Rebel Heart Read online

  “What the hell?” he demanded. The younger brother, Brian, spun and hurled an empty bucket at Calvin. It smacked into his chest and left a stinging rebuke on his chilled skin. Calvin rubbed at the spot, wincing.

  “There ain’t no what-the-hells in here, my friend! Outbursts are something you earn. Get outside, greenie,” Brian said.

  “My shoes,” Calvin protested, and reached down to grab them from where he’d left them last night. In two steps, Brian intercepted Calvin and shoved him toward the door.

  “If you weren’t battle-ready at bedtime, tough nuggets. Go!”

  Within a minute, all six recruits were outside, most of them barefoot but for socks. Some had even stripped to their skivvies for the night, and it seemed that Peter and Brian would work them regardless of this fact. The adults from the other barracks were already there; it looked like they’d gotten a similarly rude awakening.

  They started with distance runs. Peter and Brian ran in front of and behind the pack of recruits, prodding them along with sharp sticks and sharper words as they jogged for miles through the forest around Mount Vernon. Calvin soon learned not to complain when a rock or twig stabbed him in the foot, because it only earned him a swat and a warning from the McCracken boys. Instead he did his best to pick a clean path while still keeping pace—no easy task. Though the run beat up on his lungs after the previous night’s indulgence, his body handled it well enough otherwise; he’d spent a lot of time on the farm chasing errant sheep.

  Or at least, he used to.

  After a six mile loop, they came back to the grounds. The McCrackens let them rest for all of five minutes before they made the recruits move heavy logs from one end of the stables to the other, in pairs. Calvin and the girl named Rusty worked together at first; she was deceptively strong for her size. They moved three logs each, and by the time he was done, his shoulders and back were burning real bad. But then they had to move fuel drums—some full, some not—and eventually they progressed to heavy pieces of machinery that he couldn’t identify.

  Some of the older recruits grumbled about taking orders from kids, and Calvin saw more than one surreptitious glare aimed at the McCrackens when they weren’t looking.

  Lunchtime rolled around. Mr. McCracken came to the stables with his kitchen staff, describing the meal in detail. Calvin’s mouth watered again, though some recruits looked sick at the mention of food. An older man seemed as if he might pass out.

  “Oh, sorry Pops,” said Brian, fixing the recruits with a wicked leer. “They haven’t done their swim yet.”

  “Silly me,” McCracken said. Calvin got the impression that they’d planned this bit.

  Peter and Brian kept the pressure on Calvin and the others, driving them down to the river that cut through the land near Mount Vernon. With no further preamble, they shoved the recruits into the water and ordered them to swim down the bank for a mile. The only mercy they received came in the form of an order to stay close to shore, lest they drown. Calvin was not very good at swimming, and it took him several false starts before he struck up a half-decent rhythm.

  “Just breathe on every third stroke,” said a boy his age as he swam past Calvin, cutting effortlessly through the water. “It’s easy.”

  Calvin started to say “thank you,” but the boy kept talking.

  “And turn your head skyward, then make sure your lips are out of the water before you open your mouth. That’s why you’re choking.” He sped off, graceful as a fish.

  “I’m not choking,” Calvin protested. But the boy was already gone.

  If his manners had been lacking, his advice had not; Calvin’s technique improved drastically. An hour later he made it down to where Peter McCracken stood. Calvin could barely pull himself onto the shore, his limbs were so weak.

  “Where’s your brother?” asked Lyla, one of the first to finish the mile.

  “He had to rescue a recruit from drowning,” Peter said. “Doesn’t look like he’s cut out for the physical side of this. He’s been lagging all day.”

  “Will he be alright?” asked the boy called Cohen.

  “He’d better be, or he’s walking home,” Peter said nonchalantly.

  Calvin frowned at the sound of that, unable to do anything but breathe.

  Lunch was lighter fare than the previous night—mostly bread, a little dried meat and some fruit. They washed it down with a measure of milk, and plenty of water. Calvin was careful not to take in too much. His guts still hurt from the morning.

  The McCracken boys led the recruits on a long march around the perimeter of Mount Vernon so that they knew the boundary of the grounds. Peter told them not to pass that boundary, because that was where their father’s protection ended. If the mages sensed people moving about in the woods, it would draw undue attention to Mount Vernon. Calvin couldn’t see very far into the woods anyhow—the trees were far too thick, like a living wall of green.

  “Last exercise of the day, and then you can clean up,” Brian said, halting their march next to a wooden pen than stank horrendously of pig filth. The very air had an oily texture.

  “What’s the exercise?” someone asked. It was the swimmer boy, standing tall with his arms folded in front of him, his chest sticking out just a little more than necessary.

  “Run across this sty to the other side, there and back three times,” Brian said.

  “Shoot. Cakewalk,” grunted a bearded man with a patch over one eye.

  “Just mind the pigs.” Peter pointed to the north end of the pig pen. Five heavy, hairy beasts wallowed in the mud and waste, some of them idly cutting their tusks together. It wasn’t immediately clear whether they were boars or hogs.

  Calvin exchanged a glance with Stitch at his left. His expression mirrored Calvin’s thoughts.

  It can’t be so easy.

  It wasn’t.

  Peter opened the gate and let the recruits in. Their feet sank into the disgusting muck, all the way up to their ankles. Almost instantly the pigs spooked and shook themselves free of the filth, rising up to their full height. The biggest one in the middle had to weigh at least five hundred pounds, and possessed the most frightening air about him, because he was the most still. He didn’t huff and puff and squeal like the others. Calvin was about to speak when Brian withdrew something from a satchel hanging on a fence post. Whatever it was, he hurled it into the pen, right behind the pigs. A sharp crack filled the air, and the frightened animals stampeded straight at the recruits.

  “GO!” Peter roared.

  Calvin had negotiated a fast-moving flock of sheep, but a herd of five-hundred pound pork was something else.

  About half of the recruits went for it when Peter told them to. The rest went after Brian set off a second explosive device behind them, when the pigs were almost too close to avoid. Driven by a killer instinct, the huge beasts targeted individual recruits, lunging with their powerful jaws, intending to gore a leg or snag an ankle. The exercise immediately disintegrated into chaos, what with Brian chucking explosives at random into the pen.

  Calvin got away from the pigs on his first pass, and that was all he had after the day’s labors. He kicked and leaped with every ounce of his remaining strength, his bowels threatening to release under the stress. Mud sucked at his tired legs, made him push two and three times as hard as usual just to take a single step, and more than once he had to drop onto all fours to roll out of the path of a charging swine. Somehow he made it to the other side, relieved to see most of the other recruits with him.

  One by one, the recruits pushed through. By the time the first wave had gone once, Calvin was on his second try. The task seemed interminable—two steps forward, one step back, again and again—yet he managed to reach the other side for a second time, slapping one disgusting hand against the wooden fence.

  “How ‘bout this, huh?” asked the swimmer boy, panting, lathered with the effort.

  “Forget this,” Calvin gasped.

  “I’m Edsel, by the way.”

 
“Calvin.” He recognized Edsel as the other youth who’d arrived in the shark mimic, but had attached himself to the older group of cadets.

  “Come on, kid. One more go!” Edsel punched his shoulder and took off.

  “We’re the same age,” Calvin muttered. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and returned for a third run. When he touched the fence, he waited for the burning in his limbs to abate, and for the rest of the recruits to make it through, nursing bruises and injuries from where the pigs had kicked them or shoved them down.

  “Come on!” Brian shouted, throwing yet another bomb. The pigs were losing steam, but not ferocity. When recruits came close enough to bite, the pigs lashed out with even greater fury.

  “We can do this!” said Edsel. He ran. About half the recruits went with him, summoning the dregs of their strength to evade death by hog. Calvin looked covetously at the far side of the pen, prepared himself for a last run, and charged.

  He was halfway through the stampede when a cry of agony stopped him in his tracks. He turned and saw an older man clutching at one leg. It was bent in a very incorrect direction, streaked with blood, and one of the pigs had halted to come back at him, its right tusk covered in dark red gore.

  One of Brian’s small explosives hit the pig right in the side of its neck. It caused no wound, but the sound and impact made the pig abandon the hunt temporarily. Peter McCracken grabbed a long pole that rested against the fence, and then jumped into the pen and rushed to the patch-eyed man with practiced skill. But rather than help the recruit to his feet, he crouched down and yelled in his face.

  “How are you going to beat mages if you can’t even beat a pig?”

  “Please!” the man sobbed, rocking from side to side. Calvin couldn’t take it. He ran back and hooked his arms under the man’s shoulders, intending to pull him the rest of the way, but Peter whacked the back of Calvin’s knee with the pole he carried—Calvin noticed it had a snare at the end—and told him to get away. Calvin stumbled into the muck.

  “Hey!” Calvin snapped, getting back up. “What’s your problem?”

  “Get back to the fence!” Peter shouted angrily, even as a nasty-looking boar homed in on Calvin. Peter expertly looped the snare around its neck and yanked hard, pulling the hungry beast onto its side. Thus entangled in the snare, Peter again struck Calvin and told him to get gone.

  Calvin lost it. He smacked Peter’s cheek, leaving a streak of mud across his face. He drew back his hand to hit the McCracken boy again, but Peter was too quick; he dropped the pole and lashed out with his fists, hitting Calvin’s elbow, armpit, ribs and jaw. A knee to the groin sent Calvin sprawling into the muck. Half his body was numb. The world faded, but before the lights went out, he thought that maybe, just maybe, being a wool merchant in Baltimore was better than this.

  *

  Calvin lay on the floor of the brig, a square room cut crudely from the earth beneath the mansion. It smelled of dirt and straw, and the air was moist. A layer of stinking, drying grime covered most of Calvin’s body, and he found himself longing for one of the buckets of cold water that had woken him up that morning.

  The door opened at the top of the stairs, and Jonathan McCracken descended the steps.

  “Calvin Adler, is it? On your feet.”

  Calvin got up, scowling in the dark.

  “I trust you’ve learned your lesson about striking officers,” said McCracken, peering through the bars from a safe distance.

  “The officer was beating an injured man,” Calvin protested.

  “That doesn’t matter. My sons know what they are doing,” McCracken said, resting both hands on the pommel of his cane.

  “His leg was broken! He’d been gored, and Peter took a club to him.”

  “Do you want to be a TechMan, or do you want to stay comfortable? What Peter did was no less merciful than what a mage would have inflicted upon that man on the battlefield. The purpose of these exercises is to build up your bodies and prepare your minds for the stress of combat against a superior foe. Today was easy. It will only get harder from here, cadet,” McCracken warned.

  “And what about that recruit? Will your boys beat him into running on a busted leg?” Calvin demanded.

  “You don’t get to talk to me this way, Adler. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  Calvin balled his hands into fists to keep the tremble out of his voice. “My entire life, we’ve taken abuse from the mages. We’ve sat back and watched them do whatever they wanted because we couldn’t do anything to stop them. John Penn brought me here because we’re supposed to change all of that.”

  “John Penn brought you here because the TechMan army needs technomancers,” Commodore McCracken said. “Any army is built on a command structure, and each member of that army will honor that structure.”

  “Your sons act like mages, Commodore. Are they going to act the same way when the attack is over? I thought we were fighting to beat the tyrants, not become them.”

  McCracken drew in a sharp breath and narrowed his eyes. “Choose your words carefully, boy. You say that again and you’ll walk home.”

  His tone gave Calvin pause. Something in how he said it implied that he didn’t literally mean walk home. McCracken picked up on his comprehension and smiled.

  “Good. Now: I especially will not tolerate you comparing me or my sons, or any of the TechMans, to the British. You were due to be released in six hours, but I am increasing your punishment to twenty-four. And you will make up for the training you will miss in the interim, understand that.”

  Without waiting for a response, McCracken hobbled over to the stone stairs and negotiated his way to the door of the brig. Calvin watched him rap his knuckles against the iron slab, then give the password before it was pulled open from the other side. McCracken departed without another word, and the heavy door slammed shut, leaving Calvin alone in the deafening silence.

  He was glad that it was dark. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see him shed a tear over his situation. Cursing to himself, Calvin turned his thoughts to a few nights ago when John Penn’s crew had broken into his home. He wished he’d have called out for his father. Too late for that now.

  Then again, he didn’t necessarily have to stay here . . .

  Calvin sat down and rubbed the pain from his sore legs, doing his best to stretch out the kinks. He would need healthy legs tomorrow.

  Forget walking home. He would run, and damn anyone who tried to catch him. Calvin Adler was done with the technomancers.

  ~

  CHAPTER 4

  Calvin didn’t know what time it was when the brig door opened again. He’d prepared a litany of insults to sling at whichever McCracken man came down the stairs, though he stopped himself when he saw a girl with a tray of food.

  “Good morning,” she said, almost jovially. “I brought you something to eat.”

  “Thank you.” Calvin’s voice cracked, his throat dry from hours of thirst. The girl first passed a canteen through the bars, and he drank from it greedily.

  “Not too fast or it’ll come back up,” she cautioned. “I’m sorry you’re down here.”

  Calvin hesitated. She was downright kind. Her hair was braided in two short tails that hung behind her head, out of her way. Her clothing was clean, and she smelled . . . pleasant. Judging by the look of her, she was also a McCracken. He said nothing, but accepted the food as she passed it to him—an apple, two rolls, and a slice of cheese. It might as well have been a king’s feast, for how hungry he was.

  “My name’s Amelia,” she went on.

  “Calvin,” he managed between bites.

  “I heard what you did. Hitting my brother, I mean.”

  Calvin paused and considered the roll in his hand. “This ain’t poison, is it?”

  She actually giggled. “No. Knowing Peter, he probably deserved it.”

  Calvin stared at her, suddenly suspicious. Maybe Commodore McCracken was testing his penitence. “Did your father send you down here?”r />
  He saw genuine honesty in her eyes. “Yes, but he told me not to talk to you. He’s overseeing the other recruits this morning though, so he won’t know. I snuck the cheese. You should try it, it’s called brie. I’m pretty sure it’s French.”

  Dipping a slice of the apple into the soft cheese, Calvin raised it to his mouth and nibbled at it. The taste was new to him—mostly he only ever ate cheese made from goat’s milk. This new cheese mixed well with the fruit, and he craved more of it.

  “Thank you,” he said again. “I hope you’re not going to get in trouble.”

  “That would involve Dad paying attention to me, and he never has time. He’s too busy building an army.” Amelia waved him off, but he sensed a deeper bitterness behind her words. “So I’m curious: what made you do it?”

  “Join the technomancers?”

  “No, put a pig-crap handprint on Peter’s cheek.”

  Calvin choked on a bite of the apple, trying not to laugh. Amelia giggled again, and he found he liked it when she did that.

  “He hit a guy who had broken a leg. It was wrong, and I tried to stop him,” he said.

  Her eyes grew wide. “Wow. Don’t let my dad tell you that you did the wrong thing, because you didn’t. My brothers . . . I mean, they’re family and all, but they’re prats sometimes. They’re harder on you recruits than I think they have to be,” Amelia said.

  “Maybe it’s for the better. They do have a point, that the mages won’t go easy on us out there. Did they hit you when you did it?”

  Amelia frowned, puzzled. “Did what?”

  “All of the training stuff.”

  “Ha! I’d love to be a TechMan, but Dad won’t let me. He doesn’t want me anywhere near the fighting,” she said bitterly. “I have to get by with watching you recruits from the windows. I pick up things here and there. I could tell you how to load and aim a rifle, but I’ve never gotten to fire one before.”