Chapter 23: Redbone (4)
Chapter 23
Redbone
Evening.
“I shouldn’t have procrastinated! Everyone else is done and I’m the only one left?!”
A high-pitched grumble carried from afar.
“It’s almost over… just a little more and it’ll be over…”
Zeedee lay collapsed over her desk, soul drained and drifting, but at last she finished it: a thirty-page report through its final draft, ready to submit.
“Damn it… Sparring with a shark is easier than this. Why do humans make such a sadistic ordeal out of everything?”
Ding-ding.
The entrance door (someone had installed a bell on it) chimed. Zeedee looked up to find Dan Burn at the threshold.
“Hey, Freya.”
“Your Highness?!”
“How are you holding up?”
“Hueeeee!!!”
“If you’ve got the strength to bawl, you’re not dead.”
Dan came in and sat beside her workstation. He pulled a cardboard box from his shoulder bag.
“I brought bread from the market.”
“Ahhh!!! Your Highness!!! You!!!”
Zeedee was nearly in tears—she hadn’t eaten a thing since after noon.
“There are several loaves. There’s meat, too.”
“A-all of this, for me?”
“Correct.”
“Y-your Highness! Thank you!”
devours messily
“Slow down.”
He handed her a napkin to wipe her mouth.
“Remember, right now we’re human.”
“You did this because you love me, didn’t you?!”
“Of course.”
Dan reached over and brushed a crumb from Zeedee’s lip.
“I’m thinking of asking Casca about tearing up your scholarship contract… You shouldn’t have to slog through this trouble just because you helped me.”
“That witch won’t help me. She still makes me sleep in the doghouse!”
“I might roll that portion of your debt over to me. After all, you chose the scholarship because of me, didn’t you?”
“For you, I’d do anything.”
Zeedee cupped the boy’s chin.
“But if you really want to help me, then when are we going to ‘smooch-smooch’?”
“Ask Casca about that.”
Dan crossed his legs, shook his head, and smiled from the corner of his mouth.
Just then, the lab door swung open.
“So you’re here after all!!!”
?
Dan and Zeedee turned together. Striding in quick as a snap was Thomasin Mayfield.
“Junior Dan!!!”
“Hm? Yes, Senior Thomasin?”
“I’ve been searching the whole place for you! What is going on?!”
“Pardon?”
A man followed Thomasin into the room… She glanced his way, eyes popping, shrieked, and darted behind Dan.
Roma.
“What is this, huh?! Why won’t this guy stop following me?! Since yesterday!”
Totti: “Miss Thomasin, please cooperate—”
“Eeek!”
“Senior, you do know that screaming won’t be heard, right?”
“Maybe it will. Could get lucky.”
Dan rolled his eyes.
“I asked him and he won’t answer anything! He just keeps saying he has to protect me! Yesterday I ran into the dorm and thought he’d stop, but this morning he was still outside! It’s too scary! Junior Dan, do something!”
Zeedee: “You stood outside her dorm all night?”
Totti: “Yes.”
Zeedee: “How didn’t you get nabbed?”
Totti: “Off-campus dorm.”
Zeedee: “Ah…”
“Doing this scares me! Please stop!”
“Totti is someone I know and trust. If something like Rafinya happens again, he can help for sure, Senior.”
“I don’t doubt that—just do it normally, please?!”
“Is this not normal?”
“No!!!!”
Dan looked at Totti and thought,
This is him when it’s Roma… If it were Valencia…
“Please take him away! I’m scared!”
“Ah… okay. I’ll talk to him, Senior…”
Thomasin puffed her cheeks and headed out, edging widely around Totti.
Totti: turns to follow with his eyes
Thomasin: startles
His Highness looked pained; he hardly wanted to imagine what behavior had frightened Thomasin so much.
“You didn’t do anything… odd to Thomasin, did you?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“Can I believe that…?”
“Absolutely, Your Highness. I followed every order.”
“Maybe this one’s on me.”
Dan scratched his head.
“You were standing there stalking her more than protecting her, I’d say.”
“What is ‘stalking,’ Your Highness?”
“What you’ve been doing for the past thirty years.”
“And what would be appropriate, then?”
“I’ll ask her again… someday.”
Outside Aetheris Academy, not far away.
“Faster! Faster! Time’s close! This anonymous client is paying us a fortune! We can’t be late!”
The crew boss—more like a head chef than a foreman—barked strict orders at his men.
Two wagons stood out front of the kitchen. Each wagon had only one driver, themselves hired on the side.
Their job: at 8 p.m., bring the wagons to the drop points the “client” had given, then clear out fast.
The kitchen had finished loading the goods into the wagons.
“Huff… huff… huff…”
“Fuu…”
“Boss… I’ve gotta say something.”
“What?”
“This client, if they aren’t throwing a huge banquet, they’ve gotta be deranged… They bought out ten pigs, cleared the shop, took everything—livers, kidneys, guts, brains, even bones… and paid five times the market price! Nuts! What could they possibly need all that for?!”
“And why do you care? They paid us five hundred thousand credits—that’s what matters!”
“Ugh… well, yeah, but—”
Thud!
< Hey! We’re heading out! We gotta keep time here! >
“Yeah, yeah! It’s ready!”
The meat wagons rolled out from the butcher’s.
They headed beyond the academy walls, into the forest behind.
And every step of the operation—
was within the sight of Princess Nora, hooded in black. She nodded, satisfied, and faded beneath the rising moonlight.
Princess Nora vaulted onto the rooftops of the nearby houses, then moved from one roof to another with swift leaps.
Anfield.
Two figures—one a prince, the other his retainer—walked side by side, heading up the hill beneath the pale moonlight.
At the upper terrace, Totti lifted his eyes to the sky… while Dan leaned against a boulder and opened his notebook.
“Seen through human eyes… the sky is truly beautiful, Your Highness.”
“Their eyes see the world more beautifully than ours, Roma.”
“As for what Your Highness is focusing on… how is it going?”
Dan gazed up at the stars…
But the image in his mind was underwater—the deep, mysterious ocean.
“I think of it every day… the day he rose from the depths of the sea and lifted his face to this beautiful sky for the first time in the world… What made that decision to leave the water? How much courage did they need?”
Roma could tell he understood maybe twenty percent of what Fury was rhapsodizing about right now.
“Your Highness, you’re using your private funds to support Paleobiology. You’re not giving it away for nothing, are you?”
“Of course not. I’ll open our islands for their study. That’s my endgame.”
“You’ll let humans set foot on our islands?”
“Our ancestors sleep beneath the earth. They’re down there. They are time’s record, telling us where we come from… The nature on our islands is pristine. If we let Thomasin’s team in, I’m sure we’ll find them.”
“Our islands are too vast for only ten humans, Your Highness. And would they even agree?”
“Knowledge doesn’t care about species.”
Totti picked up Dan’s notebook.
He saw… trial calculations, notes, fossils, and… stars in the sky.
He didn’t understand it—but he knew one thing for certain: his lord had found something he loved. That was what mattered most.
In that instant—
Totti stilled and turned right.
“Your Highness, I hear wagons below.”
“Wagons?”
“I smell an enormous amount of meat.”
“Hm?”
Dan pushed off from the boulder.
The two of them peered down the slope. There really were wagons parked there. Two men hopped off and mounted their horses.
< This the spot? >
< Yeah. >
< Looks like we’re ten minutes early. >
< Good. We can head back sooner. >
< Shall we go then? >
< That’s our job. The client only told us to park the wagons here. >
< Right… Don’t know what it’s for, but twenty-five thousand credits are twenty-five thousand credits. >
Dan and Totti heard every word.
“Could it be…”
They slid down the hillside, waited in hiding until the men were gone, then edged closer.
“Whoa… that smell…”
“Your Highness, will you really take it?”
“If it’s what I think… I should be able to take it.”
Dan vaulted onto the wagon… and pulled back the cover. Inside were… pig carcasses.
“!”
The boy’s eyes went wide.
“Nora…”
He flung the cover aside; the raw scent hit him full in the face. He found a flask with a rolled note inside. He pulled it out. What he found was a snowflake sigil and:
{Please enjoy.}
“…Nora.”
“Lady Nora sent this to you, Your Highness?”
“Went all the way, didn’t she… Buying out the whole pen—how much did that cost?”
“She must be quite fond of you, Your Highness.”
“Look around—no one’s here, right?”
“Affirmative.”
“Alright, then…”
Dan turned back.
“Care to eat with me, Roma?”