“Where are we?” I hissed, seeing colorful fabrics draped from the ceiling, shelves full of pottery and glassware.
“I told you to memorize that little map!” he whispered back to me. “The one from the file!” He said nothing to the women who were working there, but the woman behind the chip reader met his eyes and made the slightest motion with her head. We took a sharp turn through lovely, draping silks, and before us was a long, dark, bad-smelling staircase.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I had put my complete trust in Tim sometime after we’d left the camp. Maybe when we were in the abandoned store with the wolves? When he hadn’t deserted me? It had just happened; I hadn’t noticed it.
So basically I had broken the very first, most important rule of Crazy House: Never, ever trust anyone.
103
BECCA
I WAS STUCK. I’D THOUGHT I’d be a lunch server, immediately leap through the air, knock the President out of his chair, and kill him somehow. I didn’t care what happened after that.
But the “dining room” was in fact an enormous dining barn practically as big as the Provost’s house back home. One wall was all windows opening to a beautiful garden. I had them pegged as one possible route of escape. The other walls were covered with gold-flecked wallpaper and lined with gorgeous sideboards laden with food and extra plates. I’d seen several easy-to-grab carving knives, if I could avoid the eyes of the armed guards stationed around the room.
So I had weapons and at least one possible escape route. What I didn’t have was proximity. I was at the opposite end of the world’s longest table, serving a woman with elaborate blond hair fading to pale green. There was one server per person, and she was mine. All I’d been able to do for the last endless hour was mimic the servers on either side of me: stepping forward to push chairs in, refill water glasses and wine goblets, remove empty plates, etc.
My bulletless gun hung uncomfortably beneath my skirt and apron, tucked into the granny panties they made me wear here. I shouldn’t have even brought it.
I was trained to assess risk and outcome. The risk here was high; I judged my chance of success to be about 25 percent, and the chances of me dying at 100 percent.
I told myself I was bid
ing my time, waiting to make my move, but in reality I had no firm plan on what my move might be. Also, I was learning a lot standing here like an herb-picker, listening to the table talk. Servants are invisible; we might as well be robots. As we kept refilling wineglasses, the talk got louder—and looser.
“Any more news on the drought in the western cells?” a man asked my personal assignment.
She tilted her head and made a face. “Little or no relief, and death tolls rising.”
I glanced left and right to see if the other servers had “Oh, my God” faces on, but they looked expressionless and I quickly wiped my face to neutrality. They were talking about cellfolk. Cellfolk dying because of drought. While their big stag ice statue dripped silently into a silver tray of fruit.
The next time my neighboring server leaped forward to refill water glasses, I edged over to the sideboard and slid a long carving knife into the folds of my skirt. Over the next ten minutes I calculated how far I’d have to run to get close enough, how much time I’d have to do that, and how much force I’d use to sink the carving knife deep into the President’s chest.
The woman next to mine leaned over and lowered her voice. I immediately drifted up with a chilled bottle of rosé. They ignored me.
“If you’re planning to go south for a vacation, dear,” the other woman said very quietly, “don’t. Virtually everything south of here has been hit by plague.”
I almost let the wine spill but caught myself and stepped back. Everything south of here? Like, everyone south of here? Every cell?
“I heard there was… trouble in the east,” my woman murmured, and the other one made the very slightest appalled face, then took another bite of sorbet.
Okay, that was it. All I had to do was quickly slice a jugular, nick a carotid, swiftly run a knife beneath a rib cage—it would take two seconds.
I gripped the knife more tightly and took a step forward. Then one of the dining room doors opened and two guards admitted a tall man in a suit. I stared in disbelief and bit my lip hard so I wouldn’t gasp out loud.
“Ah, Provost Allen, is it?” The President’s voice drifted to me from far away. “From Cell…”—an aide whispered into the President’s ear—“B-97-4275, right?”
104
CASSIE
“I’M SURPRISED YOU’RE ALIVE,” MS. Strepp said to me.
I just gaped at her. Eyes wide in the dim light, mouth open like a goldfish. Slowly my head turned to Tim: he wasn’t surprised at all. Finally I looked at the stranger with us; he was very tall, very slender, and wearing an oversize, bulky trench coat.
“They call me the Loner,” he said, brushing fair blond hair away from his face.
Finally my brain could seize something. “Oh. You’re the Loner?” My eyebrows raised. “Okaaaay.” I turned away just as his blue eyes flared.