The Select's Bodyguard (Children of the Wells - Bron & Calea Book 1) by Nick Hayden Read Free Book Online Page A

myself, and allow Calea to roll off.
    “Help me up,” she says. “And stop wheezing. You sound like an asthmatic dog.”
    I laugh, or try to. I rub my neck. Not crushed, but it might be bruised. Calea held on very tightly.
    We resume our journey. The Academy looms before us, the facade broken to pieces but still hanging on. It is an octagonal building, thickly built, squat. The road is pocked and mangled, but it looks as if it will hold, as long as we are careful. “We’ll be there soon,” I tell her.
    “Not soon enough.”
     

Chapter 6 - The Journey Out
    Three Years Earlier
    Calea gave Bron credit for one thing--he was quiet.
    Most days she spent in her lab, sometimes working forty-eight hours non-stop, oblivious to time, fatigue, and hunger. She’d drop deep into the problem before her until she understood the contours of the dilemma, its form and shape and idiosyncrasies. Her theories and the symbols on her whiteboard and the experimental applications of magical transference played one off the other, each held loosely so that it could change with the situation. She tested, dissected, recombined, discarded, and retried. Bron very well might leave for hours at a time when these moods took her, but she knew he did not. He took his required days off, but he watched and waited endless hours. Sometimes she returned to her surroundings with him in the other room, a tray with warm food sitting beside her.
    If that had been all a bodyguard was, she could almost have dealt with it, if only because she wouldn’t have to deal with it at all. A shadow was the most forgettable thing in the world as long as it kept quiet. And Bron did admirably--but not perfectly. He urged her to eat or to socialize. He hovered over her, prodded her, gave her looks that showed he thought she was wrong. He did it softly, and subtly, but she noticed.
    It was the principal of the thing, too. She remembered that first night. She knew the perception: she needed protecting, because she could not protect herself.
    Today, Calea was out of the lab and out of the Tower. She had begun introducing cheap, efficient personal transports into the Section Four economy, as well as a host of less visible but more important upgrades to the power grid. Occasionally, she found it necessary to look over her project personally, if only because she didn’t trust others to tell her the whole truth. Her assistants were largely upper-level students who were both frightened of and in awe of her. They performed the task of administrative paperwork well enough, but they certainly could not judge the results of her current experiments with as critical an eye as she demanded.
    So, once a month, on schedule, she descended into the city. She went without announcement. She did not like to draw attention to herself, whatever the rumors in the Wheel claimed. She’d heard the muttering. It was caused by envy. That pleased her.
    Though she walked inconspicuously among the people, she could not come alone as she desired. Bron was at her side, quiet, yes, but still there, on alert, like a hawk. He walked coolly enough, but his eyes roamed back and forth.
    “You do a poor job of remaining hidden,” she said.
    “I am not trying to hide.”
    “I wish you would. I do not need you here, anxious to throw yourself in front of some energy blast. There was a study some years ago showing that less than twenty percent of the population could identify the Overseer by sight, and I’m not the Overseer. I do not think I’ll have an angry citizen see me and attempt to punch me in the face.”
    Bron said nothing, and this, more than some excuse or explanation, aggravated Calea. She was already in a bitter mood. She had woken up that way. Now, she was beginning to roil within.
    “When can I be rid of you?” She tried to say it lightly. Sometimes he seemed to be hiding a smile when she became furious at him.
    “When I am no longer needed.”
    “Ha! Needed? No one’s needed in this world.