Under the Empyrean Sky (24 page)

Jacinda did not need fixing.

Devon, however, needs it in heaps and hills.

She idly ponders throwing up. The only thing that stops the urge is the feel of the wind—the sweet, sweet wind. Indicative of the sky, the stars, the sun. Away from this brown, moribund clod of clay. The wind is the only reminder of home.

Life on the flotillas gives you the sense that nothing is stable, that the very ground beneath your feet could drop out from under you at any time. Because, theoretically, it could. That’s not a bad thing, not as the proctor sees it. To her it means that she’s flying free. That anything can happen. It’s a wonderful, unburdening sensation—the feel of raw potential as big as the sky. The
ground beneath her feet only heightens her queasiness.

Being here, on the ground, is disorienting. Like getting off a carnival ride and still feeling the motion inside. Truthfully, she doesn’t know how the Heartlanders stomach it. Something in their breeding makes them tolerant to it, the way farm animals don’t even notice when they’re lounging around in mud. That’s how she sees these people: They’re all just livestock. As lunkheaded and docile as the average cow, as preprogrammed to duty and misery as a common motorvator.

Of course, they’re not all docile, are they? Sometimes a motorvator goes off its program, a cow wanders free from its paddock with dreams of greener pastures and bovine independence. So too it is with the Heartlanders. Once in a while one gets an idea in his fool head and makes no end of trouble.

Hence the guards. Three ahead of her. Another six back in the ketch.

It’s not they who emerge behind her now but the four concomitants. Helpers. Two men, two women. Here to facilitate whatever needs to happen to get this family on the boat as swiftly and painlessly as possible. Pack a small bag for each. Seal up the house. Package any small pets and execute any large ones. Brew tea to settle nerves. Whatever needs doing, the concomitants will do. And what
they need to do right now is unfurl the golden runner.

“Ma’am,” they say, allowing the proctor to step aside as two of them tiptoe forward, the golden plasto-sheen unrolling behind them—textured so that none will slip on it.

They roll the runner toward the house.

Better get on with it, then. Agrasanto steps onto the runner and snaps her fingers at Devon.

“What are their names?”

He stammers, “Wh-what?”

“The
names
. Of the Heartlanders with whom we are forced to play nice.”

“Ah,” Devon says, setting down the thermos of tea and drawing up the screen on his visidex. He flips through icons with the tip of his finger and then double-taps the glass. “The winners are: Richard Shawcatch; wife, Maevey; daughter, Gwendolyn; son, Richard Jr.”

She snatches the screen from his hands. He pulls back his hands as though burned.

Proctor Simone Agrasanto takes the rudimentary visidex and scrolls through what few pages of information they have on this family. Minimal troubles. Father is a field shepherd. Mother a seamstress. Daughter a… well, that’s interesting. Member of a scavenger crew and recently Obligated to the mayor’s son.
I bet I’ll hear about
that
one.
Mayor Barnes often has it in mind that
he isn’t
like
all these other people. Simply because he holds a position of dubious authority, he assumes that he’s—
wink-wink
—one of the Empyrean.

Idiot.

Well, no time to worry about that now. “One foot in front of the other, dear,” as her husband always said, sipping his tea, the servo-man reading from the day’s news-roll. She’ll soon have these Shawcatch fools bundled up and carried high into the sky where they think they’ll become—

Over the corn, she sees headlamps in the distance. Hears the hum of a prop-engine.

Agrasanto whistles, and the
evocati augusti
form a three-pointed perimeter around her, sonic rifles popped free from their back-brackets and drawn. Already they dial up the power on their rifles—these won’t just make the interloper fall to the ground sick. They’ll cook his brains. Cause his internal organs to evacuate out whatever hole the viscera slurry can find. Turn the enemy into a bubbling skin-suit.

The elder male Lottery winner pokes his head out through the doorway. “Is something wrong?”

Simone waves him back inside, hissing, “
Close the door!
”

Whoever this is, they’re going to wish they hadn’t tangled with her today. Because the dirt between her toes—real or imagined—has made her very,
very
irritable.

Cael runs.

He runs hard and fast, his legs burning at the hips, his calf muscles feeling as though they’ll soon snap like banjo strings. Gwendolyn’s house is on the other side of town. Getting the boat would take too long—going back to Martha’s Bend, fetching the pinnace, using the oar-poles to nudge that clunky brick
Doris
along at a rock-turtle’s pace.

And so Cael runs.

He takes the road. The corn would be faster, but evening is upon him and will soon give way to night—and the last thing he needs now is to get lost in the stalks and lose any chance of stealing Gwennie away.

Because that is his plan.

He’s going to find her. And he’s going to rescue her.

From the clutches of the Barneses.

From the clutches of the Empyrean.

And with Pop’s garden coming to fruition, from all the miseries the Heartland offers.

A little voice inside tells him:
She doesn’t need rescuing, you thick-witted pony. She’s always been smarter and tougher than you.
But he has no time for that kind of thinking, true or not.

Cael’s feet clomp across the plasto-sheen roads.

As he bolts down the main thoroughfare of Boxelder,
passing all the town’s sights—Poltroon’s garage (poor Poltroon), the Tallyman’s office (hell with the Tallyman!), Busser’s Tavern (gonna need a drink after tonight, that’s for damn sure)—he keeps his eyes focused foward, his heart pinned neatly to the dream of scooping up Gwennie in his arms and making her his bride.

He doesn’t see the attack coming.

A two-by-four cracks him across the face. Blossoms of jagged light like electrical pulses bloom inside his skull.

He opens his eyes and realizes he’s on his back. Staring up at the stars.

Tasting blood. He tries to breathe through his nose, but he can’t.

“Guh,” he says.

Boyland Barnes Jr. appears over him, blotting out the purple nighttime sky.

“I know what you’re up to, McAvoy,” Barnes growls. “She’s mine.”

Then he punches Cael in the face with a meaty, hamhock fist.

The first sonic blast from one of the guardsman’s rifles warbles over the yacht’s bow, and Mayor Barnes hits the deck, slamming his hip into a cooler and wincing. He hears
Agrasanto say something, but his eardrums are still pulsing from the sound of the rifle firing. The elder Barnes yells out, “It’s me! It’s Mayor Barnes!” His own voice sounds watery, full, distorted.

He waves his hand over the edge of the boat. Then he fumbles up to the console to dim the hover-rails so the yacht eases down to the ground.

Hands come up over the side. Grab at him. Throw him over the edge.

The proctor’s guardsmen stand over him, their rifles pointed at his face and chest. Their black-lacquered horse-faced helmets stare dispassionately down.

Agrasanto eases them aside. “I should have figured it was you.”

“This isn’t the respect a mayor deserves,” he stammers. The proctor has always been a brutish woman, but she’s always afforded him a measure of mannerly—if grudging—regard.

“Get him up.”

Two guards grab under his armpits, haul him to his feet.

“Respect,” she mumbles. Agrasanto clears her throat, and her red-painted lips stretch into a false smile. “Mayor Barnes!
So
good to see you again. I see you’ve come to wish your fellow Boxelder citizens good luck as they depart on
their journey to a better life in the bosom of the Empyrean flotillas. I’m sure they appreciate their town’s most
estimable citizen
showing his—” And now the false face falls away like leaves off a tree. “Drunken, unshaven self. So, Mayor Barnes, before I have my
evocati augusti
punch a hole in your chest or lash you to the underside of our ketch with one of their whips, I suggest you mosey along.”

That word,
mosey
. He can hear the mockery in her voice. Barnes waves her off. “It’s not about
them
, Proctor.” He leans in. Lowers his voice. “We have a terrorist in our midst.”

“A terrorist.”

He can see she doesn’t believe him.

Behind her, two servants—one man, one woman, each in a red plasticky jumpsuit—appear. “Ma’am, may we begin the extraction?”

Agrasanto makes a dismissive gesture. “Yes. Go. Make it snappy.” As they flitter off, she looks to Barnes. “They’re going to try to take their sweet time. They always do. They want all their family photos, their favorite gingham skirts, some favorite dust ball behind the rickety wooden torture device they call a chair; but we have to hurry them along. They won’t be needing any of that up above.”

“About the terrorist—”

“Terrorist. Right. Go on.”

He quickly tells her what he knows—which is,
admittedly, very little. His son. Martha’s Bend. The McAvoy boy.
Strawberry hands
. He lets her know he’s been seeing suspicious signs around town: the votary with an apple, a trash pile with melon rinds sticking out of the top, evidence of fruits and vegetables that are
plainly
forbidden. But still Agrasanto doesn’t seem to care.

“Votaries of the Lord and Lady often find… fortune,” she says. “Apples aren’t illegal. Sometimes they show up in provisions, Mayor Barnes. As do melons. And all manner of foodstuffs.”

“Not like this,” he says. “This apple was as big as a fist. Red, too. Not a dark spot on it.”

Her face, as impassive as a stone wall.

He kicks it up a notch. “I… saw it with my own eyes.”

“You went to Martha’s Bend. Illegally.”

Risky play
, he thinks, but—fingers crossed—worth it. He nods with faux reluctance. “I could not abide the thought that someone from my town was growing illicit plants and vegetables. I went to see with my own two eyes.” He clears his throat. “Besides, there’s something you ought to know about the family. The daughter’s gone—gone hobo and hightailed it to Jeezum Crow knows where. And the father, Arthur McAvoy… he’s the real terrorist.”

There
. He has her. A little snake tongue of curiosity flickering in the dark of her eye. He suspects she was
moments away from hauling him off and leaving him to wander the corn, but now he has her interested.

“Go on,” she says.

“When Arthur McAvoy—the boy’s father—was younger, he took off. Ran away from Boxelder. I’ve heard rumors. About what he did during that time.”

“So let me hear them.”

He does. The mayor leans forward and whispers them in her ear.

She worries at a lip with her teeth. “Fine,” she says finally. “I’ll give you six of the
evocati augusti
. Lead them to Martha’s Bend. Bring in McAvoy. If all is as you say it is, then there will be a bounty awaiting you. For your loyalty to the Empyrean.”

But then she grabs him by the scruff of his beard, wrenching his head suddenly close to hers. He can smell her breath: mint and bergamot. Cold, too. Not warm and boozy like his.

“But if you’re wrong—if no garden exists, if McAvoy is just another toothless Heartland dog—then I will have you strung up with thrum-whips and vibrated into a half dozen pieces. Are we clear, Mr. Mayor?”

He hopes suddenly that his lies and guesses add up to something. Is there really a garden? Could Arthur McAvoy be behind all this?

The mayor’s voice is ragged like a burr: “We’re… we’re clear, Proctor.”

“Good.” Once again her fake smile. “Now, go! Go and catch this tiger by the toe.”

“She’s
mine
,” Barnes snarls, grabbing Cael by the shirt and pitching him into a pair of barrels sitting out in front of Doc’s place.

Cael’s head is spinning. He scrambles to stand, plants a foot in the dirt, and throws a fist at Boyland. But it’s a long, clumsy haymaker, the kind that takes ten minutes to get where it’s going and sends off a postcard RSVP long before it arrives. The mayor’s son has no problem leaning back as Cael’s fist whiffs through open air.
Swing and a miss
.

Barnes responds by leaning in and pulling Cael close. Then he pumps his knee into Cael’s gut once, twice, three times. Cael topples. Bloody. Breathless.

He rolls on his side, wheezing and gasping.

By now people have started to come out of Doc’s and, across the street, Busser’s. Nobody’s looking to break anything up. Not yet. Fights like this tend to run their course, and unspoken Heartland etiquette says you don’t go breaking up a fight unless someone’s a stone’s throw
from dead. This is how the hard people of this place settle their business.

Barnes kneels down. Grabs Cael’s face so he can talk right in his ear.

“Listen, punk. Gwennie’s Obligated to me. You think I don’t know that you’re running to her right now? Lord and Lady only know what you think a lowland corn-weevil like yourself is going to be able to do. I’m the godsdamn mayor’s son. I got pull. She’s mine to get and yours to leave. You understand me, McAvoy?”

“I can’t hear you,” Cael mumbles, blood and saliva dribbling into the dirt.

Boyland gets even closer, bares his teeth, starts to say something—

Cael cocks his head hard to the right, smacking his skull straight into Boyland’s teeth. It hurts Cael—the sum-bitch’s teeth bite into his skin—but it hurts Boyland worse. The younger Barnes tumbles backward, howling and clutching his mouth.

Suddenly Cael’s up again in a plume of dust. He’s still as wobbly as a plate spinning on a stick, but there’s no way he’s letting this thick-necked child of privilege take home the love of
his
life.

Boyland launches himself at Cael, but this time Cael’s ready—he steps aside, lets the bull stumble past,
then pops a fist right into Boyland’s ear.
Pow
.