The Claiming

by Imogen Keeper

  No, if you worked for the Boss, you were his. One hundred percent.

  Or you weren’t.

  And if you weren’t, you were nothing.

  And now they had a pile of inoperable guns, a bad employee, and an alliance with a woman he couldn’t trust.

  Vangeline was a pro. Which meant it was intentional. She’d delivered faulty goods for a reason. To slow him down? To draw him out?

  One thing was certain though, she wasn’t working for him.

  Which meant, Vangeline was working for someone else. And in Didgermmion, there were only two options.

  The Boss or Manivietto.

  Sanger tapped the useless gun.

  Vangeline would apologize profusely and swear she had no idea, and offer to replace the entire batch. But it would all be lies.

  The only possible purpose could be to slow him down.

  It had to be Maniviettio. Which meant they weren’t operating in secret anymore. If the High Consular knew he was gathering weapons, then he knew a war was coming. So why hadn’t they stopped him? With their drones and Vangeline’s information, they could have taken out the whole warehouse in seconds.

  It made no sense.

  Shane glanced over his shoulder, met Sanger’s gaze, and shook his head, pulling the toothpick from between his teeth to tuck behind his ear.

  Sanger picked up his comm and contacted his half-brother, the Regio of Tamminia.

  Tor answered fast.

  The line was secure, but still, Sanger wouldn’t risk saying anything too much. “They may have intel on us.”

  Tor was quiet, thinking, no doubt. Sanger let him.

  “How much?”

  “It’s unclear. One of my suppliers gave me a crap shipment. She’s meticulous.”

  “A delay tactic, then?”

  Sanger watched as Draggor scratched the back of his neck. He was a big guy, had been leading Sanger’s men into battle for a long time before they came here to Didgermmion to live in underground bunkers, to work in secrecy and the dark. It didn’t suit everyone, lying and living in secret.

  “That’s my read too.”

  “How close are we?”

  “I need this shipment.”

  Tor blew out a breath, and Sanger pictured him, sitting in their father’s desk, high up in the tower, overlooking the glittering city Sanger had come to love and loathe. “Can we go around her?”

  That was Sanger’s first thought too. “Maybe.”

  “Good.”

  Sanger smiled grimly. “A week.”

  “Things are falling into place. The Alliance plans to make a final vote in thirteen days. If we take down Manivietto before then, the whole fucking Alliance will collapse.”

  Freedom. The end of the Alliance of Vesta meant the end of the whole fucking war with Argentus. Peace.

  “It needs to be before then,” Tor said. “I have two thousand guns waiting for you. We just need to get them across the border. And Argentus will bring another two thousand for you when they land.”

  Sanger hissed, thinking about it. “I don’t want my men sitting around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for Argenti to hand them guns.”

  “Find a way for us to get them to you in advance then.”

  He eyed his third in command, a slender humani woman named Freysa. She was stacking the useless guns in boxes. She and Shane were the only two people alive in this country who knew his true mission. She hated Didgermmion with a fiery passion. No one fought better than a true believer.

  “Give my love to your bride, Torum.”

  “She’d send hers back. Come to stay when this is over?”

  “Will do,” Sanger murmured, though he knew he wouldn’t. Happy couples made him sick.

  He ended the call.

  He contacted Freysa next. “Come to the office.”

  A second later, she arrived, her pale skin rippling with muscles, tattoos along her shoulder blades visible behind the laced-up vest she wore over cargo pants and massive black boots.

  She tossed a spray of plum colored hair over her shoulder. “Yeah?”

  “I need something from you, Freysa.”

  A grim smile spread across her features. Freysa could and would kill faster than anyone he’d ever seen. She moved like the wind. There one second, gone the next, before a person even touched the ground.

  “You may need to flirt a bit.”

  Her tongue touched the front of her bright white teeth. “I can flirt.”

  “There’s a man who works in customs. Name of Delmari. Persuade him to work for us.”

  “Can I hurt him?”

  “If you must. But it would be better if you didn’t.”

  One of things Freysa liked most about working for him, he knew, was that he didn’t micromanage her. He trusted her. Let her do things her way. She’d plan the mission on her own, and if she needed help, he’d help her.

  “Consider it done.” She backed out the door with a cocky wink, and Sanger set his eyes on Draggor.

  He didn’t enjoy killing people, but he wouldn’t waste any tears on Draggor either.

  Vangeline would be next.

  Then High Consular Manivietto.

  And then the Boss would die, and this would all be over.

  8

  a boy who’s really a girl

  running like her ass is on fire

  TESSA just kept on running, as if somehow movement would make Leyla show up again. It was irrational and she knew it. Thoughtless and stupid. Exactly the type of thing Leyla was always complaining about. No plan. Just motion.

  Panic.

  But she couldn’t make it quit.

  She wasn’t careful, either, running like a maniac through the morning streets. Some people froze when they got scared. That’s what Leyla always did. When in doubt, do nothing. Think, plan, plot.

  Tessa was the opposite. When she got scared, she ran. Her brain shut down; her feet took over. It was as if motion kept her stable.

  Leyla wasn’t at the aerie, so she took off again, straight back to the bathhouse. Just in case.

  She forced herself to slow down and walk the building’s perimeter. The people exiting all had the flushed, relaxed looks on their faces that people got after a bath. None of them looked like they’d kidnapped anyone. The circling Polizei, guns tossed over their shoulders, gave nothing away.

  The streets filled. Humanis were on their way to work. The baths were busy, and the cafés. But suddenly everything seemed unusual. Was that waiter giving her side eye? Or that man who walked past, did his nostrils flare? That woman was staring, wasn’t she?

  It was always like that whenever she looked for anything. She saw her worst fears. So, she breathed in deep, and tried to let go of all the irrational doubts and see what was real before her eyes. Everything seemed sinister, and yet nothing seemed unusually sinister, so she paced, and ducked into cafes and bistros and hassled bums and street kids, and even passersby, until there was only one place left.

  A small park, wedged between two buildings, tammin-draped pergolas offered shade, and a fountain in the center bubbled with free fresh water. The view of the bathhouse from there was limited, but it was possible someone had seen something.

  Let it be possible.

  A couple of junkies lazing on the lawn under the pergola passed a spliff back and forth. A few bums slept in the shade.

  At least the stench of their zafa would cover any lingering felana-scent. She tucked her hands in her pocket and crossed over to them.

  The guy was leaning back on his elbows on the slightly sloped ground. He pushed up as she crossed over. The humani girl next to him rolled over, lifting her lip in an irritable sneer when she saw Tessa, all indolence and insolence.

  The other two didn’t even bother looking at her.

  “Did you see anything across the street?”

  The humani girl twirled a greasy strand of hair between her thumb and forefinger, her sneer stretching into a smirk. Tessa curled her fingers in to stop her
self from smacking her. She was clearly the leader of this little duo. No choice but to play nice. “At the bathhouse?”

  The girl’s gaze dropped up and down Tessa’s body, her man’s clothes. “You mean, other than a boy who’s really a girl, running like her ass is on fire?”

  The guy laughed shortly and sucked on the spliff with a loud hiss. Noxious wafts of smoke floated on the air, lingering in the heat.

  See, that was the thing about junkies and bums. Everyone discounted them, but they saw stuff. They knew stuff.

  “Other than that.”

  The girl sat up, resting a lazy elbow on her knee, and reached out for the spliff. “Maybe. We see a lot of interesting things.”

  “I bet. Did you see me go into the bathhouse?”

  The girl looked over at the guy.

  “What have you got for us?”

  Tessa took a long, slow breath of air. “I’ve got a pair of tammin-bars. You look like you could use a meal.”

  It was the last of the food they had, but for a few sugared berries. It didn’t matter. She’d find more. She’d pick all night if she had to, once Leyla was back, safe and sound.

  The girl held her palm out.

  Tessa sighed and pulled her pack off her back, dug around for the bars, and tossed them in front of the girl. They bounced on the feathery aqua grass.

  The guy junkie was fast. The bars disappeared into the dirty pockets of his pants, and the girl’s head tilted to the side.

  “We saw two felanas, dressed like men, go into the bathhouse. That was interesting.”

  A ball of fury rose up Tessa’s throat, and her hand moved to the knife on her hip. This bitch better not have taken the last real food she had in the world in exchange for shit she already knew. “And?”

  “And we saw one of them come out, alone, still dressed like a man.”

  Tessa licked her lips, swallowing thickly. “Me?”

  The girl took a long pull on the spliff, the little flame burning amber with along hiss.

  “Did you see the other one?”

  The guy crossed his bare feet at the ankles, the calluses dry and stained nearly black. The girl turned and they held one another’s gaze for a long minute. Something that looked a lot like fear moved across his face. The girl lifted her shoulder in a short, fast shrug. “Yeah, we saw her.”

  “And? What happened?”

  That look crossed the guy’s face again.

  “Tell me.”

  The girl leaned back on her elbows, crossing her own pair of stained feet. “A pair of big guys carried her out naked. Well, one of them carried her. The other one had her boots.”

  All the air rushed out of her lungs. It would have hurt less if Leyla had left her, abandoned her, had enough. But this.

  It was all her fault. It was because of that shirt, that Prime-stinking shirt. “Who?”

  Both of them shrugged, identical gestures that said they just didn’t give a shit.

  “What did they look like?”

  More shrugs. “Big. Looked like assholes.”

  “How did they know we were there? Did you see them go in? Did they go in after her? Or just find her and take her?”

  The girl frowned, and it was the first genuine expression she’d seen on her face. “I don’t know.”

  “Were they Polizei?”

  She just shrugged, looking bored and itchy at the same time.

  But the guy beside her shifted, his eyes narrowing. “Trackers.” He hummed. “They’re putting trackers in the felanas now.”

  She turned back to the girl. “Who were they?”

  The girl slapped at an imaginary bug on her shoulder. “I was fucking sitting here minding my own business, when I saw the pair of you strut in there like you owned the place, clear as the fucking hoity-toity, better-than-the-world tilt of your stupid felana heads that you weren’t normal. Anyone could see just looking at you. You don’t walk normal.”

  She stabbed the end of the zafa splif toward Tessa. “And then the two bastandos go in after you, guns on their backs. They didn’t exactly come over and tell me what their plan was. I avoid Polizei and anyone who looks like they might have anything to do with the Boss like the godsdamned Plague of Days. No one else walks like that. They were either Boss men or undercover Polizei. Two minutes later, they walk out, one of them with her thrown over his shoulder like some shitty-ass carpet. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, you came out, running around like your ass was burning.”

  Tessa didn’t even bother to say goodbye. Just turned on her heal and ran straight back to the aerie. Someone had to have called in Polizei, that or private guards.

  The guy’s voice echoed after her. “You find her, you make sure to get rid of her tracker.”

  She pumped her arms harder, sprinting as fast as her felana legs could carry her. All the way to the building, up the fire-escape ladder, lurching over the low half wall, breathing hard, eyes wild, teeth bared in terror. They had to be wrong. Maybe Leyla had come back by now.

  They were right.

  The aerie was still dead empty.

  She couldn’t sit still. It was like her feet had grown a hundred little legs of their own, like centipedes, and each one wanted to go in a different direction.

  Back to the bath house? Back to the spot under the tree in the park where Leyla went to cry sometimes, that she thought Tessa didn’t know about? Home? To beg Manivietto for help? Except he wouldn’t help. He’d just lock her up again and trade her to some old man. If it wasn’t his own personal guards who’d taken Leyla in the first place.

  She squeezed her hands to fists, glaring out over the city beyond.

  So many choices, and yet none, all at once.

  She needed help.

  She paced on the roof, chugged down two canteens full of water, and polished off the last of the candied berries. Not because she was hungry, but because she knew her body needed it.

  Eating felt wrong. Drinking felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.

  The aerie felt wrong.

  Not wrong like it felt when Leyla was just out picking. Really wrong. Empty wrong. Because Leyla wasn’t out picking. She was gone gone. Taken.

  Tessa lit a candle and flipped open the flowered sheet divider between their bunks.

  Leyla’s bed was made, neat and prim, with folded-down corners. The pillow fluffed as always. It made her feel mildly ashamed, seeing how tidy Leyla was. Her own bunk was a disaster. Scraps of paper with details about the Boss tacked up on the wall, a variety of books on self-defense scattered on the floors, the bed never made, her clothes never folded.

  A sad stack of books to the right of Leyla’s bed, a canteen, a perfectly folded pile of clothes, a spare pair of boots, and a painted box Leyla had found in an abandoned condo that held her toiletries. Everything in the world her half-sister had owned.

  Tessa sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. It squeaked under her weight, dipping a little in the center. She lifted the lid on the box. Face lotion. Lip balm. A hairbrush. Hair ties.

  Leyla was so fastidious. She’d hate it if there were no brushes wherever she was, especially after a bath. Her hair would be matted and tangled.

  And what the hell was she supposed to do about it? What could she do? One felana, alone, without a single weapon to her name except a knife. She was useless.

  She pulled the knife off her hip. Jonan had given it to her before he died. He hadn’t really taught her how to use it, though she’d found a book on knife-fighting and she and Leyla had practiced.

  She needed something bigger.

  A real weapon.

  What she needed was a gun.

  There was one person she knew of who had plenty to spare. Big whole crates of them.

  9

  screw lucky

  THE YELLOW PALM wasn’t hard to find. The map-drawing junky knew where it was, and was still happy enough from their earlier trade to tell her for free.

  It was a faded bar at the end of a dead-end street with big stained s
tucco buildings on three sides.

  A cluster of empty stools sat around a few unsteady tables on the street in front, and an awning stretched over the front door. It had probably been yellow at some point, but was now mottled brown.

  It was a place where people went when they were ready to die but too cowardly to do it themselves.

  Tessa skulked in the shadows of a boarded-up entryway across the street, waiting for a glimpse of the Prime.

  Someone had used it as a toilet recently. Her eyes watered from the ammonia stench.

  Heightened sense of smell. Irritability. Cramps. Inability to stop thinking about the Prime and the long, hard length of him pressed against her low belly.

  Classic. Her own heat was coming.

  Two, maybe three, days out?

  And Leyla, she’d be full in the throes by now.

  Thanks to that big bastard and his potent Prime smell.

  Tessa squeezed her eyes shut. Leyla had been taken. She wouldn’t be with Tessa this time. She’d be with a man. Someone she didn’t choose.

  Primes thought it was their duty to mate with a heated felana. Some of them even thought it was a kindness. Like they were blessing them with the gift of their cocks.

  And all of it was Tessa’s fault. She shouldn’t have thrown that shirt.

  She waited well into the night. People came and went. But not the Prime. Finally, when the sliver of sky above the alleyway told her it had to be approaching midnight, she gave up on him showing his face. That would be too easy. She’d never been lucky anyway, so screw lucky.

  Tucking her hands into her pockets, she walked in. No other choice now.

  She shook her head. Jonan would be so ashamed if he knew she was turning to a Prime for help. Leyla would be furious that she was even considering it.

  None of that mattered. Jonan was dead. He’d have to keep his mouth shut. And Leyla? Tessa would gladly listen to her rail all she wanted, once she had her back home, safe and sound. This was the only way she could make that happen.

  The inside of The Yellow Palm was even dirtier than the awning. Stained walls. Bad lighting. Scarred floors with suspicious puddles, and patrons who looked like they were drunk more often than not.