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Showered and changed, holdout weapon in place, I flipped the cover back on the bed, making it look nice enough that the maids wouldn’t be concerned with it. My door slammed open, and I spun, snatching up another knife from the nightstand. Silver stood in the door, a satchel and my bag already in the air between us. I caught them by instinct.
“Alys, you’re in a lot of trouble, which means you’re causing a lot of trouble forme,” he said. “You need to be a problem somewhere else.” His hand slashed the air in the complicated gesture that tipped me through a portal before I could move.
“Damn it,” I muttered, sighing as I climbed to my feet, bags in hand. “Where the hell did you send me now?”
Glancing around, I tried to gather clues about my location. Monuments, like shiny white teeth jutting from the earth, stood in ordered rows around me. Plush grass cut to ankle height rolled away, with row on row of headstones stretching into infinity. Further from this section, weathered and old, the headstones weren’t as well kept.
The unique scent of swamp and evergreen flooded my nose, the hum of insects in my ears. A hill, a levee I recognized, started its rise a few feet from me, jogging my memories. Above its crest, branches of mature bald cypress soared another twenty feet in the air.
No breeze moved the hot, humid air. Sweat had already started forming under my shirt. The sun had climbed—this was mid-morning, not dawn.
A glance at a headstone confirmed that Silver had sent me to Arlin Cemetery, near DC. Why he always dropped me here, I had no idea, but today’s location was slightly different from the last few times. It was enough to throw me, if only for a moment. Or maybe it was the fact that I was bootless, in my pajamas, in a relatively dangerous area.
At least I had the bags he’d thrown at me…
I started walking, trying to ignore the frustration building inside of me. This should be my time with Dimitri. He was feeling sick, and he needed me. Instead Silver’d thrown me so far from my child that the thought made my blood boil. Hadn’t the Guild already taken enough of my precious time from my child?
It was hard to ignore how desperately I wanted to be back with my baby, but I had to. I needed to focus on where I was and how I could get back as quickly as possible. That’s what mattered right now.
The Guild sigil, a star superimposed on a flag, dominated the monuments in this section; a variety of politicians were buried here for bravely legislating. The idea alone made anger rush through my veins. “Bravely” legislating my ass. I spat on one of the headstones as I maneuvered through them.
Breathing through the flare of anger, I climbed the levee, rising to a forty-foot height of the embankments that were built to prevent the overflow of the river. I needed to think, not rage. The satchel weighed on my shoulder, but I didn’t want to open it. Chances were I’d regret emptying the contents into the water, as I had previously.
Red light played over me as the automated defense system registered my body pattern and jewel. This reserve area didn’t have living guards because no one would work here—those willing and apt did safer things, like play Russian roulette.
Alligators, spirits, demon crabs, outlaw humans… DC was a place the dregs washed to then rotted. The swampers who lived here for generations didn’t get along well with strangers, but by not backing down and by giving some well-chosen bribes I’d bought myself a neutral greeting rather than hostile interactions.
No air stirred at the top of the levee, either. The cypress trees grew to the foot of the levee, channels of algae-covered water flowing between their raised knees. The Guild had built the levees when the flooding from the river and the estuaries became too much, and they were unwilling to move their dead. Here, in spring, the standing water would be three to five feet deep; in summer and fall it would dry out.
On the east and south the water deepened to between ten and twenty feet, flooded year-round. No trees grew there, but swamper villages rose on stilts scoured by the tides. A high-tech initiative, generations ago, had provided a foundation they could build and rebuild on. When a hurricane toppled the original high-rises, they built lower stacked dwellings. And called them ‘rises in mockery.
The forest here didn’t like humanity, made its opinion known.
Frogs called, the trees rustled, and I let anger trickle out of me as I walked the levee as it curved southeast, to where the trees thinned and swampers made their way back and forth between the levees that protected the old monuments of one of the Guild’s precursor states. No stones hurt my bare feet, but the vegetation pricked at them.
A tall, thin tower of stone jabbed into the sky, visible through the thinning forest.
Nearer to the Mall, cattails and rushes grew thickly at the levee’s base, water lilies blooming further out. Ripples of motion under the water indicated fish rising to feed, not big ones; a flock of undisturbed ducks foraged for food. I checked the satchel. It was packed with my usual requests, as if the stores master had memorized the items I took when I left. No gloves. At least I had trade goods.
Shading my eyes to get a better view, I watched the little flat-bottomed boats that dotted the water, pulling up traps and fishing. Each bore distinctive patterns, in splotches of either paint or charcoal, as well as the colors the owners wore wrapped around their heads. The swamper families staked out territories and defended them fiercely. In order to ply the tourist trade, engines were required for where the swamp deepened to river, before shallowing out again by the Mall.
I had never visited the Mall; the thought of crossing deep water in one of those tiny boats sent cold shivers down my spine.
Surrounding the Mall levee, more boats moored, and smoke rose from a variety of grills. Rich tourists commuted from Silsprin, a city to the northeast. They came by the boatload, often transported in by licensed swampers through shallow water, providing a much-needed trickle of credits.
Locals expanded that trickle by offering ‘local cuisine’. From what others in my village said, it was amazing what lies, salt and oil from game animals could do for flavor.
The sun had passed noon by the time someone poled close enough to hear me shout. When she pulled up at the levee’s base, I slid halfway down.
Dark as old wood, broad shouldered, she poled to within easy speaking distance. She grinned at me, gaps dark between her teeth.
“Can you pay for a lift?” The thick accent glided over the words. Swampers’ dialect had drifted from the language used in the cities, thick with new words and sounds I wasn’t used to. This area had once housed many people from many lands, and all had contributed to the dialect. Swampers took pride in the fact that outsiders couldn’t understand them easily. I’d learned the dialect, but I couldn’t manage to make some of the sounds correctly.
I held up a tube. “I have some waterproof sealant.”
She poled closer and steadied the boat as I climbed in. I passed her the spray bottle.
“Where?” she asked.
