Reign of Outlaws Read online

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “You’re already helping,” Key answered.

  “Who are you?”

  “Eveline knows,” he said. “She told us we could use this room if we needed to. How do you think we knew it was here?”

  The hairdresser nodded. “I’ll tell her you’ve come.”

  “It’s not me she’ll want to talk to,” Key said. “It’s … my friend.” He resisted the impulse to use Robyn’s name. “She’ll be here later.”

  “Very well,” the hairdresser said. Key couldn’t help but notice that her forehead furrowed in worry as she spoke.

  There were more gun bags than kids, as it turned out. “The math was never going to be perfect,” Scarlet grunted as they shoved the last bags out the factory window themselves.

  “What do we do with the excess?” Robyn wondered aloud.

  “We can’t leave any behind,” Scarlet said. “They have to think we cleaned them out totally.”

  Down the block, there was a regular industrial Dumpster. The girls glanced at each other and shrugged. “Well, they are in trash bags,” Robyn said. “Maybe no one will notice.”

  They hauled the extra sacks a few at a time and heaved them over the side of the metal bin.

  “We could’ve just thrown them all away,” Robyn said with regret. “That would’ve been much easier.”

  “What if we need them later?” Scarlet said. “It’s good to keep our options open.”

  A chill went down Robyn’s spine. She didn’t especially want to keep that particular option open. Was that really where they were headed with this rebellion? Toward a battle? An all-out war? It was not going to be easy to take down someone as clever and cruel and powerful as Crown, but Robyn couldn’t help but think her parents would want it to happen on their own terms. Peacefully, if possible.

  Still, she didn’t protest it out loud. Robyn and Scarlet hustled toward the braid shop, carrying the last couple of bags.

  Scarlet led the way, cutting through the streets with surprising turns. Every few blocks she stopped at a corner, and peered around a building before they proceeded.

  “You’ve memorized all the checkpoints?” Robyn said. Usually, she took to the rooftops, leaping from building to building and only coming down when she had to cross a wider street.

  “No, they keep moving them,” Scarlet reminded her. “I’m just looking as we go.”

  “How are you seeing all that in advance?”

  “Look,” Scarlet paused at a particular intersection and pointed down the angle of the street. Following her arm, Robyn could see two blocks over and two blocks down, between the buildings. If they continued on this path, and turned right at the next intersection, they’d run into a checkpoint in two blocks. “Everything in Sherwood is built on crazy angles,” Scarlet said. “You haven’t noticed?”

  “I guess not,” Robyn admitted. It seemed embarrassingly obvious now that Scarlet had pointed it out. Study the angles. There are arrows in everything. Floyd Bridger’s words floated back to her.

  Robyn stopped suddenly. Maybe he’d meant literal angles. Not metaphorical ones.

  “Hang on.”

  The girls ducked into a recessed doorway. Robyn pulled out the map her dad had left her. Study the angles.

  There had to be something here.

  “Here, look at this,” Robyn pointed to Scarlet. “Look at what’s marked.”

  “That’s the cathedral,” Scarlet said.

  “And the fire in Tent City.”

  Scarlet pointed. “The tree house?”

  “Yeah.”

  The tree house, with its stone base. A possible second shrine? A little bloom of hope opened up inside her.

  She had to get back to the tree house to check it out. What if the answer to everything was there?

  But first, the braid shop. Robyn grinned. Of course. It had been right under her nose all along.

  “What’s this?” Scarlet pointed to the twisty icon on the map.

  “We’re in luck,” Robyn said. She folded the fragile paper and tucked it away. “We’re already headed that way.”

  “The library database lists these books,” Mallet reported to the woman behind the checkout counter. “I can’t find them on the shelves.”

  The librarian punched some key. “They are checked out,” she reported.

  “All of them?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “When are they due back?”

  “Well …” The librarian consulted the screen. “Unfortunately, not for several months.”

  Mallet frowned. “That doesn’t sound right. I thought the borrowing period was a couple of weeks?”

  “Yes. But they’ve been checked out by a graduate student working on a thesis. He received special permission to keep these six books longer than normal. I’m very sorry.”

  “There were seven books. Where is the seventh?”

  “It appears to be missing.”

  “Missing?” Mallet’s agitation increased.

  The librarian clicked a few more keys. “Yes, and it may have been stolen,” she reported. “I’m attempting to track its location based on its barcode, but it doesn’t appear to be anywhere in the library.”

  “Hang on.” The librarian disappeared into the office behind the desk. Mallet tapped her fingers on the countertop. This was unacceptable.

  The librarian returned moments later with a thick textbook in her hand. “You might try taking a look at this, in the meantime.”

  Mallet proffered her library card. “Fine. I’ll take this one.”

  The librarian tapped the book’s spine. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. I’m afraid that’s a reference copy.”

  “I would like to use it for reference.” Mallet smiled engagingly.

  The librarian shook her head. “It doesn’t circulate. You’ll have to use it here in the library.” She smiled. “The good news is, you can come back any time to access it, and know that no one else can check it out, either.” Her bright, encouraging tone of voice grated on Mallet’s mood.

  “Very well.” She snatched the book off the counter and took it to a nearby table.

  The reference book contained only brief mention of moon lore texts. Nothing Mallet didn’t already know. She tamped down her frustration and began tapping the screen in her palm.

  Her PalmTab had reasonable access to the central databases, but it didn’t have everything. The library’s records were sealed, she remembered. They had refused to connect their internal system to the city central database, even though it was a mandatory upgrade for all agencies. The library was still on a closed loop. Something to do with privacy for patrons. It had been a big to-do some while ago, but these things fell on someone else’s desk.

  It didn’t matter. It would be easy enough to find out who checked out the books. Mallet tapped the screen and sent a message to her boys in the basement. Her lab techs could surely open a path to the information she needed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Family Reunion

  Eveline glided among the salon chairs toward the door.

  “What have you done to your beautiful hair?” The older woman’s silver braid glittered. Robyn felt a longing for the piece of herself that was missing. Her hand went involuntarily to her bare neck. The fringe of ruffled curls that met her skin still felt unfamiliar.

  “I have to talk to you,” Robyn blurted out. No time for pleasantries, for sentiment.

  Eveline regarded her calmly. “Young people. Always in a rush.”

  Robyn pushed down her frustration and tried not to be rude. She didn’t have time to mess around. Not when her parents had mere hours left to live.

  “It’s about the moon lore, and the shrines,” she said.

  “Shh.” Eveline placed her arm around the girl. “Come upstairs with me.”

  In the small, single-room apartment, Robyn pulled out the map and showed her. “The cathedral, the tree house, this braid shop. That’s not a coincidence, is it?�
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  “The shrines no longer exist. They were destroyed.”

  “But they still matter,” Robyn insisted. “Their messages were supposed to help people figure out what to do.”

  “That’s not quite—”

  “I’m figuring it out.” Robyn cut her off.

  Eveline sighed.

  “They built a tree house over the site of the second one.” Robyn traced the triangle for her. “According to the map, the third one should be here.”

  “It is not here,” Eveline assured her. The old woman closed her eyes. She hummed softly, a tune Robyn felt in her bones. “But I believe you when you say it once was here. I’ve long been drawn to this place. And the view of the sky. The full moon passes right over my window.”

  Robyn looked up at the extra-large pane of glass.

  “He’s going to kill my parents,” she said.

  Eveline looked pained. “Yes, I heard the broadcast.” Her fingers pressed against each other as if holding on to something that wasn’t there.

  “My father told me that the braid you wear, the braid I used to wear, is something handed down through my family.”

  Eveline smiled. “Yes.”

  “Are you … are we related?”

  “We are all related, love.”

  “But I—you—I can see it in your face. Are you … my grandmother?”

  “No, love,” Eveline said. “She was my sister. The youngest of us. The bravest.”

  So it was true.

  “Does my dad know?”

  “Your father knows a great many things.”

  The wise-woman non-answer answer thing was starting to get on Robyn’s nerves. Perhaps it showed in her face, because Eveline smiled.

  “He knows some about the history of our family.”

  “Why have I never met you? Why didn’t he bring me to Sherwood? I could have known about this all before.” Robyn felt ashamed. She’d had a charmed life, free from fear, where she hungered for danger and adventure. Meanwhile, people in Sherwood, people like Laurel, lived skittish and rootless, getting by moment to moment. It didn’t seem fair.

  Eveline wrapped her arms around Robyn. Her angular figure had enough softness to settle in to.

  “Your father is a dear man, with a good heart,” she said. “He has not forgotten where he came from. But there are many reasons why it is hard for him to return.”

  “He always says family is everything.”

  “Yes.” Eveline stroked Robyn’s shorn hair. “There is the family we are born into. And also the family we choose.”

  Laurel floated into Robyn’s mind again. Was she in prison? Was she alive? Had she been hurt?

  Merryan, who like Robyn, like all of them, had lost her own parents. And she had been willing to give up the one shred of family she had left, her uncle. Merryan had been caught helping them. Had Crown punished her, too?

  Even Scarlet. They could bicker about anything, it seemed, but they’d risked it all for each other time and again. Was this what it was like to have sisters?

  “So you’re kind of like my grandma, I guess,” Robyn said. “Was she very beautiful, like you?”

  “Ach,” Eveline scoffed. “Do not let the eyes speak when it is the heart that tells the better story.”

  There she went, being all cryptic again. “Appearance doesn’t matter?” Robyn deciphered the fortune-cookie phrasing. “I know that.”

  She pulled her beret back on, with the braid sewn into the back. Eveline smiled at the more familiar sight. Robyn pointed at her pleased expression. “But see, people still look first, and they want to like what they see.”

  “Ah, but the ones who truly know you will like what they see because they’re seeing you,” Eveline reached for Robyn and hugged her. Over her shoulder, Robyn caught sight of herself in the bedside table’s mirror. She might have inherited this special braid, but it had been all too easy to remove. Now, it was part of a costume. The hoodlum Robyn was pretending to be.

  What if she was only pretending to be someone with a destiny?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Paint the Town

  Key and Scarlet made their way back toward the cathedral. They would pick up their paint cans, then split up to proceed with the graffiti plan.

  “That was good work, I guess,” Key said. “But maybe not public enough. No one knows we stole the guns.”

  “A private slap in the face to the MPs can’t hurt,” Scarlet said. “Anyway, they’ll know once they find Robyn’s note.” The girls had left their signature green sticky-note message on the side of the now-empty container.

  They slipped inside through the plywood-covered door.

  “Yeah, I meant that the general people don’t know,” Key said. “They should know we’re building an arsenal. We should start getting them excited.”

  “The graffiti will get them excited. It gives them a quiet way to get involved.”

  “I know,” Key said. “I just think we could do more.”

  “Anyway, a bunch of empty guns isn’t exactly an arsenal,” Scarlet said. “We’re a long way from a street war.”

  “Did any of them even still have bullets?” Key asked casually.

  “A couple,” Scarlet said. “I emptied them.” She pulled the small handful of bullets out of her pocket and poured them into an open desk drawer. She pushed it shut.

  Key studied her actions thoughtfully.

  Scarlet perched on the edge of the desk, balancing her feet on the edge of his chair. “How come you want a fight so bad anyway? You don’t seem like the type.”

  Key’s gaze flicked up to meet hers. “I plan ahead,” he reminded her. “Like a chess game.”

  Everything seemed calm and normal outside of the Sherwood Health Clinic. Robyn watched from around the corner, studying the comings and goings of people through the main entrance. Any minute now, Merryan should arrive to volunteer.

  After what happened this weekend, her uncle might be watching her. She probably wouldn’t be able to get away to go to the cathedral. Robyn needed to know she was okay. That Crown hadn’t thrown her in some dungeon along with Laurel and Tucker. Merryan had said she could handle her uncle, but really, who could handle Crown? Robyn doubted that the kind of man who would take over a government and threaten people’s lives had a warm and fuzzy side.

  She waited for over an hour. No sign of her friend. Maybe she had gone in some special side entrance.

  It seemed safe enough for the time being, so Robyn strolled across the street and into the clinic lobby. She walked up to the check-in desk and greeted the nurse on duty.

  “I’m a friend of Merryan Crown’s,” she said. “I know she’s busy working right now but I’d really like to say hello, if I could.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said the desk nurse. “I’m afraid she couldn’t make it to her volunteer shift today.” The nurse looked saddened suddenly. “We do hope she’ll be back here with us at some point. She really is a lovely girl.”

  “Thanks,” Robyn said dejectedly. She hurried out of the building before anyone could recognize her.

  This was bad. Very bad. Merryan wouldn’t miss a day of work. Especially not today, of all days. What had Crown really done to her?

  In a flurry of concern and desperation, Robyn pulled out her TexTer. Quickly she typed her message:

  NEED TO KNOW. M OK?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A Familiar Tune

  Key’s small satchel rattled suspiciously. He tried to walk at a leisurely pace, but it was hard when he constantly wanted to duck out of sight as soon as possible. He painted arrow after arrow, on every brick wall, on every whitewashed fence. Bright green symbols of resistance, posted for the world to see.

  He worked his way up and down the streets of Getty neighborhood, where the walls were short and the houses small and run-down. Getty was close to the heart of the resistance. Hardships had made the people strong. It had made them fighters.

  People saw him working. He didn’t try to hide. No
one questioned him. “For Robyn,” he would say, if anyone looked briefly puzzled.

  Key tagged another fence, then tucked away his spray can. He didn’t have to hide from the people, but he did have to worry about MPs appearing.

  “Gather the Elements as you will: Earth to ground you, Water to fill.” The sound of a woman’s singing caught his attention.

  He followed the voice. He couldn’t help it. The familiarity of the sound pulled him closer. It couldn’t be, and yet …

  “Air to sustain, a Fire to ignite; Elements gather, all to fight.”

  The singer was a young woman in the backyard hanging up the wash. Key did not know her, and his heart sank a little. Of course, he shouldn’t have been disappointed. It couldn’t have been his mother. She was dead.

  Not his first mother, he reminded himself, but his true mother—the woman who raised him. The one who had chosen and loved him when he was cast aside.

  His first mother was also dead, he knew. But knowing that filled him with anger rather than sorrow.

  His true mother had kept the knowledge from him as long as she could. He knew he was not born of her all along; her dark complexion against his paleness made that obvious. But she had tried to protect him from the truth of how unwanted he had been by everyone but her.

  He was officially a person who didn’t exist. His mother had saved him from certain death and raised him as her own. She had sacrificed for him, struggled with him.

  “Gather the Elements as you will, till Earth cannot shake us, nor Water be still …”

  As the words floated around him, it was impossible not to be reminded. How generous she was. How wholeheartedly rebellious.

  He had repaid her gift by running. He hadn’t been there when—

  Key shook his head to clear his thoughts. The devastation of the Night of Shadows had cut deep across Sherwood. Someone like Robyn could be told the facts of that day, but she didn’t really understand. Yes, her parents might have been better known than others, but they weren’t the only ones who had disappeared.

  “Air, boundless, our everything; the Fire, our true light; Elements gather, all to fight.”