The Consort, Chapter 27
They walked back to their quarters after dinner, hand in hand, not speaking. DG wasn’t dallying along; Cain knew she was thinking about the talk he’d said they needed to have and wanted to get on with it. As for him, he’d spent most of the afternoon and evening obsessing over how he was going to say it, how he was going to put it.
No sooner were they through the doors to their suite then DG turned on him. “Okay, what’s this you have to talk to me about?”
“Come on, DG. Let’s get changed and get comfortable first, huh?”
“I can’t possibly get comfortable with some kind of serious discussion hanging over my head.”
He dragged her into the bedroom, shutting the door behind them. “Well, I’m sick of being in this suit, so I’m changing. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He took off his jacket and waistcoat. DG sighed mightily, and unbuttoned her skirt.
“Maybe we should have sex first,” she said, in her pajamas by now and sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up.
He cocked an eyebrow at her, pulling a t-shirt on. “First you can’t wait two seconds, now you want to have sex first?”
She scrunched up her face. “Most men would jump at the chance! Are you sick of me already?”
“Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?” he said, exasperated.
“Because!” she exclaimed. “I’m terrified, that’s why!”
“Of what?”
She lowered her legs to the floor and leaned over, her hands clasped between her knees. “That you’re going to tell me that you were wrong, you’ve changed your mind, you don’t want any of this and it’s all just over,” she said in a rush, her head lowered.
Cain was dumbstruck by the depth of her misconception. He went to her side and took her hands. “How can you think that?” he said. She risked a glance up at him. “After all we’ve been through, everything that’s happened…”
“That’s just what I mean,” she said. “There’s been so much, and there’ll probably be more, and I know you just wanted a quiet life…”
Cain laid a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t care if it’s quiet or not as long as it’s with you,” he said. Isn’t this ironic, Cain? Here she is thinking you’re about to dump her or something when all along it’s you that’s terrified she won’t want you anymore once she’s heard the truth.
Yeah. It’s ironic. I hate irony.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hate sounding like some ninny hysterical girly-girl.” Cain chuckled. “I’m just still…I guess kinda fragile from losing you, and afraid it’ll happen again. And…well…” She trailed off, looking up at him.
“What?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck in a fierce hug, her whole body behind it. Cain hugged her back. “I just love you, is all,” she murmured against his neck.
Cain held her tighter, feeling the tremendous weight of being responsible for DG’s love, her heart which she had given to him, surrendering to him the power to hurt her. The only thing that made it bearable was that she held an equal power over him. “I love you, too,” he whispered.
She pulled away, putting on a smile and taking a deep breath. “All right. Now what is this serious thing you need to talk to me about?”
“It’s…complicated.”
DG’s face went sober. “Well, there’s only one thing I can think of that fits that description.” She put her hand on his arm. “Are you ready to tell me the truth? About what happened to you?”
He nodded. “Yes.” He got up. He couldn’t be sitting next to her when he said these things. “Okay,” he said, half to himself. You’re really going to do this, huh?
Yeah, I really am.
He leaned on the edge of the bed and faced her. She looked so heartbreakingly young, sitting there in her pajamas with her knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, watching him and waiting. At that moment, Cain felt every single minute of the seventeen years he had on her.
“What I’m about to tell you will be a surprise. A shock, even. It might be upsetting.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Have you ever heard anyone mention the Geminic Order?”
DG didn’t answer. Her expression didn’t change. She just kept watching him, as if he hadn’t spoken.
Cain frowned. “DG, did you hear me?”
She rose, slowly, and walked around to her nightstand. She knelt and placed her hand over the lock on the bottommost drawer, which obediently released for her. She reached inside and withdrew what looked like a letter. She stood and walked to him, handed him the letter without a word, and returned to her place on the couch.
Cain examined it. It was addressed to “Dorothea VIII”…but it was dated just a few days after the Eclipse, long before anyone had the slightest idea that she’d ever use that title. He read the words written there in a careful, elegant hand.
Someday, the man you love will ask you if you’ve ever heard of the Geminic Order. When he does, you will know that we are real, and that we are watching.
Cain felt cold all over. The long arm and far-reaching gaze of the Order was humbling and made him feel small, like a chess piece on a board, doing their bidding without even being aware of it. He looked up at his wife, who was just staring at him blankly. “When did you receive this?” he asked.
“About a week after the Eclipse.”
“And you didn’t tell anybody about it?”
She shook her head. “I had a strong compulsion not to, until now. It’s like I forgot I even had it, until you asked me that question.”
He nodded. “They probably attached a telepathic suggestion to the note.”
“Who are these people, Wyatt?”
He sighed. “No one knows, not really. They’re everyone and no one.”
“Like the Illuminati.”
He frowned. “Who?”
“Oh, back home there are these paranoid conspiracy nuts who think there’s some top-secret super-powerful cabal of people who run the whole world from behind the scenes. Pulling strings, installing governments, blah blah.”
Cain took a deep breath. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Except the Order is not the fantasy of paranoid people. It’s very real.”
She laughed, sounding surprised to be doing so. “Come on, Cain. There isn’t any secret club of puppetmasters controlling everything in the Zone! Don’t you think I’d know about it?”
“No. Not until they want you to.” He held up the note. “And it looks like they know I’m going to tell you.”
“That note could be from the same paranoiacs that think the Illuminati are reading their email!”
“DG,” Cain said, fixing her with a serious gaze. “The Order is real.” He took a breath. “I know because I’m a member.”
She stared at him for a moment, obviously wanting to laugh at him but seeing his face, seeing that he was serious, and it died halfway to her mouth. She pulled in fast, her face going closed. She stood up and went to the window, her arms folded over her chest, looking out. “You’re one of these secret guys?”
“A very low-ranking one, but…yes.”
“And you couldn’t have told me this before?” she said, an edge coming into her voice.
“Membership in the Order is beyond a secret, DG. I shouldn’t even be telling you now.”
“How long?”
“DG…
“How long?” Cain got the distinct impression he was speaking to the Queen now. She so rarely showed her face in their bedroom.
He sighed. “Seventeen years.”
“Since the Witch took my sister.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you joined? Was the Order trying to fight it?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why, then?”
Cain said nothing. After a few moments she turned and looked at him, an expression of analytical wariness on her face. “It was you, DG. I joined the Order to protect you.”
Her eyes widened. “But…wha…you didn’t know me!”
“I knew who you were. You were the Queen’s daughter and I owed you my allegiance. Just because we’d never met doesn’t mean I didn’t feel duty-bound to protect you.”
“Everyone thought I was dead!”
“Not everyone.” He went to her and took her hand, leading her to the window seat, her favorite spot. “Sit down, okay? Let me try and get this all out before you go all DG on me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, indignant…but she sounded more like herself again, which had been his intent.
“You know. Barging in, interrupting, and generally throwing me off.”
She shook her head. “I’ll try.”
He sat down facing her, with his back against the opposite wall of the window seat. He folded his legs under him, the casual pose making him feel less like a penitent as he told this story.
“When your mother brought you back to life, she knew she needed to hide you, and for that, she needed help. She was weak and her magic was damn near used up, and the moment Azkadellia realized she was gone from the palace she’d be hunting for her. So she asked the Mystic Man for help.”
“He was in this Order too, wasn’t he?”
Cain nodded. “The Mystic Man guided your mother to Milltown, but he had to help her with a travel storm to get you and your new parents to the other side, and after you were gone there were memories to be erased and precautions to be taken. He couldn’t undertake such a project without the consent of the Order.”
“He had to tell them about me.”
“They already knew. There’s very little that escapes their attention. His guards, myself and three other Tin Men, were to help him, but we couldn’t be privy to the business of the Order without being made members, so we were sort of…drafted. I didn’t ask too many questions. Everything was happening so fast. Word of Azkadellia’s treachery and your death was just breaking, and we knew the truth but couldn’t say, and then your mother and father both vanished. You can imagine what things were like, how confused and frightened everyone was, and no information was getting to anyone. I just wanted to get the operation over with and get back to Adora and Jeb, and keep my head down. And once you were gone, and your mother returned to the Northern Palace, that’s just what I did. I left the Mystic Man’s service after a few more years, when things started to get really bad. Azkadellia had imprisoned your mother, and the Longcoats were starting to round people up. Central City was becoming a scary place. It was then that I moved my family out to the country where they’d be safer.”
He turned towards the window. He was getting closer to the hard part. He could feel her watching him. “I don’t know why the Order did nothing against her. Their vision is very long. They sometimes put a stop to things that seem good, and allow bad things to continue, because of some plan they have for fifty years from now. I’m not privy to their reasons, no one is. But they knew the truth. That you were alive, and someday you would return, and the Witch would fall. That’s what they believed. But they couldn’t risk Azkadellia finding out you were alive, or anyone slipping up, or being captured and having it tortured or Viewed out of them.” He sighed. “So they decided to make it safe, for you. They’d erase the memories of anyone who knew you were alive, and where you’d gone.”
DG frowned. “But…the Mystic Man knew.”
“Barely. His mind was powerful. Some vestige of memory must have remained.”
She nodded. “Go on,” she said, quietly.
“They wanted to make sure you were protected. So they…took steps.” His throat was closing up.
DG slid a little closer, like she sensed his hesitance. He couldn’t look at her, but he felt her small hand on his ankle. “What steps, honey?”
“They chose four protectors. Their memories wouldn’t be erased. They would know about you. And to…to make sure they weren’t compromised, or hurt, or captured, they…” He shut his eyes. “They had them put in tin suits.”
He heard her breath squeak a little in her throat and her hand tighten on his ankle. “Wyatt…”
He looked at her, her blue eyes wide with disbelief. “I was one of those four protectors, DG. I was put in that suit to keep me safe so I could protect you when you came back.”
She was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. “But that isn’t why. It was the Resistance…Zero found out, and…”
“No,” he said. “I mean, yes, I was in the Resistance, and yes, I was betrayed. But it was all arranged by the Order. It was a cover story, DG. That’s what Zero thought he was doing, imprisoning a rebel traitor. What he was really doing was putting me in safekeeping until you came back.” He nodded at her shocked face. “Now, you see what the Order is like. Do you think they asked me to volunteer? They didn’t. Do you think they considered what would become of Adora and Jeb? No, they did not…or if they did, they didn’t care. They picked me, and I was not informed ahead of time. When they came to my door, when they beat me, when they beat my wife and my son…” He swallowed hard, then went on. “I never imagined there was anything else behind it. I thought I’d been found out as a Resistor. But when they were putting me in the suit…great and terrible, I’ll never forget it. Zero was strapping me in. I looked over his shoulder, and there was another Longcoat, watching me, staring at me so intently…and then he gave the sign. The sign of the Order.” He demonstrated, fingers down the temple. “I knew right then that this was no accident. Once I was inside the suit, suddenly I knew everything. The Order must have planted a telepathic dump inside it so I’d understand my task. The other three guardians were placed in the other three quadrants of the Zone. Each of our suits had an enchantment placed on it to draw travel storms. It was no accident that yours dropped you within half a click of me, DG. I drew you to me.”
DG stared for a few more moments, then she slowly slid off the window seat and walked a few steps away. She walked back and forth, head down, arms wrapped around her stomach. “You knew who I was when I let you out of the suit, didn’t you?”
He stared at the rug. “Yes.” DG said nothing, just continued to pace. Cain watched her. “DG, say something,” he finally said, after a long silence.
“What can I say?” she replied, her voice wispy, almost dreamlike. “Oh wait, I know…I’ll just apologize for being not indirectly responsible, like I thought, but directly responsible for all the pain of your life!”
He would have liked to disagree, but he couldn’t. “It wasn’t your fault,” he murmured.
She stopped and looked at him, tears on her face. “God, how you must have hated me,” she said.
Cain couldn’t lie, not to her, not now, not about this. “Yes, I did. For a long time inside that suit, I did. But I hated them more. It was them that put me in that suit, not you.”
“No wonder you were so grumpy at me when I let you out.” She put her hands to her face.
“I waited for you to be of age,” Cain went on. “Waited for you to come back and get me out of that suit. You’ve asked me how I stayed sane in there? I had hope of release. Knew I had a one in four chance of you showing up. You were early, actually. And you weren’t what I expected. I never expected this little whirlwind to come running in with a stick like she was going to save me, ready to march off to Central City, no idea who she was or what she was supposed to do. You were supposed to come back knowing who you were and what your task was, but you didn’t know anything. It wasn’t my place to tell you. I barely knew anything myself. I resented that I’d had this mission forced on me when all I wanted was to find Jeb and Adora. I tried to get free of it in Central City, but…well, the Mystic Man didn’t let me.”
“Why haven’t you told me this before?” she said. An edge of anger had come into her voice.
“I’m telling you now.”
Her hands rose to run through her hair and clench there briefly as she paced, her steps quickening. “Everything you’ve ever told me was a lie.”
“No. There was just more to it.”
“More to it?” she exclaimed. “Cain…Jesus, these people imprisoned you, practically kidnapped you, forced you into some secret task you didn’t agree to and you’re still protecting their little secret cabal?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Let’s hear them!”
“I’m not done protecting you, all right?” he said, louder than he’d intended to. “I’ll never be done, not as long as I live! You are not supposed to know about the Order now, and don’t think I didn’t debate telling you this because I did. I might be putting you in danger and that’s a thought to keep me up nights.”
“In danger? What are they going to do to me? Shouldn’t I know these things? I’m the Queen, remember?” she cried. “I can’t take it! Everything’s changing too fast, I don’t know…who are you? Are you the man I know, or are you somebody totally different?”
He stood up. “You know me, DG. Better than anyone.”
“I know the guy you said you were! Now you’re a member of some Machiavellian Rotary Club and you just told me you hated me for years and somehow I’m supposed to fit this into my idea of who you are? My friend, my husband, my Consort? And these people, this Order, all I want to do is find every last one of them and lock them in a tin suit for eight years for what they did to you and now you tell me I’m in danger just for knowing about them?”
“Take a breath, DG.”
“I can’t take a breath! It might not be air in here! Maybe this palace is an elaborate brain trick like the Matrix or something and none of us are really here!”
He seized her arms and shook her once. “Listen to me, all right? Nothing’s changed, nothing that’s really important! I’m Wyatt Cain, your husband. And you are DG, and I know everything about you. I know you spent two years as a teenager mooning over somebody named Eddie Vedder, I know you’re afraid of spiders and not much else, I know that scar on your ankle is from a spill off your motorcycle that you never told your parents about. Your favorite color is purple. You love dogs but not cats, you’re allergic to strawberries and you hate being in a car if you aren’t driving. Now. What do you know about me?”
DG stared up at him, her eyes too wide in her pale face. “You…your grandfather taught you to whittle when you were five. The first thing you made was a horse.”
“That’s right. What else?”
“You ran away from home once when you were ten because your father wouldn’t let you race in the Draymore Derby and you went to your best friend’s house, but his mom brought you back home and you were grounded for a month. You…you wanted to be a cabinetmaker until your parents were killed, and you speak sign language because your mother was deaf. You were bitten by a raccoon when you were seven and had to have a shot and it really hurt. You like seeing me in blue, and the only thing you’re afraid of in the whole world is harm coming to the people you love.” She was hanging onto his forearms, getting herself under control.
“That’s right,” he said. “And I love you, you know that, right?” She nodded. “Nothing about me has changed, nothing about us was ever a lie, I promise you.” DG lowered her eyes and stepped forward, burying herself in his arms. Cain held her close, pressing his cheek to the side of her face. God, what a few weeks we’ve both had. Maybe I should have waited to tell her. Maybe it was too much.
But it wasn’t. He’d known it wouldn’t be. She just needed a minute to process. He felt her arms wrapped tight around his waist, her hands gripping his shirt, and that old-fashioned alpha-male weight of marital responsibility settled a little heavier on his shoulders. She was the Queen, and she was strong, but she was also his wife and he still felt that primal urge to protect her, and be needed by her, as she was by him.
She drew away, lifting her hands to swipe at her wet cheeks. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“It’s just…too much all at once.”
“I know. C’mon, sit down.” He drew her back to the window seat, expecting to take up their previous positions again, but as soon as he sat down she clambered up and sat with him, resting her head on his chest, one leg draped across his thighs. Cain sighed and let his arm rest around her shoulders. “I tried to plan how I’d say all this,” he said. “I tried to rehearse it so it’d be perfect. I guess I didn’t get it quite right.”
She sighed, her hand idly stroking his side. “When will I meet these Order people?”
“If you’re lucky, you never will. Although really, you’ve already met them. You’ve seen their faces, you’ve heard their voices. I promise there are at least ten of them in this palace. They’re everywhere, they’re nowhere. They’re waiters and politicians and Tin Men and musicians and prostitutes and everyone in between. The Order is old, DG. Much older than the throne you sit on, and its members are protected by a magic that’s ancient and unknown. Maybe unknowable.”
“You’re one of those members.”
“Barely. I don’t know any ancient secrets, I don’t get invited to the big meetings. I served a purpose and was discarded. I’ve been half-expecting to be contacted or summoned or something since the Eclipse, but I guess they don’t have any more use for me. Except…”
“What?” she said.
“Mynus. The man who kidnapped me. I think he used to be in the Order. That’s what I left out at my debriefing.”
“Used to be?”
“There’ve been factions that have split off now and then. Members fleeing, that kind of thing. He knew the signal. He knew my history. I don’t know how or why, or if what happened to me was them manipulating me again.”
“Maybe they wanted us to figure a few things out,” she said.
“That’s a nice romantic notion but somehow I doubt it.”
She was quiet for a long time. Cain let his eyes rest on the cityscape outside the window. Each lit window was its own mystery, and each darkened one its own secret. Suddenly those spires and balconies seemed very close, pressing in on him as he sat here in the window seat, DG in his arms, his mind whirling with fears and worries and pressures. How had all this happened? Once upon a time he’d stood in that tin suit and cursed her name. How had he gotten here, her ring on his finger and Adora in the ground far away?
As if sensing his unrest, DG snuggled closer. “Are they evil?” she finally said, quietly.
“No. Neither are they good. They’re…practical.”
“It’s hard to see anything good about what they did to you…but yet you’re one of them.”
“They protected you at great risk and sacrifice.”
“They didn’t try to stop Azkadellia.”
“They knew only you could do that the way it had to be done, by the prophecy.”
“They knew the prophecy?”
“They wrote it.”
She sat up, shaking her head. “I’m out of my depth here. I don’t know how to think about all this. I can admit when I’m over my head.”
“We all are. All we can do is live as best we can, and all you can do is be the best Queen you can, which you would have done anyway, and deal with things as they come.”
She met his eyes. “It bothers me that you’re one of them.”
“I’m not. Not in any way that matters. DG, I’m your husband and Jeb’s father first, your Consort second. And I’m a member of the Order…I don’t know, seventy-fifth. I’m a lot of things before I’m one of them.”
“Why did you tell me?” she asked. “Why, if I can’t do anything, and I can’t even let it affect my life?”
He reached out and touched her cheek. “I told you because I needed you to know the truth about me, about how I got in that suit, about why I was such a jerk to you at first.”
A ghost of a smile came to her lips. “You weren’t so bad.”
“I didn’t tell you because you needed to know, but because I needed to tell you. Maybe that’s selfish, and maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“No. It’s good. And clearly part of the plan, if that note is any indication.”
He grumbled a bit. “I don’t like the idea of being part of anyone’s plan.”
“All the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players,” DG said.
He looked down at the top of her head. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“No. A writer from the other side said that. Shakespeare. You’d like it, maybe I’ll get you a book someday.” She sat up and climbed down from the window seat. Cain’s arms felt cold and empty with the absence. She turned to look at him, her eyes shadowed. “Can we be done talking about this now?”
He nodded. “For now, I suppose.”
DG reached up and pulled off her pajama top, every move deliberate, never taking her eyes off him. Cain swung his legs over the edge of the window seat and sat there, hands gripping the edge, watching her. She stood there for a moment, the shadows dipping wells of darkness beneath her breasts, then hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her bottoms and slid them over her hips. They fell to the floor in a rustle of silk and she kicked them away, then stood there naked, watching him.
Cain stood up and went to her. DG held out her arms and stood on her toes to kiss him as he pulled her against his body, her mouth so sweet, so seductive, her hands on his neck and shoulders, her nails scratching through his short hair. Cain’s hands stroked her warm skin, crackling with the erotic charge of holding her naked in his arms.
He bent, picked her up and carried her to the bed, their bed.
No sooner were they through the doors to their suite then DG turned on him. “Okay, what’s this you have to talk to me about?”
“Come on, DG. Let’s get changed and get comfortable first, huh?”
“I can’t possibly get comfortable with some kind of serious discussion hanging over my head.”
He dragged her into the bedroom, shutting the door behind them. “Well, I’m sick of being in this suit, so I’m changing. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He took off his jacket and waistcoat. DG sighed mightily, and unbuttoned her skirt.
“Maybe we should have sex first,” she said, in her pajamas by now and sitting on the couch with her knees pulled up.
He cocked an eyebrow at her, pulling a t-shirt on. “First you can’t wait two seconds, now you want to have sex first?”
She scrunched up her face. “Most men would jump at the chance! Are you sick of me already?”
“Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?” he said, exasperated.
“Because!” she exclaimed. “I’m terrified, that’s why!”
“Of what?”
She lowered her legs to the floor and leaned over, her hands clasped between her knees. “That you’re going to tell me that you were wrong, you’ve changed your mind, you don’t want any of this and it’s all just over,” she said in a rush, her head lowered.
Cain was dumbstruck by the depth of her misconception. He went to her side and took her hands. “How can you think that?” he said. She risked a glance up at him. “After all we’ve been through, everything that’s happened…”
“That’s just what I mean,” she said. “There’s been so much, and there’ll probably be more, and I know you just wanted a quiet life…”
Cain laid a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t care if it’s quiet or not as long as it’s with you,” he said. Isn’t this ironic, Cain? Here she is thinking you’re about to dump her or something when all along it’s you that’s terrified she won’t want you anymore once she’s heard the truth.
Yeah. It’s ironic. I hate irony.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hate sounding like some ninny hysterical girly-girl.” Cain chuckled. “I’m just still…I guess kinda fragile from losing you, and afraid it’ll happen again. And…well…” She trailed off, looking up at him.
“What?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck in a fierce hug, her whole body behind it. Cain hugged her back. “I just love you, is all,” she murmured against his neck.
Cain held her tighter, feeling the tremendous weight of being responsible for DG’s love, her heart which she had given to him, surrendering to him the power to hurt her. The only thing that made it bearable was that she held an equal power over him. “I love you, too,” he whispered.
She pulled away, putting on a smile and taking a deep breath. “All right. Now what is this serious thing you need to talk to me about?”
“It’s…complicated.”
DG’s face went sober. “Well, there’s only one thing I can think of that fits that description.” She put her hand on his arm. “Are you ready to tell me the truth? About what happened to you?”
He nodded. “Yes.” He got up. He couldn’t be sitting next to her when he said these things. “Okay,” he said, half to himself. You’re really going to do this, huh?
Yeah, I really am.
He leaned on the edge of the bed and faced her. She looked so heartbreakingly young, sitting there in her pajamas with her knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, watching him and waiting. At that moment, Cain felt every single minute of the seventeen years he had on her.
“What I’m about to tell you will be a surprise. A shock, even. It might be upsetting.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Have you ever heard anyone mention the Geminic Order?”
DG didn’t answer. Her expression didn’t change. She just kept watching him, as if he hadn’t spoken.
Cain frowned. “DG, did you hear me?”
She rose, slowly, and walked around to her nightstand. She knelt and placed her hand over the lock on the bottommost drawer, which obediently released for her. She reached inside and withdrew what looked like a letter. She stood and walked to him, handed him the letter without a word, and returned to her place on the couch.
Cain examined it. It was addressed to “Dorothea VIII”…but it was dated just a few days after the Eclipse, long before anyone had the slightest idea that she’d ever use that title. He read the words written there in a careful, elegant hand.
Someday, the man you love will ask you if you’ve ever heard of the Geminic Order. When he does, you will know that we are real, and that we are watching.
Cain felt cold all over. The long arm and far-reaching gaze of the Order was humbling and made him feel small, like a chess piece on a board, doing their bidding without even being aware of it. He looked up at his wife, who was just staring at him blankly. “When did you receive this?” he asked.
“About a week after the Eclipse.”
“And you didn’t tell anybody about it?”
She shook her head. “I had a strong compulsion not to, until now. It’s like I forgot I even had it, until you asked me that question.”
He nodded. “They probably attached a telepathic suggestion to the note.”
“Who are these people, Wyatt?”
He sighed. “No one knows, not really. They’re everyone and no one.”
“Like the Illuminati.”
He frowned. “Who?”
“Oh, back home there are these paranoid conspiracy nuts who think there’s some top-secret super-powerful cabal of people who run the whole world from behind the scenes. Pulling strings, installing governments, blah blah.”
Cain took a deep breath. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Except the Order is not the fantasy of paranoid people. It’s very real.”
She laughed, sounding surprised to be doing so. “Come on, Cain. There isn’t any secret club of puppetmasters controlling everything in the Zone! Don’t you think I’d know about it?”
“No. Not until they want you to.” He held up the note. “And it looks like they know I’m going to tell you.”
“That note could be from the same paranoiacs that think the Illuminati are reading their email!”
“DG,” Cain said, fixing her with a serious gaze. “The Order is real.” He took a breath. “I know because I’m a member.”
She stared at him for a moment, obviously wanting to laugh at him but seeing his face, seeing that he was serious, and it died halfway to her mouth. She pulled in fast, her face going closed. She stood up and went to the window, her arms folded over her chest, looking out. “You’re one of these secret guys?”
“A very low-ranking one, but…yes.”
“And you couldn’t have told me this before?” she said, an edge coming into her voice.
“Membership in the Order is beyond a secret, DG. I shouldn’t even be telling you now.”
“How long?”
“DG…
“How long?” Cain got the distinct impression he was speaking to the Queen now. She so rarely showed her face in their bedroom.
He sighed. “Seventeen years.”
“Since the Witch took my sister.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you joined? Was the Order trying to fight it?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why, then?”
Cain said nothing. After a few moments she turned and looked at him, an expression of analytical wariness on her face. “It was you, DG. I joined the Order to protect you.”
Her eyes widened. “But…wha…you didn’t know me!”
“I knew who you were. You were the Queen’s daughter and I owed you my allegiance. Just because we’d never met doesn’t mean I didn’t feel duty-bound to protect you.”
“Everyone thought I was dead!”
“Not everyone.” He went to her and took her hand, leading her to the window seat, her favorite spot. “Sit down, okay? Let me try and get this all out before you go all DG on me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, indignant…but she sounded more like herself again, which had been his intent.
“You know. Barging in, interrupting, and generally throwing me off.”
She shook her head. “I’ll try.”
He sat down facing her, with his back against the opposite wall of the window seat. He folded his legs under him, the casual pose making him feel less like a penitent as he told this story.
“When your mother brought you back to life, she knew she needed to hide you, and for that, she needed help. She was weak and her magic was damn near used up, and the moment Azkadellia realized she was gone from the palace she’d be hunting for her. So she asked the Mystic Man for help.”
“He was in this Order too, wasn’t he?”
Cain nodded. “The Mystic Man guided your mother to Milltown, but he had to help her with a travel storm to get you and your new parents to the other side, and after you were gone there were memories to be erased and precautions to be taken. He couldn’t undertake such a project without the consent of the Order.”
“He had to tell them about me.”
“They already knew. There’s very little that escapes their attention. His guards, myself and three other Tin Men, were to help him, but we couldn’t be privy to the business of the Order without being made members, so we were sort of…drafted. I didn’t ask too many questions. Everything was happening so fast. Word of Azkadellia’s treachery and your death was just breaking, and we knew the truth but couldn’t say, and then your mother and father both vanished. You can imagine what things were like, how confused and frightened everyone was, and no information was getting to anyone. I just wanted to get the operation over with and get back to Adora and Jeb, and keep my head down. And once you were gone, and your mother returned to the Northern Palace, that’s just what I did. I left the Mystic Man’s service after a few more years, when things started to get really bad. Azkadellia had imprisoned your mother, and the Longcoats were starting to round people up. Central City was becoming a scary place. It was then that I moved my family out to the country where they’d be safer.”
He turned towards the window. He was getting closer to the hard part. He could feel her watching him. “I don’t know why the Order did nothing against her. Their vision is very long. They sometimes put a stop to things that seem good, and allow bad things to continue, because of some plan they have for fifty years from now. I’m not privy to their reasons, no one is. But they knew the truth. That you were alive, and someday you would return, and the Witch would fall. That’s what they believed. But they couldn’t risk Azkadellia finding out you were alive, or anyone slipping up, or being captured and having it tortured or Viewed out of them.” He sighed. “So they decided to make it safe, for you. They’d erase the memories of anyone who knew you were alive, and where you’d gone.”
DG frowned. “But…the Mystic Man knew.”
“Barely. His mind was powerful. Some vestige of memory must have remained.”
She nodded. “Go on,” she said, quietly.
“They wanted to make sure you were protected. So they…took steps.” His throat was closing up.
DG slid a little closer, like she sensed his hesitance. He couldn’t look at her, but he felt her small hand on his ankle. “What steps, honey?”
“They chose four protectors. Their memories wouldn’t be erased. They would know about you. And to…to make sure they weren’t compromised, or hurt, or captured, they…” He shut his eyes. “They had them put in tin suits.”
He heard her breath squeak a little in her throat and her hand tighten on his ankle. “Wyatt…”
He looked at her, her blue eyes wide with disbelief. “I was one of those four protectors, DG. I was put in that suit to keep me safe so I could protect you when you came back.”
She was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. “But that isn’t why. It was the Resistance…Zero found out, and…”
“No,” he said. “I mean, yes, I was in the Resistance, and yes, I was betrayed. But it was all arranged by the Order. It was a cover story, DG. That’s what Zero thought he was doing, imprisoning a rebel traitor. What he was really doing was putting me in safekeeping until you came back.” He nodded at her shocked face. “Now, you see what the Order is like. Do you think they asked me to volunteer? They didn’t. Do you think they considered what would become of Adora and Jeb? No, they did not…or if they did, they didn’t care. They picked me, and I was not informed ahead of time. When they came to my door, when they beat me, when they beat my wife and my son…” He swallowed hard, then went on. “I never imagined there was anything else behind it. I thought I’d been found out as a Resistor. But when they were putting me in the suit…great and terrible, I’ll never forget it. Zero was strapping me in. I looked over his shoulder, and there was another Longcoat, watching me, staring at me so intently…and then he gave the sign. The sign of the Order.” He demonstrated, fingers down the temple. “I knew right then that this was no accident. Once I was inside the suit, suddenly I knew everything. The Order must have planted a telepathic dump inside it so I’d understand my task. The other three guardians were placed in the other three quadrants of the Zone. Each of our suits had an enchantment placed on it to draw travel storms. It was no accident that yours dropped you within half a click of me, DG. I drew you to me.”
DG stared for a few more moments, then she slowly slid off the window seat and walked a few steps away. She walked back and forth, head down, arms wrapped around her stomach. “You knew who I was when I let you out of the suit, didn’t you?”
He stared at the rug. “Yes.” DG said nothing, just continued to pace. Cain watched her. “DG, say something,” he finally said, after a long silence.
“What can I say?” she replied, her voice wispy, almost dreamlike. “Oh wait, I know…I’ll just apologize for being not indirectly responsible, like I thought, but directly responsible for all the pain of your life!”
He would have liked to disagree, but he couldn’t. “It wasn’t your fault,” he murmured.
She stopped and looked at him, tears on her face. “God, how you must have hated me,” she said.
Cain couldn’t lie, not to her, not now, not about this. “Yes, I did. For a long time inside that suit, I did. But I hated them more. It was them that put me in that suit, not you.”
“No wonder you were so grumpy at me when I let you out.” She put her hands to her face.
“I waited for you to be of age,” Cain went on. “Waited for you to come back and get me out of that suit. You’ve asked me how I stayed sane in there? I had hope of release. Knew I had a one in four chance of you showing up. You were early, actually. And you weren’t what I expected. I never expected this little whirlwind to come running in with a stick like she was going to save me, ready to march off to Central City, no idea who she was or what she was supposed to do. You were supposed to come back knowing who you were and what your task was, but you didn’t know anything. It wasn’t my place to tell you. I barely knew anything myself. I resented that I’d had this mission forced on me when all I wanted was to find Jeb and Adora. I tried to get free of it in Central City, but…well, the Mystic Man didn’t let me.”
“Why haven’t you told me this before?” she said. An edge of anger had come into her voice.
“I’m telling you now.”
Her hands rose to run through her hair and clench there briefly as she paced, her steps quickening. “Everything you’ve ever told me was a lie.”
“No. There was just more to it.”
“More to it?” she exclaimed. “Cain…Jesus, these people imprisoned you, practically kidnapped you, forced you into some secret task you didn’t agree to and you’re still protecting their little secret cabal?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Let’s hear them!”
“I’m not done protecting you, all right?” he said, louder than he’d intended to. “I’ll never be done, not as long as I live! You are not supposed to know about the Order now, and don’t think I didn’t debate telling you this because I did. I might be putting you in danger and that’s a thought to keep me up nights.”
“In danger? What are they going to do to me? Shouldn’t I know these things? I’m the Queen, remember?” she cried. “I can’t take it! Everything’s changing too fast, I don’t know…who are you? Are you the man I know, or are you somebody totally different?”
He stood up. “You know me, DG. Better than anyone.”
“I know the guy you said you were! Now you’re a member of some Machiavellian Rotary Club and you just told me you hated me for years and somehow I’m supposed to fit this into my idea of who you are? My friend, my husband, my Consort? And these people, this Order, all I want to do is find every last one of them and lock them in a tin suit for eight years for what they did to you and now you tell me I’m in danger just for knowing about them?”
“Take a breath, DG.”
“I can’t take a breath! It might not be air in here! Maybe this palace is an elaborate brain trick like the Matrix or something and none of us are really here!”
He seized her arms and shook her once. “Listen to me, all right? Nothing’s changed, nothing that’s really important! I’m Wyatt Cain, your husband. And you are DG, and I know everything about you. I know you spent two years as a teenager mooning over somebody named Eddie Vedder, I know you’re afraid of spiders and not much else, I know that scar on your ankle is from a spill off your motorcycle that you never told your parents about. Your favorite color is purple. You love dogs but not cats, you’re allergic to strawberries and you hate being in a car if you aren’t driving. Now. What do you know about me?”
DG stared up at him, her eyes too wide in her pale face. “You…your grandfather taught you to whittle when you were five. The first thing you made was a horse.”
“That’s right. What else?”
“You ran away from home once when you were ten because your father wouldn’t let you race in the Draymore Derby and you went to your best friend’s house, but his mom brought you back home and you were grounded for a month. You…you wanted to be a cabinetmaker until your parents were killed, and you speak sign language because your mother was deaf. You were bitten by a raccoon when you were seven and had to have a shot and it really hurt. You like seeing me in blue, and the only thing you’re afraid of in the whole world is harm coming to the people you love.” She was hanging onto his forearms, getting herself under control.
“That’s right,” he said. “And I love you, you know that, right?” She nodded. “Nothing about me has changed, nothing about us was ever a lie, I promise you.” DG lowered her eyes and stepped forward, burying herself in his arms. Cain held her close, pressing his cheek to the side of her face. God, what a few weeks we’ve both had. Maybe I should have waited to tell her. Maybe it was too much.
But it wasn’t. He’d known it wouldn’t be. She just needed a minute to process. He felt her arms wrapped tight around his waist, her hands gripping his shirt, and that old-fashioned alpha-male weight of marital responsibility settled a little heavier on his shoulders. She was the Queen, and she was strong, but she was also his wife and he still felt that primal urge to protect her, and be needed by her, as she was by him.
She drew away, lifting her hands to swipe at her wet cheeks. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“It’s just…too much all at once.”
“I know. C’mon, sit down.” He drew her back to the window seat, expecting to take up their previous positions again, but as soon as he sat down she clambered up and sat with him, resting her head on his chest, one leg draped across his thighs. Cain sighed and let his arm rest around her shoulders. “I tried to plan how I’d say all this,” he said. “I tried to rehearse it so it’d be perfect. I guess I didn’t get it quite right.”
She sighed, her hand idly stroking his side. “When will I meet these Order people?”
“If you’re lucky, you never will. Although really, you’ve already met them. You’ve seen their faces, you’ve heard their voices. I promise there are at least ten of them in this palace. They’re everywhere, they’re nowhere. They’re waiters and politicians and Tin Men and musicians and prostitutes and everyone in between. The Order is old, DG. Much older than the throne you sit on, and its members are protected by a magic that’s ancient and unknown. Maybe unknowable.”
“You’re one of those members.”
“Barely. I don’t know any ancient secrets, I don’t get invited to the big meetings. I served a purpose and was discarded. I’ve been half-expecting to be contacted or summoned or something since the Eclipse, but I guess they don’t have any more use for me. Except…”
“What?” she said.
“Mynus. The man who kidnapped me. I think he used to be in the Order. That’s what I left out at my debriefing.”
“Used to be?”
“There’ve been factions that have split off now and then. Members fleeing, that kind of thing. He knew the signal. He knew my history. I don’t know how or why, or if what happened to me was them manipulating me again.”
“Maybe they wanted us to figure a few things out,” she said.
“That’s a nice romantic notion but somehow I doubt it.”
She was quiet for a long time. Cain let his eyes rest on the cityscape outside the window. Each lit window was its own mystery, and each darkened one its own secret. Suddenly those spires and balconies seemed very close, pressing in on him as he sat here in the window seat, DG in his arms, his mind whirling with fears and worries and pressures. How had all this happened? Once upon a time he’d stood in that tin suit and cursed her name. How had he gotten here, her ring on his finger and Adora in the ground far away?
As if sensing his unrest, DG snuggled closer. “Are they evil?” she finally said, quietly.
“No. Neither are they good. They’re…practical.”
“It’s hard to see anything good about what they did to you…but yet you’re one of them.”
“They protected you at great risk and sacrifice.”
“They didn’t try to stop Azkadellia.”
“They knew only you could do that the way it had to be done, by the prophecy.”
“They knew the prophecy?”
“They wrote it.”
She sat up, shaking her head. “I’m out of my depth here. I don’t know how to think about all this. I can admit when I’m over my head.”
“We all are. All we can do is live as best we can, and all you can do is be the best Queen you can, which you would have done anyway, and deal with things as they come.”
She met his eyes. “It bothers me that you’re one of them.”
“I’m not. Not in any way that matters. DG, I’m your husband and Jeb’s father first, your Consort second. And I’m a member of the Order…I don’t know, seventy-fifth. I’m a lot of things before I’m one of them.”
“Why did you tell me?” she asked. “Why, if I can’t do anything, and I can’t even let it affect my life?”
He reached out and touched her cheek. “I told you because I needed you to know the truth about me, about how I got in that suit, about why I was such a jerk to you at first.”
A ghost of a smile came to her lips. “You weren’t so bad.”
“I didn’t tell you because you needed to know, but because I needed to tell you. Maybe that’s selfish, and maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“No. It’s good. And clearly part of the plan, if that note is any indication.”
He grumbled a bit. “I don’t like the idea of being part of anyone’s plan.”
“All the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players,” DG said.
He looked down at the top of her head. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“No. A writer from the other side said that. Shakespeare. You’d like it, maybe I’ll get you a book someday.” She sat up and climbed down from the window seat. Cain’s arms felt cold and empty with the absence. She turned to look at him, her eyes shadowed. “Can we be done talking about this now?”
He nodded. “For now, I suppose.”
DG reached up and pulled off her pajama top, every move deliberate, never taking her eyes off him. Cain swung his legs over the edge of the window seat and sat there, hands gripping the edge, watching her. She stood there for a moment, the shadows dipping wells of darkness beneath her breasts, then hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her bottoms and slid them over her hips. They fell to the floor in a rustle of silk and she kicked them away, then stood there naked, watching him.
Cain stood up and went to her. DG held out her arms and stood on her toes to kiss him as he pulled her against his body, her mouth so sweet, so seductive, her hands on his neck and shoulders, her nails scratching through his short hair. Cain’s hands stroked her warm skin, crackling with the erotic charge of holding her naked in his arms.
He bent, picked her up and carried her to the bed, their bed.