Title: Betrayal
Summary: The Cain men are targeted in a new threat to the OZ
Disclaimer: The Lady owns no rights to Tin Man, but owes much inspiration to the creative talents of the writers and to Mr. McDonough and Mr Cumming
The Vanishing Princess
The alarm sounded across Finaqua. The princess was missing, presumed kidnapped. Jeb Cain was the prime suspect.
Inside his palace living quarters, Wyatt Cain slumped against the wall as caustic bile surged in the back of his throat. The pain of his son's alleged betrayal pierced his heart with more force than any bullet. He clenched his shaking hand and rammed it into the fireplace wall. The cold, sharp stones bit into flesh and shattered bone.
"Why Tin Man hurt self?" Raw asked.
Transfixed on his swelling hand, Cain made a tight fist, watching blood ooze from between his fingers.
"Because the pain makes me think clearer," he hoarsely replied.
Weakly batting away the Viewer's paw that offered healing, Cain leaned against the fireplace, resting his damp forehead against the mantle. The coolness of the wood helped to alleviate some of the overwhelming nausea.
Ominous sounds echoed through every wing of the palace -- slamming doors, running footsteps and the wailing of a young woman in the grand hall. The woman, Evanna, DG's personal servant, sounded the alarm when she discovered the princess missing, her bed empty, vanity mirror broken and a table smashed as evidence of a violent struggle. A rope still dangled over the side of DG's private balcony.
"Cain! Cain!" cried Glitch, hyperventilating as he sprinted into the room. "I've looked in DG's rooms, every corner, every closet, every nook and cranny, and I just cannot find her!"
The bleary-eyed Cain tried focusing on the excited man, but the zipper on top of Glitch's head seemed to swirl amid the dark curls.
"Thanks, Glitch," Cain muttered. "That's the identical report you gave the last three times you searched DG's bedroom."
"Well, if we're going to be critical here, Mr. Looks-Like-I-Could-Use-a-Gift-Certificate-for-Rehab, may I point out that you look like H-E-double toothpicks," declared the offended former royal advisor with a hand on his hip. "Of course, I really don't mean double toothpicks, or double hockey sticks, or for that matter double..."
Raw lightly thumped Glitch on the chest to cease the ramble.
"Thanks, Raw," Cain said.
"No problem, Tin Man," the Viewer shook his head. "Where Jeb go with DG?"
"I might have an idea, but I pray that my boy isn't heading there," Cain said in a lowered voice. "Treason will get his neck stretched at high noon in Central Square."
"Jeb not loyal to queen?" Raw said in surprise. Glitch muzzled Raw with a hand over the Viewer's mouth as he looked around in wide-eyed fear, making sure that none of the palace guards heard him.
Cain rubbed his brow and whispered, "Let's just say that my son has a different vision for the OZ."
Weeks after the Battle of the Double Eclipse, Jeb had sent a cryptic message instructing his father to meet him on the Dark Tower's balcony. The upper level of the tower was cordoned off with 'hazardous materials" tape. No one wanted to clean up the oily goo, the remains of the melted witch, from the Sunseeder's platform.
"Could have picked someplace more pleasant for a family reunion, Son," Cain said. He held a bandana over his nose to block the putrid odor.
"I asked you here for a reason," Jeb said, leaning against the balcony's railing. "Can't you smell the rot?"
"Hard to miss," Cain said. He turned to look out on the moonlit, panoramic view of the OZ.
"I thought that maybe you needed a reminder," Jeb started.
"Of what?"
"Of the stench of what the OZ had become," Jeb said. "Of the rotting flesh of my mother and everyone who fought the tyranny. This place still stinks to high heaven."
"DG defeated the sorceress and now the queen plans to rebuild," Cain said. "Times are going to get better. You'll see."
His own sugary words of artificial hope almost gagged Cain. Annuals ago, before Zero dropped in the pin sealing his iron suit, Cain was a young man with idealistic dreams for his children and their children. His passion for freedom and hope for the future, he sadly realized, died along with the brave lady who was now nothing more than worm food in a scratched-out grave marked by a rotten piece of wood that wasn't a fit meal for termites.
"Sorry, Father, I'm not a wide-eyed, optimist like you," Jeb argued, annoyed by his father's smirk at the 'optimist' part. "I blame the queen for the OZ falling as much as I do the old witch. She let evil overtake her house once without a fight and she'll do it again. How bad will it get next time?"
"Jeb, quiet down," warned his father. "Don't let any of the royals hear you or else we'll be eating moldy bread in solitary confinement."
"Can't you see that DG is a realist?" Jeb whispered. "She's got no interest in high teas, royal balls, parades or a throne. She's from the United States of America, where people are citizens, not subjects. She says that her nation's not perfect, but it's got to beat waiting for the next witch to overthrow the queen."
"What you intending to do, Jeb?" Cain asked angrily. "Overthrow the House of Gale yourself? Start another war? I'm not burying you, too."
''DG gave me some of her books from her political science classes," Jeb said. "I've studied them. Change could come from a battle of wits, not weapons. For starters, I think the outer territories would jump at the idea of being separate states in a democratic country. If DG would just talk to them..."
Down in the grand hall, DG's distraught servant collapsed on a brocade love seat, burying her face in a lace handkerchief. Evanna choked back a sob as Azkadellia wondered if the servant was going to swoon yet again.
"Oh, the sweet princess," Evanna bawled. "I can only imagine what that perverted Cain boy will do to her. No one comes out of one of those tin suits sane."
Azkadellia cringed. "Iron suits, not tin suits," she silently corrected the servant. "And the fact that both Jeb and his father have a shred of humanity left in them is a testament to their strength of character."
The oldest princess inspected Evanna's face and the sheer nightgown that was found beside DG's bed, along with Jeb's red bandana. The short, low-cut lingerie was ripped from the neckline to the hem.
"Something's going on here," the skeptical princess told herself. Since an assassination scare a few weeks earlier, DG started sleeping in modest attire, just in case Cain, Glitch and Jeb decided to bust down her door again.
Another thing that bothered Azkadellia was the woman's over-the-top histrionics. She had witnessed countless displays of raw human emotion while under the witch's control. People were forced to watch as friends and family members were tortured in the most heinous and imaginative ways.
" Something about this woman's behavior didn't ring true," she told herself.
Then there was the handwritten note that DG must have slipped under her bedroom door during the night. The brief missive explained that her baby sister and the quiet, likable son of the Tin Man had gone on a brief journey. Just two young friends on an adventure to DG's home in Kansas.
Dear Az,
"...Mr. Cain shouldn't blame Jeb because he's only going under EXTREME protest to protect me," DG wrote. "He'll probably blow a head gasket, paddle Jeb (LOL), and lock me in my room for the next 20 annuals when he figures out that I slipped a few of the cook's herbs in his coffee to help him sleep soundly..."
DG
"Azkadellia! Come up here, my darling." The queen, who rarely raised her voice, shouted over the marble railing of the hall leading to Cain's room in the west wing of the palace.
"Queen coming," Raw stated the obvious. The rapid tapping of her heels counted down her approach.
"Find Pooch." Cain put his hand on Glitch's shoulder, resting most of his weight on the smaller man. "It's important, Glitch. Find the tutor."
"Explain yourself, Mr. Cain." The queen swept into the room, enunciating the words as if they offended her tongue . "Why is it that everyone in this kingdom is frantically searching for the missing princess and you are still in your bed chambers, barely dressed?"
"Cain not well," Raw defended his friend.
"Silence, Viewer," the queen ordered. "I want to hear Mr. Cain's excuse for how he allowed his traitorous son to abduct my angel."
Cain staggered toward the queen. Unsteady on his feet, Glitch and Raw caught him before he stumbled on his face. Glitch reached to the fireplace mantle for Cain's coffee mug, pressing it into his hand.
"Drink this," Glitch urged..
Cain stared over the rim of the mug as Azkadellia cautiously entered his room. Troubled blue eyes pierced those of worried brown. She walked forward to accept the trembling hand that he offered.
Azkadellia's hopes that the Tin Man could set things right faded as despair wrapped its barbs around her heart. The ghastly pale man was not the same powerful Cain who shrugged that it "was nothing" after he effortlessly moved her large armoire last evening, then politely tipped his hat good-bye when she declined his offer to join in a card game in DG's room.
"Your kind offers are appreciated, Mr. Cain," Azkadellia said softly. "But sometimes I feel like I don't fit into everyday life anymore. I doubt that I ever will again."
"I know exactly how you feel, Princess," Cain said sadly with a half-smile before heading to meet the gang in DG's room..
That was only last night and now the strong man whose shoulders she needed to lean on, her sister's most-trusted friend, was only a shell of his former self, his misty eyes pleading, to her of all people, for help. His fingers limply slipped from hers. She shivered at the streaks of his blood across her palm.
"You know, my queen, Wyatt Cain isn't the only man in the entire OZ responsible for our Dorothy Gale's safety," Glitch protested. The queen's lavender eyes narrowed at his audacity. "She has a guard posted at night."
"Yes, a young Miles Donnellson," the queen agreed, motioning for the contemplative Azkadellia to come closer.
"Jeb was going to offer to take Miles' shift," Cain said in a hoarse voice. "Miles has a new baby and hasn't been able to get much sleep lately."
"Well, Mr. Cain, he will have ample time to rest peacefully now," the queen retorted. She raised a hand to summon a tall man with a shaved head, wearing a black jumpsuit.
Cain squinted at the burly man. He had handpicked every member of the royal protection detail, but had never laid eyes before on the intimidating man or his uniform . The man handed the queen something wrapped in a white cloth. In dramatic fashion, the queen pulled the cloth back to reveal a knife sticky with dark, dried blood. The weapon was the beautiful show piece presented by the royal family during Jeb's 19th birthday party.
"This knife was pulled from poor Miles' back," the queen said, pausing for the surprised gasps around the room. "His body under one of the hedges in the maze. These were found beside her bed."
The monarch ripped the ravaged nightgown and Jeb's red handkerchief from Azkadellia's hands, thrusting them at Cain. His face blanched.
"My son is not a cowardly, cold-blooded killer or an abuser of women, your Highness," Cain flatly stated, infuriating the queen . He took a drink from the stoneware mug, then hurled it at the wall.
"I say that we take this interview to a more appropriate place," the queen hissed. "Perhaps I can loosen your tongue."
Cain's body went limp as his eyes rolled back into his head and he began to convulse. Glitch struggled to support his weight but ended up on the floor with the seizing man across his legs. Blood trickled from the corner of Cain's mouth.
The queen clapped her hands and seven more men in black jump suits stormed into the room. "Take him below."
"Mother, no!" Azkadellia cried.
"You can't do this!" Glitch protested as the men roughly lifted the unconscious Cain. "This man needs a physician!"
"Ambrose, your Mr. Cain won't need a physician if he doesn't start providing answers," the queen declared. "Take care that you and Mr. Raw are not implicated as accomplices as well."
As the queen stomped out of the room on the heels of her mercenaries, Glitch, Raw and Azkadellia exchanged frightened looks.
"What just happened here?" Glitch asked in a low voice.
Raw touched the wall where Cain's mug had shattered. The dregs of his coffee dripped from the wooden paneling. He swiped them with his paw, wrinkling his nose as he smelled the brown and green sediment before lapping at it. He spat on the carpet.
"Poison!"