Part II
The rest of Vincent's shift passed without incident or word from Below. Curiosity gnawed at him, but he knew better than to fill sentry pipes with idle chatter. He passed the hours with his books and his rounds. Speculation about the strangers and Jacqueline's odd behavior, as well as mental notes for his afternoon reading groups, kept his mind from drifting too far from the safety of the tunnels and the present moment, but he was relieved when he heard voices approaching.
"…isn't happy with Jackie," Kanin was saying as Vincent closed his book and gathered the remnants of his lunch together.
"But if they're really in danger," Jamie answered, "we have to help them. Father always says."
"Doesn't mean she didn't break a whole host of rules."
Vincent stepped out into the corridor to meet them.
"Jackie brought strangers into the tunnels without permission," Jamie blurted at once. "Did you see them?"
Vincent nodded. "Yes, they entered here."
"The Council's going to let them stay. There's some kind of danger, up Above, and Brian—that's the man—asked for sanctuary for him and his two daughters. But Father's pretty mad at Jackie."
Vincent passed the staff to Kanin. He looked up when he heard running footsteps, and Mouse rounded the corner. Mouse's face darkened when he saw Jamie.
"Supposed to wait for Mouse," he informed her when he got to them.
"Well, Mouse was supposed to help Jamie clean up from lunch," she answered with matching acidity.
Mouse's indignation decayed into chagrin. "Forgot."
"So I guess I forgot to wait."
He ducked his head. "Okay. Sorry."
Jamie made a show of considering it, but she said, "Yeah, all right."
Mouse perked right back up. "Okay good. Okay fine." He reached into his pocket. "Anyway, brought you a thingy. From Above."
Jamie's efforts at indifference failed her, and she fell to looking at the bright plastic something-or-other with enthusiasm. It was a peculiarity of the mid-teens that Vincent had witnessed in most of the children he had watched grow, the way that they could switch from almost-adult to gleeful child in the space of a word, like even they weren't sure which they were at any moment.
"I wish my arguments with Livie got solved that easily," Kanin muttered.
Vincent smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.
A moment later, Dominic and Joshua came up the corridor, both snickering over something conspiratorially. Like Jamie, they were each also sixteen or seventeen; so many children came to them not knowing, exactly, that guesses got made, and nearly half the children Below celebrated the day they first came to the tunnels in place of birthdays. Dominic was a dark-haired boy from a bad foster situation, and Joshua was a redhead that had been caught picking pockets on the subway by one of their Helpers. They joined the group in the corridor, sobering somewhat.
"Did you hear about the strangers Jackie brought down?" Joshua asked Vincent.
Jamie turned her attention from Mouse. "They used this entrance. Vincent's the one who raised the alarm."
"Father was still yelling at Jackie when we left," Dominic said.
"Then it's good they'll have some privacy to continue their conversation," Vincent answered with mild admonishment.
Joshua snorted indelicately. "Not likely. Half the kids over ten are—" he caught Vincent's disapproving look and cut himself off. "Um."
Vincent let the silence draw on for another awkward second before he surveyed the group. "We're all ready, then?"
He led the four teenagers back down the way they had come, to the Serpentine. In a chamber midway down, the tunnel folk had set up a training room of sorts, with spare sentry staffs and padded vests lining one wall. The rest of the chamber was empty, perfect for sparring, and they kept a good few inches of loose sand on the ground to take the edge off of falls.
Everyone suited up in mismatched pads and grabbed a staff.
Vincent looked them over. "So, first rule of being a sentry?"
"No heroics," all four chorused.
"Good. When you're on duty, you're the eyes and ears of the community. But our strength is in our unity, our communications, and our knowledge of the tunnels. Think about how many ways you know from here to Father's chamber that no intruder could ever find. Fighting alone must always be your last resort. Now, drills."
Vincent took them through practiced drills of strikes and blocks. Joshua and Dominic both took to the training with the sloppy alacrity of boys their age; they were full of power and enthusiasm, but they lacked control and finesse. Mouse, as he had always been, was a power unto himself, having an advantage in sheer unpredictability, but a gross disadvantage in his habit of shutting down when charged. Vincent tried to encourage the instincts that had made Mouse so good at running away as a child as subtly as he could, for fear of what would happen if the young man tried to engage anyone in real combat. Jamie was the most serious student; she had found herself easily overpowered in the beginning, but had since made up for it with speed and technique. Vincent found himself pushing her more than the others because she responded to the challenge, and because there was something about being beaten by a young woman that focused the minds of young men in any kind of combat. Well, except Mouse.
He led them through sparring next, each fighting the other three in five point bouts, no head shots. Jamie emerged as the undisputed victor, as she had every lesson for nearly three weeks, though Dominic looked like he was starting to break down some of her attacks. Vincent gave it another week before he surprised Jamie with a victory and upped the ante.
Newly dispatched, Joshua went to stand with Mouse and Dominic, while Jamie remained in the center of the room, her face red and sweaty. She leaned on her staff to catch her breath while Vincent picked up a staff of his own and gave it a few practice swings.
He never lost his control with a staff; the foreign weight of a blunt object curbed his desire to slash and throttle almost completely, and the weapon became a tool like a fork or a pen. He certainly wasn't the best of the sentries at this kind of combat; he taught the beginners because he was good at teaching. And he knew that if push ever came to shove, he'd forget the staff altogether and tear into his adversary the way that instinct dictated. The way that instinct had dictated.
"Okay," Jamie said. "I'm ready."
Vincent emerged from dark memories and focused on the situation at hand. He was Below, safe. All was right with the world.
He placed himself opposite Jamie. "Watch your footwork. And don't swing so wide that it compromises your balance."
She nodded, her face setting in determination.
"Director? Dominic?"
Dominic stepped forward. "Sentries ready? Fight."
Vincent held back to give her room to attack, but she knew better than to take the opening at face value. She feinted right and tried to catch him with an upward swing on the left, but he wasn't there to be caught. They pushed back and forth, Vincent attacking more to test her defense than to score, but she left herself open, and she grunted when he tagged her just under the ribs.
"Halt," Dominic said. "Touch, Vincent. One-zero."
Jamie took a moment to catch her breath and rub out her side before she reset her defensive stance.
"Sentries ready? Fight."
Jamie led with the same feint as before, but as he blocked the upward swing on the left, she turned the strike into a lunge, sliding just past his own staff and striking him under the sternum with the straight end of her staff. He staggered backward a couple of steps as Dominic called a halt and Joshua whooped.
"Are you all right?" Jamie asked. "I didn't think that'd work."
Vincent nodded. After a moment, he regained his breath. "That was good." He cleared his throat, trying to get control back over his voice. "Well done." There, that came out better. He reset his stance.
"Touch, Jamie. One-one. Sentries ready? Fight."
Jamie tried a new charge, but Vincent rebuffed it with sheer strength. They circled. Jamie tried to come in from overhead, but their height difference made that ineffectual. Vincent responded by pressing a series of attacks that didn't give Jamie any time to get clever. Even though he kept from using his full strength against her, she had learned that her best defense against someone his size was to simply not be there when he struck. But moving her entire body took more time and energy than blocking, and she risked her footing the more he pressed.
"Balance," he cautioned.
She grunted in acknowledgement. He could see her frustration. Finally, she swept her staff wide to knock out his right knee, and he took advantage of the momentum she had to put behind the strike; he blocked, struck left, and then just pushed against her staff. She stumbled backward and fell on her rump.
"Halt," said Dominic.
Vincent stepped forward, his hand out to help her up. She grabbed it and had just begun to trust her weight to his arm when he heard running footsteps, felt a threat, saw the glint of a blade. He turned to face the attack, the stranger from earlier rushing him with a long knife, but Jamie's half-supported weight pulled him off balance; he dodged the first swipe of the blade, but he stumbled over Jamie's feet, and they both fell into the sand. Jamie landed flat on her back, knocking the air out of her lungs.
Their attacker took quick advantage of the situation and swung down viciously with his knife. Vincent's feet were still tangled with Jamie's, and he was reduced to lurching forward and grabbing the attacker's wrist. Matching the other man's power was doable enough, even at this bad angle, but Vincent had to give Jamie time to get out of the line of fire, and his crouch was more than simply awkward in the soft sand.
"Jamie? Jamie, go!"
In his distraction, Vincent didn't see the other man switch his knife to his left hand until the point of it bit deep into the flesh of his forearm. Vincent roared and lashed out, but his attacker leapt back. Jamie pulled her feet away from him, but she kicked his in the process, throwing off what weak threads of balance he had, and he fell onto his side, even as the stranger rushed forward again. Jamie shouted, and Vincent tried to shift to a more defensible position and, barring that, brace himself against the pain of another knifing, but then there was someone between him and his attacker; the stranger's lunge came up short, but Mouse crumpled to the ground with a whimper.
Absolute silence reigned in the chamber for a pair of heartbeats; Vincent watched Mouse on his knees, arms clutched around his middle and head bowed. As his body slumped down further, Vincent surged to his feet, leapt over Mouse, and had his attacker by the throat against the stone wall by the time he had drawn enough breath to roar. The knife clattered to the ground as Vincent stared into terrified brown eyes, bore his teeth and screamed his rage inches from a pale, trembling face. He felt the man's rapid pulse in his neck and leaned closer still, reveling in the feel of fear and helplessness from his adversary as he snarled.
"Vincent!" A hand landed on his arm, breaking the dark spell, and he turned to stare into Jamie's worried eyes. "You've got to help Mouse."
His grip on their attacker didn't abate as he looked over his shoulder at Mouse, on his side on the ground, his face tight with pain, his hands red and wet over the wound in his side.
He heard a high sob then, and looked the other way at the two blonde girls he had seen earlier, both faces ashen and tear-streaked as they looked on from the doorway to the corridor.
With a grunt, Vincent swung the man around and tossed him to the ground near Joshua and Dominic's feet. "Take him up to Father's chamber. Take them all."
The young men scrambled to pull the man to his feet by each arm.
The youngest girl whimpered, and Vincent spared what mercy he had in the fury, fear, and shame swirling inside of him. "See to it that no one comes to further harm."
He assured himself that they were on their way before he dropped down next to Mouse, across from Jamie. She had her hand in Mouse's hair. She stared up at Vincent.
"Go to Father," he told her. "Tell him what's happened here. I'll take Mouse to the hospital chamber."
Jamie nodded, her eyes bright. She looked down at Mouse. "You're going to be just fine. Father'll sew you up." Her voice threatened to break, but she swallowed and put on a watery smile. "You'll see."
"O…okay, good," Mouse answered with something that might have been a smile, but was too full of pain. "Okay, fine."
Jamie up and bolted from the chamber then. Vincent smoothed Mouse's hair back from his face.
"Hurts," Mouse said.
"I know. But you have to let me see the wound."
Mouse winced, and his palms came away red and glistening. There was little for Vincent to see besides a ragged slice through layers of blood-soaked clothing. A lot of blood.
Vincent took a quick survey of what he had on hand shrugged out of the padded tunic he wore to get at his undamaged shirt sleeve. The knife wound in his arm stretched and ached as he tore the sleeve off of his outer shirt, and the pain made his fingers weak, but he rolled the fabric and pressed it against Mouse's side. Mouse gasped and clutched at Vincent's shoulder with one bloody hand.
"Put pressure on this." Vincent took each of Mouse's wrists and laid his hands over the fabric. "I'm going to take you up to the hospital chamber. Keep the pressure on the wound. That's your job, the whole way."
Mouse nodded, his teeth clenched tight. He grunted as Vincent picked him up off the ground and stood.
"Lucky Mouse." He tried to smile again. "No one faster than Vincent."
Vincent didn't answer; he started the smoothest jog he could manage up through the tunnels.
