Chapter Three—The Establishment

Alice Fairfax ran a very tight ship. The house wasn’t only a place of residence—it was one of the hearts of operations for the Ivaldan government, of which Master Kain was a major player. His, it seemed, was more of a diplomatic post, as he worked to quell concerns regarding cohabitation from either side of the aisle.

“You are not to disturb Master Kain when he’s working,” she said as she led us upstairs. “He is a very busy and important man.”

Blanche and I were given rooms next to one another, with an en suite bathroom that connected the two. Mine was more opulent than anything I had ever seen before, with a four-poster canopy bed, and a divan beneath a picture window with views of the pool and the endless desert beyond. The floors were Moroccan tile in beige and blue, and there were beautiful glass lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

“Ms. Fairfax,” I said, stopping her before she could leave me alone to get settled in, “this is a job, right? Like…we’re paid, and everything.”

“Of course, Ms. Lockewood,” she said, canting her head gently to the side. “Your payment schedule will be on your datapad—along with everything else. You are free to come and go as you please, outside of your scheduled work hours. There is a shuttle that can take you into the city, if you wish to amuse yourself there. And once you’ve acquired enough credits, you are free to leave us and find a place of your own, and new employment. Though I would require the requisite two weeks’ notice if you would like a good recommendation from me.”

“Of course.”

I was equipped with my own datapad and taught how to manipulate it and the nanites so that they would become anything I wanted them to be. For the Ivaldans, it was much more intuitive: they could simply think something up and manifest it in the world with their nanite technology. We humans had to sit there and use a clunky program the Ivaldans had designed for this purpose, sketching out ideas with our fingertips on the screen as we would with a pencil and a notepad. And I wasn’t very good at it.

For the first couple days, the clothes I wore looked like they’d been sketched by an angry toddler. The hems were uneven, the colors were mismatched, and they fit perhaps too snugly. Blanche, on the other hand, was apparently a natural and came down to breakfast every day looking like she’d just stepped out of a Cosmopolitan fashion spread.

But then, blessedly, my two sweet charges came to my rescue.

I met them on my second day at Thornfield and adored them pretty much immediately.

They were twin boys, with big blue eyes like their father’s, but skin the color of granite. Their horns came to points, like they were each wearing a crown of thorns, and they were tall, even for twelve-year-olds. Tall and reed-like and full of energy.

I pushed my way into the nursery that was their classroom and playroom in one, and found them sitting quietly, hunched over their datapads.

“You must be Pim and Tox,” I said, smiling at them, and they looked up and smiled back at me.

“I’m Tox,” said the one on the left.

“And I’m Pim,” said the one on the right. “And you can tell us apart because Tox has blue eyes.”

“But Pim has blue-green eyes.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Also you’ll never see me in anything Red.” One of them said. “I’m Pim.”

“And you’ll never see me in anything woolen, because it’s scratchy and I hate that,” said the other. “I’m Tox.”

“Well,” I said on the wings of a sigh, “I will do my best to try to remember that.”

“We’re not really all that much alike, when it comes right down to it,” One of them said. Tox, I think. Yes. Tox. “So once you get to know us, you’ll get the hang of it.”

“And we’re not like those evil twins who try to trip people up,” said Pim. “It’s not your fault we look the same.”

“And we don’t like to dress the same either.”

“Except Tox is wearing my tee-shirt.” It was blue, and it had a screenprint of the earth on it.

“It is not yours,” Tox protested. “They’re my nanites.”

“But it’s my design. From my brain!”

I moved deeper into the room and joined them on the person rug on which they were sitting. “It’s a fantastic design,” I said. And it was then that they bothered to look at me at all, really.

“What’s your name?” Pim asked.

“Jane. Jane Lockewood.”

“Ms. Lockewood,” Tox said, “If I may be so bold—”

“Please, you can call me Jane.”

“Jane,” Tox went on, scooting closer to me. “I think maybe you might, er…need some help? With the design program on your Pad?”

I grimaced, and Pim punched Tox in the shoulder. “Is it that obvious that I’ve no idea what I’m doing?”

“It isn’t your fault. These weren’t initially designed to work with a design program. They were designed to create on the electrical impulses of our brains. But because you folks, I guess, don’t have particularly, er…electrical thoughts…”

“That isn’t it, stupid,” Pim interjected. “But he is right about one thing—you need help.”

“Yes,” I said. “Please.”

And so the first half of our first day together, my students taught me how to use the design program. They even designed a few items for me and saved them to my digital wardrobe, beautiful garments that were just my style: fitted jeans, and shirts that hugged at the shoulders and chest, but had some give at the tummy. But the piece de resistance was the design of the datapad itself.

“They hide in plain sight, see,” Pim said.

“Like mine,” said Tox, “is this watch.” He brandished his wrist, and I gave it a good look: a watch that looked as though it were carved out of wood. It was beautifully rendered. “Isn’t it wonderful?” I agreed that it was.

“Mine is this backpack,” said Pim, and showed me the black canvas knapsack covered in patches. It was very unique, just like the creature who had created it.

“So now, let us make you something,” Pim went on. He had my datapad in his hand, and his fingers were lightning quick across the screen.

“Tell me all the things you love,” said Tox, “and we’ll make something perfect.”

“All the things I love?” I asked. “Oh, my.” And I began. When I told them about growing up in midwestern suburbs, they asked about the color of the sky, and what wheat fields looked like; when I told them about going to college, they asked what it smelled like in the quad; when I told them about my grandparents who raised me, they asked what my grandmother’s hands felt like. The questions were tender and oddly probing, and I had no idea what any of it had to do with design.

“Ok, last, I want you think about the most beautiful piece of jewelry you’ve ever seen,” said Tox. And I did: I pictured the brooch my grandfather had given my grandmother, that she wore on her lapel every Sunday. It was a golden disc, with rays extending outward in shades of rose, white, and yellow gold.

“All right,” Pim said at last. “Done.” He hit a final button on the datapad, and I watched it transform, break down into its component atoms, until it looked like broken black pixels on a screen, marching toward the center of Pim’s flattened palm, before it began to reform itself.

It happened quickly, like a 3D printer in fast forward, but after a few moments, there was a necklace in Pim’s hand where there once had been an electronic device. “It’ll happen faster from now on,” Pim explained as he held the necklace out to me, “now that it’s done it once.”

I took the necklace and turned it over in my hand; the simple beauty of it took my breath away. It was a cluster of pale blue aquamarines set in a disc of tri-colored gold. It was on a simple golden box chain and when I put it on, it fell center-sternum. It was stunning; it was perfect.

“Thank you,” I murmured, fingering the pendant gingerly. “It’s just…I’m overwhelmed. It’s just what I would have picked out for myself, if I had all the necklaces in the world lined up side by side.”

The twins smiled at one another. “We’re glad you like it,” they said in perfect unison.

~ * ~

I did not see Master Kain those first few days. He kept himself busy with work and diplomacy, and with Ms. Ingram, I thought. But I was wrong.

“Jane,” she said, peeking her head out of her bedroom just as I was passing to reach my own. It was as though she’d been waiting for me there. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.” She was wearing a negligee in pink lace, her nipples erect beneath the flimsy fabric. She was a stunning invitation, but the expression on her face and the pink in the apples of her cheeks belied the fact of her recent rejection.

“Have you…?” She paused, shifting her weight from side to side, closing the door just a little so that more of her body was hidden away. “Have you seen Master Kain lately? That is, have you spent any time with him?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen him at all since the first day we got here—why?”

“Well,” she hesitated. “It’s just…I know that he wanted you first. And that’s all right—I don’t mind it. So I was wondering if he’d…ever come to you at all. Visited your bedroom, anything like that.”

“No, of course he hasn’t,” I said. “And if he ever does, I’ll…turn him away.”

She broke into a wide smile and nodded her head. “Thank you, Jane. That’s all I wanted to hear. Good night.”

“Good night.” She closed the door and I saw the light go out from beneath it before I continued down the hall to my room. But no sooner had I opened the door than had I made a liar of myself. For there he was, Master Kain, sitting in the dark on the divan by the windowsill.

He gave me a start when I switched on the light, and I place a hand over my racing heart, bracing myself against the door I’d only just closed behind me. He was wearing a red silk housecoat over his slacks and shirtsleeves, and he cut a fine figure.

“Forgive me,” he said, rising to his feet and coming forward with his hands held out in front of him. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“It’s all right,” I said on the wings of a sigh. “It’s your house after all.”

“But this is your room—I should not have trespassed. Only…” He hesitated, casting a glance toward the door that led to the bathroom that connected my room with Blanche’s. He went over to it and locked the door, then continued to speak with his voice low. “Only I couldn’t make up my mind to come in, and I was pacing outside the door when Blanche came up, and so I…I darted inside and hid.”

“You…hid? From Ms. Ingram?” I couldn’t help it; I smiled.

“Well,” he said, reflecting my grin back at me, “yes. I did. Absurd, isn’t it?”

“You should see what she has on for you,” I said, crossing my arms in front of me and proffering a bit of a smirk. “Or, I should say, what she hasn’t got on.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said, rather grimly. “She looks like a parcel, all wrapped up with a bow just waiting for me to undo her. Do all human women dress like that to seduce their men?”

“Not all,” I said.

“Not you.”

I paused, inclining my head slightly. “Not me.” A silence lapsed between us, and I could feel something radiating from him, some energy like he was trying to draw me to him, like he was trying to coax me forward. I felt it in my mind first, then lower, lower.

“Is there something I can help you with tonight, Master Kain?” I asked, trying to push him out of my mind. I felt whatever energy he’d used to reach me recede again, and I felt more safely moored inside my own skin.

“How are the boys getting on?” he asked. “Not giving you too much trouble, I hope?”

“Not a bit. They’re delights, actually.” I smiled, lifting a hand to absently touch the necklace they’d designed for me. “They’re quite apt pupils, and we’re moving through the sciences quite quickly. I’m afraid I won’t have much to teach them. No more than a year’s worth of material, maybe two if we take our time.”

“Are you happy here, Jane?” he asked, entreating me with his eyes. He advanced on me slowly until we were standing so close that I could feel the heat radiating from his body.

“Should I be, Master Kain?”

“I…” He balled his hands into fists, then released them. “I hoped you would. You’re not a prisoner.”

“Am I not?” I side-stepped him and moved deeper into the room, turning away so that I was facing out the window instead of looking at him. “Your people came here and put the world to sleep. Now you’re allowing us to wake up again. Perhaps you have killed no one, hurt no one, but you are still taking what was never yours to take.”

There was a long stretch of silence until I wondered if, perhaps, he hadn’t left the room altogether. But no; when I turned around, he was still there, his eyes cast to the floor at my feet. “Of course you’re right,” he muttered. “It is no wonder that most of your kind are beginning to hate us.” He sighed and fell into a troubled lean against the wall next to the door. We had the length of the bedroom between us, and I felt quite starkly that ache, that need to be closer to him. But I would not give in. “I tried to wake up the ones without…family, without structure. The ones who were most in need of a new beginning. And then I tried to give it to them. But even they are beginning to resist. Even they are beginning to turn. Because the more people we wake, the more we have to wake. And I fear I’ve gone about it all wrong.”

He lifted his eyes to look at me, then, and I felt my heart flip over in my chest. “But I look at you,” he went on, moving toward me, “and I know that I could not have gone to war, not if it meant a single shadow passing over your eyes.” I moved toward him by degrees, a half a step with each lovely word. “I think I dreamed you, Jane,” he said, his breathy tone indicating his amazement. “I dreamed you, and now you’re here.”

What he said jolted a memory somewhere deep in my limbic system, and I remembered that I’d seen his eyes. I had dreamed his eyes before the Ivaldans had pulled me out of stasis, revived me back into life. It was his eyes that I’d dreamed. How could that be?

He drew nearer and nearer, and I was breathing so quickly, I thought I might faint. He touched me, ever so lightly, his fingertips brushing like bird feathers up over my shoulder, sending goosebumps down my spine. His lips were parted slightly as he looked down at me, watching his fingers, watching them dance across my clavicle and down the slope of my breast, and I was ignited. I felt the familiar pulse of longing between my thighs, and as he bent toward me and pressed his lips to mine in a gentle kiss, my entire being was screaming yes.

But I pushed him away. Because it couldn’t be trusted. He couldn’t be trusted.

“What is it?” He whispered, his voice thick with desire.

“I can’t do this,” I said in a plain tone.

“They said I could not have you,” he said, his tone matching mine. “But it isn’t for them to say. What do you say?”

I swallowed hard, and with all the courage I could muster, gave my reply: “I say you cannot have me.”

He looked taken aback; he was clearly not used to being rejected. “Have I done something to offend you, Jane?” he asked.

“You came to my planet, Master Kain,” I said, standing up to him as best I could. “You put the world to sleep. You gave us lives we did not recognize and called it ‘mercy’. And now, just now, you tried to seduce me with the considerable powers your mind possesses. I may…feel it, now. I do feel it. But I don’t trust it; it isn’t real, any more than this necklace is real. It’s all the great power your people have over mine. And I will do right by those two boys of yours, and I will work at the wage you’ve given me because it seems fair and just, but I will not stay here a moment longer than is absolutely necessary for me to build a life of my choosing.” I took in a deep breath. “And while I do it, I shall not play your whore.”

He grew stiff where he stood and gave a sharp nod of his head. It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that I saw a flash of light from his eyes. “Forgive me,” he said, his tone flat, “I did not mean to cause offense.”

“I’m sorry if that was harsh,” I said, taking a step toward him, but he recoiled like I burned him. “I know that Blanche is very…interested in you. I’m sure all of your advances would be welcome with her.”

“Right,” he said. “I’ll bid you goodnight, then, Jane.”

And before I had a chance to return the sentiment, he was gone.

~ * ~

The nanite-rendered bedclothes were as beautiful as they were downy soft, and I drifted easily to sleep each night in the grand four-poster bed I had come to think of as mine. But the night that Master Kain had come to see me, it took me hours to fall asleep, tossing and turning as I was. I couldn’t be sure if the grip he still had over me was real or part of whatever power his people possessed. I tossed and turned, seeing only those striking blue eyes in my mind, seeing only that hand as it drifted up my arm, over my shoulder, across my breast.

But something woke me in the night, some strange sound from some remote corner of the estate. I was dreaming of him, and I woke to a wailing cry, off in the distance. It sounded like agony at first, but I strained to hear it, strained to learn where it was coming from. I sat up in the bed and pushed the covers aside, swinging my feet around and padding against the cool tiled floor until I reached the door.

There was something frightening about the sound, like some poor soul was desperate to get out of wherever they were being held, and it scared me enough that I did not dare to open the door. At least not immediately. I pressed my ear to the heavy wood and tried to focus on the sounds of screaming, then laughter, screaming, then laughter.

After a moment, I heard the shuffle of footsteps as they darted, whispering, past my door and in the direction of the sound. Maybe it was the fact that I knew I wouldn’t have to face the noise alone that finally gave me the courage to unbolt the door and step out into the hallway.

I was wearing precious little in the way of pajamas—when the desert nights dipped the temperature, they cranked up the heat—only a tank top and a pair of light cotton shorts. I sidled along the walls, and I hear the shrieking cry of a woman in pain, before it subsided into the hysterical laughs of a soul gone mad.

I could feel my heart thrumming in my chest as I moved forward, closer and closer to the source of the sound, until I ran into a solid form who darted out of a side corridor without a sound. I felt strong hands grip me by the shoulder and turn me around. Ms. Fairfax. “Back to bed with you, Jane,” she said, shuffling me back the way I’d come.

“What is that?” I asked, trying to turn myself around again, but Alice just pushed me forward. “What’s making that awful sound?”

“Never you mind,” she said sternly.

“Wait,” I protested, but she was having none of it. I jerked myself free and spun around, staring up into her proud face, and hoping that there was something sharp and insistent in my eyes. “There is someone screaming, Ms. Fairfax. Why is there someone screaming?”

She hesitated a moment, and in that moment, the screams turned to laughter again. “There,” she rejoined rather grimly, “no one is screaming.”

“But—”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“I live in this house now,” I pressed. “It is my concern.”

Ms. Fairfax gripped her hands in front of her, and her golden asp bracelet glinted in the moonlight drifting in through the windows. She was still dressed for the day even though it was the middle of the night, and I wondered what, exactly, her job duties entailed.

“Jane,” she finally said, a certain pleading in her tone, “it is not my secret to tell.” The house grew quiet in that moment, and I saw Alice Fairfax close her eyes and lift her chin, as though she were listening very closely to the air around her. But there was nothing, neither laugh nor scream, and she wore a look of plain relief.

She stared me down then, and I swallowed hard before turning on my heel to head quickly back to my room, the dim light emanating in from the windows all there was to light my way.

And I thought that I would stay there through the night, but I awoke in the small hours of the morning, when the sky was a deep royal blue in anticipation of the rising sun. I awoke because something was coaxing me out of slumber, somewhere deep inside my mind. Like a lullaby, just loud enough to rouse me.

I turned over onto my side, my head on my bended arm, and I saw the shadow of two feet beneath my door. And there was light there, too. Dim and orange and flickering like candlelight. My heart was a railroad spike hammered into the hard earth of my chest, and for a moment I was frozen in place. I was sleepy, still half in a dream, when I drew the covers back and padded silently across the tile.

When I pressed my ear to the door that time, I could hear the slow, even breath of someone standing very close by. And then, I heard her speak. “Jane.”

I gave a start, and unlatched the door, throwing it wide just in time to see her dart away. She had a torch in her hand, and it glowed a dancing yellow as she ran down the hall, away from me. I followed.

She rounded the corner as though she were headed to the master suite, and that was the last time I saw her. But she’d left her light behind, and I could see it beneath Master Kain’s bedroom door. Fearing the worst, I ran forward and pushed my way inside, pleased to find that he’d left it unlocked—or had the creature simply gotten a key?

Once inside, I saw that she had set fire to the drapes and they’d gone up in a blaze, leaving a roaring fire to reach its hungry tendrils to anything that would catch. And there was Master Kain, asleep in his bed, one arm hooked up high over his head. I was rooted in place for a moment, panting as I tried to figure out what to do to stop it. But when the canopy of his bed caught fire, I could do nothing to quell the burning. I had to focus on saving the life.

I scrambled up onto the mattress and began to shake him. “Master Kain,” I shouted, louder than full volume, “wake up—there’s a fire—wake up!”

He came slowly out of sleep, until he saw the blaze, at which point he threw a protective arm up as though to shield me from harm. “You’ve got to go, Jane,” he said, pushing me forward as he scooted off the bed. I could see the outline of his abdominal muscles as he bent forward to retrieve a pair of pajama pants he had abandoned. He tugged them quickly on to preserve his modesty and shoved me toward the door.

“You have to come with me,” I pleaded with him in the hallway. “You’re not safe—what are you doing?”

“I’ve got to make sure…” he hesitated. “I need to make sure that there’s no one else in here.”

“There’s no one else,” I said, mostly certain. “She’s gone, she isn’t in there.”

Another moment of hesitation before he gave a sharp nod of his head and took me by the hand, leading me at top speed down the hall to where a touch screen was embedded in the wall. He pressed his fingertips against it, and it came to life, glowing a dim blue in the darkness. He keyed in a code, and gave it a final press, and an alarm blared throughout the estate. I pressed my hands to my ears to keep the sound at bay, this wailing siren, even as people began to file out of their bedrooms, tying robes about their waists, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

“Everyone outside,” Master Kain was shouting. “There’s been a fire—emergency services have been notified, and the sprinklers in the affected sector have been turned on. Please—everyone, outside.”

They all began to file out of the building, and Master Kain took me by the arm and directed me out. “Why didn’t the alarm come on automatically, with the smoke?” I asked, shouting over the blare of the siren.

“Someone must have disabled it,” he shouted back.

“Who would do that?”

But Master Kain didn’t say anything. He just dragged me down the stairs, out the front door, and deposited me safely in the courtyard of Thornfield Hall. Outside, I could see black smoke emanating from Master Kain’s bedroom window. It seemed as though the fire had been doused, but much, I assumed, had been ruined.

Tox and Pim ran over to me when they came out, and I clutched them to me, grateful for the security of their presence. “Are you all right?” They asked in unison.

“Me?” I smiled. “I’m fine. Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Tox said.

“A little shaken,” said Pim.

Master Kain was circling the group, counting heads, and his sons were watching him closely. “Is father ok?” Tox asked.

“I think so,” I said. “I got there just in time.”

“You?” Tox and Pim angled their bright eyes up at me.

“I saw…someone. Someone with a torch, and she—”

“She?” Echoed Pim.

“A torch?” Echoed Tox.

“Yes. I ran after her, and she led me to your father’s room. She’d disabled the alarm system, I suppose. Or someone had. Anyway, when I got there, the curtains were ablaze, so I woke him up and he re-set the alarm.”

“So,” Tox said, taking my hand in his, “you’ve saved us all.”

We stood in the courtyard all huddled together for over an hour while the fire department went in to inspect the damage. As they did, Master Kain huddled conspiratorially with Ms. Fairfax, and they talked animatedly about what was going on, but I couldn’t hear any of the words. I sat on a low stone wall with the twins, my arms about their shoulders, until they fell asleep on me. I didn’t mind: their warm, solid forms were a comfort to me.

When the fire department gave the all-clear to go back inside, Master Kain approached me, smiling thinly down at his sleeping boys. “I wanted to thank you, Jane,” he said. “You saved my life.”

He was trembling—maybe from the adrenaline (did they have adrenalin?) or from the cold of the early desert morning.

“I’m only grateful that I got there in time,” came my quiet reply. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

Pim lifted his head then and stared at his father with one open eye. “Is it over? Can we go back in?”

“Yes,” Master Kain confirmed, “it’s all over.” Pim reach across me and nudged Tox, and the two sleepy boys forced themselves to stand up and trudge back into the house. But Master Kain lingered. “Did you…” he hesitated, and moved to sit beside me where Pim had been, so close that I could feel the warmth of his body, “did you see what the person looked like, the one with the torch?”

I shook my head. “No. But I know it was a woman, from the form of her, from the sound of her voice. I know that much.” I looked at him in profile and he was giving a slow nod of his head, the light from the rising sun glinting off of the obsidian of his horns. They were a distinctly humanoid people, the Ivaldans, but never had Master Kain looked so alien as he did in that moment. I noticed how thick his neck was, how hulking his shoulders. I noticed the slightest hint of an underbite that, when looking at him straight on only made him seem as though he had a strong jaw, but from the side like this, it was almost primitive, barbaric, as though he were made to have two protruding tusks.

But no. There was nothing primitive about the Ivaldans. I turned my head away to admire the sunrise.

“You should get back to sleep, Jane,” he said after a time, rising to his feet and holding out a hand to help me up. I took it, relishing the feeling of his skin, warm against mine. “We’ll push back the day’s operations by four hours today, so you should feel free to sleep in.”

“And you?” I asked, noting that Blanche Ingram was hovering near the doorway in a silk robe that barely covered her ass. “Where will you sleep, now?”

He smiled a little and arched one broad shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not sure. I don’t think we have a full house yet, and if we do…Well. There are couches.”

We chuckled a little, and I felt somehow so at ease, despite the harrowing events of the night. And when he gave my hand a final squeeze and thanked me again, I said, “Think nothing of it, Master Kain.”

“Please, Jane,” he said, lifting a finger to tuck an errant lock of brown hair behind my ear, “Call me Kaz.”

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre