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  “My Jessie is going to be glad to get a break,” Mark observed. He and I traded a knowing look. Sure, Mark had been a Hunter back home, but back home there hadn’t been cam feeds of his battles where his new wife could see them. For Jessie, it would be a break from watching and worrying about him, not just from working.

  “We all are, that’s a fact,” Kent said. He turned his attention on me before I had a chance to take another sip. “Now that we don’t have dozens of ears around us, what did that Folk Mage say to you?”

  Oh, blargh. He must have called up all the cam footage before he went to bed. But I answered, of course, repeating the Mage’s words verbatim.

  Kent mulled that over. “What do you think he meant?”

  Fortunately nothing I planned to say involved lying about “my” Folk Mage. “First thing, he obviously recognized me, probably from when we beat Ace and his tame feral, so I guess that’s another clue that they’ve gotten really, really organized. The business of ‘shepherds’ and ‘sheep,’ though, that’s pretty clear. We call ourselves Hunters, but to them, we probably look like sheep dogs protecting a herd. From their point of view we don’t actually hunt anything—if we did, we’d be out going after them on their own territory.”

  “Wherever that is,” Steel muttered.

  But Kent nodded with satisfaction. Scarlet ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “We need a better name for these new ones,” she said. “What about Folk Lords?”

  I made a face, but nodded in agreement. “He surely acted all high and mighty.”

  “Folk Lords it is,” Kent said, after thinking about it a moment. We sat there, listening to the continuous thunder, the bar top vibrating faintly under our arms. “I’ve sent for more help from some of the other big cities. We’re getting another wave of reinforcements. No Elite, but very experienced Hunters.”

  Mark Knight grimaced a little. “We need ’em, and I hope you’re right about them being prepared, Kent. We’re being worn down to the point where we’re going to start making fatal mistakes just out of exhaustion.”

  Now…I’d been thinking about something. What the heck, I decided. “Armorer Kent,” I said, “what if we took volunteers as apprentices from the rest of the Hunters? You know, an Elite as the master and the volunteer as the apprentice?” That, of course, was how the Masters worked up at the Monastery: each Master had one or more apprentices under him or her. When they sent you out to Hunt on your own, you knew you were no longer an apprentice.

  He gave me such a strange look that for a moment I was afraid I had said something horribly wrong. Finally, he swallowed the last of his whiskey in a gulp and said, “That’s not a half-bad idea. We should have just enough people coming in from outside to replace the volunteers, if we get a full fifteen to agree to this apprentice thing.”

  “I’d have said nobody was going to volunteer and lose their standing in the ratings,” Mark replied. “But after the Barrier Battles…I don’t think anyone gives a rat’s ass about their ratings anymore.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Scarlet, and held out her glass. We all got refills. Even me. Kent reached under the bar and brought out roasted nuts. I went back to sipping, but by the end of my second I was definitely starting to feel more than just relaxed. Then Kent looked over at me and said, “I think you’re right. I think we should get volunteers to be…apprentices, although I don’t like that name. And since it was your idea, I think you should be the one doing the recruiting.”

  I nodded. “I can do that, sir.” Part of me was sitting back and shaking my head at my audacity. But that part of me was a lot smaller than it had been the last time Kent told me to step up and take charge of something. Heck, I was Hunter Joy, the one with eleven Hounds who was still famous enough to get a lot of vid coverage without being ranked or having my own channel anymore. I should learn to use that, or it would go to waste.

  “Good,” Kent replied.

  I’d have to talk to both the night shift and the day shift…and the best time to do that would probably be now, during this storm, while everyone was in HQ. “Permission to issue an all-Hunter Perscom message, sir?” I said. “I want to talk to everyone in the morning.”

  “Permission granted,” he replied with a grin, and then walked me through the process, which involved getting hold of the comm operators. Five minutes later all our Perscoms went off with the text message.

  Scarlet finished her drink and contemplated the empty glass. “Another?” asked Kent, picking up her bottle. But she shook her head.

  “No, I think I will walk back to my room while I can still do so without bouncing off the hallway walls,” she said, getting off her chair. “You coming, Joy?”

  “That’s the plan,” I told her, and got off my chair as well. “We can leave the guys to serious drinking now.” So we left, and managed to get back to our respective rooms and beds, only staggering a very, very little.

  I WOKE UP THE next morning much earlier than I needed to. I started thinking about what I was going to say to the others while I was getting dressed, and kept reconsidering how to word my speech all through breakfast. I guess I must have had a “deep thinking” face on, because while the couple of other people that came in while I was eating nodded at me, they didn’t sit down and try to talk to me. At about eight thirty I sauntered over to the hangar and sort of set myself up at one end, waiting. People started trickling in a little before nine, and the place was full right on the dot. I cleared my throat, and the speakers picked that up, which made everyone that wasn’t already looking at me turn and give me their full attention.

  “Hunters, those of you who I haven’t met yet, I’m Elite Hunter Joyeaux,” I said, trying to keep my tone casual. I noticed the rest of the Elite filing in and sort of arranging themselves at the back of the group. “We’ve all been hammered lately, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better anytime soon. As you know, Elite Armorer Kent has gotten some help from outside the city, and thank you for volunteering, Hunters”—I nodded at a couple of faces I didn’t recognize up in the front—“and he’s going to ask for a second wave, because I suggested something some of you might be interested in. Obviously this is no time to be holding Elite Trials, but would any of you consider signing up as sort of Elite junior partners?”

  I paused and waited for a question. “Would this be permanent?” asked Dazzle.

  “Only if you wanted it to be—then you’d have to go through the Trials once this current situation is over. And we wouldn’t put any of you out there solo,” I assured her. “You wouldn’t have to give up your channel or anything like that. You’d just be partnered up with an Elite with complementary powers, so the Elite will be able to spread themselves out a little more.”

  “Sounds like a fine plan to me,” said Tober, in his deep, gravelly voice. “Sign me up.”

  “Same,” said Raynd, before anyone else could say anything.

  “Ditto.” That was Bithen. Cielle just held up her hand, followed by Dazzle. Shortly we had fifteen, enough for each of the Elite to get a new partner. I wasn’t too surprised by Trev and Regi and Sara—but I was absolutely floored by Tober, Bithen, Raynd, and Cielle. They’d all been part of Ace’s crowd, and while they had not been unpleasant to me now that Ace was locked up, I hadn’t expected any of them to fall in with something I suggested so quickly, much less be the first to volunteer.

  Kent cleared his throat and the speakers picked it up, which told me he was taking over the meeting. “All right, Hunters, go back to relaxing until the storm is over, except for you volunteers. You come with me to my office and we’ll get you matched up with a complementary Elite.”

  As I passed Cielle, heading back to my rooms, she stopped me. “If you’re wondering, and I bet you are,” she said, with a wry little twist to her mouth, “ever since Ace…well, it feels like we have something to prove. Like, we’re nothing at all like him, you know? I mean, he used to be snarky funny, and he knew all the greatest places to club, and bei
ng seen with him kicked up our ratings a treat. But what—” She shook her head. “Nothing about him, even after his brother got killed, rang any alarms. You know? None of us saw that coming.” She made a sour face. “So, like, we haven’t talked about it much, but I’m pretty sure the others all want to prove we’re Hunters. I know I do.”

  “Hey, he did a good job of fooling Kent, you know,” I pointed out. “You were manipulated; not your fault. But I see your point. And you guys are top-ranked Hunters. If I was going to get a choice, instead of waiting for volunteers, I’d have picked you guys. We’re glad to have you on board.”

  The twist left her lips, and she actually smiled a little. “You’re not half bad, Joyeaux Charmand.”

  “I have my moments,” I replied, and went on my way to my room to check the weather.

  It looked as though the storm was going to stick around longer than we’d thought, maybe even lingering until tomorrow morning. I thought about watching a vid or reading a book…but at the moment, there was nothing as appealing as actually using my fancy shower-steam-bath-hot-soaking-tub thing. In fact, I decided I was going to finally try out every darn function it had until my sore muscles stopped being sore.

  I was feeling a whole lot better when I left the bathroom, wrapped in a big, warm, soft robe. The vid-screen had the “message” light blinking in the corner, so as I flung myself down on the bed I ordered it to play.

  It was Kent. “I’m pairing you with Cielle,” he said. “She’s got some impressive tricks that work at a longer range than yours do. I think you can teach each other a lot. Plus, her Hounds fly, which will come in useful. Kent out.”

  Well, now I was really glad we’d made peace with each other.

  The only toad in the cider was that I still hadn’t made up with Josh. And I didn’t dare. I was pretty sure Abigail Drift was trying to figure out ways of combing through my brain, and I couldn’t trust any Psimon, much less one that had started to get romantic with me. So far as I was concerned, there were still some lingering doubts as to whether or not Josh had really felt anything about me. I mean, he had never actually lied to me, but…well, of all the people in Apex, Uncle and I are the two who can least afford having a stray thought slip, if that thought betrays the secrets of the Mountain and the Monastery.

  When it came down to it…the longer we were apart, the more I realized I didn’t know that much about him. Back home, my best friend, Kei, could have told you not only what every single one of her boyfriend’s favorite colors was but what his favorite song had been back when he was knee-high, and any other detail you wanted to know. I knew…a little about Josh. That his mother had brought him up, rather than a crèche, because she’d been a Psimon too. But I didn’t even know why she hadn’t been together with his father, or what his father had been. In fact, what I actually did know, compared to what I didn’t, was like a gallon of water compared to the swimming pool. I’d just let what I wanted dictate what I did and how I reacted. So maybe I was lucky that circumstances had broken us up.

  That was what I kept telling myself, anyway.

  If he and I had still been together, we’d probably have been playing a vid-game; I didn’t have the heart to go on solo with the one we’d been duo-ing, so I probably would never find out what the endgame was.

  And before Mark Knight had gotten married, we’d probably have hung out in the lounge, or gone swimming, or spent some time in the garden trading news from home. That wasn’t going to happen—he and I both knew better than to do anything that would exclude Jessie. Like most Christer girls, she’d been raised to think that if a guy spent time alone with someone who wasn’t his wife or girlfriend, he was probably cheating on his wife or girlfriend. And even if we invited her along, our shared experience as Hunters would make her feel excluded anyway.

  Besides, this would probably be the most “awake” time they’d had together since the attacks ramped up, and it wasn’t exactly fair of me to rob her of any of that.

  Instead, I did a subject search through the library and found some fiction books about magic at the turn of the twentieth century—a good thing to read anyway, because I might get some more ideas for what I could do. I picked one at random, set an alarm to remind me of supper, and started on it. I got so deep into it that I yipped when the alarm went off.

  I bookmarked my place and made a note of the author’s name. Some publication details came up, and I noted with some surprise that she’d been alive and put this book out just before the Diseray, at a point when some people in charge had decided they “didn’t believe” in climate change, or “didn’t believe” it was happening because of burning fossil fuels, and had just started in wholesale on digging, drilling, and fracking, and burning, burning, burning. Eventually that had led to a massive release of frozen methane in the tundras of the world, then complete and catastrophic climate meltdown, and that had led to starvation wars, and that had led to someone nuking the Middle East. And that had brought on the Breakthrough when the Othersiders came over, if my Masters were right. Of course, the earthquakes, droughts, killer storms, and volcanic eruptions hadn’t helped.

  That just made me wonder: Had the author seen and understood what was happening? Had she felt helpless and afraid because there was absolutely nothing someone like her could do to stop it? Were these books about Victorian magic her way of trying to escape from that feeling of helplessness? I have a good imagination; I could feel myself right back there, seeing everything coming apart. It kind of made me sick to think about. My life might be in danger almost every waking hour, but at least I wasn’t helpless. I could do a lot about steering the course of things.

  I picked a quiet spot in the mess and mulled over things as I ate. Now that I wasn’t distracted by the book, my thoughts kept veering back to reality and the Folk Lords who recognized me, talked to me—Lavender, and now Gold. How had I ended up being well known among the Folk?

  Idiot, I chided myself. There’s no mystery about it; Lavender knows you from when he tried to attack the train. And as for Gold, a Folk Mage witnessed you taking down Ace and those two Drakken he was controlling. Someone who had taken out two of the biggest Drakken I had ever seen? Yeah, that probably raised some long, pointy eyebrows. I hadn’t done it alone, far from it, but that Folk Mage who’d left Ace to our tender mercies hadn’t known that.

  “Save your sheep, shepherd…if you can.” That was an interesting statement, and very close to a traditional challenge, without actually issuing one.

  Or was there more to it than that?

  Just how many Cits had been lost in that raid? Was there something more going on than just the kinds of attacks we were used to?

  Before I could get any further with that thought, Cielle appeared at my table with a tray full of food. “Breakfast pizza,” she said. “They were making some for the night shift. I don’t suppose you want some, do you?”

  “If you’re looking for a way to get me to ask you to sit down,” I replied, with a wave of my hand at the seat across from me, “you found it. Sit down, oh wandering stranger, and tell me of this strange thing you call ‘breakfast pizza.’”

  She plopped down in the seat I’d indicated, put the tray on the table, and shoved it a little toward me. “Breakfast pizza, oh mighty wizardess, is not unlike regular pizza, except the spell required for its making uses yellow cheese instead of white, plus onions, bacon, and eggs.” I think we both found it easier to talk like this, sort of “acting” as we sorted through our feelings toward each other.

  “Sounds yummy.” She gestured at the plate nearest me, and I took a piece. “Um. It is yummy. Thanks!”

  She smiled tentatively at me, and both of us did our best to turn the tray full of “breakfast pizza” into a memory. Since she had approached me, I figured this was as good a time as any to interrogate my new…partner, I guess. “Feel like talking about Hunting with the Elite?” I asked.

  She nodded. “That’s kinda why I was bribing you with food.” I have to admit, I was lik
ing this side of Cielle a lot better than what little I had seen of her before.

  “Okay, then let’s start with the basics. How many Hounds do you have? Kent told me they fly.”

  “The usual,” she said. “Four. Like coyotes with bat wings. They’re tough, tougher than Harpies. They talk to me.”

  “That’s a plus. That’s you, Scarlet, Defender, and Mark with the only flying Hounds in all of Apex.” I studied her a few moments. Cielle’s pink-dyed hair was cut asymmetrically; her Hunting colors were dark rose, pale pink, and white, and the overall impression that gave was one of someone soft…which absolutely could not be the case. But it was so ultrafeminine, and so completely unlike me. “How on earth do you stay clean?” I finally asked.

  She gave a startled laugh. “I used to Hunt the city,” she reminded me. “I never went down in the storm sewers, I never went out in Spillover. I never got dirty until the Barrier.” She chewed on her perfect lower lip for a moment—have I mentioned how gorgeous she was? It had been intimidating when she was with Ace, and it was still kind of intimidating. “Have you got any ideas?” she asked. “About how to fix my Hunting gear so it’s better for out there?”

  Well, the last thing I expected was to give fashion advice to Cielle. “Uh…make the main color of your Hunting gear in the darkest color, let them gray it out a lot, and just use the other two for trim? Have them make the trim waterproof?”

  But her eyes lit up, and she smiled and reached for her Perscom. I finished my share of breakfast while she ordered up new outfits, then she turned her attention back to me. “So, what is it you do, exactly?” I asked. “Your magic, I mean.” I had seen her at the range, and I already knew she was a darned good shot with just about any gun. But I hadn’t seen anything she could do magically.

  “Well, it wasn’t horribly useful until you figured out the Hounds could feed us magic,” she admitted. “I can—I can make something like a fat laser-blast, only before the Hounds could feed me I was only good for one shot and then I had to rest at least a half an hour to recharge.”