mustache will be at the northeast corner. If he is not there already, do not wait. If he is there with anyone else, kill the other person or people but keep the duffel bag.
Sten is like Bizarro August. He wants an outcome that is “bench.” The materials and blueprint and tools are there; the rest is up to us.
Ziggy points me to the bucksaw across from another wolf who introduces herself as Kristin, the Delta mate. I have never used a saw, not on wood at least, but how hard can it be?
As soon as the two-by-four slides into place, I notice the blood spatter. Now that is firmly within my field of expertise. I can tell the difference between arterial spray, expirated spatter, transfer patterns. How blood that’s been loosed by a pool cue looks as opposed to blood from a knife wound.
“You do know what that is?” I point out the various browned smudges and drops.
Ziggy jots something down on the wood’s edge. “What I know is that it is good sturdy wood—” He uses his pencil to tap a two-by-four with each word. Good [tap] sturdy [tap] wood [tap]. “And that with enough time, the asses of wolves will erase the blood of their hunters.”
As soon as he tightens the clamp keeping the wood in place, Kristin pulls the bucksaw and I stumble forward, stirring up a light sprinkling of sawdust. She waits, her eyebrow raised, for me to regain my footing, and I pull back hard.
The saw sticks until Kristin unsticks it. I’m doing something wrong because whenever I pull, it sticks. Eventually, the piece doesn’t so much fall off as gives up, tearing at an awkward angle.
Kristin calls for another wolf.
With a sigh and a pitying look, Ziggy hands me some already-cut pieces and tells me to hammer them together like so.
The nail bends with the first blow.
“Not so hard,” says the wolf at the next bench.
I yank it back out with the claw and start again. I was good at my job. I manipulated markets, altered outcomes of elections, imported large quantities of goods without interference, took lives that no one imagined could be taken. I fucking made the world safer for cabba—
I did it! I look around to see if anyone notices how smooth and even and secure this nail is, but no one else is paying attention. I’ll show them that I can make bench. Not just bench, but a bench that is sturdy enough and strong enough to support even the lead weight of the Great North.
Time seems to speed by, though without my phone, I can’t be sure. Then Sten heads to the door, puts his cudgel head down on the floor, and proceeds to strip down to his unabashed hairy nakedness, hanging his clothes from the top of the handle.
Within seconds, the rest of the wolves have followed him outside, leaving me alone except for clothes hanging haphazardly from hooks or dropped to the floor. When they come back, they are as naked as when they left except for the odd bits of fur or sap. One of them snaps at another, and blood flows from the cartilage of his ear. Kristin interrupts her discussion of the mouth feel of summer mink to lick it clean, then rubs her face against him.
Dressed and back at the worktable next to me, Ziggy burps. “Goose,” he says, punching his chest.
Days pass this way, marked by benches and belches. Each day, they get better—the benches, that is; the belches have already reached their pinnacle—until one day when they are all out at lunch. I have been working on this particular bench slowly for two days, making sure that it is sturdy and steady. I hand plane the grain ends, then burnish them with 320 grit sandpaper until the whole thing is smooth. Into its underside, I burn a fish with an open caudal fin that is supposed to be an α.
At the end of each day, we march our benches back to the Great Hall, ready for wolfish asses to scour bloodstains away, until like cockroaches and tardigrades, the benches outlive us all.
Today nobody notices that I put mine at the head of the 7th’s table like a throne for the Alpha on the odd occasion when she does finally sit.
Chapter 15
Evie
So far I haven’t heard the sound the perimeter wolves warned me about. The machines came for two days, they said, then disappeared again. We hoped they were gone for good,