Chapter Fifteen Shea #2
The room goes quiet. She searches for something to say and finds nothing.
Needles clicking, Poppy says, “My dad always says we shouldn’t judge a person by the way they look, but by the content of their—”
“You saw him,” accuses Asher.
“—character,” finishes Poppy, scowling over at Asher.
He doesn’t notice. He’s looking right at Shea now, his eyes bright with an epiphany, and she wishes he’d look anywhere else. “The night Sullivan attacked you it was Lysander who killed him. That’s why you lied—you were covering for him.”
“So what if I was? I’d do the same for you.”
“He killed someone.”
“You’ve killed hundreds.”
He shakes his head. “Not like that. It’s not the same.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” snaps Shea, her patience frayed, “I must have missed that chapter in the handbook on murder . I guess it’s only acceptable when it’s a head shot from a hundred yards away.”
Asher’s eyes go wide. “Parker, he tore out someone’s heart with his bare hands.”
“Oliver did?”
Their host has reappeared, a wide rattan tray in hand. Instinctively, both Asher and Shea go quiet. Poppy knits faster, avoiding the man’s gaze as he peers at each of them in turn.
“This is very troubling, if true.”
Asher says nothing. Neither does Shea.
Frowning, the man sets the platter onto the table, shuffling the contents into order.
There’s a waxy truckle of cheese, a wedge cut loose.
A sleeve of crackers and a handful of nuts.
A large copper kettle rests on a shallow trivet, steam rising from the spout.
Taking a seat in a nearby rocking chair, he regards them across the top of his spectacles.
“Please,” he says, gesturing toward the tray. “Help yourselves. And perhaps while you do you can fill me in on what happened to Oliver.”
“It was a private conversation,” says Asher tightly.
“Of course.” The man smiles. “You’re reluctant to share sensitive information with a stranger. I understand. In that case, let’s begin with introductions. Perhaps, by the end, we won’t be strangers anymore.”
“I don’t need an introduction,” says Asher. “I know who you are. You’re Egor van Haut.”
Egor’s eyes sparkle. “Oliver told you about me?”
“He didn’t. But your property is pretty clearly marked on the geospatial maps back at the garrison. Anyone stationed out this way has strict orders to stay at least sixteen klicks from the border on all sides.”
“And yet here you are,” Egor notes.
Asher’s expression tightens. “I’m on leave.”
“You mean to say you’re a fugitive.” Egor tips back in his chair, fingers laced over his stomach.
“Don’t worry. As someone who has long been morally opposed to some of the more—oh, what should we call them—sadistic methods employed by the wood watch, you won’t hear any criticism from me.
Although I’ll admit Oliver makes a strange ally for a soldier. ”
“We have a shared interest,” says Asher.
“Do you? Intriguing.” Egor’s eyes drift to Shea as he reaches for the kettle. Water pours into a set of chipped porcelain cups, steam releasing into the air in thin tendrils. “Does anyone take sugar in their tea?”
“I’m set,” says Asher.
“None for me, thank you,” says Poppy, who has stopped knitting to pick at a handful of almonds.
“Suit yourself.” Egor spoons out three lumps of sugar into his cup and sits back, his chair creaking beneath him as he stirs it in. His eyes find Shea for the second time in as many minutes. “How about you? A cup of tea is an excellent remedy for mild hypovolemia.”
“Blood loss,” says Poppy, in response to the look of confusion that plays across Shea’s face. “You do look a little sweaty, Shea.”
“I’m fine.”
“There’s no need to be ashamed,” says Egor. “You wouldn’t be the first human to form a symbiotic bond with one of Oliver’s kind.”
Symbiotic. Another ugly word for this ugly thing they’ve done. Her stomach turns over. She can’t bring herself to look at Asher at all.
“That’s not what— It isn’t—” She falls off, flustered. “I’m fine .”
“Drink,” insists Egor, gesturing to the still-steaming cups. “You’ll feel better.”
Sensing it would be rude to turn him down a third time, Shea leans forward and takes a cup from the tray.
The porcelain is hot in her hands, and she breathes in the flowery scent of hibiscus.
Several yellow shoots swim to the top. It makes her think of her mother, trimming the blossoms from the calendula out back.
Pressing the petals between the pages of a book. Good for fever.
“Thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure.” Egor smiles affably at her over the lip of his cup. “Now, if nobody minds, I’d like to direct the conversation back to our mutual friend. Oliver killed someone. Who?”
Shea busies herself by taking a too large sip of tea. The heat of it scalds the roof of her mouth and she coughs, sputtering.
“No one of importance,” says Asher.
Egor narrows his eyes in Asher’s direction. “I have to confess—I find your instinct to protect him perplexing. And perhaps misplaced. Oliver is a ticking bomb. When he detonates—and he will—the damage will be astronomical.”
Silence swells. The morning sun shines directly on the glass, turning the room to an oven.
Under her myriad layers, Shea begins to sweat.
Wedged as she is between Poppy and Asher, there’s no space for her to shed her flannel.
She sets down her teacup and tugs at her collar, resolving herself to her fate.
“Is there a bathroom I could use?” asks Poppy suddenly. Every head in the room turns to face her, and she smiles, rising to her feet. “Sorry, it’s just that we’ve been on the road for days. I’d really love to clean up.”
“Me too,” says Shea. “I could use a shower.”
An ice-cold one. She feels like she’s catching fire. The temperature in the room is slowly creeping toward unbearable. Sweat trickles in a line down her back.
“Yes, yes, of course,” says Egor. “I’m sure you’re eager to get the dust off.” A smile appears on his face, wan and nervy. “You’ll find a bathroom at the top of the stairs. Please feel free to use anything you need. Perhaps we can come back to this conversation a little later.”
Asher bristles. “Unlikely— Oof . ”
“Thanks,” says Poppy, who has trod right on Asher’s toe. “That’s very generous.”
Asher rises after her with a scowl, and Shea follows. The moment she stands, the room tips on its axis. She catches herself on a narrow console table lined in string-of-pearls, sending its leaves fluttering toward the floor in verdant helixes.
“Hey,” says Asher, stabilizing her by the elbow. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just tired, I think.”
“Shea,” calls Egor as she reaches the door. “It’s Shea, right? Would you mind staying back just a minute? I’d like to speak with you. It won’t take long.”
Poppy is already upstairs. Asher hesitates on the bottom step, his brow raised in a question.
“I’ll be right up,” she says. “You can go ahead.”
“You’re sure?”
“Go. I’ll be fine.”
She watches him leave before turning back toward the living room.
Everything feels slow and diluted, like she’s moving underwater.
She catches her shoulder against the doorframe in a lopsided lean, wicking sweat from her brow.
In his chair, Egor looks on edge. His eyes dart from her to the hall. His teacup rattles against the saucer.
“I was a young man when the Rot first appeared,” he says, speaking like he’s rushing to get something out.
“New to my career and already jaded. Everyone likes to say it all happened so quickly, but that simply isn’t true.
Men like me—scholars, botanists, scientists—we’d been sounding the alarm for years.
“As a phytologist, I published several peer-reviewed articles on the melting Arctic, the rising temperatures. We had good reason to believe that certain ancient microbes were trapped in pockets of gas, miles beneath the ice. That soon, they’d escape.
They’d get into the groundwater. They’d wreak havoc on our modern ecosystem.
We were discredited for our writings, my colleagues and I.
Even now that the worst has come true, people still feign ignorance. ”
The temperature in the room is stifling. Tea-water hot.
“Why are you telling me this?” asks Shea.
“You are important to Oliver,” says Egor simply. “That makes you important to me. I’d like it if you knew who I was. What kind of man I am. It might make this visit a little easier.”
Shea considers him through the blinding swell of a sun flare. “Back home, Father Isaac says the Rot came from hell. He says the world ripped itself open to punish us for our sins.”
Egor’s eyes twinkle behind his glasses. “And is that what you believe?”
“I don’t go to church.”
Egor smiles around another swallow of tea. “I see why he likes you. You’re very similar, you and he. You both carry so much anger. I only wonder—if you strike two flint stones one against the other long enough, eventually they catch fire.”
The sound of his voice winnows out. She catches herself on the back of the couch, dizzy.
Sweat pours down her face. When she swipes the back of her hand across her eyes, her focus snags on the dregs of her tea.
The bottom of the cup is rimed in a flat blue paste.
Petals ground down to powder. Tasteless. Toxic.
“Scutellaria,” says Egor, when he notices her looking. “Although you likely know it by its more common name.”
Shea thinks of her mother culling weeds in the garden, pointing out the mountain whorls mixed in among the wildflowers: Pay attention, Mouse. It’s important not to mix up the petals.
“Skullcap.”
“Like I told you,” Egor says, “you’re important to Oliver, which makes you important to me.”
The air snuffs out, and the foyer—all the drab olive green of it—comes rushing toward her.
When she hits the floor, she hits head first.