Vol. ll Chapter 32 “So, how did you earn that name?” (Part 2 of 2)

Chapter 32 "So, how did you earn that name?"

Half a dozen smiths worked steel by the forge. Each working on different things, hammering onto anvils and producing the same sound each time. Rosie noticed that everything for sale around the forge had been marked with the same symbol, the letter 'A' with flourishes either side.

The pictures she had of John showed him with a patchy beard and stubble. Rosie didn't like it and picked out a straight razor like the one she'd seen Brandon use. Next she found some well made arrows. Aluminium shafts, interchangeable heads, and plastic fletching.

As the automated bellows hissed and stoked the forge hotter, Rosie noticed the hammering seemed to stop. She continued to browse the well made wears, watching over her dark glasses. A woman with a shaved head wearing a bright orange t shirt began inspecting the work, offering advice and correction. An instructor, Rosie thought.

She walked round the forge, looking at this and that, keeping up the subterfuge of being just another customer. The maker's mark came from the woman's name, Avalon, and they addressed her as Lady. Rosie soaked up as much information as she could over the next hour while she watched the Lady fold steel, heat treat edges, work rebar and cable into solid ingots.

Rosie asked if she could pick up the things she'd bought later, hoping for an opportunity to learn more. She got it after wandering the square for a couple more hours, when the Lady made another round. She almost forgot the operation that could be set in motion at any moment.

Back at the house Rosie found Beverly working in the kitchen. "Wash your hands, then mix me a bowl of sugar and salt water." Rosie did as instructed, taking off her sling and unwrapping the pipboy. Beverly didn't even give it a second glance. "Good, now slice these and soak them." She handed Rosie a knife and pointed her at the bowl of tatos.

With her focus on slicing the red orbs Beverly began to ask gentle questions about her life before three months ago. Rosie felt herself get angry, her grip on the knife tightening. Whenever Beverly picked up on it she would give Rosie something else to do. After an hour Rosie had prepared the stag leg, the corn, and the tatos.

Everybody ate together. Matt and Brandon had spent the day with the freed teenagers. Helping build an extension onto the halfway house. Brandon tried to draw her into the conversation, as did Beverly, but Rosie kept her responses brief and vague. She barely touched the food she'd made, then Rosie politely excused herself and set her alarm for o'two hundred.

Matt and Beverly were on the roof when Rosie went up. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, not wanting to intrude, but Matt poured her a drink and uncovered the food she'd left.

"We're stood easy for tonight." Matt told her the operation was off. She tried not to let her frustration show.

"They piss you off, don't they?" Beverly asked as Rosie tore into cold slices of radstag.

"Who?" Rosie answered, playing for time.

"Terrence and Sheila." Rosie hadn't even been sure of the freed teenagers' names. "You think that they're weak, and that makes you angry."

"Moon." Matt asked his sister to stop with his tone.

"No, she's right. I...I wanted to scream at them this morning." Rosie stared at her plate, ashamed, but knew Beverly had a point.

"You didn't though." Matt had a look in his eyes that he wanted to do the same.

"We don't get angry at things we don't recognise." Beverly smiled warmly as she helped her understand. "Rosie, what you went through, what you're going through, it isn't something that goes away overnight."

"I still can't sleep if things are a mess." Matt threw back his drink to push down the lump in his throat. Rosie knew it'd been fifteen years since Matt and his sister wore a collar, and it had shaped both their lives since.

"I won't bother them, I promise." Rosie lifted her head and looked Beverly in her kind eyes.

"They'd understand. They're not weak, they're just frightened. Like you." Beverly shifted closer as Rosie looked back, confused. "You're frightened their reaction is normal and yours isn't." Beverly's insight brought tears to Rosie's eyes that soon became sobbing. Rosie hadn't fully understood how real the fear felt, that somehow she wasn't ok, despite feeling ok. Beverly's years of coaxing the abused and degraded to true freedom had seen the same fear many times before. "There is no normal reaction Rosie."

Rosie dried her eyes and stared at the slivers of stars cutting through the shifting grey above. Matt nudged her, and slid something from his pocket. He folded open the photograph just enough to let Rosie see.

"Moon, did I tell you about my new friend Janey?"

"No, is she a nice girl?" Beverly seemed excited. Matt could barely keep a straight face.

"She's cold, thinks she knows everything, and got one eye." Matt handed her the picture folded up. Beverly opened it and closed it up again quick with fear and disbelief. Matt laughed at her shock. She opened the picture again and saw Matt with his arm round Janey.

"It's a trick, that Devil would cut you down."

"Rosie hacked her." Matt sounded like he still didn't believe it himself.

"I didn't really hack her, I reset her and gave myself admin privileges." Rosie forgot she was speaking to people who grew up without technology and got nothing but a shrug and a laugh in return.

The next morning Rosie made straight for the Iron Square. She'd changed into her duster and chest armour to be on the safe side, and perched at a table outside a still closed bar. Once the forge and the people got going the Lady appeared again in another bright t shirt, drawing the attention and respect of all. Rosie followed, browsing over this and that. She shifted through some people as the Lady went behind the forge.

"So you're back again." The Lady had baited Rosie and they both knew it.

"Excuse me?" Shit, Rosie thought.

"You were here twice yesterday, wearing a fine cloak and a sling on an arm that wasn't broken." Lady Avalon had an eye for detail that extended well beyond her craft. Rosie knew that kind of observation had to be trained. Her eyes searched for the fastest escape route, yet the Lady's raised hand put her at ease. "I took you for a thief, yet now I see you're trying to steal something more valuable, knowledge."

"I'd offer you money but…" Rosie took a chance on her own growing talent for observation.

"You don't have any?" The Lady didn't believe that, not with Rosie's gear.

"You aren't interested in money. You wouldn't teach people if you were, it'd be more profitable to have fully trained people working." Rosie saw she'd got that right as Lady Avalon laughed.

"Impress me." The Lady issued a challenge that Rosie felt confident she could meet. She drew her Assaultron blade from her back, slowly, and extended the broad carbon steel with a thunk.

"Took down a clanker did we?" The Lady held the blade and looked down it's serrated spine, inspecting the mechanism, rubbing her thumb along the bullet impacts.

"No, I found it under a building." Rosie didn't lie. "Made this too." She slipped the alloy flick knife from her boot and handed it to the Lady with the blade hidden. She seemed unimpressed, then extended the blade and became transfixed.

"Come with me."

Rosie followed Lady Avalon to the back of the square and through an unassuming wooden door. Her hand hovering over the pistol on her thigh. Lady Avalon took her into a long ground floor of an earthen walled building. Lacquered wooden floor, natural light flooding in through a glass sky light. The Lady worked her way along waist high steel drawers that made little noise when opened. She peeled out specific drawings on thick paper, rolling them up and sliding them into a stainless steel pipe.

"The books stay here." The lady said as Rosie gawped at the wall of pre-war information. "You will forge the makers mark on this pipe into a trinket, whatever suits, someone will let you in day or night." She handed Rosie the tube and kept walking. Upstairs were drawing benches made from bits of cars, old metal made new and put to use. Rosie wondered if that might be some sort of test. "I don't have a free desk but something tells me you wouldn't take it anyway."

At the end of the building, white walls gave way to glass doors that Lady Avalon opened with a crank handle. Rosie couldn't see the mechanism, and barely heard it. "May I?" The Lady asked as she sat at her own drawing bench, made from a flat car bonnet, and painted red. She tapped the flick knife blade with a thin steel rod, listening to it reverberate.

Framed design drawings on the wall caught her eye. A spear with a telescopic shaft. A pair of twin short swords that held slam fired twelve gauge rounds. A warhammer that split in two. And pride of place, a broadsword with Excalibur carved into the blade. Rosie stayed calm.

"You're a member of the Brotherhood?"

"No, I simply offer my service in thanks." The Lady didn't break from her examination. "How did you work Saturnite?" The Lady asked.

"Heated it then cooled it with a fire extinguisher." Rosie left out Janey's role. "Used the shards for arrowheads." Rosie didn't want to change the subject. "I've heard bad things about them."

"Malum necessarium. A ne—" Rosie interrupted.

"Needed evil?"

"Good. A necessary evil, yes. The Brotherhood has its good and bad side. Yet it is necessary that they exist. They see my people fed and guarded. Without them we would be at the mercy of far worse. Because one day my life, or a life I hold dear, may depend on a sworn knight. I see them outfitted with the best I can offer." Lady Avalon spoke calmly and with reason, and her genius undeniable. As was her luxurious home.

Squelch broke over Rosie's comm as Lady Avalon rolled up more drawings for Rosie to take. "What's the time?" Rosie lied convincingly. She started to leave.

"You should give that sword to your man." Lady Avalon handed back her sword.

"I'm single." Rosie sounded less convincing.

"No one desperate enough to block forty four magnum rounds with a sword goes home to an empty bed." Lady Avalon missed her guess. Rosie used the sword to block bullets to see if she could. "Besides, it's a butcher's cleaver in an artist's hands." Rosie wished she could have enjoyed the compliment, but she knew what the signal meant.

Rosie knocked on the door at the halfway house, although she didn't exactly know why. A man in his forties she didn't know opened the door. Big, built bigger than John or even Paul, bald, dull green trousers and a white vest. He might as well have been wearing power armour.

"Is Beverly here?"

"It's alright Frank. Let her in." Matt called down from the roof.

Rosie headed up, seeing another new face sat with Matt. Both men stood as she approached, and the man who answered the door followed. "Rosie," Matt smiled and beckoned her over. "It's my honour to introduce Knight Commander Frank Carpenter."

"Crixus." Frank introduced himself by his call sign. Matt turned her towards the other man, a little younger, slim build, dark brown hair and keen eyes to match.

"And this is Knight Captain Cliff Harper."

"Acheron." He shook her hand with a firm grip.

"Tornado." Rosie introduced herself by the name Brandon gave her. The lack of rank didn't bother Rosie, yet it threw the new faces to hear a call sign without one.

"So, how did you earn that name?" Crixus asked in a manner that at least tried to seem casual. Matt laughed into his half sphere clay tea cup, had a quick look around, and handed it to Rosie.

"Show them." Matt's eyes gave her an idea of what he had in mind. At one point she never would have let him see her do it.

Rosie held the tea cup, almost like toasting something. She tossed it up and back into a high arc and slipped into the dreamlike state. The duster flared outwards as Rosie jumped from the roof, landing on the stacked bales of dried stalks used for building and down into the garden. Rosie plucked the tea cup from the air and let time snap back. Cut stalks flew from the ground in her wake. She held it the same manner as two shocked faces looked down at her. Matt smiled.

Crixus held Matt's legs and pulled them both back up. Rosie took off her duster and before she'd even unwound the bandages they recognised the pipboy.

"These are John's team mates." Matt put Rosie at ease.

"Yeah, and I've never seen him do that." Crixus looked shocked, while something had occurred to Acheron.

"He can, I don't think he knows it though." Rosie began to see worry on the new faces.

"John's girl, Rosie." Acheron whispered. Crixus stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder.

"John is our sworn Brother, we are at your service. Whatever it takes to find him."

"Find him?! You mean he's not at the outpost?"