Murder of Crows

CHAPTER 10

“Phineas Jones is here to see you.”

The Controller gathered up the papers on his desk, put them in a folder, and put the folder in the bottom desk drawer before he said, “Send him in.”

Phineas Jones was a short man with sandy hair, faded blue eyes, and a sweet smile. He wore an off-the-rack suit with a waistcoat that was a little tight over his rounded belly and one of the bow ties that were his trademark. He looked like he belonged in a sepia print, a photograph of someone who lived a few generations ago. And that was one of his major assets: Phineas Jones looked quaint and harmless. His abilities as a mesmerizer made him the most successful procurer of blood prophets in all of Thaisia.

For more than twenty years, Jones had talked parents into giving up a troubled girl for her own good, and by the time the family realized the contact information they had was bogus and they had no idea where their daughter had gone, Jones had packed up and moved on. And the girl ended up in a compound in some other part of Thaisia.

Even if a family wasn’t willing to give up a child, Jones sold the information about the family’s location and habits, making a straightforward abduction that much easier.

The Controller didn’t like Jones and certainly didn’t trust him. But they’d done business on occasion. After all, families who carried the cassandra sangue bloodline could be difficult to ferret out—until the girl began cutting and called too much attention to herself.

“I was surprised to hear from you,” Jones said as he settled in the visitor’s chair. “It’s my understanding that you’ve been running a successful breeding program and would have little use for my services.”

“Even the best breeding program benefits from new stock now and then,” the Controller replied.

“Is that what you’re looking for? New stock? Or perhaps a reacquisition of previously owned property?”

So Jones had heard about cs759’s escape and the failure to reacquire her. “New stock. Doesn’t have to be prime grade.”

“My, my. That wasn’t what I expected. Several other gentlemen are looking to acquire new stock. It seems a number of girls have become unreliable all of a sudden. But those men are all looking for the best that’s out there.”

“I already have the best,” the Controller replied. “What I’m looking for is variety.”

Jones thought for a moment. “I think I’ll poke about in the eastern part of Thaisia. Haven’t been there in a while. I’ve made some excellent finds in some of the sleepy hamlets in the Southeast Region.” Then he smiled that sweet smile. “Although with spring so close, the Northeast will be coming into bloom. And I recall there was an incident near Lake Etu last summer. Something about a girl drowning in the river?” He gave the Controller an expectant look.

“I don’t recall hearing anything.”

“Could be nothing. Accidental drownings happen all the time.”

Of course, if it hadn’t been an accident, if the girl had jumped into the river to escape the visions she didn’t understand … Families that had blood prophets either hid among normal humans in solitary fear or gathered together. So a blood prophet in one family could lead to other girls living in the same area who were also cassandra sangue.

“Fine,” the Controller said. “Go east. See what you can find. I assume you’re splitting your expenses among all your potential buyers?”

“For the most part,” Jones replied. “Expenses for obtaining a particular girl for a private acquisition would be paid by the buyer.”

“Of course.” He considered a moment. “Some trouble will be stirring around Lake Etu. Just something to be aware of when you’re traveling.”

“Trouble tends to stir the pot and bring what is hidden to the surface.” Jones stood and tugged his jacket into place. “Well. I must be off. I’ll call you when I have a potential delivery.”

The Controller watched the man leave the office. He had sent trained fighters to the Lakeside Courtyard to reacquire Meg Corbyn. They had failed. More than failed. Perhaps Phineas Jones’s quaint looks and mesmeric abilities could do what guns and explosives could not.

Jean pulled the broken needle out of the seam of her slipper. It wasn’t much to work with, but she’d taken it while the Walking Names were distracted by another girl having a fit of hysterics.

No water in the girls’ cells. Nothing but a bedpan if a girl couldn’t wait for her turn to be taken to the toilet. And with the Walking Names preoccupied by what might be happening outside the compound, they weren’t following the schedule as diligently as usual, especially now that some of the girls had seen things so terrible even the euphoria hadn’t shielded them completely from the horror.

She knew about terrible things and horror. The wounds that were inflicted on her to harvest her blood produced visions too. But they gagged her because they wanted her pain, so she saw the terrible without anything to shield her mind.

She didn’t know if she was halfway crazy or all the way crazy now. Her mind worked. What she overheard, she understood, and she overheard plenty because the Walking Names no longer paid attention to her presence and talked about the other girls they had to deal with—girls who were breaking down mentally because of what they had seen.

Girls talked about cities in ruins, about fields burning, about people killing each other for the last bags of food in a store, about corpses damming a stream that provided the drinking water for a village. They talked about glass jars full of smoke, and a community swimming pool full of severed heads. For the past few days, it didn’t matter what the client asked about, whether it was business or politics or the best time to plant crops. The questions didn’t matter because all the girls were seeing things too terrible to forget.

She’d seen those things too, but the streets and buildings she saw didn’t match any of the training images for cities or towns in Thaisia, and the street signs were in a language she didn’t recognize.

The Controller and other men like him had set something in motion. They thought prophecies would help them control the world and everything in it. They hadn’t considered that they wouldn’t be able to control how people felt.

The Others weren’t anything close to human, but they had feelings too. They had lots of feelings.

Jean wet a spot on her nightie’s hem, then rubbed the needle clean as best she could. Pricking the skin deep enough to draw blood wouldn’t give her enough, but a scratch made by a needle would draw attention because the Walking Names would know it wasn’t caused by a razor or a beating.

There was one place they wouldn’t think to look.

Hooking the side of her mouth with one finger, she put the needle in her mouth and dragged the point along the lower left-hand side of her gum. As the blood welled up, she wiped off the needle and carefully put it back in the slipper, fighting against the building pain and the need to speak. As long as she didn’t speak, she would remember the visions, remember the prophecy. But without spoken words, there would be terrible pain instead of the euphoria.

The Walking Names. The ones who touched me today. What is going to happen to them?

She swallowed the blood and the pain … and saw the first visions of the prophecy.

Too much. Too terrible.

She grabbed her pillow and covered her face. Then she whispered, describing the images to no one. Euphoria rolled through her body as she spoke, replacing the pain and clouding the images as she described them.

When the prophecy ended, Jean lowered the pillow.

What she’d seen. It was coming here. Maybe not all of it, but enough.

Shivering, she lay down on her narrow bed and pulled up the covers.

She tried not to think about how the Walking Names were going to look one day. Instead she focused on the last image that came to her as the prophecy ended. She had stopped speaking out loud by then, so this image was clear in her memory.

For the rest of the afternoon, she pondered the significance of seeing her own hand holding a jar of honey.