Cloak Games: Rebel Fist (2 page)

Then, of course, Morvilind would probably try to kill me, if he had no further use for me. 

Six years. I had six years to think of something clever. Some way to save Russell and save myself.

Russell was saying something, so I jerked myself out of my dark thoughts and made myself pay attention. If I was going to find a way to save us, I probably wasn’t going to do it today.

If only I had known. 

“You made bacon,” said Russell, grinning. “And eggs?” I nodded. “And pancakes?”

“No. An English muffin,” I said. 

“But not pancakes,” said Russell. 

“Eggs and bacon have protein,” I said, “and pancakes have…”

“Too many carbs,” said Russell in perfect synchronization with me. 

“Don’t be smart,” I said. “In deference to your sweet tooth, I have put jam on your English muffin.”

“Thank you,” said Russell, and I handed him his plate. He started to eat even before he sat down. I had seen some terrifying creatures in the Shadowlands, but I had yet to see one that devoured its meals with the same gusto as a teenage boy. He paused only long enough to put hot sauce on his eggs, which was an absolutely disgusting habit and one I refused to contemplate. 

James owned a number of commemorative beer steins from reunions of his company of men-at-arms, so I took one, filled it with coffee (without cream or sugar, of course), and sat down to eat my own breakfast. Russell was already halfway through his, so it was just as well I had left more eggs in the skillet. James and Lucy ate at a more sedate pace, reading the news on their tablets as they did. 

“Are we still going to the mall today?” said Russell around a mouthful. 

“Don’t talk with food in your mouth, dear,” said Lucy, not looking up from her tablet.

Russell nodded, chewed, swallowed, and spoke again. “Are we still going to the mall today?” 

“Yep,” I said. “Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

“No, no,” said Russell. “There are some books I want to get.” 

Other teenage boys went to the mall to pick up girls. Russell went to buy books. At least, I assumed other teenage boys went to the mall to pick up girls. I didn’t have any firsthand experience in the matter. 

“We’ll take your bike?” said Russell, leaning forward. 

“You most certainly will not take Nadia’s motorcycle,” said Lucy with a frown as she lowered her tablet. 

“Sportbike,” I said. “Technically it’s a Royal Motors NX-9 Sportbike with a six cylinder engine, capable of going from zero to sixty in…”

“I don’t care if it’s capable of going from zero to sixty in two seconds and can fly to the moon and make grilled cheese sandwiches while it does it,” said Lucy. “Those things are deathtraps.” James smiled a little, then caught himself and put on a grave expression. I bit my cheek to keep from laughing. “Nadia is an adult and she can do what she wants, no matter how reckless it is. You, however, will not be riding on a motorcycle.” 

“Even with a helmet?” said Russell.

“Even with a helmet,” said Lucy. “From the accidents I have seen at the medical center, the helmet only serves as a convenient bucket for your brains.”

“That,” said James as he took a bite of eggs, “is a disturbing mental image.”

“I don’t like motorcycles,” said Lucy. “I’ve seen the end result of too many accidents.”

“I’m sure Nadia is a very cautious rider,” said James. That was true. Mostly. 

“So you’re free all day?” said Russell. “You don’t have to do any work for Lord Morvilind?”

“Not a thing,” I said. In fact, since the disaster at Madison, Morvilind had summoned me only once. I had gone to his mansion dreading some perilous task like the thefts of the Ringbyrne Amulet or the ancient tablet from Paul McCade’s mansion. Instead, Morvilind had sent me to steal a set of backup drives from a bank vault in Cincinnati. It had been dead easy, and the entire job had taken only two days. I had even able to help myself to several bundles of hundred-dollar bills on the way out, which had given me enough money to live on for a while. Morvilind had not summoned me since, and it had been the longest time I had gone without hearing from him…well, ever. 

Maybe something had distracted him. Maybe the contents of the backup drives held his attention. Maybe he was taking a vacation, if someone like Morvilind ever took vacations. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. 

“The entire day,” I said, “assuming Lord Morvilind doesn’t summon me for work.” 

“It’s unusually generous for him to give you so much time off,” said James. “His lordship is of course a wise man.” I kept a straight face at that. “But he usually works you quite hard.”

“I suppose he’s busy,” I said. “Well, when he wants to find me, he…uh, he has my cell phone number.” Of course, Morvilind had never once used a cell phone to summon me. I glanced at Russell. “Ready to go.”

“Almost,” said Russell. There wasn’t a crumb of food remaining on his plate. “Are there seconds?”

###

Lucy had discouraged Russell from riding with me on my motorcycle, but she hadn’t outright forbidden it. 

So of course we took my motorcycle. 

The bike was black with orange highlights, so I had a leather jacket with orange stripes on the sleeves and chest to match. I had a black helmet with a mirrored visor, and both helmet and padded jacket were uncomfortable in the summer, but were still better than wiping out and leaving half my skin on the asphalt. As the weather got cooler, the jacket and helmet got more comfortable, until it got too cold and too snowy to use a bike. 

I had bought Russell a helmet, but I wasn’t going to get him a jacket until I was sure he wouldn’t outgrow the damn thing in six weeks. Of course, by then maybe he would be living on his own and could afford his own bike. I was pretty sure he had acquired a taste for motorcycles. And maybe the motorcycle would impress a girl. 

Russell with a girl. Now there was a thought I wasn’t ready to process. 

“Ready?” I said, swinging my leg over the side of the bike and pulling the helmet over my head.

“Yep,” said Russell, climbing on the back of the bike. His thin limbs and the helmet made him look a little like a shiny black lollipop. 

I grunted, reached back, and pulled his arms around my waist. “Arms there. If you fall off the back, I’ll never hear the end of it from Lucy.” 

“True.” He got a good grip around my middle. “Too bad you aren’t a real girl.”

I looked back at him. He couldn’t see my expression through the visor, but he had to know how I would react to that. “A real girl? What does that mean? Last time I checked, I was pretty sure that I was a girl.” 

“Well, you know,” said Russell. “A girl who isn’t my sister.”

“Ah,” I said. “You’ve hit adolescence. Did James and Lucy have the talk with you?”

“Er…they did,” said Russell. He was getting embarrassed. “It was…pretty frank. Of course, he’s a doctor and she’s a nurse, so they don’t mind being…candid. Then they gave me a book to read. It had a lot of diagrams.” 

I grinned behind my visor. “And then they explained that Jesus disapproves of sex before marriage?” 

“Well, he does,” said Russell with perfect earnestness. 

I wasn’t sure what I thought of the Marneys raising Russell in their church. My attitude toward God was basically embittered cynicism – if he loved humanity, why did the Elves rule over us? Still, I wanted Russell to grow up with a sense of right and wrong, and raising him to believe in God was the most efficient way to do that. I wanted Russell to have a good life, a better life than me…

Basically, I didn’t want Russell to become anything like me.

“Good for him,” I said, putting my keys into the bike’s ignition. 

“What about you?” said Russell.

“Did James and Lucy have the talk with me, you mean?” I said. They had not. When I had hit puberty, one of Morvilind’s tutors had given me a prescription for birth control pills, followed by a lecture from Morvilind about how I would become useless to him if I was pregnant. “I think I would have preferred that, actually.” 

“So you do have a boyfriend, then?” said Russell.

My startled twitch knocked my hand off the keys. “Um. What?” 

“Well,” said Russell, and I could hear the smirk in his voice, “if you can ask if I had the talk with James and Lucy, I can ask if you have a boyfriend.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said. 

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” said Russell.

I hesitated. There had been on serious boyfriend, one man for whom I had fallen head over heels in love. His name had been Nicholas Connor, and he had been brilliant and strong and handsome. 

He had also been the leader of a Rebel cell, planning to set off a bomb that would have killed tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles…and he had set me up to take the blame. I had defused the plot, wrecked his Rebel cell, and escaped scot-free back to Milwaukee, much sadder, but much wiser.

“I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense,” I said.

Russell laughed. “Do you know what I think?”

“I think,” I said, turning the key, “that we should shut up and ride.”

The engine roared to life and I fed the throttle, drowning out Russell’s answer. He whooped, his arms tightening around my waist, and I grinned and gunned the bike into motion. We took off down the streets, going a good twenty miles over the speed limit, but there wasn’t much traffic on a Saturday morning and the Homeland Security traffic patrollers kept to the main streets and the freeways. 

I whooped in turn, and I heard Russell laughing. I had to admit that I loved motorcycles. I loved the speed, the sense of power and freedom as I gunned the throttle. Of course, that sense of freedom was an illusion. Morvilind only had to crook his finger and I would come running, since the consequences of ignoring his summons would be dire. I wasn’t free, and I didn’t have anything remotely like the power I needed to free myself.

Not yet, anyway. 

Today, though, I would enjoy myself.

Russell wasn’t that heavy, but his weight did affect the motorcycle’s handling, so I kept off the freeways and stayed to the surface streets. We left Milwaukee, made our way across Wauwatosa, and ended up in Brookfield. Most of Milwaukee’s super-rich lived in mansions along the lakefront or in high-rise condominiums downtown. Those who were merely rich lived in Brookfield, in new houses with big lawns and two-car garages. So there were a lot of shops selling fancy electronics and skis and tennis rackets whatever other expensive crap rich people needed. 

The Ducal Mall had a lot of stores like that.

From what I understood, there had been a shopping center there centuries ago, but it had been destroyed during the Conquest. Later Duke Tamirlas of Milwaukee had given his approval to build a new mall there, so the county and city governments made it happen. Over the centuries it had grown into a four-story monstrosity of glass and steel and concrete, with concourses and walkways and restaurants and even a little amusement park with a couple of roller coasters. It had its own dedicated off-ramp from Interstate 94, which I avoided, circling instead to the eastern side of the Ducal Mall and using the back entrance. 

“Why are we parking so far from the doors?” said Russell as I brought the bike to a halt in the outer reaches of the parking lot.

“Because,” I said, putting the kickstand in place, “walking is a healthy activity. That, and if anyone gets a scratch on my bike, I’m going to get mad.” 

“And because there is no place to park near the doors?” said Russell, squinting at the sea of cars gleaming in the morning sun.

“Yep,” I said, climbing off the motorcycle and stretching my legs. Motorcycles are a lot of fun and often useful, but they sure aren’t comfortable. “Also, seriously. If anyone scratches my bike, I’m going to be pissed.” We set our helmets on the seat.

“You don’t mind all the dents in your Duluth Motors sedan,” said Russell as we walked to the mall doors.

“That car is older than I am,” I said. Plus, I used it for my various jobs. A Royal Motors NX-9 sportbike with orange highlights drew attention. No one paid attention to an old four-door sedan. 

“Let’s have lunch first,” said Russell. “Can we get burgers?”

“We just had breakfast,” I said. 

“Yeah, like two and a half hours ago,” said Russell. 

I laughed. “You’re part locust. Come on.” 

We went through the Ducal Mall’s side doors and into the crowds. It was Saturday, so the place was packed. Most of the elderly and the veterans did their shopping on weekdays, so on the weekend working men and women with young children filled the mall, and constant cacophony of children’s voices echoed off the glassy storefronts. I watched the shoppers with a mixture of bemusement and annoyance. Their lives were so different than mine that I could barely understand them. In some ways I had pitied them. I had magic and they did not (well, except for the veterans of the Wizards’ Legion), and I understood more of how the world really worked than they did. In a way, they were a lot like sheep. They went through their lives believing that the High Queen and the nobles were wise and benevolent, watching the Punishment Day videos and the addresses from the nobles, and doing what they were told. They had been shaped from childhood to revere the Elves, and so they revered the Elves. 

And yet…

I saw a toddler wobble to her mother, a woman a few years older than me. The woman picked up the child, and an expression of pure delight went over the little girl’s face. That woman didn’t have to worry about the capricious demands of an Elven noble. That woman didn’t have to fear that her brother would die if she did not obey. Maybe she had a husband that loved her and a home of her own…

For a moment I was so sad that I stopped walking.

“Nadia?” said Russell.

Then a scowl went over the little girl’s face, and even from several yards away I detected the odor as she filled her diaper. 

Well. No one’s life is perfect. 

“You okay?” said Russell. 

“I was just reflecting,” I said, “that every life has its thorns.”

“You’re weird.”

“You have no idea,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

We found a burger place in the Ducal Mall’s food court and had lunch. As Russell and James liked to point out, I was a bit of a fanatic about healthful eating, with Lucy’s full support. I had my reasons. Given the kind of things Morvilind had me do, I needed to be in the best shape I could manage. So I had a chicken sandwich while Russell wolfed down a double bacon cheeseburger and a mega-sized carton of fries. I would like to say that only through heroic willpower I resisted the temptation to stuff myself with fried food, but truth be told I didn’t like the stuff very much and wished I could have a salad instead. Of course, Russell’s body needed a lot more energy to fight off the frostfever.