Alien Me (21 page)

“I can’t go another round with the clawman,” I said as I hugged a pillow. “I don’t care. I’m not going back there.”

“There won’t be a clawman, and for a change His and Her Majesty seem to be on our side. Come on. We can’t refuse.”

“You don’t understand. The thought of being back there all but gives me a panic attack,” I whispered through stiff lips and a dry mouth.

And I waited for Sean to despise me for being weak and sad. He had praised me for my bravery in saving him in the vice principal’s office and for taking his and Tardik’s clawman pain. But would he hate me now that I was a broken-winged bird, no longer pretty in the air, now crushed and needy? I had no more bravery to give. I leaned my head against the back of the chair, careless about mussing my pretty hair. No way could I look at him.

But Sean knelt down next to my face. “Open your eyes. See me.”

I did as he asked.

“You’re crazy if you think that you don’t have anything left. I’ll be waiting for you in the courtyard.”

He went out, and Circle brought me a pair of gloves. I held out my arms so that she could put them on me, but I needed a minute. I went into my bathroom, turned on the faucet, and let cold water run over my face to fortify myself. My anxiety was worse, much worse, than when I walked onto my high school campus into a crowd that believed I had tried to kill Martin Leonard. Right now that seemed less bothersome than having to listen to a song I didn’t like. Right now I needed someone and it couldn’t be Sean. Sensing this, Circle offered me her arm. She walked me down the stairs, just in case I might faint on the stairs. When we got into the courtyard, I saw Methany staring at the floor with an expression of distaste.

“Invigorating the potted plants, my lord,” he said to Sean.

“It looks like it,” Sean replied.

I heard Methany’s veiled reprimand about using energy in such an unprofitable pursuit and felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. It was a small rebellion on Sean’s part, but I still loved it because it appeared to be the only kind we would have.

Arlee gave Circle a look that made her withdraw and shrink away. Then, without being asked, Arlee took my arm. As we left the courtyard, several gardeners appeared and began touching the plants, moving from blossom to blossom with devices that looked like feather dusters.

“My lady, I’m glad to see you’ve recovered from your—your—encounter,” Methany said to me. “The lesson imparted was harsh, but without discipline our society would be no better than humans’. I’ve been on Earth at night and I’ve seen the chaos there, the way humans have no firm standing in their world. They are physically unwell and mentally unstable, starving and unprincipled. It must be horrible for them, unsure of how to dress or what job to do or what to eat, each day battered by all their tiresome choices and uncertainty.”

“They would find your way of life limiting,” I said as we walked through the endless courtyards and hallways.

“My lady, I’ve heard that notion from other young Sworn Assets, and it always rings hollow to me.” He looked around the palace fondly. “Eventually all the Sworn Assets see the wisdom of how we live in Geminay. Most choose to spend their final years here. Had you and Lord Sean not killed them all, the retired Sworn Assets would tell you how they came to understand how liberating it is for one to know how one fits into the world. Only then can one fully flower in his or her role. Look around you. Do you think that the lowborn who made these beautiful couches could have done them so well if they had been burdened with the relentless demands of commerce? Look at the ceilings. They are works of art made possible by the cultivation of artistry in the guild houses. Our artisans can give themselves over to their craft. Only then can they reach their full potential. It is known.”

Not to me, it wasn’t, I thought.

When we arrived in the courtyard outside the throne room, Methany asked our group to wait. I sat down on the rim of a fountain and felt the tickle of the water drops that blew on our faces. Arlee and the others took seats nearby. The citizens who were already in the courtyard moved away to its far perimeters as if they were foundation plantings. Circle and Sean’s footman stood just beyond our group, their faces to the ground and their hands folded in front of them. The effervescent water smelled faintly of sulfur.

Suddenly the crowd parted and a young man strode through the opening with much more energy than most showed in Geminay. Tall and wiry like Sean, his auburn hair seemed crimson under the pink sky. His dress was elaborate, a knee-length silver tunic embellished with red and green stones. The cuffs of his trousers were trimmed in a bright red fur. His hair was short and he showed no fear as he walked toward us.

“What’s up?” he asked, stopping in front of us. He rocked back and forth on his heels while his attendants stayed a safe distance back. “You must be Darcy and Sean. I’m Remy, the Sworn Asset from the House of Rothgar.”

“You’ve heard of us?” Sean asked.

“Are you kidding me? You two ripped apart over ten thousand Earth years of history,” Remy said with a laugh. His eyes darted back and forth between Sean and me. “The First Shaman of my House still hasn’t quit babbling about it. When the two of you touched, all of us Sworn Assets felt it. I was at school and fell right out of my seat during history class. The teacher freaked out. I ended up in the school nurse’s office for a couple hours and my parents were called. It was a major big deal for no reason. I’m just glad I didn’t end up extinguished like all the older Sworn Assets. And since we’re all rare birds right now, they’re going to be taking real good care of us.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said softly, thinking about the clawman.

Remy laid a heavy stare on me. “The fact that you’re both missusans and that you have killed other missusans has caused quite a stir between the shamans and the Mechanics. There have been shouting matches about who’s to blame.”

“It’s been that bad?” Sean asked.

“It sure has. The shamans have been tripping about how corrupt entities like the two of you threaten the Original People’s existence and have reinvented barbaric and savage energies.” Remy grinned at me. “Especially you.”

Sean’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why especially Darcy?”

“Because she faced a clawman and lived to tell about it. Word has it that you even threatened him. They didn’t expect that much strength in a Sworn Asset.” His eyes appraised me. “They thought you’d crumble like a cracker. Yeah, we’ve heard about how you took Sean’s pain and saved some young lord. That’s pretty amazing.” Remy’s eyes traveled slowly up and down my body. “They hate Sworn Assets here, you know. Before my shaman disappeared, he told me that we’re like a tiger that brings prey to feed the village, you know, dangerous and powerful but oh so necessary.”

“Then why don’t they leave Earth?” I said with some heat. “Why don’t they just pack up and head to another planet with a red sun like the Original Home?”

Remy chuckled. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But my shaman told me that the Earth has been a good place for the Original People. He claims this has been a safe planet and that the people are healthier and a lot taller. Personally I think it’s because the Mechanics and the highborn were able to make a society here where they didn’t have to do physical work. But that’s just my opinion. My shaman would disagree.”

“You’ve been talking politics with them?” I asked.

“Sure. Like my shaman claims that there is no technology around here, but don’t believe it. This place is saturated with technology. It’s just that you don’t see it. We’ve debated that many times.”

“Have you met the other Sworn Assets?” Sean asked.

“Not yet. They don’t encourage us meeting because they think we’ll fall in love with each other. I guess being mutated makes us find each other irresistible.” Remy lowered his voice. “There’s something going on and I suspect that it’s not a good thing for us. I overheard my shaman whispering about a meeting with a representative from the court. And Lord Ramsey and Lady Leslie are already here.”

“They’re back?” I asked with a jolt of fear. I couldn’t help but associate them with the clawman, even though it was irrational. My stomach turned over and over, making me queasy.

Before Remy could answer, a short, round man plowed his way through the atrium like a moose through brush and shouted for everyone to get out of his way. He moved quickly for one of his girth and shoved aside anyone who didn’t move fast enough. Several young men and women trotted behind him, struggling to keep up.

“Open those doors in the name of His and Her Majesty, you filthy animals!” he bellowed at the footmen.

The footmen ignored his order. They stopped the fat man outside the door, and his mouth tightened with fury as he glared at them. After a moment the big doors opened and the little man grabbed a footman by the front of his uniform.

“If you let anyone in while I’m here, I’ll have you dipped in lava all the way to your knees,” the little man bellowed. “You’ll beg for a clawman before it’s over.”

He shoved the footman away and slammed the door shut behind himself, sending a wave of thunder down the hallways. For a few moments no one moved, not even the three of us Sworn Assets. The footman quaked and had trouble keeping on his feet.

“Was that the guy you were talking about?” I whispered to Remy.

“Yeah. He’s an ambassador from the court. They wear that symbol on their clothes. It’s like the military around here where badges and insignias are concerned.”

A dozen men with fur-trimmed trousers ran past us into the courtyard. They all stood guard outside the throne room windows.

“I want to hear what’s going on in there.” Remy turned to Sean and me. “Order all your staff to stay here and wait for us. Then come with me. If this throne room is anything like the one at the House of Rothgar, then no one will be up on the balcony. And I think I know where to look for a small door that we can use to get up there.”

Sean and I ordered our staff to wait and then we followed Remy. We walked slowly and decorously, the way Original People always did, through the courtyard past the men who were keeping people away from the throne room windows. We entered the building through a different door. Remy looked around to make sure we were alone and began searching behind every statue, table, and pillar.

“Here it is,” he said as he pulled a tapestry away from the wall and revealed a passage.

Remy disappeared into the opening. Sean, though suspicious, went next. I followed up the steep, narrow steps to the balcony above the throne room. Angry voices echoed back and forth in the huge space. The three of us crawled in and sat down on the floor behind the railings of the balcony to listen. The first words we heard set our hearts pounding.

“Your incompetence with the Sworn Assets has left me breathless,” Lord Ambassador Jordi shouted. Sylvan and Naomi sat stiffly on their thrones. Ramsey and Leslie, their faces tight with anger, were seated nearby on upholstered chairs. “How all you fools managed to let this happen is beyond me. His and Her Majesty sent me all the way from Africa to remedy your North American stupidity! Never in the thousands of years we’ve been on this planet has anyone perpetrated such idiocy.”

“How could we help it if the humans’ school burned down?” said Sylvan peevishly.

Jordi rounded on him. “Maybe by reckoning that the humans would shuffle the Picard Sworn Asset to an alternate school? Did any one of you bestir yourselves enough to make certain that the two Sworn Assets wouldn’t be assigned to the same one? How about that for starters?”

Sylvan’s face darkened in anger. “That duty belonged to our Sworn Asset’s shaman—”

“Who disappeared and none of you bothered to find out why,” Jordi cried, his voice a lash that cut through Sylvan’s words. The veins stood out on his neck. “Thanks to your egregious carelessness all the Sworn Assets who were on the surface on the other continents fell dead—all of them—not just those in the six North American Great Houses. Those creations are total losses! Total! At least a thousand healers had to be drained to death in order to save the others who were below ground. And all of that because of the incompetence of your two Houses.”

“There’s no proof that our Sworn Assets caused that!” Naomi said.

“Really? We’re supposed to believe that they all dropped dead in some kind of incredible coincidence that just happened to be when your Sworn Assets touched? And what about the Treaty? Did you just set it aside along with your brains?”

Naomi huffed, but she didn’t reply.

“Clearly the Mechanics created poor Sworn Assets,” Sylvan argued.

“Oh, shut up!” Jordi turned a look of pure loathing on him. “Are you aware that one of your Sworn Assets drained a Second Mechanic?”

“The healers gave him back his energy,” Naomi said, furious.

“They gave him the inferior energy of a palace healer and he is now little better than a gibbering idiot. He’s hardly worth the trouble it would take to put him to the lava. And just when I began to believe there was an end to how far your bad judgment could take you, I find out you subjected two Sworn Assets and Lord Tardik—the highborn lord of a Great House—to a clawman. A clawman!”

Jordi bellowed the last two words so loudly they rang off the throne room walls.

“Lord Tardik was a hostage,” Naomi said. “He knew the risks.”

“Lord Tardik is a highborn lord of the purest bloodlines, not a plaything to satisfy your sadistic yearnings.”

Ramsey and Leslie traded nods, clearly pleased with that assessment.

Naomi looked at Jordi with open irritation. “Make you point.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Haven’t I been making my point?” The ambassador’s face was a mask betraying nothing but his anger. He pulled a bag from one of his enormous sleeves and revealed a long, slender crystal that was about a foot high and shaped like a candle flame. “Contemplate this.”

Ramsey, Naomi, Leslie, and Sylvan all started protesting at once.

Jordi chopped his arm through the air, cutting off their objections. “Your Houses will restore the energy that was lost by the other Houses when your Sworn Assets touched.”