Black dawn (22 page)

"What are you talking a-?"
Jeanne broke off,
looking at Maggie with her eyebrows drawn together. Suddenly the eyebrows flew up and she straightened slightly from her crouch.
"Hmm."

Maggie stared back. Then she followed all their eyes and looked down at herself in bewilderment.

For the first time since she'd arrived in the
Dark
Kingdom
she wasn't wearing her jacket and her
shoes. She was wearing exactly what she'd been
wearing when her mother's screams woke her three
days before-her flowered pajama top, wrinkled
jeans, and mismatched socks.

"'She will come clothed in flowers, shod in blue
and scarlet,"' the girl was saying. She was still
pointing at Maggie, but now it was with something
like reverence. "'And she will speak of freedom.'
You heard her, Laundress! It's
her.
She's the one!"

The knife trembled slightly. Maggie stared at the
red knuckles of the hand holding it,
then
looked
up at Laundress's face.

The blotchy features were grim and
skeptical
but
there was an odd gleam of half-stifled hope in
the eyes. "Is she the one?" she said harshly to
Jeanne. "Is this idiot Soaker right? Did she say she's
come to deliver us?"

Jeanne opened her mouth,
then
shut it again.
She looked helplessly at Maggie.

And, unexpectedly, P.J. spoke up. "She told us
she had to get the slaves free before Hunter
Red
fern
had them all killed," she said in her light,
strong child's voice. She was standing straight, her slender body drawn to its fullest height. Her blond
hair shone pale above her small earnest face. Her
words had the unmistakable ring of truth.

Something flashed in Jeanne's eyes. Her lip
quirked, then she bit it. "She sure did. And I told
her she was crazy."

"And in the beginning, when Jeanne showed her
what they do to escaped slaves here, Maggie said
it had to stop."
P.J.'s
voice was still clear and confident. "She said she couldn't let them
do
things
like that to people."

"She said we couldn't let them do things like
that," Jeanne corrected. "And she was crazy again.
There's no way to stop them."

Laundress stared at her for a moment,
then
turned her burning gaze on Maggie. Her eyes were
so fierce that Maggie was afraid she was going to
attack. Then, all at once, she thrust the knife back
in her pocket.

`Blasphemer!" she said harshly to Jeanne. "Don't
talk about the Deliverer that way! Do you want to
take away our only hope?"

Jeanne raised an eyebrow.
"You
were the one
about to take it away," she pointed out.

Laundress glared at her. Then she turned to Mag
gie and a change came over her gaunt features. It
wasn't much; they still remained
as
severe and grim
as ever, but there was something like a bleak smile twisting her mouth.

"If you are the Deliverer," she said, "you've got
your work cut out for you."

"Just everybody
hang
on one second," Maggie
said.

Her head was whirling. She understood what
was going on--sort of. These people believed she
was some legendary figure come to save them. Be
cause of a prophecy-they seemed to have a lot of
prophecies around here.

But she couldn't really be their Deliverer. She
knew
that. She was just an ordinary girl. And
hadn't anybody else ever worn a flowered top in
this place?

Well maybe not. Not a slave anyway. Maggie looked at Laundress's clothes again with new eyes.
If they all wore this sort of thing, hand sewn and
plain as a burlap sack, maybe a machine-made top
with bright colors and a little wilted lace
would
look like something from a legend.

And I bet nobody wears red and blue socks, she
thought and almost smiled.
Especially at once.

She remembered how Sylvia had looked at them. Normally she would have been terribly embarrassed by that, perfect Sylvia looking at her imper
fections. But the socks had been what started her
on this whole journey by convincing her that Sylvia
was
lying
. And just now they'd saved her life. If
Laundress had attacked Jeanne or Cady, Maggie would have had to fight her.

But I'm still not the Deliverer, she thought. I have
to explain that to them....

"And since she's the Deliverer, you're going to
help us, right?" Jeanne was saying. "You're going to heal Cady and feed us and hide us and every
thing? And help Maggie find out what happened to
her brother?"

Maggie blinked,
then
grimaced. She could see Jeanne looking at her meaningfully. She shut her
mouth.

"I'll help you any way I can," Laundress said.
"But you'd better do your part. Do you have a plan, Deliverer?"

Maggie rubbed her forehead. Things were hap
pening very fast-but even if she wasn't the
Deliverer,
she
had
come to help the slaves get free. Maybe it didn't matter what they called her.

She looked at Cady again, then at Jeanne, and at P.J., who was staring at her with shining confi
dence in her young eyes. Then she looked at the
girl named Soaker, who was wearing the same
expression.

Finally she looked into the gaunt, hard-bitten
face of Laundress. There was no easy confidence
here, but there was that half-stifled look of hope
deep
in the burning gaze.

"I don't have a plan yet," she said. "But Ill come
up with one. And I don't know if I can really help
you people. But I'll try."

CHAPTER 14

M
aggie woke up slowly and almost luxuriously. She wasn't freezing. She wasn't aching or weak
with hunger. And she had an unreasonable feeling
of safety.

Then she sat up and the safe feeling disappeared.

She was in Laundress's hut of earth bricks.
Jeanne and P.J. were there, but Cady had been taken to another hut to be treated. Laundress had
stayed all night with her, and Maggie had no idea
if she was getting better or not. The frightened girl
called Soaker brought them breakfast, but could
only say that Cady was still asleep.

Breakfast was the same as dinner last night had
been:
a sort
of thick oatmeal sweetened with huckle
berries. Maggie ate it gratefully. It was good-at
least to somebody
as hungry as she was.

"We're lucky to have it," Jeanne said, stretching.
She and P.J. were sitting opposite Maggie on the
bare earth of the floor, eating with their fingers. They all were wearing the coarse, scratchy tunics
and loose leggings of slaves, and Maggie kept going
into spasms of twitching when the material made her itch somewhere she couldn't reach. Maggie's
clothes, including her precious socks, were hidden
at the back of the hut.

"They don't grow much grain or vegetable stuff," Jeanne was saying. "And of course slaves don't get
to eat any meat. Only the vampires and the
shapeshifters
get to eat blood or flesh."

P.J. shivered, hunching up her thin shoulders. "When you say it like that, it makes me not
want
to eat it."

Jeanne gave a sharp-toothed grin. "They're afraid
it would make the slaves too strong. Everything
here's designed for that. Maybe you noticed
,
there's
not much in the slave quarters made of wood."

Maggie blinked. She
had
noticed that vaguely, at
the back of her mind. The huts were made of
bricks, with hard-packed
dirt
floors. And there were
no wooden tools like rakes or brooms lying around.

"But what do they burn?" she asked, looking at
the small stone hearth built right on the floor of
the hut. There was a hole in the roof above to let
smoke out.

"Charcoaled
wood,
cut in little pieces. They make
it out in the forest in charcoal pits, and it's strictly
regulated. Everybody only gets so much. If they find a slave with extra wood, they execute '
em
."

"Because wood kills vampires," Maggie said.

Jeanne nodded. "And silver
kills
shapeshifters
.
Slaves are forbidden to have silver, too-not that
any of them are likely to get hold of any."

P.J. was looking out the small window of the hut.
There was no glass in it, and last night it had been
stuffed with sacking against the cold air. "If slaves can't eat meat, what are those?" she asked.

Maggie leaned to look. Outside two big calves were tethered to iron pickets. There were also a dozen trussed-up chickens and a pig in a pen made
of rope.

"Those are for Night People," Jeanne said. "The
shapeshifters
and witches eat regular food--and so
do the vampires, when they want to. It looks like
they're going to have a feast
they don t bring the
animals here until they're ready to slaughter."

P.J.'s
face was troubled. "I feel sorry for them," she said softly.

"Yeah, well, there are worse things than being
hit over the head," Jeanne said. "See those cages
just beyond the pig? That's where the exotics are

•
tigers
and things they bring in to hunt.
That's
a bad way to die."

Maggie felt ice down her spine. "Let's hope we
never have to find out--2' she was beginning, when
a flash of movement outside caught her eye.

"Get down!" she said sharply, and ducked out of

•
line
of sight of the window. Then, very care
fully, with her body tense, she edged up to the open
square again and peered out.

"What is it?" Jeanne hissed. P.J. just cowered on the
floor, breathing quickly.

Maggie whispered, "Sylvia."

Two
figures had appeared, walking through the back courtyard and talking
as
they went.
Sylvia and Gavin.
Sylvia's gown today was misty leaf green,
and her hair rippled in shimmering waves over her
shoulders. She looked beautiful and graceful and
fragile.

"Are they coming here?" Jeanne breathed.

Maggie shook a hand-held low to the
ground
toward
her to be quiet. She was afraid of the same
thing. If the Night People began a systematic
search of the huts, they were lost.

But instead, Sylvia turned toward the cages that
held the exotics. She seemed to be looking at the
animals, occasionally turning to make a remark
to Gavin.

"Now, what's she up to?" a voice murmured by Maggie's ear. Jeanne had crept up beside her.

"I don't know. Nothing good," Maggie whispered.

"They must be planning a hunt," Jeanne said
grimly. "That's bad. I heard they were going to do
a big one when
Delos
came to an agreement with
Hunter
Redfern
."

Maggie drew in her breath.
Had things gone that
far already?
It meant she didn't have much time
left.

Outside, she could see Sylvia shaking her head,
then
moving on to the pens and tethers holding the
domestic animals.

"Get back," Maggie whispered, ducking down.
But Sylvia never looked at the hut. She made some remark while looking at the calves and smiling.
Then she and Gavin turned and strolled back
through the kitchen garden.

Maggie watched until they were out of sight,

chewing
her lip. Then she looked at Jeanne.

"I think we'd better go see Laundress."

The hut Jeanne led her to
was
a little bigger than
the others and had what Maggie knew by now was
an amazing luxury: two rooms. Cady was in the
tiny room-hardly bigger than an alcove-in back.

And she was looking better. Maggie saw it imme
diately. The clammy, feverish look was gone and so
were the blue-black shadows under her eyes. Her
breathing was deep and regular and her lashes lay
heavy and still on her smooth cheeks.

"Is she going to be all right?" Maggie asked Laun
dress eagerly.

The gaunt woman was sponging Cady's cheeks
with a cloth. Maggie was Surprised at how tender
the big red-knuckled hands could be.

"She'll live
as
long
as
any of us," Laundress said
grimly, and Jeanne gave a wry snort. Even Maggie felt her lip twitch. She was beginning to like this woman. In fact, if Jeanne and Laundress were ex
amples, the slaves here had
a courage
and a black
humor that she couldn't help but admire.

"I had a daughter," Laundress said. "She was
about this one's age, but she had that one's color
ing." She nodded slightly at
P.J.,
who clutched at
the baseball cap stashed inside her tunic and
smiled.

Maggie hesitated,
then
asked. "What happened
to her?"

"One of the nobles saw her and liked her," Laun
dress said. She wrung out the cloth and put it
down, then stood briskly. When she saw Maggie
still looking at her, she added,
as
if she were talking
about the weather, "He was a
shapeshifter
, a wolf
named
Autolykos
. He bit her and passed his curse
on to her, but then he got tired of her. One night
he made her run and hunted her down."

Maggie's knees felt weak. She couldn't think of
anything to say that wouldn't be colossally stupid,
so she didn't say anything.

P.J. did. "I'm sorry," she said in a husky little voice, and she put her small hand in Laundress's
rough one.