned to the shelf behind him and reached for a miniature phonograph emitting a faint green glow. Her fingertip warmed as the luminosity touched it. “How do they—?” “Grey!”

She yanked her hand back. Granddad's yellow brows scrunched. A frown stamped his mouth.

He nodded toward a stack of books, and his next words came out gentle. “Find a place for those, will you?”

Haimon stepped into the room and Grey whirled away to hide her flushing face. She knew better than to touch Council equipment. She hefted the pile of books and searched the crowded shelves for empty space. There, a shelf high above the case in the corner.

She set the load of books on top of the obscured glass surface she'd cleaned only yesterday. A reflection moved over the pane. Grey waved a hand over the case, but this time nothing flickered in the dull glass. The light was always tricky in the back of the store. She shrugged and skimmed her finger over the keyhole embedded at the edge. Though she helped in the shop often, she'd never seen the matching key. Bracing herself against the cabinet, she shelved the books two at a time. The lines of her mark prickled where her midsection pressed into the cabinet's metal rim.