A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(112)

I look down the slope and see it. The First Settlement.





SIXTY-TWO

The settlement looks more like a temporary camp than a village. Ten cabins, loosely scattered, at least fifty meters from each neighbor. Poor for defense, but I suppose that’s not really an issue up here, where the only thing you need to defend against is the wildlife, and you’re close enough to your neighbor to shout for help if a grizzly ambles into your living room.

Not that a grizzly would fit in these living rooms. The cabins probably share the same size footprint as our chalets, but without a second story. Intentionally small, Dalton explains, for conservation of heat.

Our boots crunch on the snow, and it’s not loud, but in a place like this, it’s enough. A door opens. Then another. Dalton moves closer to me, and I’m not even sure he’s aware he’s doing it, he just shifts over, shoulders squaring.

No one looks my way, though. I’m between the two men, a head shorter than either, a slight figure in an oversized snowmobile suit, with the hood drawn up, scarf wrapped in a muffler, only my eyes visible over it. If they notice me, they mistake me for a boy, like Cypher did. It’s Dalton they’re looking at. Sizing up. They know Jacob—he trades here, as his parents did. Dalton, though, is a stranger, and he’s young enough and big enough to earn wary looks.

“Is Edwin in?” Jacob calls to the person nearest, asking after the town elder—as much to check whether he’s present as to let people know he’s following proper protocol, escorting strangers directly to the guy in charge.

The man nods. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t bother to stop staring either. People watch us as we proceed to the center of the settlement. By the time we arrive, the door to that central cabin is open. A man stands in it. He’s not much taller than me, stooped and wizened, at least eighty. His brown skin and eyes suggest he’s Asian, but given his age, I honestly can’t tell if he is or that’s just the result of fifty years of living out of doors.

“Edwin,” Jacob says and bows his head. “May we come in and speak to you?”

Edwin nods and backs up. We walk inside. The cabin is smoky, fire blazing too hot, as if his old bones can no longer take the cold. There are two chairs. Real wooden chairs, as good as anything Kenny would make at his carpentry bench. One is oversized, blanketed with thick furs. Edwin lowers himself into that. We stay standing.

“Edwin, this is—”

“I know who he is,” Edwin says. “I’m old. I’m not senile. I recognize your brother’s face.”

Disconcertion flickers through Dalton’s eyes. He blinks it away, but not before Edwin catches it and snorts. “You think you’ve changed that much? You haven’t, and you look too much like your brother for anyone to miss the connection. I remember you, Eric. Yes, even your name. I remember the hell you put your parents through, too, when you took off.”

“He didn’t—” Jacob begins, but Dalton silences him with a look. He’s not going to explain more than he has to. Like in Rockton, secrets are valuable out here. They’re weapons that can be used against you.

The old man’s gaze flicks to me and then back to Dalton. “You think you need to hide your girl from me?”

“Well, considering I seem to remember—” Dalton cuts himself short, presumably before bringing up his mother’s treatment.

I unwrap my scarf and lower my hood. Edwin eyes me, not like an old man looking at a young woman, but the hard, assessing study of a stranger.

“What’s your name?” he says.

“Casey.”

That snort. “I meant your family name.”

“Butler.”

A harder snort. “Your other family.”

I give him what he wants. “My maternal grandfather’s family name is Zhao.” He nods, apparently satisfied that he’s guessed my heritage correctly. I add, “And my maternal grandmother’s family name is Navarro.”

“Spanish?” There’s a thread of hope in his eyes that disappears when I say, “Filipino,” and the sneer that follows isn’t disgust for the law that forced Filipinos to adopt Hispanic surnames. It’s racism, pure and simple.

He says something in Mandarin Chinese. I just look at him, long enough that he shifts in vague discomfort, and then I say, “I was born in Canada. I didn’t take Mandarin lessons growing up because my mother believed in full assimilation. I did study it in university because in spite or—or maybe because of—my mother’s attitude, I am interested in my cultural heritage. But I’m Canadian. I know French better than Mandarin. I know English better still, so we’ll stick to that. I came here to inform you of the death of one of your people. A man named Roger.”

I don’t know how much of my speech he paid attention to, but that last part gets his attention.

“I don’t know his surname,” I say. “He was a second-generation settler—”

“I know who you mean. He’d left the settlement, but he was still one of us.”

“Then I offer my condolences. He was badly injured in the forest. We took him to Rockton and did our best to save him, but he succumbed to his injuries.”

“Injured how?”

“He received multiple deep lacerations to the torso.”