Written in Red

pieces of old mail. I put them in HGR’s spot.” She indicated the cubbyholes in the sorting room’s back wall. “Also, I’m still not clear if the ponies deliver mail to the Market Square businesses or if someone from the businesses is supposed to stop in for that mail.”

Right now he didn’t care about the mail or packages or any other damn monkey thing.

He took the poster out of his pocket, opened it, and set it on the table. “No more lies,” he said, his voice a growl of restrained menace. “What happens next will depend on whether you answer two questions honestly.”

She stared at the poster. Her face paled. She swayed, and he told himself to let the bitch fall if she fainted.

“He found me,” she whispered. “I wondered after the other night, but I thought . . . hoped . . .” She swallowed, then looked at him. “What do you want to know?”

The bleakness in her eyes made him just as angry as her lies.

“What was your name, and what did you steal?” Couldn’t have been a small thing. They wouldn’t be hunting for her like this if it was a small thing.

“My name is Meg Corbyn.”

“That’s the name you took when you came here,” he snapped. “What was it before?”

Her expression was an odd blend of anger and pride. It made him wary because it reminded him that she was inexplicably not prey.

“My designation was cs759,” she said.

“That’s not a name!”

“No, it isn’t. But it’s all they gave me. All they gave any of us. A designation. People give names to their pets, but property isn’t deserving of a name. If you give them designations instead of names, then you don’t have to think about what you’re doing to them, don’t have to consider if property has feelings when you . . .”

Her eyes stayed locked on his, despite her sudden effort to breathe.

Simon stayed perfectly still. If he moved, fangs and fury would break loose. What did they do to you, Meg?

“As for what I stole, I took this.” She pulled something out of her pocket and set it on the wanted poster.

He picked it up. Silver. One side was decorated with pretty leaves and flowers. The other side had cs759 engraved into it in plain lettering. He found the spot that accommodated a fingernail and opened the thing to reveal the shining blade of a thin razor.

He had seen one of these twenty years ago. Seeing another one now made him shiver.

“It’s pretty, but it can’t be worth all that much.” His voice sounded rough, uncertain. He felt as if he’d been chasing a rabbit that suddenly turned into a Grizzly. Something wasn’t right about this. So many things weren’t right about this.

“By itself, it probably isn’t worth much,” Meg replied. “The second thing I stole is this.” She pulled off her sweater and tossed it aside. She pushed up the left sleeve of the turtleneck until it was above her elbow. Then she held out her arm.

He stared at the evenly spaced scars.

An old woman, her bare arms browned by the sun so the thin scars showed white, sitting behind a little table where she set out cards and told fortunes to earn the money that paid for her room and board. A little community of humans who eked out a living at the edge of an earth-native settlement that amused itself by taking tourists into the wilds for pictures and stories and sometimes even movies that would be shown in theaters. Some taught the Others basic skills like weaving or carpentry. Some assisted with the tours. And there were always a few who were looking for an excuse to die and were just biding their time, knowing the Wolves and Grizzlies would oblige them eventually.

She sat there in the baking sun, her head covered by a straw hat, smiling at the youngsters, human and Other, who laughed at her as they went by in their various groups.

But he hadn’t laughed, hadn’t walked by. The scars intrigued him, bothered him. The look in her eyes unnerved him. And then . . .

“Not much good skin left, but this was meant for you . . .”

The silver razor flashed in the sun as she took it from the pocket of her dress. A precise cut on her cheek, its distance from an existing scar the width of the blade.

What he saw that day, what she said that day, had shaped his life.

“Blood prophet,” Simon whispered as he continued to stare at Meg. “You’re a cassandra sangue.”

“Yes,” she replied, lowering her arm and pushing down her sleeve.

“But . . . why did you run? Your kind live in special places. You’re pampered, given the best of . . .”

“Whether you’re beaten or pampered, fed the best foods or starved, kept in filth or kept clean, a cage is still a cage,” Meg said with fierce passion. “We are taught what the Walking Names want us to know because what good is a prophet if she can’t describe what she sees? We sit in classrooms, day after day, looking at pictures that describe things that exist in the world, but we’re never allowed to know one another, never allowed to have friends, never allowed to speak unless it’s part of an exercise. We are told when to eat, when to sleep, when to walk on the treadmill for exercise. They even schedule when we take a shit! We are alive, but we’re never allowed to live. How long would you last if you were kept like that?”

She was shaking. He couldn’t tell if she was cold or upset, even when she retrieved the sweater and put it on.

“Why don’t more of you run away?” he asked.

“I guess living in a cage and not having a name doesn’t bother most of them. Besides, where would they go?” She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Will you let me stay until dark? I might be able to slip past whoever the Controller sent after me if I can stay here until dark.”

Simon tipped his head, struggling to understand her. “You’re going to run again?”

Now she looked at him. “I would rather die than go back there.”

A quiet statement. The honesty scared him because there was a little too much Wolf in her voice when she said those words. She wasn’t terra indigene, but she also wasn’t human like other humans. She was a confusion, and until he understood more, all he had to work with was instinct.

A few days ago, she came looking for a job because she wanted to live. If that wasn’t true, she would have gone to sleep in a snowbank somewhere. Now she was willing to die?

He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all.

He pocketed the silver razor and the wanted poster.

“The razor is mine,” she protested.

“Then you’ll have to stay until I give it back.”

“Mr. Wolfgard . . .”

“You’re staying, Meg,” he snarled. “Until I say different, you’re staying.” He heard a truck pull in, then another. “You’ve got work.”

As he passed through the back room, he grabbed his boots but didn’t stop to put them on. Instead, he ran back to HGR.

Cs759. The meaning of the letters was clear enough. He didn’t want to think about the significance of the number.

That Controller was trying to set the police on her trail. Were other kinds of hunters searching for Meg? Was it a hired predator who had tried to break in the other night?

After telling John and Heather he was back, he went up to his office and put on dry socks. While he waited for the members of the Business Association to arrive for the meeting, he stared out the window that gave him a view of the Liaison’s Office.

Power. When the terra indigene dealt with humans, it always came down to power and potential conflict.

He was the leader of the Lakeside Courtyard and what he wanted would carry weight, but this choice was too big for him to make alone.