The man, Sonny, led Orenda in what she assumed was the wrong direction. She would assume that any kind of healing would have been done upstairs, in one of the large, stately rooms the mansion had to have, but he led her into a servant’s area, then down into a basement that seemed to be used for storage. Barrels of apples, pears, and other fruits were stored as if they had just been harvested, along with various farm equipment and all the sorts of things one would expect to see stacked on high shelves for a large agricultural business.
“My father spoke of you often, Orenda,” he said as they descended the staircase, “none of us knew whether you were alive or dead. I must admit that I didn’t know if you were even real. My father… he was a good man, but he lived a hard life, and he had his vices. He drank too much, for example, and when he did he would ramble on to us about unbelievable things.”
Orenda didn’t know why they were down here. It was obvious that Gareth wasn’t, and she didn’t much like being in an underground room, with only one exit, with a man who, if his little brother had been any indication, could tear out her organs if the mood struck him.
“I’m sorry about your father, Sonny,” She said, “I had wanted to meet him.”
“I’m sorry too,” Sonny said as he grabbed onto one of the shelves built into the walls of the room and yanked. “He was a good man. A loving man. A lot of people grow up without fathers. Mine saved me. I was lucky. I’ll make sure the little ones know who he was.”
The shelf came away from the wall with a click and no scraping sound, as if it didn’t rest on the floor at all, as if it was mounted on hinges.
It opened into a short corridor, lined with earth on all sides and completely unlit. Sonny stepped into it and motioned for her to come through as well.
“Come on,” He said, “Down the rabbit hole.”
Orenda took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway, then Sonny grabbed for the handles on the back of the shelf and pulled it closed. They were plunged into darkness, and Orenda remembered that most humans couldn’t see in the dark.
“He saved you?” She asked as she began to walk down the corridor.
“Yes,” Sonny said, and the hallway filled with a crisp white light. Orenda turned to follow it to its source, and saw that several spiraling tubes protruded from the wall at different intervals, connected by some sort of metal wire- but none of them pulsated with magic. They gave off heat, but it was no sort of fire magic she had ever seen.
“It gets dark down here,” Sonny followed her eyeline, “And we can’t very well keep a fire going with ventilation as it is. None of us can use any sort of magic- we’re,” he stared at her and she stared back and thought that perhaps he wasn’t so young after all, now that she really looked at him. He was older than she was- not by much but humans aged differently, and he could have been Ali’s age. All the Brigaddons had those big eyes and cute faces- they all probably looked younger than they actually were. He was looking into her eyes, and she knew what he was looking for.
“You’re made of sterilite, starboy,” She said.
“Yes,” he said and his eyes darted away, “You must be fairly high ranking in the Order to know that. It’s a well kept secret. No one knows that… you really are Soko and Ronnie’s child.”
“I suppose,” Orenda said.
“My sister,” He said as they began to move again.
“I suppose,” Orenda said again.
“Well, then you know that none of us can cast magic,” Sonny explained and tapped one of the tubes, causing it to flicker, “So we caught lightning in a bottle.”
“Lightning?” Orenda asked.
“Yes, that’s what it is,” Sonny explained, “Or… that’s what powers it. It’s a long story. But you can cut the current and it’ll go off and we need to do that in the main hall and the first few rooms until we know for sure that no one is going to come to the house looking for trouble.”
He led her out of the hall and into a much larger room, laid out like a living area. There were toys scattered about, mostly knitted or hand-sewn patchwork rag dolls, along with the sort of storybooks that children learn to read on. No fire blazed in the room, but it didn’t need it. Orenda didn’t know what kept out the chill of the outside, but she knew that it did not reach her. There were several paintings and posters hung along the walls- but one in particular drew Orenda’s attention.
A poster over a desk, situated between two bookshelves, was familiar to her- Gareth’s mask stood out with a cutlass and his pistol crossed below it. The painting said: No Gods. No Monarchy. Only Mortals. Another poster had an outline of a rabbit and three belts with symbols that Orenda didn’t understand, along with more text than posters normally had: This Weekend at the Satra Mainhouse Arena - Eishtar Festival - World Cage Fighting Championships! See humans from around the globe compete in this world-class bloodbath! Show begins at sundown! Tickets available at- Here someone had stuck a sticker over the text that read “sold out” - for only 200 gold. See the legendary Bunny Foo Foo, Our own Eishtar Bunny, the shifter Xaxac OfAgalon defend his title for the fourth year running! Someone had written on it at an angle a large X, but it looked as if someone had come in, at a later date, and finished with a different ink the letters “axac BRIGADDON”. The text was all arranged in a pleasing way, and Orenda was sure it was a poster that had been made to commemorate the event.
“My dad,” Sonny said, “was the best cage fighter in the world. Funny thing about rabbits… they’re notoriously difficult to cage. That’s our family motto,” he pointed to a homey piece of needlework that had been hung over the doorway through which they had entered. In careful, beautifully crafted stitches it read:
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“When you’re on your feet keep your head held high
But when you’re on your knees you smile and lie
You tell them “of course”, you tell them “okay”
And when they leave don’t do a single thing they say.”
“Did your mother make that?” Orenda asked.
“I don’t remember my mother,” Sonny said, “We weren’t allowed to ask about her. Our master was much more interested in our ability to be nice, cute, quiet and not ask questions. And dad didn’t really remember much of her- he hadn’t even remembered her name; he had to go through the records to find it. They only knew each other for a few hours, so you can’t really blame him for that. If I had to guess, and I do have to guess because I don’t really have the resources to do much else, I would say she’s dead. Most humans, especially humans who weren’t shifters and I know she wasn’t, don’t survive that kind of multiple birth.”
“Oh,” Orenda said, “I’m sorry.”
“I never knew her,” he shrugged, “It’s the way of the world. Come on, if you want to save your uncle we can’t stand around bullshitting.”
“I never knew my mother, either,” Orenda said as she followed him down another long corridor.
“Dad talked about her all the time,” He said, “He said she was funny, and smart, and she never really… wanted anything from him. That kind of thing is important to him. I don’t think anyone ever showed him basic compassion before. And once you understand that, it’s hard to go back to being… I think he would have died before he let someone else enslave him.”
“Who’s Langil?” Orenda asked, “Commander Agalon called Mary Sue ‘Miss OfLangil’.”
“Uncle Lapus,” Sonny said, “But god… he’s not been here in years.”
“Lapus Lazuli couldn’t have been here within your lifetime,” Orenda said, “He’s been trapped in a cup for two centuries.”
“Maybe we’re thinking of two different people,” Sonny told her, “The Uncle Lapus I know is a water elf.”
He opened another door and held it for her, “In here.”
Inside were two women with bandanas around their neck as if they had had them over their faces and had just pulled them down, drinking from cups and talking amongst themselves over a table where Gareth was splayed out and seemed to be asleep. His flesh was pale and sunken, and it would have been so easy to think he was dead if his chest wasn’t moving, ever so slightly, with his shallow breaths. He had been cleaned, but his abdomen was so stitched together that he looked like one of the patchwork dolls Orenda had seen in the living room.
“This is Orenda,” Sonny said, “Orenda, these are my sisters, Honey and Bunni.”
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” Orenda said, “I can never thank you enough.”
“Don’t thank us yet,” Honey said, “He was rough. We get a lot of rough cases through here, but… this man’s been through a lot.”
“I don’t know what the hell got into Lappy,” Bunni said, “That boy ain’t right. He lost his goddamn mind.”
“What got into him,” Honey said, “Is that he’s spoilt. He never had to… he don’t appreciate how good he has it here.” She turned to Orenda and asked, “You a fire elf?”
“More or less,” Orenda answered, “I’m the only chance he has, at any rate. You can take blood from one person and put it into another?”
“I hypothesize,” Bunni said, “That we can take whole-ass organs out of one thing and put them into another if we can figure out how. We get… we get more corpses than we’d like through here. But we have been able to… study them. Silver linings, I guess.” She shrugged.
“Study?” Orenda asked and allowed the sisters to lead her to a table.
“They cut them up to see what’s inside them,” Sonny explained, “And then draw it.”
Orenda opened her mouth in an ‘O’ and looked up to see Honey standing beside her. She had expected to see a small vile, the sort of thing they use to test for magical acumen in the blood, but Honey was holding a long tube attached to the needle. On the other end was a glass jar easily large enough to hold a pint of liquid.
“How much blood do you need?” Orenda asked in alarm.
“Yeah, you’re gonna need them soup beans,” Sonny said, then to his sister, “Soko’s making beans and cornbread.”
“Good,” Bunni said, “I’m starving. And tired. I’m dead on my feet.”
She flipped Gareth’s arm so that it rested palm up and prodded at it, “God all his veins are flat. He barely has a pulse. We need to get enough blood into him to wake him up so he can drink some fluids.”
“Anilla is making healing potions,” Orenda told them.
“Oh thank god,” Bunni said, “A mage. Maybe he won’t look like one big mass of scar tissue. What happened to his face?”
“The Emerald Knight tried to cut through him,” Orenda said, and she refused to give them time to respond because she knew it would be a huge, time consuming subject, so she asked quickly, “Where’s his hand?”
“My brother Junior took it,” Honey told her, “You’re going to feel a pinch. Make a fist for me.”
Orenda obeyed her and flinched when the needle entered her arm. She watched the dark blood flow through the tube and begin collecting in the jar. They were taking so much of it.
“Why did your brother take it?” She asked, trying not to panic, trying not to be as upset as she was.
“He makes all kinds of things,” Sonny said, “Not just clockwork, but all sorts of things. He made the electric lights you saw.”
“He took the hand and the gun,” Honey said.
“He needs his hand,” Orenda protested.
“Stay calm,” Honey told her, “your blood pressure can’t shoot up on me. He won’t break it, I swear. He just wants to see what makes it tick.”
“I’m so tired,” Orenda admitted, “Oh, and I left a weapon upstairs that your brother nearly killed Gareth to get. It burns anyone who touches it. I need to go get it… I shouldn’t have left it up there. I’m so bad at this… I’m not…”
She would not cry in front of them. She would not break down and cry in front of them.
“Hey,” Sonny said, “Hey, look at me. I’ll go get it. I’m not afraid of being burned. I’ll wrap it in a blanket or something.”
“Thank you,” Orenda told him, “If it hurts you, put it down! Oh- but I did leave a mask up there get that as well- actually… perhaps I shouldn’t move it. I think Falsie will watch it. But… I shouldn’t have left it-”
“Look,” Sonny said, “It’s been a really long night. A lot has happened. It would make you feel better to have it in front of you. I’m going to go get it, alright? Your friend Falsie may follow me down here. And I’m going to get a new pitcher of water. I really want you to stay nice and relaxed so your blood flows right. Then we’ll get some food in you, and you can rest. I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but everything is going to be ok.”
He said this as if he said it, or something similar, pretty frequently, and Orenda thought of all the people the Brigaddons had helped. They had dedicated their lives to ferrying people out of this awful place, to making the world a little better, one person at a time.
“Thank you,” She said.
He took her free hand and squeezed it.
“Try to rest,” he said.