Erasmus shrugged. “But they’ve lost us, haven’t they? They can’t possibly overtake us before—”
“You’re wrong. They’ve got two-way radios better than anything the Royal Post can build. If it is Clan security, they’ll have us in the Gruinmarkt before we get off the platform.”
Erasmus nodded thoughtfully. “Then we won’t be on this train when it arrives, will we?” He reached into his valise and pulled out a dog-eared gazetteer. “Let’s see. If we get off at Hartford, the next stopping train is forty-two minutes behind us. If we catch that one, we can get off at Framingham and take the milk train into Cambridge, then hail a cab. We’ll be a couple of hours later getting home, but if we do our business fast we can make the express, and we won’t be going through the city station. You know about the back route into the cellar. Do you think your stalkers know about it?”
Miriam blotted at her forehead. “Olga would. But she’s not who I’m worried about. You’re right, if we do it your way, we can probably get around them.” She managed a strained smile. “I really don’t need this. I don’t like being chased.”
“It won’t be for long. Once we’re on the transcontinental, there’s no way they’ll be able to trace us.”
The shadows were lengthening and deepening, and the omnipresent creaking of cicadas provided an alien chorus as Huw sat in the folding chair on the back stoop, waiting for Hulius. Elena had installed her boom box in the kitchen, and it was pumping out plastic girl-band pop from the window ledge. But she’d gone upstairs to powder her nose, leaving Huw alone with the anxiety gnawing at his guts like a family of hungry rats. For the first hour or so he’d tried working on the laptop, chewing away at the report on research methodologies he was writing for his grace, but it was hard to concentrate while he couldn’t stop imagining Yul out there in the chilly twilit pine forest, alone and in every imaginable permutation of jeopardy. You put him there, Huw’s conscience kept reminding him: You ought to be there instead.
Well yes, he’d tell his conscience—which he liked to imagine was a loosely knit sock-puppet in grime-stained violet yarn, with webcams for eyes—but you know what would happen. I don’t have Yul’s training. And Yul doesn’t have the background to run this project if anything happened to me. It sounded weak to his ears, even though it was true. He’d known Yul back when he’d been a tow-headed blond streak of mischief, running wild through the forest back of Osthalle keep with a child’s bow and a belt of rabbit scalps to show for it—and Huw had been a skinny, sickly, bookish boy, looked down on pityingly by his father and his hale, hunting-obsessed armsmen. The duke’s visit changed all that, even though the intensive English tuition and the bewildering shift to a boarding school in the United States hadn’t felt like much of an improvement at the time. It wasn’t until years later, when he returned to his father’s keep and went riding with Yul again, that he understood. Yul was a woodland creature, not in an elfin or fey sense, but like a wild boar: strong, dangerous, and shrewd within the limits of his vision. But not a dreamer or a thinker.
Yul had gone to school, too, and there’d even been talk of his enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps for a while—the duke’s security apparatus had more than a little use for graduates of that particular finishing school—but in the end it came to naught. While Huw had been sweating over books or a hot soldering iron, Hulius had enlisted in Clan security, with time off to serve his corvee duty with the postal service. And now, by a strange turnaround of fate that Huw still didn’t quite understand, he was sitting with a first-aid kit on the back stoop of a rented house at twilight, worrying his guts out about his kid brother, the tow-headed streak who’d grown up to be a bear of a man.
Huw checked his wristwatch for about the ten-thousandth time. It was coming up on eight fifteen, and the sun was already below the horizon. Another half hour and it would be nighttime proper. I could go over and look for him, he told himself. If he misses this return window, I could go over tomorrow. Elena’s video footage had been rubbish, the condensation on her helmet camera lens blurring everything into a madcap smear of dark green shade and glaring sunlight, but Hulius was wearing a radio beacon. If anything had happened—
Something moved. Huw’s head jerked round, his heart in his mouth for an instant: then he recognized Yul’s tired stance, and the tension erupted up from his guts and out of his mouth in a deafening whoop.
“Hey, bro!” Yul reached up and unfastened his helmet. “You look like you thought I wasn’t coming back!” He grimaced and rubbed his forehead as he shambled heavily towards the steps. “Give me medicine. Strong medicine.”
Huw grabbed him for a moment of back-slapping relief. “It’s not easy, waiting for you. Are you alright? Did anything try to eat you? Let’s get you inside and get the telemetry pack off you, then I’ll crack open the wine.”
“Okay.” Hulius stood swaying on the stoop for a moment, then took a heavy step towards the doorway. Huw picked up the first aid kit and laptop and hurried after him.
“Make your weapons safe, then hand me the telemetry pack first—okay. Now your backpack. Stick it there, in the corner.” He squinted at his brother. Yul looked much more wobbly than he ought to be. “Hmm.” Huw cracked the first-aid kit and pulled out the blood pressure cuff. “Get your armor off and let’s check you out. How’s the headache?”
“Splitting.” Hulius pawed at the Velcro fastenings on his armor vest, then dumped it on the kitchen floor. He fumbled at the buttons on his jacket. “I can’t seem to get this open.”
“Let me.” Huw freed the buttons then helped Hulius get one arm free of its sleeve. “Blood pressure, right now.”
“Aw, nuts. You don’t think—”
“I don’t know what to think. Chill out and try to relax your arm.” The control unit buzzed and chugged, pumping air into the pressure cuff around Yul’s arm. Huw stared at it as it vented, until the digits came up. “One seventy four over one ten.” Shit. “You remember to take your second-stage shots on time, two hours ago?”
“Uh, I, uh, only remembered half an hour ago.” Hulius closed his eyes. “Dumb, huh?”
Huw relaxed a little. “Real dumb. You’re not used to doing back-to-back jumps, are you?” Lightning Child, he could have sprung a cerebral hemorrhage! “The really bad headache, that’s a symptom. You need those pills. They take about an hour to have any effect, though, and if you walk too soon after you take them you can make yourself very ill.”
“It’s just a headache—”
“Headache, balls.” Huw began to pack up the blood pressure monitor. “All you can feel is the headache, but if your blood pressure goes too high the arteries and veins inside your brain can burst from it. You don’t want that to happen, bro, not at your age!” Relief was making him angry. Change the subject. “So how was it?”
“Oh, it was quiet, bro. I didn’t see any animals. Funny thing, I didn’t hear any birds either; it was just me and the trees and stuff. Quite relaxing, after a while.”
“Okay, so you had a nice relaxing stroll in the woods.” Why needle him? It’s not his fault you were chewing your guts out. “Sorry.” He glanced away from Hulius just as the door opened and Elena bounced in.