Easternport Vol. 1, First Edition

Hidden Treasure - Part 2

Cory

The two women moved into the maids quarters very slowly. First, my brothers, the Bastards, hired some men to come in and clear the backyard so that the ladies could even get to the maids quarters. And then before they could live there, they had to clean it out, top to bottom. So for the month or so that it took for them to do that, we didn't ask them to do any work on the house. We only asked them to cook us some meals, which also required a good deal of cleaning. But my brothers helped with that. Even Miles.

I didn't. I couldn't. Ian had me working at the capital building every day from sun up to sun down. Half the time I wasn't doing anything at all except standing at attention and being ridiculed for everything and nothing. It was his way of reminding me that I was still a slave. It bothered me a whole lot at first, but as the weeks dragged on, I was growing numb to it.

Mikkel helped with that. He was showing me ways to build up an inner shell to keep me from getting torn up over everything. It also helped me touch people without connecting nerves like I had a tendency to do. Miles hated that. It encroached on his personal space.

I didn't used to have that problem, you know. When I was a kid, I didn't even know I was special—would never have guessed it. But it was something that the SBS did to me that messed me up. Mikkel said I was an "augmented Indigo Child—one of a kind." There was no other living augmented Indigo Child on record. Which meant that no one knew shit about me.

Ian said I was müll. He said I was damaged and could never live up to the standard of Indigo Child that he was. He tried to convince King Matthias to throw me away. But Matthias wouldn't do it. He said, "Any Indigo Child on our side is an asset." So Ian just used his sway to keep me from being useful at all. That's why he had me stand around at attention all day. The gebbed misch.

Every time I came home, something was different. Something was cleaner, something was moved, something was destroyed...

Mikkel and Nate seemed to be doing as much damage as they were helping. That concerned me. They might have thought that they owned the house, but Rea Estate belonged to King Matthias Rea. We were just supposed to be the caretakers. He had given us a free place to live and all he asked was that we fix it up. And then we were supposed to sit in it—guard it. Whatever was upstairs—treasure or not—was probably useless, but what was below the house—one of the main entrances to the city's tunnel system—was invaluable.

I still didn't know where that entrance was, exactly, but it didn't matter. As long as the house was safe, the entrance was safe.

But the house didn't seem all that safe with Mikkel and Nate around. One particular night, I came home very late to find that damned ladder leaning up against one of the front-facing windows. I saw it from the road. Somehow they had found a way to make it reach the third floor, which I thought was impossible until I walked around the front gate and found that they had set the ladder on the roof of the limo which was parked so close to the side of the house that its passenger side mirror had to be taken off.

The whole tower looked disastrous. And at the top of the ladder, the third floor window was smashed to bits, which drove me mad because I knew that they knew how to jimmy a window without breaking the glass. But they were probably drunk, which was another growing concern of mine.

Matthias told me he'd be dropping by the place every so often to check on our upkeep and I was certain that if he saw this, I'd get in trouble. What I didn't know was what he'd do to me. The possibilities were endless.
The mansion was dark when I walked in the front door. I almost tripped over the threshold after shoving the door open with all my strength.