Chapter 10
ten
Kit
The small school bus had aged in the ten years since Kit had last boarded it. The leather seats had cracked and its white exterior was tinged yellow from too many trips into the desert — a fact that greatly depressed him.
Everything had been low and dull when they’d boarded the bus that morning.
A babysitter (a witch from the community whom he recognized) sat on the porch as the younger children said goodbye to the aged-out children with loud wails and temper tantrums. For this cycle, Nona had seven children to take on the field trip — two boys and three girls whom he didn’t recognize and then little Benny and Amelia.
It hurt his heart to see them in their seats, their chests puffed out as they would finally get to explore the fabled Skadra all their schoolmates gushed about.
They’d been babies when he’d aged out and they remembered him because of the extensive photo albums Nona liked to keep.
Only one boy had the good sense to cry when the bus backed out of the orphanage and onto the country road. He hugged his overstuffed backpack as his shoulder shook.
“What’s going on?” Gentry whispered to him vehemently. “Something’s wrong. Really wrong.”
His former target had chosen to not mingle with the little witches.
A choice that he figured was purposeful from the hateful way she looked at him and the horrified look on her face when she’d figured out what they were.
The woman clearly hated witches with all her heart.
Which made it all the more surprising when she’d chosen to sit next to him for the ten-hour bus ride.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he murmured back. “You’re getting to Skadra. Isn’t that good enough?”
She wrinkled her nose, making her full cheeks even fuller. “Not if it means these kids are going to turn into assassins like you. They’re kids. Is that where you guys are dropping them off? Some assassin witchy boot camp?”
Somehow, how she’d misunderstood the situation amused him.
So she’s a witch hater, but a witch hater with standards.
It all seemed very dignified and skewed from his viewpoint.
She was a proud creature, one with rules, that much he’d gotten over the last twenty-four hours.
Which was good, considering he needed to trick the Favors away from her so he could save Visha.
A proud fool he could work with. “First off, I’m not an assassin.
Second, Nona is doing her best by these kids, not that it’s any of your business.
You should try running an orphanage with so many mouths to feed.
She’s a miracle worker.” A miracle worker with finite means, he revised in his head.
He changed the subject. “What is it you want in Skadra, Gentry? You’re best off taking a charter boat to one of those purist colonies.
” The purist colonies pre-tested their pregnancies for the witch gene and terminated those who tested positive.
It was all very civilized, less messy than it was here on the mainland.
Gentry gave him a very tired look. “How does that change my situation? I’m cursed. I want out of it.”
Kit scoffed, “Everybody knows soul bonds are permanent.”
“Oh just like how you knew how a Favor worked? Excuse me, but I’m not exactly considering you an expert on magic after I, a poor helpless magic-less girl, outsmarted you with it.” She snarked, her voice rising to the point where he saw Nona peer at them from her rearview mirror.
Nosy old bat, he thought. He was just about to retort, to remind Gentry that he was the one with magic thank you very much, and that the Favor had just been a very lucky fluke, when the girl went pale and still. Still like death.
He went on high alert, standing to peer out all the windows as they were still bumping down an empty desert highway.
There were no nearby vehicles, no witches pacing alongside the bus on brooms. Next he checked the seats.
All the kids were accounted for, and there was no residual magic floating in the air.
They weren’t under attack. Then finally he placed a palm over a silent Gentry’s head.
Magic, malevolent and powerful, bit his palm. Hissing, he retracted it.
“Gentry?!” Alarmed, he grabbed her by the hand. “It’s here, isn’t?”
Sure enough, blood bloomed underneath the girl’s sleeve, and soon dripped onto the leather of the bus seat.
“Oh. That is a lot,” Gentry said loopily as Kit forced the blood-slicked sleeve back to reveal a gnarly long cut bisecting Gentry’s forearm. Gentry looked away from it. “Not sure how looking at it helps, witch. Heal me with your magic.”
He was already putting his palm near the wound.
The foreign magic was gone, but the cut was deep enough that her tendon was exposed, and he was absolute shit at healing magic.
“I can’t heal that,” he admitted, “wrap it tight and Nona can take the exit to the closest hospital. Nona!” He raised his voice just enough and caught his former caretaker’s eye. She stopped the bus immediately.
“No. We can’t do that. That’s what he wants,” Gentry gritted out. She kept her face down as if she wanted to hide her expression. “That’s why he did it.”
It took a second for Kit to understand what she was saying.
Drayer Netherton caused this, he realized.
She was right. The psycho had cut himself and then siphoned all the damage to Gentry in the hopes she’d either die while he’d purposely quarantined himself off from her, or she went to a hospital to be retrieved.
A cruel, but clever plan. For the first time, Kit witnessed firsthand how little control a soul-bound person had over their own body.
It was the work of true evil, particularly because it made someone as wickedly clever as Gentry helpless. Genius or not, a non-magical human didn’t stand a chance against a witch.
Nona walked through the bus to check on the situation and whistled when she saw the wound.
“Trouble,” she said, “I knew you were trouble, girly, as soon as I saw you. Amelia!” she called out, and the gawky ten-year-old who Kit had held as a baby approached.
“Now’s a good time to put your skills to work. ”
The little girl’s eyes widened to the size of quarters at the sight of Gentry’s wound.
“Hey, shake it off, girl,” Nona murmured to Amelia, “I raised you tougher than that.”
The goad worked like a charm. Amelia squared her shoulders and stepped up to the plate.
She put her small hands directly on Gentry’s lacerated arm and pressed the flesh together just like many other healers Kit had seen over the years.
Gentry let out a string of curses that weren’t fit for a bus full of kids as the skin stitched back together to a thin pink line.
The kids in the closest seats stood on top of them to see better.
Amelia waved her hands around. “Ouch, ouch, ouch. Hot,” she complained as her adopted siblings cheered.
Nona slapped the girl on the back, “Attagirl,” she said gruffly before directing her attention back onto Gentry, who was hiding her face into the back of the bus seat. “Kit, could you sit up front? Spend some time with an old hag?”
Kit understood the hint as Gentry seemed to shrink into herself. Some people liked to be alone after a scare like that. Seemed as though Gentry was one of them. “Uh, yeah, sure.” He climbed over the seat and the injured girl immediately scooted over to the window. She hugged herself and rocked.
It was a private moment, one he felt the need to look away from as he followed Nona to the front. His old caretaker started the bus back up and they started their trip up the long, dusty, endless road. Despite her earlier excuse, Nona made no attempt at conversation.
Kit, however, didn’t need any encouragement.
He’d missed too much, and now that they were approaching Skadra, he could feel what little time they had left together slipping through his fingers.
“How’d you teach the kids healer magic?” It was certainly not something he’d learned while at the orphanage. Hell, he still sucked at it.
“Some hippie old man down the street. I’ve been asking the community to pitch in more to get them ready. Only so much I can do on my own,” Nona said.
He smiled. There was something off about how she’d presented that information. “A hippie old man? Nona, don’t tell me you have a boyfriend.”
“Shut the hell up, kid.” Then a second later, “I’m glad to see that you’ve stopped holding that grudge of yours.
Mary told me you started calling her, that she hasn’t picked up because of all the years you shunned your siblings.
I wish you hadn’t taken your feelings out on them, Kit.
I’m the one you should be angry with,” Nona said gruffly, her voice distinctly uncomfortable.
Kit’s heart sped up a bit, as he fought back the residual bitterness. He clenched his jaw. She’s getting older. Now’s the time to bury the hatchet. “You’re right that I shouldn’t have taken it on them. I regret it. Now I just want to make up for lost time if they’ll let me.”
“That does my old heart good to hear that… the way I went about things with you, Kit, with all you kids—I could’ve done better. And Brienne—”
“Forgiven and forgotten,” Kit cut her off as soon as she said his sister’s name. Old pain roiled through him but he forced a smile. “Now, Nona, tell me about this boyfriend.”
From what Kit could see when he snuck glances through Nona’s rearview mirror, Gentry had recovered her color and composure by the time they reached Skadra’s security gates.
The bus had hushed when a tattooed witch had looked at Nona’s day pass.
But Kit relaxed. These types of visitors were encouraged in Skadra, and any witch worth his salt would be able to tell what a bus full of witch kids meant.
The guard nodded them through, and Kit suppressed a smile when all the kids (plus Gentry) gasped when they cleared through the wall that hid Skadra from the prying eyes of the desert.
In all areas, Skadra leaned towards the extreme.
The skyscrapers were far, far taller than any non-magical human dared build and made of yellow, sandy stone, and the streets packed to the brim with questionable vendor carts.
Traffic immediately narrowed into a slow crawl (only non-magical residents and tourists drove vehicles).
The vendors took advantage of the slow-moving traffic to talk to fools dumb enough to unroll their windows for them.
Magical floating banners spun right above the semi truck level, advertising the upcoming mayoral campaign.
Past the children’s shouts of excitement, he could’ve sworn he heard Gentry’s quiet gasp when she saw Drayer Netherton’s blinding smile on the closest banner. He winked at the camera.
“Brooms, there are freaking brooms in the sky!” Benny shouted, pointing up as the other kids pointed out their own observations about the Sky Road.
Kit tore his attention from Gentry to watch the children take in the sights.
He’d been starstruck the first time he’d seen the Sky Road as well.
In every other city other than Skadra, brooms were highly regulated and primarily ridden by government mages.
That’s why he’d ridden his broom under the cover at night to Tunsa; government mages delighted in giving bullshit tickets (over his dead body would he get caught in the air by a mage).
That’s why the fast-paced, endless stream of flying objects — carriages, cars, magic carpets, whatever a witch felt like magicking up — carrying witches about a hundred feet up from the streets was such a sight in Skadra.
They moved at such fast speeds and volume that their darting shadows gave the streets a nice reprieve from the unforgiving desert sun.
The Sky Road dazzled and dizzied, but, from his number of near-death experiences up there, Kit considered the area up above to be more of a death trap than marvel.
Wordlessly, Nona navigated the traffic with a firm, expert hand.
She weaved the bus in and out of lanes with a proficiency she’d like all those years ago when she’d taken Kit and the others here.
He wondered how many trips she’d taken since then, how many times he could’ve stopped by and said hi to the woman who raised him.
He hadn’t realized until he saw her yesterday how angry he’d been with her. It’d boiled to the surface all at once, but, by the time he’d slept and woken up for the trip, all that hatred had disappeared. Now he just missed her.
Nona drove the bus through the downtown and past the seedier parts of town.
The buildings transformed from hovels into more of an upscale area where some buildings used brick rather than the same sandy stone material.
The children all quieted. Some hugged their bags, much like how the crying boy had done earlier.
Nona stood up as the bus doors hissed open.
“Check your packs,” she announced gruffly, “make sure you have your money, provisions, and everything else.” Her eyes grew misty as the kids rummaged through their backpacks, which were packed to the brim.
“I’d pay for a meal for you all before leaving, but I’d rather you keep the money for later.
The housing centers will have you kids covered. Now, come. Give me a hug.”
Kit smiled at the kids as, one by one, they obeyed Nona’s last tearful command. Both Benny and Amelia gave him a hug as well, and he whispered that he’d visit them soon. Because he would.
Then, too soon, the bus emptied to just him, Nona, and Gentry. The bus idled with a dissatisfied rumble as the kids crossed the streets and disappeared into the suburbs towards what Kit knew to be the nicest child housing center in the city.
He would’ve been content to watch in silence, to allow Nona to mourn the children she’d raised, but then Gentry ruined it.
From the back of the bus, she said, “Can you explain why you’re dumping kids to fend for themselves?
In a city ran by vicious gangs? From where I’m sitting, it looks royally fucked up. ”