The Claiming

by Imogen Keeper

  The bartender was a humani woman. She’d dyed her hair green and purple in random sections, and the bags under her eyes made it look like maybe she was drunk more often than not too.

  The good news was that no one really looked at Tessa. Everyone just stayed on their stools, slumped over their drinks, eyes on the holo figures of zincu players running up and down the walls in their bright-green uniforms and purple boots, tossing a ball back and forth.

  All humanis though. No Primes. No other felanas.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, pitching her voice low.

  The woman didn’t even look up. Just kept on making figure eights on the bar with a stained rag. “What can I get you to drink?”

  Tessa shook her head. “I’m not here for a drink.”

  The woman kept on trailing the rag around. “This is a bar.”

  “I know that.” She was about to ask if there was a Prime who worked here, but the woman didn’t give her a chance.

  “People come to bars to drink. Not to talk.”

  Tessa shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.” She’d never been in a bar before. “I’m looking for a Prime. His name is Sanger.” His name felt almost lazy on her tongue. She hadn’t said it until now. At least not out loud.

  The woman didn’t look up, but her rag paused in its greasy circles. Just for a split second. Then it resumed. “Don’t get a lot of Primes in here.”

  That had to be true. The place was a shit hole, and that was a nice term for it. Primes tended to choose fancier establishments. A place like this was for society’s dregs, not its leaders.

  “I’m not looking for a lot of Primes. Just one. Sanger. If you see him, will you give him a message?”

  The woman finally looked up. Dark eyes, hard and far more lucid than Tessa would have guessed. “Say whatever you want. Sanger’ll hear.”

  “Will you tell him the woman from the warehouse came looking to make a trade? I-it’s good information.”

  The woman frowned, but lifted her chin in agreement.

  “Tell him I’ll come back tomorrow night. Same time.”

  The woman just shook her head, like an old person sick of seeing young people do dumb shit.

  “Thanks.” Tessa let out a long breath and backed out of the bar.

  No going back now.

  10

  fear’s got a way of knocking

  people off kilter

  SANGER STOOD on the rooftop above the Yellow Palm. A sticky breeze, rife with sea brine tugged at the sleeves of his shirt. On the street below, the felana melted into the shadows of a side street.

  No felana in hiding would turn herself over to a Prime unless she was in serious trouble—that was their whole point of hiding. Avoiding Primes.

  And who could blame them? None of the other countries on the entire planet of Vesta treated felanas half as bad as Didgermmion. The black markets that sold felanas were persistent, even in his home state of Tamminia, but in Didgermmion the felana trade was a chief source of revenue for High Consular Manivietto. And that meant everyone turned a blind eye—or they disappeared.

  She had to be brave, dumb or desperate to have come here.

  Probably all three, given the sad set of her shoulders, the panicked glances she kept tossing around and the fact that she was actively seeking out the Boss.

  He jogged across the roof and leaped to the next building, keeping pace with her. When she hit a rougher part of town, he dropped down to street level, staying as close as possible, following her into the fifth arondi.

  She wasn’t bad, actually.

  She moved with purpose, but not overly fast. She moved the way people expected someone to move, and therefore ignored. None of the obvious furtiveness that drew the eye.

  Her strides were even and there was a certain aggressiveness that would probably have her mistaken for a man by anyone who didn’t know better. He did, so he could pick out the decided flare of her hips under her baggy clothes, the slight sway as she moved, something delicate underscoring it all.

  He pressed a button on his wrist piece for Shane.

  He kept his voice low so the felana wouldn’t hear. “Did anything happen today that I should know about? Anything new?”

  A pause. “Anything new like what?”

  It was an annoyingly good question. He had no clue. The woman he’d pressed against that building, the one who sank her claws into his back, she’d have died before she came to him for help for herself, which meant it was for someone else, someone she cared about, someone she wasn’t willing to live without. A family member, or another felana maybe. There were five or six groups of them hiding around the city. She must belong to one of them.

  “With felanas maybe. Or drugs. Or a street kid.”

  A trio of hovers passed low over his head. He increased his pace, pulling a little closer to the woman.

  “A felana was taken at the men’s bathhouse in the fifth arondi this morning, just after sun up.”

  That had to be it. “Who?”

  “Not sure yet. The junkies say a pair of girls dressed like boys went in. They didn’t pay any attention at the time. Thought they actually were boys. Until one was carried out, strung over some guy’s shoulders naked, unconscious like she was dead, and the other came out ten minutes later, ran around like an idiot, kicking the bums awake and shoving into people.”

  That sounded exactly like the kicking, elbow-throwing, hissing woman he’d pressed into a wall the night before.

  Shane kept going. “She was dressed like a boy, but they think she was a felana. And the guards who work there said that once they started looking for the signs, they thought so too.”

  Yeah. Crazy, stupid and desperate. And brave. “Who were they working for?”

  “Not sure. No one is talking about it.” Which was telling in its own right. “But the one who was taken was loaded right into a hover and taken toward the first arondi.”

  Interesting. Not just any felana would have been taken to the first arondi. Usually, if the Polizei intercepted them, they went straight to a processing plant to find their closest Prime relative. This had to be someone specific, connected to someone big.

  Which meant the felana in front of him, with her hands in her pocket, and her head ducked low, was also connected to someone big. He trailed his tongue along his teeth. “Who had her picked up?”

  “No idea. The hover landed at Jiannom, and no one knows where she went from there.” Jiannom was the City Hall where the Consulars held meetings. Why would they have taken her there?

  If she’d been taken by Manivietto, then she’d have ended up in one of his holding houses and been in the stalls in a matter of days. Unless she was someone Manivietto cared about. “Find out if anyone there knows anything.”

  “Already on it.”

  Up ahead, the felana cut across Shiavalon park.

  He followed, keeping to the shadows.

  “If anyone is seeking a specific felana, I want to know about it. And ask Freysa. See if she knows anything.”

  He terminated the connection before Shane could answer, freezing in the shadow of a tree, while the felana hopped up in a lithe move, pushing off the wall to get extra height and grabbed a fire-escape ladder, pulling herself up. She made fast work up the stairs, all the way up to the top, twenty stories without a single break in her stride, disappearing over the edge like she’d never been there at all.

  Impressive. She was fit.

  He waited a full hour, giving her time to get settled, time to feel safe, time to relax, before he too grabbed hold of the ladder and lifted himself up and climbed the stairs himself, to the top floor of a run-down apartment complex.

  It was the last place someone like her belonged, and the last place someone would look. There was a group of felanas hiding in the underground, and another, larger one in the countryside, but this one hid in plain sight.

  When he got to the top, he stepped quietly over the knee-high wall that rimmed the edge of the space. No lights. Not even a si
ngle flickering candle flame. With the moons hidden behind the clouds, it would make this easier.

  She couldn’t see at night, not like he could. She’d be afraid, at least a little bit. Fear had a way of knocking people off kilter, playing with their minds, making them erratic.

  He moved across a make-shift seating area and into the only interior space. A single room, if you could call it that, four walls with un-glassed windows open to the elements and a concrete roof.

  For some reason that bothered him, that she should sleep like that, out in the open, subject to wind and rain.

  Someone had strung flowery lengths of cloth across the windows and down the center of the room. Privacy. Just what two women sharing a single space might do.

  He paused at the divide. An empty bed in a tidy space.

  He tilted his head, listening for a sound. Breathing. Soft and steady.

  Asleep.

  He pulled the curtain aside.

  She lay on her stomach, flat across the bed. From the tears still streaking her cheeks and the depth of her slumber, it was clear she’d cried herself to sleep.

  She looked small like that. And peaceful.

  One arm was tucked under her cheek, the other draped over the bed, dangling in the air.

  He stifled the impulse to feel for her.

  Bare feet hung over the bottom of the cot. Nice feet, long and thin like the rest of her, attached to nice ankles, attached to nice calves. Runner’s calves. She’d probably been panicked since that morning. Sleep was probably the first break she’d had from fear. It would be cruel to take the respite away.

  But he could be cruel when he needed to be, and he had too much to do tonight to wait around while she went through a REM cycle.

  Squatting down only a few inches from her face, he lowered a palm to her mouth, the other to the back of her head. When she woke up, she was going to panic, thrash around, and probably scream. The hand over her mouth would keep her silent. The hand behind her head would keep her from pulling back and getting away.

  Her eyes snapped open instantly, wide and glittering in the dark.

  He had a brief impression of warm skin, soft lips, tangled hair.

  She tried to lurch, just as he’d expected, her body bucking in panic, but he held her down.

  “Quiet, felana.”

  The air hissed through her nose as she sucked in rapid gusts. He helped her sit up, trying not to notice that she wore nothing but a single flimsy practically see-through cotton shirt that clung everywhere. Her nipples beaded tight, either with cold or fear or both. Her ribs showed along her sternum and under her breasts with the force of her rapid breathing. She was thin, thinner than he’d expected, thinner than she should be, the muscles of her biceps tightening in bony upper arms so thin he could wrap his hand around them. She tugged furiously at his arms.

  He hadn’t touched a felana in a long time. He’d almost swear the pads of his fingers burned on contact with her.

  “When I move my hand,” he said. “Don’t scream.”

  Her grip tightened, her fingers digging into the skin of his forearm, trying to tug his hand away from her mouth.

  “Blink if you understand.”

  She blinked.

  Slowly, he removed his hands, but didn’t back away, keeping his face only a few inches away. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes.” She was calm. He’d give her that. Except for the way her heart fluttered in her chest, fast and as desperate as a terrified bird.

  “Good.”

  She swallowed and licked her lips nervously.

  “Why did you come looking for me?” he asked.

  “H-how did you find me?”

  He didn’t bother answering that one. Just stared back at her.

  If she could see him at all in the darkness, it wouldn’t be much, but her eyes roved his face like she was searching for an answer. After a long moment, she ran her hands through her messy, waving hair. “I need a gun.”

  “Then you’re wasting your time. And mine.” He rose to his feet.

  She jerked off the bed like her ass had springs. Her breasts bounced, small but round. If he took one in his palm, they’d be warm and soft, the nipples hard beads. “I saw them. I was there at the warehouse. You have so many. I just need one. Just one. Please.”

  “Why?”

  Her lower lip started shaking, and he really wished he hadn’t seen it.

  “I need to get my sister back.”

  Shane’s information had been correct. He’d expected that. “Not why do you need it. Why should I give you one?”

  The lip started shaking again. Her hands clenched at her sides, but she didn’t flinch away. “I have information for the Boss.”

  That, he had not expected. “What information?”

  Her long curly lashes blinked. She had to be scared, a felana like her, alone with a Prime like him, but she hid it well. Her lips parted.

  “Don’t lie,” he warned.

  “I can give him the layout of Manivietto’s seraglio.”

  He stared at her, trying to decide if she was lying. How many people knew that outside of the harem and the man himself? A handful of servants… Not many. That was for damned sure.

  Two felanas in hiding, one carted off toward Jiannom, the other claiming to have inside information. Sisters? Escaped wives?

  “Why would we want that?”

  “There’s only one person more powerful than the Boss in this city and it’s the High Consular. It’s information he’d want. I know where the sensors are around the house. I know where the lights don’t shine. The guard’s path along the walls.”

  He couldn’t help but smile at that. She was right. He would like to know that information.

  Her hands twitched. Her toes curling beneath her. Under the thin shirt, she wore nothing but a pair of thin panties, tight enough to make out the shadow of her cleft.

  He sucked in a breath and backed up a step.

  She didn’t appear to be lying, but he’d been fooled before. There were good liars out there. He was one of them.

  “How do you know the layout of the High Consular’s seraglio?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “Then why would I believe you?”

  She stepped closer to him, long, narrow feet, slender legs, delicate steps. He didn’t retreat, so he just stood still, let her invade his space, with the heat of her body rising through the thick night air, the smell of her filling his noise. Her toes curled, digging into the bumpy concrete floor they stood on. He jerked his gaze back up to her eyes, wide.

  Fuck, but everything about her tugged at something he’d set aside long ago. And she smelled like wet felana pussy. Just breathing her in was making him dizzy. Why was she so turned on? Because of him?

  “Please,” she whispered, and he had the distinct impression she wasn’t someone who said please often. Her fingers jerked by her sides, one of them coming up, as if she were planning to touch his stomach or his chest. He knew well enough what happened when he touched her, so he took a big step backward.

  “If you get your hands on a gun, you’ll do something even more outrageously stupid than running around the city, chasing after Primes, this close to your heat. What do you want with the Boss?”

  Her hands fluttered in the air. Something was off there. Lies again. “I won’t do anything stupid.”

  “What will you do with it? There is nothing smart someone as emotional as you will do with a gun.”

  “I…” she broke off. “With a gun, I could make people answer my questions. I could find her, my sister. She was taken today.”

  He moved even farther away, far enough he couldn’t smell her, couldn’t feel the heat of her skin, hear the desperate beating of her heart. “You’d just get yourself killed. What do you really want with the Boss?”

  “For a gun.”

  “If you’d told the truth, I might have tried to help.”

  “I don’t tell my secrets to people I don’t
trust.”

  “And I don’t help liars.” He backed through the shadows, out of her sight, dropping over the ledge and climbing down the metal staircase.

  Arguments spilled from her lips, dancing on the breeze, and he tried not to listen. She wouldn’t be able to see in the darkness that he was already gone.

  11

  time to run

  again

  IT TOOK A LONG TIME for the shaking to stop. But it did eventually. Tessa didn’t move, forced herself to fight the compulsion to run. She’d attracted too much attention already. So there, standing in the dark, staring at the place where the eerie silver light of his eyes had been, letting the adrenaline run its way through her body, she thought.

  It had felt like he’d been dissecting her with his eyes, peeling away the layers of her clothes, reading her mind.

  She shuddered.

  A Prime had been in her home. Near her bed. While she’d been sleeping. His smell still saturated the air all around her, humid and thick, and she didn’t know if she wanted to slide her hand into her panties and release a little tension, or run as long and as far as she could. She couldn’t stay here. Not ever again.

  First priority. Move.

  It took three tries to get the candle lit, but as soon as it was, she set to work packing up the few things she’d need. She’d find somewhere else to stay. A pillow, blanket, her clothes, the canteen, some soap and charcoal powder, deodorant.

  Second priority. Leyla.

  If Sanger wouldn’t trade with her for a gun then she’d find someone else who would. You could buy anything at the Night Market. Someone there would want the information. She’d find someone who knew something about Leyla, and someone who would give her a gun. She swallowed. Whatever the price.

  She left as soon as the sun came up, to an empty unit on the fifth floor of an apartment building a few blocks away. The place was dusty, and stank of mildew, but it would work. At least for a few days.

  The day crawled by. There was nothing she could do during the day except sleep. She couldn’t risk running around the city this close to a heat, not after yesterday when the Polizei were probably all looking for a felana dressed as a boy. The Night Market didn’t open until the sun went down, and there she could ask for answers from the junkies and hopefully find a gun she could use to start making people pay attention to her.