Her bibi-daj put her empty cup down as they left the kitchen. In the main hall, Stella had her first proper look at the teenagers she had rescued. They had formed little groups already, with a bit of space between each. The most space was afforded to Diego’s group. Everyone hated Spaniards. The boy with the bark instead of skin, the girl with the black cactus spines sticking out of her face and arms, and the dark-skinned blue-eyed healer were all in Diego’s group. There was another boy who was uncomfortable to look at; his knees bent the wrong way, his arms were too long, his eyes too big, his back humped, and beside him were a dozen or so more that looked human.
The next group of just over a dozen included a boy who seemed to have had some of his skin replaced by metal. After that, a group of around the same number included one member with a single cyclopean eye, and another who had the body of a snake from the waist down. The fur covered boy was in the next group, as was a… goddess?
Stella found herself staring at the impossible woman. Her waist length hair was a shimmering silver, her eyes the frigid pale blue of glacial ice. Her perfectly proportioned body was seven feet tall. She was grace incarnate, moving like a dancer, smiling as she chatted with those around her, perfect in form and manner, a goddess of old reborn.
“Stop staring at the baro rakli,” her bibi-daj said, fondly amused.
“Sorry,” Stella mumbled.
“We have all done it,” her mother said. “Her form draws the eye.”
Stella dragged her attention away from the vision of beauty and grace and saw in the next group a girl whose lower jaw seemed about three sizes too large for her head, and a boy with mushrooms growing out of half his face. A tiny girl was hiding behind them. This was the largest group yet, with around twenty teenagers in it.
“Well, that rather ruins my hypothesis that everyone with powers is sixteen, like me,” Stella sighed as she took in the next group.
“He received his powers on his sixteenth birthday. The power unaged Jan to a ten year old version of himself, physically,” her bibi-daj said quietly.
“Truly?”
“I knew it seemed like it went against your theory, so I made sure to find out for you. Your idea could still be right, tikni stardi.”
“Thank you, bi-da.”
Next to the little kid was a boy with white-feathered wings, a girl who glowed and had bug antenna, a boy with antlers growing from his shoulders, a boy with green skin, and a boy with stone lines across his body, like marble veins. There were around two dozen in this group altogether.
In the next group was a boy with horns and another with bony growths on his arms, and just over fifteen others. Then there was a wider space, before another group about the same size. This one had a girl who appeared to be made of green goop, another with long, metal hair, and a boy with crab claws instead of hands. Then there was the last group, almost two dozen in number, where one boy had a lizard tail, another appeared to have a mechanical arm, and the last had a smooth oval where his face should be.
“How does he speak?” Stella asked.
“He doesn’t,” her bibi-daj replied. “The more important question you should be asking is how does he eat.”
“How does he eat?”
“Not with a spoon, that’s for sure.”
Stella glared at her bibi-daj, but glaring could not fix her awful sense of humour. The worst thing was how insufferably smug she looked. She’d set a trap and Stella, a hunter, had walked straight into it.
“You have rested,” her mother addressed all the groups but one. Stella watched as her bibi-daj headed to that group and began to repeat her mother’s words in Hungarian. In the groups themselves, a chosen translator was conveying her mother’s words to the teenagers surrounding them. “You have been tended, cleansed, restored, and afforded a quiet moment in which to gather your thoughts. Now the choice of your future lies with you. Should you wish to return to your homes, we shall assist you in making this journey. However, our aid can extend no further. We have neither the means to support you beyond this, nor the ability to shield you should those who abducted you seek you out once more.”
“My father will protect me,” one boy declared imperiously. Stella glanced over at him. He had light brown hair, thick eyebrows, and a sneer on his face. She disliked him on principle.
“Then I shall endeavour to reunite you, Baron von Rautenberg,” her mother said.
Stella frowned at that. Kidnapping poor people out of fields and forests was one thing, taking actual nobility quite another. Whoever had done this had no fear of the consequences. Which didn’t make sense, because it had been Sabini men guarding the warehouse. Darby Sabini was a powerful gangster with high-level connections, who catered to the nobility, but he wasn’t kidnap 180 teenagers from multiple European countries, sneak them into London somehow, and ignore that one was a baron powerful. He was powerful because of his connections to the nobility who would never stand for him targeting one of their own. He was also powerful by way of money and weapons, but that didn’t allow for this.
Someone else was behind this. Someone blaming Sabini? Using Sabini? Paying for Sabini’s help? She wasn’t sure, but whoever it was, they had to be powerful to ignore the consequences. Powerful like a noble? That would fit with the Sabini connection, and explain why the powerful figure was so lacking in manpower they had gangsters as guards.
There was one way to know for sure. The Land Registry had records of every building in the city, maybe in the country. Those records could tell her who owned the warehouse. The owner would be the one behind all of this.
She waited as her mother gathered the names of those who wished to go home. Only twelve. None of the Spaniards opted to return, which wasn’t surprising with their Summer of Blood which, now that she considered it, was an odd name for a series of lynchings. How much blood could be involved? Perhaps the blood was from the mobs beating the Inquisition prior to lynching them.
She wrestled her mind away from that to pay attention to who was leaving. A boy each from Poland, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Greece, and Finland, with a Turkish youth who lived in Europe dropped in. Two from Norway, though Nils-Aslak Biret was apparently Sami. As soon as he got back to his reindeer herds, he said, he was heading north into the deep snow. East Prussia had the baron, and a farmer’s daughter who seemed far too deferential to him. Stella scowled at the baron in warning. He ignored her.
The second girl was an Estonian, followed closely by a Latvian boy.
The last was Aino Mäkinen, the baro rakli, the goddess, who was leaving before Stella got the chance to say hello. She’d never spoken to a goddess before, and now she wouldn’t get a chance to. The Voice didn’t count: she wasn’t sure if it was divine, she didn’t know if it had a gender, and they didn’t converse. It just spat words at her and fled, the coward. Coward coward coward. She tried challenging it again, to see if it would respond, but the Voice was clearly scared of her.
Her stomach felt empty; she hoped this wouldn’t take much longer, and she could eat.
Her mother formed them into a single group and took them aside, then came back to address the others. At her word, a member of each group came forwards, and her mother introduced them to Stella. Stella took a last look at the goddess, Aino Mäkinen, and turned her attention to the issue at hand. Introductions, then hopefully food; it was like a party.
The first girl came from Diego’s group and was taller than average height, but still shorter than Stella. Her thick black curls drifted in a wind that only affected her, and the expression on her dark face was solemn and serious. This girl knew how much trouble the Spanish teenagers could be in here, and yet it wasn’t surprising to Stella that not one of them had chosen to leave: even the threat of beatings was an improvement to what they faced at home. The Spaniard was introduced as Isabel Cortés.
Next came Árpád Székely, who stood next to her bibi-daj. His group had no one that spoke English, but her bibi-daj and Árpád shared Hungarian. He was a small, slim boy with one of his front teeth missing.
After Árpád, Stella was introduced to Eleni Markou, the Greek girl with the snake lower body. It wasn’t really surprising that she had chosen to stay, Stella thought, then startled as the girl’s forked tongue tasted the air. She hissed when she spoke and said “Ssssstella,” like it was a threat, and Stella liked her immediately.
Signe Lindholm, a blonde Finn of average height, came next. She was fat, and her blond hair was cut in a bob that sat like a helmet around her puffy face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes red from crying, but she had chosen to remain here instead of returning home.
After Signe came Sofia, and Stella wondered if her mother was filling this group with S names just to hear the delightful way Eleni pronounced them. It came to her when Sofia spoke, her English slightly twisted with her Transylvanian accent, that her mother was probably just gathering the best English speakers together.
Liesel Adler, a Bohemian with her dark hair tied under a red kerchief, represented the next group. She had a bright, sunny smile but eyes that told the truth of strain, like she was working in a shop, but would rather die than serve another customer. Stella disliked her for the fakery.
Anna Jannsen, an incredibly attractive Dutch girl, received stares from everyone as she approached. There was something ethereal about her beauty, as if one was looking upon a fairy. Self-consciously, she raised a hand to cover her nose and mouth. “I am sorry,” she said slowly. “I cannot turn it off.”
“Your Ability is… to be lovely?” Stella asked.
Anna gave a ridiculously cute shrug. “I do not know if it is an Ability. Perhaps I simply have good cheekbones?”
Stella didn’t think that was right. It wasn’t just her cheekbones. Everything about Anna, from her posture to the way she moved, was stunning. Her voice was that of an angel’s when she spoke. Her beauty was captivating, mesmerising, it demanded all of your attention and would not let g-
A French girl moved in front of Anna and broke the spell she had over everyone. She was introduced by Stella’s mother as Madeleine Girard, and she was Parisian. She seemed more mature than the others. No, Stella didn’t think mature was the right word. She seemed more city than the others, who had been plucked from forests and farms. Madeleine Girard looked upon everything with nonchalance and Parisian disdain, like she had seen it all before and found none of it remarkable, which was impressive in a room where a girl was floating six inches off the floor.
Henri Delacourt, another Parisian, was the last one to approach, glaring at Madeleine as if she had seduced his mother away from his father. He had somehow become spokesperson for a different group, despite both being from Paris.
Seven girls, two boys, one from each of the nine groups. Eight of the best English speakers in the room, and able to translate the words spoken here back to the groups they had come from. Stella looked them over as her mother spoke, wondering at their reasons for remaining. Some, like the Spaniards, would not want to return to a country devastated by war and murder. Others could no longer pass as human and would be a danger to themselves and their families. She had no idea why others, like Madeleine Girard and Henri, remained.
“We could use your compound,” her bibi-daj said, interrupting her mother.
Stella frowned. They had a compound? She glanced over at her mother, who was also frowning. Did she not know about their compound?
“It has been abandoned for more than twenty years,” her mother replied.
Stella blinked. Oh, that compound. It was certainly remote, which was really all Stella knew of it. She’d never been and had forgotten it existed, but her mother likely hadn’t. She would have been frowning from… sadness maybe? Distaste? Reluctance? Stella wasn’t sure, but she knew her mother wouldn’t be happy.
Actually, Stella hadn’t realised the compound belonged to her mother. Then again, who else could it belong to? Everyone else was dead.
“I can head there today and begin to straighten it out. I can be there in three hours with a train to Abergavenny, then a hired carriage.”
“It still leaves us with the difficulty of conveying one-hundred-and-fifty-eight youths to Wales, without attracting the notice of either their abductors or the authorities.”
“Technically,” her bibi-daj said, “if you think about it, we are their abductors now.”
“From a legal stand point, certainly,” her mother replied, “but legality has never been high in my list of concerns.”
“We took them for a good reason,” Stella added, wanting to contribute. It was like the lighter she had heroically purchased from Antonio, when he had been unconscious. It was for a good reason, so it was fine, and laziness… no, being far too busy with more important things… was a great reason. They had kidnapped these children to save them.
“I’m fine with you kidnapping me,” Henri joined the conversation, smiling at Stella.
Ugh! She was surrounded by actual children. Stella turned away from the boy.
“Let us concern ourselves with that which is actually important,” her mother added.
“I’ll contact my family,” her bibi-daj said. “They’ll spread the word amongst my people. We can move them in small groups over the course of a few days.”
“Then all that remains, aside from arranging the matter itself, is to see them properly fed. Procuring such quantities will inevitably attract notice. Stella, what provisions have you stored in the vicinity?”
Under her mother’s supervision at first and then, increasingly, under her own auspices, Stella had been stockpiling goods around the city for months. Most of it was long-lasting food, but there were also medical supplies and weapons.
“I’ve four in the Eastend, mama, though they are all quite modest. For this, I ought to use one of the larger stockpiles. Soho, perhaps?”
Her bibi-daj left to contact her family, the talk about whether or not one should enter a burning building thankfully postponed. Maybe she would forget? That seemed unlikely, but at least Stella had time for Mission: Flowers of Forgiveness.
Stella had wanted to go with her, she wanted to know how her bibi-daj could contact Romani on the move, but her bibi-daj said no. As much as she would do for Stella and Selene, she would never reveal Romani secrets to gadji.
Instead, Stella retrieved supplies from her closest stockpile, fifty tins of sardines and jars of jam, and helped with serving jam and sardines for a while. It was early evening when she left the church again, heading out for more supplies. Before that, though, she had two important issues to take care of: she needed to break into a government building, and she needed to buy her bibi-daj Flowers of Forgiveness.
Previous Chapter: Chapter Eight
Next Chapter: Chapter Ten
Author’s Note
Well, I’m sure that chapter raised some questions. Today’s craft chat might answer the most immediate one: is Stella gay? But mostly it’s a chat about how to read.
No, seriously.
Leave a comment if you can read. Then check the craft chat to make sure you’re doing it as best you can. If you want.
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