Armageddon's Children (50 page)

“Are you all right?” he asked her quietly.

Before she could answer him, the man seated at the center of the table across from them slammed his hand down on the tabletop so hard that it caused Hawk to jump. “Be quiet!” he said. “You will not speak unless asked to. You will not speak to each other. This is a trial and you will obey the dictates of this court!”

The man was big and craggy, his face and voice unfriendly, and his eyes dark with anger. Hawk looked at him, then at the other two, and his heart sank. Their minds were already made up about what they intended to do to him. The best he could hope for was to deflect their anger from Tessa.

“State your name,” the man said to him.

He took a deep breath. “I am Hawk,” he answered. “I am a Ghost, and I haunt the ruins of my parents’ world.”

There was subdued laughter from the audience, and the big man reddened. “Is it your intention to mock this court, boy? Do you think this is a game?”

“Your Honor, he is only stating what is true,” Tessa said quickly. “He is a member of a tribe called Ghosts. Hawk is the name he has taken.”

The judge looked at her, glanced at the two seated next to him, and nodded. “We will call him whatever he wishes to be called so long as he remains respectful. He is accused—you are both accused—of stealing stores from the compound for personal use. The evidence is clear. Tessa, you were observed in the medical dispensary when you had no right to be there. Medicines were found missing. You claimed to have been conducting an inventory, but no inventory was authorized. You met this boy outside the compound walls without permission, a secret assignation, and you gave these medicines to him. If any of this is wrong, say so now.”

Tessa’s mouth tightened, and she straightened in her chair. “I took the medicines to save a little girl who was dying. Why is that wrong?”

“Your reasons for what you did are not relevant to this trial. Just answer the question. Is any of what I have recited wrong?”

Tessa shook her head slowly. “No, it is correct.”

“You, boy. Hawk.” The judge gestured at him. “What was your part in this? What did you do with the medicines?”

Hawk glanced at Tessa. “I used them to help the little girl.”

“A street child?”

He nodded.

“Answer me!”

Hawk felt his cheeks burn with anger. “Yes.”

The man bent close and whispered to the other two, then looked back to Hawk. “There is no defense for what you did.” His gaze shifted to Tessa. “No defense for either of you. The law of the compound is clear in this instance. All violators are—”

“Your Honor,” Tessa interrupted quickly. “I claim the right and protection of marriage bonding.”

There was a muted exclamation from the crowd, and some of them began to mutter angrily. Hawk forced himself not to look at them, knowing what he would find in their faces.

“Are you saying you married a street boy, Tessa?” the judge asked quietly.

Her beautiful, dark face lifted defiantly. “I did. I took him to me, and I carry his child.”

Cries of outrage exploded from the assemblage. Hawk glanced quickly at Tessa, but she was looking straight ahead at the judges. He wondered if what she had just told them was true. Was she carrying his child? He stared at her, trying in vain to read the truth in her face.

The judge presiding signaled for quiet, then said, “Compound law does not recognize marriages made to those who live outside the walls. It does not matter that you carry his child. Even if your marriage were sanctioned, it would not save his life. He is an outsider and he has broken our law. In any case, I am not sure that I believe you. Clearly, you are infatuated with him and would lie to save him.”

“Where is my mother?” Tessa cried out. “I want her to come forward and speak for me.”

The judge hesitated, and then glanced toward the crowd. There was a moment’s pause, and then a small, dark-clad woman who bore more than a passing resemblance to Tessa appeared out of the crowd. A few hands reached out as if to assist her, but she brushed them away with her crushed, gnarled fingers, with her hands turned withered and streaked with vivid red scars. Hawk cringed as he glimpsed them, thinking of the pain she must have endured. He had never seen her before, but there was no mistaking who she was. Once, when she was younger, she must have been beautiful like Tessa. Now, however, her face was pinched and tight, and there was no warmth in her dark eyes.

Those eyes shifted momentarily to find his, then slid away again. She walked up to her daughter and stopped.

“Is it true,” she demanded. “Do you carry his child?”

“Mother, please tell them—”

“Do you carry his child!”

Tessa flinched, her face crumpling. “Mother—”

Her mother spit on her, her face contorted with rage. “You have disgraced us, Tessa. Betrayed us! You were told not to see this boy again. You were forbidden! If your father…”

She was unable to finish the thought. She took a deep breath. “Do you know what you have done? Do you have any idea? What will happen to me, Tessa? Have you thought of that? Your father is gone. Now you abandon me, too. I am crippled—useless to all! Do you know what that means? Do you?”

Her face turned hard and set. “If your father were here, he would not speak for you, and neither will I.”

Tessa looked stunned, her blank eyes filling with tears. Her mother held her gaze a moment, and then turned away and disappeared back into the crowd.

“Wait!” Hawk leapt to his feet. “I know what you intend for me, but you can’t blame her! She did it because I threatened to hurt her if she didn’t do as I said!”

The judge barely glanced at him as two of his captors took hold of him and forced him back into his chair. “Tessa and Hawk, you have been found guilty by this court. The penalty for stealing stores is death. You will be taken to the walls of the compound at sunset today and thrown over. We grant you forgiveness for your acts and wish you a better life in the next world. This court is adjourned. Take them away.”

Shouts rose from the crowd, mingled with scattered applause. The guards descended on Hawk once more, seized his arms as he tried in vain to break free, and swept him from the room.

The last thing he saw, looking back over his shoulder, was Tessa sitting where he had left her, weeping into her hands.

L
OGAN TOM SPENT
the remainder of the night keeping watch in the hallway outside the door he had tried unsuccessfully to pass through earlier. Realizing that the gypsy morph was in all likelihood the boy called Hawk—the one he’d unfortunately let pass him by on the street before coming into the building—he had determined to wait for his return. Hawk would be back soon, Owl had insisted. He had gone to the compound to visit his girlfriend. She would not say anything more than that. No one quite trusted him yet. Candle, more than the others, believed he was there to help. But it was Owl who made all the decisions, and she was taking no chances.

So, despite everything—or perhaps because of it—she had steadfastly refused to let him enter their quarters. All she had been willing to agree to was letting him remain in the hallway outside the door. She promised that they would not make up their minds about him until Hawk’s return. She promised that they would not try to slip out the back or flee into the city and that they would let him cast the finger bones again when Hawk returned.

Then, having left his staff lying on the floor where he could reach it, they had backed into their lair and closed and locked the door. There had been no argument from any of them, including Candle, that he should be allowed to come inside.

So he sat in the hallway all night with his back against the far wall, facing the door and waiting. He slept off and on, but never deeply and never for very long. He had time to think about what he would do once he had determined if the boy Hawk was, in fact, the gypsy morph. How hard would it be to persuade him of his lineage? It was one thing to offer your help; it was another to gain acceptance. None of these street kids knew anything of Knights of the Word. Why should they? But it made his job just that much more difficult. There was no reason for the morph to trust him any more than these other street kids did.

There was another problem, a potentially bigger one. Would the morph even know what it was supposed to do once it had been told what it was? O’olish Amaneh had seemed confident that all the pieces would fall into place once the morph was found. But Logan was suspicious. In his experience, few things ever seemed to work out the way you expected. Mostly, something went wrong.

Dawn broke, and Hawk had not returned. Logan rose and went down to the street and looked around. There was no one in sight. He stood there for a long time, willing the boy to appear. But the street remained empty of life.

He took a deep breath and exhaled. Something was wrong, and he was afraid that it was going to change everything.

He needed a bath and something to eat, but he gave up on both and went back into the building. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and knocked on the door to the lair of the Ghosts. This time the door opened immediately and Owl wheeled into view, the other street kids trailing silently.

“He hasn’t come back?” Logan asked.

Owl shook her head. “Will you try to find him?”

“I don’t know. Has this ever happened before?”

She tightened her lips. “No. He meets Tessa secretly, and then comes back before it gets light. Usually, he takes Cheney, but Cheney is hurt, so he left him behind. Hawk has been taking chances lately with Tessa. Someone in the compound might have found out about them. I’ve warned him that these meetings are dangerous. The people in the compound don’t like street kids.”

Logan nodded. “I know how they think. I’ve encountered it before. They don’t like anyone who lives beyond the walls. They can be very hard on outsiders.”

“It might be worse here. Tessa was stealing medicines from the compound stores to help street kids. Hawk asked her, and she agreed. If they found out about that…”

“Can you get inside the compound to find out?” asked the girl with dark hair and intense eyes.

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Maybe not. They don’t have any reason to help me. A lot of them don’t even like me.”

The dark-skinned kid pushed forward and looked back at the others, blocking Logan off. “We don’t need him. He ain’t got nothin’ useful to offer us. Ain’t got nothin’ but that staff. At least we got weapons. We can find out for ourselves about the Bird-Man.”

“Shut up, Panther,” snapped the slender girl with the straw-colored hair and the fierce eyes. She looked back at Logan. “Will you try to find him? Will you go to the compound and ask?”

Straightforward and to the point. “All right,” he agreed.

“Do you want any of us to go with you?”

He shook his head. “Stay here. Let me see what I can learn on my own first. If that doesn’t work, I’ll come back and we’ll try something else.”

He went down the stairs without waiting for their reply, his mind made up about what he was going to do. He had come a long way to find the gypsy morph, and he wasn’t about to give up on it now. The Ghosts meant well, but they would only get in his way if Hawk was inside the compound. His best chance of reaching the boy was to speak with the compound leaders.

Assuming Hawk was still alive.

He got a block away before he stopped to throw the bones, unable to wait any longer to make certain there was still a reason to go on. But the bones formed up on the square of black cloth, pointing down the street and toward the sports complex that he already knew was serving as shelter for the compound members. He had seen it from the highway coming in and recognized it for what it was—another futile attempt by a dying civilization at staying alive, another false hope that protection from the world could be found by hiding behind walls.

He picked up the finger bones and put them back in his pocket. He wished sometimes he could find a way to convince those who lived in the compounds that they were inhabiting their own tombs. He wished he could make them see that there was no longer any safe place in the world, and that their best bet was to keep moving. But he knew that thousands of years of conditioned thinking was standing in the way of any real change, and the advice of one man wasn’t likely to overcome that.

He caught sight of some of the other denizens of the city as he went, their furtive, shadowy movements giving them away. Another would have missed them entirely, but his training and the magic of his staff revealed their presence to him. Mutants: some of them dangerous, some not. Some were solitary, some tribal, but the humans who had not mutated shunned them all. He wondered what would become of them in the future that Two Bears had prophesied.

He reached the compound without incident and walked up to the main gates, not trying to hide his approach. If he was to get anywhere, he must be direct. Guards atop the walls challenged him when he came into view, and he stopped where they could see him, calling up his name and order of service. One of the guards, at least, knew what it meant to be a Knight of the Word and told him that someone would be right down. He waited patiently, studying the complex, noting its defenses. It was heavily fortified; its inhabitants would be well armed. An attack would have to be massive and sustained if it was to succeed. Not that it wouldn’t. Eventually, they all did.