"How old are you?"
"Fifteen."
Three years older than George, Rose's brother.
"What's your name?"
"Gaston."
William touched the amulet. "What did you do?"
Gaston froze with his fork halfway to his mouth.
William said nothing.
The kid swallowed. "You left. Dad was sleeping. Ry and Mart went to herd rolpies into the shelter, because Mom was worried that if the Sheeriles showed up, they'd kill the rolpies first. I was supposed to watch the house. We have a hand crank siren up in the tree. If anything went wrong, I was supposed to crank the siren so Mart and Ry would run home. Mom was cooking carp." Gaston stared at his plate. "Dad hates carp. Says it tastes like waterweeds. I had lines set up in a creek. I went to check my lines."
Gaston looked at his plate. "I abandoned my family."
"Who came to the house while you were gone?" William asked.
Gaston slid into a toneless monotone. "A man. He attacked Mom. He . . . cut off her leg. Ignata says that there is nothing she can do. My mom will be a cripple now. Because of me."
The kid was dumping buckets of self-loathing on himself. The fault wasn't his. Clara should have left when Cerise told her about Ruh. Gaston wasn't pushed out of his family because he'd left his post. He was a child and likely not properly trained. Gaston was pushed out because Urow loved Clara, and now every time he looked at his youngest son, he would be reminded of her injury. Urow had injected himself into the situation, his wife failed to evacuate, and now they loaded all of their guilt and their mistakes onto their child and removed him from the family. A clean sweep.
The wild scraped at his insides. That was fine. The kid was his now.
"What did the man look like?"
"I only saw him for a second, when he jumped out of the window. Tall. Blond hair."
"What else?"
"He offered Clara limes for her soup," Kaldar said quietly.
Spider. William hid a growl. Only Spider could walk into a house of a woman to interrogate her and start the conversation by offering her fruit.
William leaned forward. "The man dove into the water and didn't come up for air."
Gaston blinked. "Yes. Dad and the guys didn't believe me, but he didn't come up."
"He has gills that feed air into his lungs. What did he want from your mother?"
"He was asking about you and Cerise."
William expected as much. Clara didn't tell Spider what he wanted to know, but there had to be more to it than that. Something made him forget why he'd come there and lose himself to blinding rage. "What did she do to him?"
Gaston stared at him.
"He lost it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have attacked her. He's very good at inflicting pain to get people to talk. Hacking off someone's leg just makes them bleed to death. The target goes into shock and becomes useless for interrogation. They're too focused on their own pain and injury to respond."
Everyone winced. Apparently, he'd said the wrong thing, but William really didn't care. He had to get to the bottom of this. "What did your mother do to him?"
"She threw boiling soup at his face."
That explained everything. William leaned back. "Yeah, that would do it."
"And then Dad grabbed his crossbow, and the guy jumped out of the window," Gaston said.
"I've seen it. It's a big crossbow," Kaldar said. "I'd jump, too."
It wasn't the crossbow. It was Urow with his gray skin and serrated teeth popping up behind Spider right after he'd been scalded.
"This guy." Erian took his plate to the sink. "He has a thing about soup?"
"He has a thing about being scalded. When he was a child, his grandfather dumped boiling water on him."
"Why?" Gaston asked.
"He thought his grandson was a changeling. He was trying to get the demon beast to come out."
"Lovely family," Kaldar murmured. "I take it, that's the fellow you're hunting."
"Yes."
"You have a history?" Erian asked.
William nodded.
The boy gripped the table. The wood creaked under the pressure of his fingers. His voice came out as a ragged snarl. "When I see him, I'll kill him."
Spider would break him in half and toss him aside like a dead rat. "When you see him, you'll get me. That's an order."
Gaston opened his mouth. William looked at him the way he looked at wild wolves when he wanted them to move out of his way. The kid clamped his mouth shut. "Yes, sir."
"You fucked up," William told him. "You never leave a post you're assigned to. If you do, people get hurt."
Gaston nodded. "I understand."
"However, your mother set herself in harm's way. She was told the house wasn't safe and she had to leave, and she refused."
Gaston clenched his teeth.
"I know it's not what you want to hear. But your mother got into a pissing contest with your aunt and made a bad decision. You are a kid. You aren't responsible for her decisions. So stop wallowing in self-hatred. You're no good to me that way."
William rose. He wanted to see Cerise. He hadn't seen her since last night, and he wanted to smell her scent and see her face and know that she was all right. "Where is the small yard?"
"I'll take you." Kaldar started toward the door. Gaston jumped to his feet, dropped his plate into the sink, and followed them.
CERISE finished the combination and lowered her swords. The sun was out, and the small yard looked so nice this morning. Sheltered by the walls of the building trailing the main house, it was completely secure, a small haven in the swamp. The sunlight danced on the short grass, turning it a cheery green, and at the western wall, flowers bloomed in the small garden. Grandma Az sat on the short brick wall bordering the flower beds. Their stares connected and the old woman waved. Surrounded by white and blue blossoms, Grandma looked ancient and serene this morning, like one of the harvest goddesses the old ones worshipped.
Cerise launched into another combination, twisting, slicing at invisible opponents with her swords. The exertion felt so good . . . When she'd come out here two hours ago, twisted up inside from seeing Clara on crutches, she thought the weight that rode in her chest would never disappear. It wasn't gone now, but it was so much lighter.
She'd warned Clara. She told her to come to the Rathole. In the end it was Clara's decision, and there wasn't a thing Cerise could've done to change it. But it was she who'd started this chain of events. If she had never put Urow in danger in the first place, Clara wouldn't be missing a leg.