Stitch, p.23
STITCH, page 23
*****
The celebrations continued through the night, and eventually Molly returned to Baba Yaga to find a peaceful place to sleep. When she woke just after dawn, she went to find the fur-belly. He'd be in the lab, of course, sitting and gazing up at the translucent lids of his mother's crystal-cast eyes.
As Molly stepped from Baba Yaga's stony corridors into the throbbing, fleshy-walled lab, she saw its pulse was already up. It was buzzing with activity. The Stitchlifes she'd seen with a wagon full of bird cages were all there along with the raptors they'd taken. Every workbench held at least one of the hooded birds, and whatever the witches were doing to them, they were doing it to all of them. She glanced at the witches in the lab warily, but whenever they looked up from their work to smile at her, she returned their smiles as Fin Singh had told her to do.
Teddy Da was right where she'd expected him to be. As Molly approached, she looked up at Kitty Hawk. Her nearly see-through skin with its fine network of veins and its web of wrinkles and time-cut channels was the same as the last time she'd seen it, but this time Molly was sure the closed eyes were looking at her. Teddy Da said he heard his mother's voice in his head, and Molly believed him, but she was still surprised when she half-heard a voice whisper her name.
Molly was used to voices in her head. At any time Vora, the General, or devious Fin Singh might whisper between her ears, but this new voice wasn't like theirs. It was an old woman's voice, yes, but the way she heard it was different than the ghosts' voices. Theirs rang in her head. Theirs were so loud and so clear that she couldn't block them out. What Molly heard in her mind when she looked through the lids of Kitty Hawk's eyes wasn't loud or clear. It was only the hint of a voice leading her mind to speak whispered words at its suggestion: “Free Me.”
On the voyage to the Coral Castle and back, Molly had seen far-off objects on the sea and in the sky that she swore were moving, but Vora's ghost had told her it was just the trickery of her own eyes moving in her head. She wondered if this whispered voice was the same sort of trickery – the movements of her own mind fooling her as her eyes had.
“She wants to be freed,” the bear sitting at Molly's feet said under his breath.
Molly nodded.
Hala Zamis entered the lab from the doorway opposite where Molly had entered. She smiled as she passed them and crossed to the other side of the lab. Then the sounds of Juan Chang's bugler floated through Baba Yaga's open gates, down its corridors, and into the lab. Molly saw Hala Zamis look to her sisters with surprise on her face. “That's a call to assemble,” one of them explained.
“He's recalling his men to board Baba Yaga,” another said.
Molly noticed that Hala Zamis's mouth was hard-held and she spoke to her witches with the same tone Juan Chang used to speak to his men before battle. “We knew this day would come,” she said, “and we are prepared.”
She stepped to a box set atop one of the workbenches a few yards away. The lid was covered in bumpy pearl like the inside of a shell, like the doors of the Coral Castle's dungeon. Molly was sure the box had just been grown because she couldn't remember ever seeing it before in Corina's lab. Hala Zamis placed her palm on top of it and waited. A few seconds later, it swung open silently on hinges of muscle and sinew, and Molly saw it was filled with vials like the ones she'd seen the Stitchlifes working on earlier – like the ones she'd seen in the Coral Castle that controlled the Barbary Guard. Hala Zamis selected one filled with a pale blue liquid that looked like it was made of robins' eggs. She slid it into the pocket of her white coat, closed the lid of the pearl-topped box, and turned around to meet Molly's eye.
Molly didn't know what else to do but smile the false face that Fin Singh had advised her to wear. “Don't ever touch this box, Molly,” Hala Zamis said. “If it tastes anyone's flesh but mine, it'll kill them.” Molly didn't like the way the old woman's eye bored into her, and she was glad to hear Juan Chang's voice and his footfalls approaching. Corina's voice was in the air, too, but neither of them sounded happy.
“Wait,” Corina said, “You've got to wait. Now isn't the time to push ahead. I'm begging you – return your men to their rest and wait.”
“I've made my decision,” he said.
“And what decision have you made?” Hala Zamis asked him from across the lab. All the Stitchlifes stopped their work to watch what would unfold. Teddy Da sniffed the air and looked at Molly with worry in his ursine eyes.
“Whatever happens, Molly,” Fin Singh warned, “Say nothing.”
“The Populist Army must march now,” Juan Chang said to Hala Zamis. “West to the Waltons or South to the Lee family's enclave. We must take the momentum of this victory over the Hales and use it to win the next battle.”
“An interesting thought,” Hala Zamis said, “but don't your men need to rest and regain their strength?”
“They can rest as Baba Yaga carries them. We must push forward. There are many battles yet to be fought and won. Many enclaves. Many noble families. If the nobles' rule is to be ended, we must press on. Now. Not in a day, not in a week. Now.” As the red-cloaked leader spoke, Molly saw Hala Zamis's hand slip into her pocket where the vial rested. “I've called my men to assemble,” he said. “Some of them have already climbed Baba Yaga's ramp and await in the courtyards.”
“Surely,” Hala Zamis reasoned, “if the nobles have no chance against the size of your witch-sped army, then there can be no harm in waiting.”
“The harm in waiting is that my men may lose their fire. The Hales' enclave is a place of luxury and soft living. It would be too easy for them to rest on their laurels and lose the urgency of the fight against all the other noble families while they enjoy what victory over the Hales has already won them.”
“Your impatience surprises me,” Hala Zamis said. “How many years did it take to win this victory? Many, many decades, I think. Longer. It was only with our help that the balance of power turned in your favor and you no longer had to creep in the wilds and strike at the nobles in skirmishes, but instead could meet them and defeat them on the field of battle.”
“And I thank Corina and all the Stitchlifes for that, but now that the Populists are strong, we must use that strength and march on to finish the larger fight. The noble families will fall,” Juan Chang said, “but only if we continue what we've started.”
“What if there was another way?” Hala Zamis asked.
“There isn't,” Juan Chang said flatly.
“Please,” Corina begged as she cupped her hand to his cheek, “listen to what she says.” Molly saw the confusion on Juan Chang's face as he looked from Corina back to Hala Zamis.
“What if there was a better way to take power from the nobles?” Hala Zamis asked. “One that didn't destroy what had been built and result in the deaths of so many.”
“Death and destruction are unfortunate companions of revolution and war, but if the order of things is to change, then they're inevitable.”
“But what if the order of things didn't have to change?” she asked. “Not entirely. What if I told you I've found a better way – a way for power to be taken from the abusive hands of the nobles and put in the hands of those who truly care for the people.”
“The People,” he said, “are the ones who truly care for the People, and it is in their hands that power must be held.”
“If the power is in their hands, then the result will be the same as when the nobles ruled. You know this as well as I do because you know that the nature of man never changes. Over the centuries, we Stitchlifes have rewritten the nobles in many ways, but their nature is and always has been the same as common men. Any man or men who ruled the People after the nobles fell from power would possess the same greed and cupidity as any of the nobles. The very same avarice and hunger for ever-expanding power would bring about a rule at least as damning to the world as the rule of the noble families has been.”
“If you follow Kitty Hawk's ancient oath to serve mankind, then surely you must see that the People must be allowed to govern themselves. That's why we fight this battle against noble rule together isn't it? So that the People can rise and steer their own course.”
Hala Zamis walked to the crystal-cast body that stood in the center of the lab and gazed up at it as she spoke. “We follow Kitty Hawk's oath. Her pledge is so important to us that we have made enemies of our sisters who no longer care for it. They would rather secure their own power and the eternal safety of the Coral Castle through service and dedication to the nobles. We have gone to great lengths to escape them and to create conditions where we can truly serve man as our Stitchlife mother intended.” She turned from Kitty Hawk's body to face Juan Chang again. “And now,” she said, “we are in a position to do so.”
“So let us march together towards the nobles with our common mission,” Juan Chang said.
“We will not march on the nobles any further,” Hala Zamis said with finality. “The Hales were an example for the other noble families. Their downfall shows the other families what will happen if they don't accept what's coming.”
“I don't understand,” Juan Chang said. “What's coming? What do you mean?”
Molly saw Hala Zamis take the vial from her pocket. “Stitchlife rule,” she said. She snapped the top off the vial in her hands, and as she spoke, the pale blue liquid inside boiled away and disappeared. It floated free, and Molly knew that whatever the witchy scent was, whatever it did, it was now everywhere. “The reign of the noble families has ended,” Hala Zamis said, “and the reign of the Stitchlife Queens begins. Now, the Stitchlifes will rule the People and guide them to rise again as Kitty Hawk intended.”
“Have you asked, Lord Roge Walton or Lord Jericho Schwartz what they think of this?”
“My Stitchlifes are binding the Hale family's birds to our will now. We'll send them as messengers to inform the nobles of the Hale family's defeat and their own precarious situations. As you said, none of them can stand against the army we built. If the nobles accept Stitchlife rule, then we'll keep them. They still have their uses, after all. There's no point in creating the chaos and the anarchy of a complete power vacuum. The nobles will accept what cannot be changed, and we'll keep them in place and rule the people through them as their Queens. Through their noble hands, at our New Coral Castle's command, mankind will be best served.”
“I've traded one set of nobility for another,” Juan Chang said. “Worse. Nobility and a monarchy, too.”
“I had hoped that you would see the wisdom of it and continue to command the army that keeps the nobles firmly under our control with the threat of destruction. I think I know your answer, but I will ask you now, and I will ask it only once: will you lead the Stitchlife Guard or will you be nothing?”
The color was gone from Juan Chang. Even the hue of his cloak seemed to have paled. He turned his shocked face to Corina and asked, “Did you know about this?” She shook her head slowly to the left and the right.
“Oh, there's no longer any need for that, Corina,” Hala Zamis said. “You've done a commendable job, but the time for chicanery has passed. To continue deception beyond the point of its necessity is... unbecoming.” Corina's pleading eyes begged Hala Zamis to say nothing more, but as Molly watched the Stitchlife Queen speak, it seemed like Corina's and Juan Chang's hearts both broke, and whatever spilled from them was an elixir to Hala Zamis. Her face glowed with pleasure as she spoke. “You've been a fool, Chang. You've been Corina's fool. Yes, she witch-sped your army, but for us, for the Stitchlife Queens, not for you and your upstart Populists.”
“I thought...” he looked at Corina as he began to speak, but then he turned away from her and spoke at Hala Zamis, “My army will never pledge their loyalty to a Stitchlife Queen. Those men will never fight for you.”
“They don't have to pledge their loyalty,” Hala Zamis said with a laugh. “It's already mine.” She held up the broken vial for him to see. “I've released a pheromonal trigger,” she said. “Like what you used to calm the Barbaries of the Coral Castle, but... different.” She turned her eyes from him to look at the broken vial in her hand. “This one triggered a programmed response in your men – something put in place in their minds weeks ago as they slumbered in comas. It's irresistible. The smell of it has spread all over Baba Yaga already and into the enclave beyond. All of your men have breathed it in and become my men. Corina should be commended. It was her plan, and to set such a programmed response in place in a man's mind without killing him is a very difficult task. Corina is our most talented witch. We couldn't have done it without her.”
Corina turned her head from Juan Chang's hateful gaze, but Molly could see the pain on her face. “Is that true?” he asked her. “Did you poison the minds of my men with your witchery?”
A dozen of Juan Chang's men entered the lab from behind him, and when Hala Zamis commanded, “Take him prisoner,” they stripped him of his bush knife and held him fast. “The programming Corina put in place is terribly good. Your men are quite loyal. Well, now, they are anyway – now that they've had a taste of the right pheromone to trigger the response.” She laughed again. “A bit like their former General like that,” she said.
“Please,” Corina said, “No.”
“Oh, yes. The pheromones work on you too, General,” Hala Zamis said. “Of course Corina didn't plant programming in your brain; she expertly took advantage of the programming evolution left in place in your mind and your body. Or perhaps I should say 'in your heart'.”
“What did you do to me?” he asked Corina.
“Mei Corina is so very talented,” Hala Zamis said to Juan Chang before turning to look at the young Stitchlife and compliment her directly. Corina avoided all eyes in the room as Hala Zamis spoke. “My brightest pupil by far. She grew a gland in the roof of her mouth that produces roughly ten-thousand times the pheromones that an average woman does. Seducing you with her own witchy scent wasn't nearly as challenging for her as writing the code for the gland, delivering it with a virus, and growing it in her own, pretty mouth. I think you'll agree that what she created is quite powerful. Of course, Corina's natural charms are considerable, but there was no resisting the sweet product of her siren gland.”
“Is it true?” he asked her. Juan Chang's voice had lost all of its life and command. Corina hid her face.
Molly had to work hard to avoid Juan Chang's gaze in the moments before Hala Zamis's men took him from the lab. She knew that if she saw Juan Chang's eyes, then she wouldn't be able to restrain herself from springing to his aid. There were a dozen of the bewitched Stitchlife Guard holding him, and they were almost as fast as she was. Even with Teddy Da by her side, she knew it would be unwise to try and save him now.
Chapter Six
Brothers Fight Until Cousins Come
The Stitchlifes' winged harbingers flew across the wilds, the crumbled fringe-sprawls, and the red grasses of the great plains. They flew over swamps, mountaintops, and valleys of death to bring their messages to the noble houses of Walton, Holtz, Lee, Austin, Mack, Ortega, and to the Southern Gentlemen Schwartz.
Lord Roge Walton knew that the birds were no simple letter carriers. They were bound creatures, twin-entangled to a witchy wreath. To look into their raptor's eyes was to look into distant Stitchlife eyes. The birds hadn't been written to make the sounds of human speech, so to deliver their message to him, they carried paper and ink, but he knew the witches would see and hear what their creatures did. If he wanted, Lord Walton could deliver his response to the bird itself, addressed it as if he were speaking to the upstart Stitchlife Queen Hala Zamis.
He threw a thick blanket over the witched beast while he read the letter it had carried.
Roge Walton was happy to hear of the fall of the Hales. Reading that part made him smile, but as gratified as he was to learn of their downfall, he was enraged at the idea of a Stitchlife rebellion. The purpose of their power was to serve his. They'd served the nobles for hundreds of years. They existed to serve. The Coral Castle existed to send its witches to the noble families far and wide to do their bidding and help maintain the system of rule that had been stable and had kept the world's order for centuries. The thought of the witches turning on the nobles, threatening them with some army they'd conjured from the local stock of Vargas Hale's territories was enough to drive him to rage.
After he read the letter containing the Stitchlifes' ultimatum, he eyed the form of the shrouded, blanket-covered bird and wondered if he should draw his cutlass and cut it in half through the blanket. His dark-fingered, claw-tipped hands held his cup so tightly that the force of his grip on the carbon-latticed witch-bone made it vibrate. It wouldn't break, not even under his crushing claws, but it hummed with his anger.
Roge Walton had no love for his noble neighbors. They were enemies: their territories were to be conquered or their bands of noble blades would conquer his own. But this message the bird had brought, threatening them all and signed by a Stitchlife Queen, made him set all that aside. For now. He'd still conquer his neighbors, of course, but for now they all had a greater enemy than each other, an enemy that claimed to have nearly three hundred witch-sped blades as its army. Beside hatred for each other and a history of wars, murders, and blood debts, the noble families now had something else in common – an enemy.
