Chapter Thirty-Two
We’re making lieutenants now?”
The question jolted me out of sleep, and I rolled over in bed. There was another breakfast on my nightstand, so I supposed it was morning again. But something was different.
My nose twitched. My mouth salivated. My eyes focused on the tray.
“Is that… bacon?”
“I thought it would be easier than having you raid the guys’ fridge,” Cyrus said dryly. “The healer agreed as long as you take it easy and report any problems immediately.”
“But… there’s only two pieces.”
He cocked his head. “What did I just say?”
“Don’t know, wasn’t listening, ‘cause bacon.” I wolfed it down.
He sighed.
“What else you got?” I checked out the plate with interest for the first time in days.
It looked better than the usual white blandness, except for the ever-present cream of wheat that I quickly pushed to one side. But there was also a nice, if somewhat paltry, omelet as well as some grapes. And perched on a corner was the world’s smallest blueberry muffin.
Seriously, the muffin was a little tease. One bite, maybe three blueberries, and a dusting of Demerara sugar on top, just enough to let you mourn the fact that you were now out of muffin. I started nibbling on the omelet, which was stuffed with cheese, and suddenly it was gone, too.
Cyrus sat on the edge of the bed and waited until I was finished before getting to the point. “Can we talk about this lieutenant thing?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“For what?”
I swallowed grapes. “I told Noah we were talking about it, and we just did.”
He shot me a look. “Great, now can I get some details? Everyone is asking, and I have no idea what to tell them.”
“Tell them whatever you want. I’m making this up as I go.”
“Lia.” It was his stern voice, which usually did things for me, but not so much today.
Which told me that I still wasn’t recovered, because he was wearing a close-fitting, plain white tee that showed off his muscles, and contrasted nicely with the tousled dark curls and five o’clock shadow, despite him having probably shaved a couple of hours ago.
He looked edible, and the tight, thigh-hugging jeans didn’t hurt.
Heal already, I told myself, and then I said, “We need help. Or are you and I supposed to feed, clothe, counsel, and support eight hundred people by ourselves?”
“It may not be that many. Sienna said she might be able to absorb some of them into the diminished clans at Wolf’s Head, who are searching for new members—”
“What?”
He nodded. “She was going to merely house them for us for a while, but the other clans got together and decided—”
“They decided.” My voice was flat, causing him to frown.
“—that they could use the help on a more permanent basis, and Sienna agreed. They’re sorting through them now to find out who might be the best fit.”
“Are they? How thoughtful of them.”
That time, my tone was less flat than vicious because he raised an eyebrow. “It’s not everyone who would be willing to take any vargulfs,” he pointed out.
“But taking those healthy enough to assist with the older ones isn’t actually helping us, is it? Especially if they have other skills we might use. So Sienna skims off the cream of the crop, leaving the old, infirm, and seriously traumatized to us. That doesn’t sound like a plan.”
“Is that why we suddenly have two new lieutenants?” he asked, head cocked. “And no truck, by the way, as they took it out to Wolf’s Head before daylight.”
“Did they?” Good. I liked to see initiative.
“Lia!”
“We know nothing about the new arrivals, and we need to,” I pointed out. “It also gives Noah and Lee something to do.”
Other than getting in trouble.
“And sends the wrong signal, don’t you think?” Cyrus’s voice was even, but one look at his carefully neutral expression told me he wasn’t happy.
“The wrong signal?”
“Noah messed up. He meant well, but he almost got you killed. And as a reward, he gets promoted? What am I supposed to tell the rest?”
“That it’s temporary.” I drank apple juice, which had taken the place of orange as the acid wasn’t supposed to be good for me, and wiped my mouth. “He agreed to that; they both did. It’s just to give them the authority to speak on our behalf.”
“On our behalf?” he repeated. “And if they promise things we can’t do? Hell, Lia, we don’t even know what we can do yet!”
“And if we don’t get organized, we never will.”
“You think I don’t know that? But these boys have no experience living in a well-run clan, or much of one at all! You should have talked to me about this.”
“You haven’t wanted to discuss much of anything with me lately—”
“You’ve been recovering!”
“—and I didn’t think it was a big deal. It isn’t a permanent change.
It’s to help us with a temporary situation—getting hundreds of new clan members vetted, supported, and settled.
We can’t know what they need if we don’t know who they are or anything about them.
And what was the alternative? You could have selected different boys, I guess, but we’re going to have to test all of them for leadership qualities eventually, as we’ll need more than a few lieutenants, so why not start with—”
I broke off, because he was looking at me like I was crazy. “They are teenagers, Lia!”
“Yes, in most cases. But so is half the Corps these days—”
“Who, a few months ago, were homeless vargulfs! Many haven’t seen the inside of a clan for years, and none were from families prominent enough to have helped run one! They have no idea what they’re doing, and yet you give them our authority? What were you thinking?”
I frowned. “That we need help? That they can learn? That they have to learn, and while the middle of a war isn’t exactly the optimal time—”
“No, it’s ludicrous!”
I stared at him some more. And maybe it was because I’d just woken up, but none of this was making sense. “And the alternative is?”
“Arnou, of course! I was planning to borrow some people for the next few months to help us out, good people, experienced people—”
I stopped him with a hand on his leg, one that clenched reflexively and not lightly. Inside my head, someone was howling, but I didn’t need it. I’d grown up with a High Clan mother, and I could see her face right now if that had been suggested to her.
Not that it would have been, because no one was that crazy.
Except my fiancé, apparently.
“From Arnou?” I repeated carefully.
“Yes. They have the expertise we need and can be relied on to keep their mouths shut in case anything else goes…” he trailed off at my expression. “What’s wrong?”
For a moment, I just stared back at him. This new clan had been Cyrus’s brainchild, not mine. And yet, he didn’t seem to get how that worked.
He didn’t seem to get it at all.
“Most people already view us as an offshoot of Arnou,” I reminded him. “As some weird experiment Sebastian is running that will eventually fall apart because you can’t make a real clan out of vargulfs. Are you trying to prove them right?”
He frowned. “I’m trying to make this work with no plans and no blueprints. Nobody has done this before—”
“And nobody may ever again if we fail!”
“I know that!” he got up and walked around the room, giving the impression that he needed to move.
“I think about that every day. This has gotten big—too big—too fast, and I’m out of my depth here.
I didn’t realize how much until you were down for the count, and I was getting dozens of phone calls a day asking me questions I didn’t know the answers to. And still don’t!”
He sat back down and looked at me seriously. “But I need them, and Arnou can give them to me. To us. They can provide a clan structure overnight!”
And yes, they could. But all I could see was Noah’s surprise when he realized how large our clan was now, or when it dawned on him that the new arrivals might actually become family. He hadn’t thought about it, because even our own people didn’t see us as a real clan yet.
And if we took help from Arnou, they never would.
“It would be easier,” I agreed.
“But?” Cyrus said, because he knew me, and there had been nothing in my tone that was encouraging.
“But it won’t work. I feel like crap. I’d rather let somebody else handle this, and I hate that you’ve had to manage everything on your own for almost a week. But—”
“Lia, they’re our allies—”
“Allies. Yes. But they’ve been acting more like our masters.
Where was the alliance when we were begging for help in Tartarus?
Where was it when they stopped Chay from going after Jace the morning he ran away?
They knew he was ours; they could smell us on him.
But they held him up anyway, harassing him because they disapproved of someone like that being even slightly associated with them.
“You’ve seen the looks, the sneers, the side eyes.
Even Sienna thought nothing of perusing the rolls of our clan members and picking out whoever she wanted, like ordering off a menu!
And has now arbitrarily decided that some of them, whoever she and the other clans want, I guess, will join them to fill out their ranks—”
“She’s trying to help—”
“I know that, but she still did it! It’s no different than Sebastian deciding we’ll be his little strike force.
Everyone thinks they can co-opt our people, use us how they will, and support us if and when they feel like it, all while looking down their noses with an expression that says they smell something bad! ”
“You may think we’re allies, Cyrus, but the other clans don’t.
They don’t see us at all. Not as a clan, not as anything but a garbage can for them to dig through, and see if maybe there are a few diamonds in the rough that somehow got tossed out with the trash.
And if we allow their people in here to boss our members around, they never will. ”
“The same will be true if we fall apart,” he pointed out tightly. “We need to prove ourselves, need legitimacy, need respect, but what do we have? We won in Tartarus and again at HQ, but—” He cut off abruptly.
“But what?”