The Claiming

by Imogen Keeper

  Manivietto.

  That fuck had lived.

  Heart sinking, Sanger reached for his gun, where it should be at his waist, but it wasn’t there. He’d lost it long ago. Along with his knives, stripping the layers in his haste to dig in the mess.

  He got up close, wrapped his hands around the man’s shoulders, staring like a starving man at the features that were so similar to Tessa’s.

  This man had cut a path of bodies in his wake like footprints in sand.

  Sanger leaned in closer, his upper lip pulling back in a scowl, preparing to curse Manivietto into the darkest parts of the abyss, and stopped.

  Manivietto’s eyelids slid open, the thin pale, dusty skin, dark eyelashes lifting upward, revealing dark gleaming eyes.

  Sanger jerked backward like he’d been electrocuted. Where the fuck are you, Tessa? He just wanted to hold her one last time.

  On a shaky arm, Manivietto sat up looking around the still-smoking rubble, the hordes of people, all staring at him like he was a ghost made corporeal.

  Manivietto rubbed his eyes.

  It was like staring at Tessa only the male version of her. Their features were so similar, nearly identical. But where Tessa’s face always seemed curious, or happy, thoughtful or doubtful, Manivietto’s was blank. Nothing but calculation written in his features as he surveyed the crows all around him.

  Argenti soldiers. Tamminian soldiers. Didgermmion locals. His nostrils flared. He whispered something under his breath. Something Sanger couldn’t understand.

  For a moment, Sanger could almost see himself from the outside. Tor shouted something, but he didn’t listen.

  He knew he shouldn’t do it, but if there was any chance that Manivietto knew where Tessa was in this mess, if she’d been there when the bomb went off. A sick and painful hope had taken root. Maybe she wasn’t here. Maybe she was out there somewhere.

  Sanger leaned in closer to those whispering lips, tilted with his ear, strained to make out the barest breaths of susurrations.

  So, close his lips nearly touched down against Manivietto’s.

  And…heard…laughter.

  Sanger’s shoulders tensed, he coiled the muscles in his thighs, ready to rear back, but he was too late.

  Manivietto pressed a gun against Sanger’s temple with one hand, and with his other grasped Sanger by the neck, his fingers digging into his trachea.

  “Where is she?” he hissed.

  42

  half of her own heart

  “SHE WHO?” Sanger crouched over Manivietto, their bodies partially concealed by the piles of rubble surrounding them. He turned his gaze to the periphery of the concrete piles, to the crowd watching.

  Tor was there, body rigid, gun in his hand, stepping across the rubble, making his way toward them on careful cautious feet. The pale-haired woman, the sister, the mother, all lurking behind him, along with three armies.

  Thousands of men, but none of them would have a clean shot of Manivietto, and Sanger had shed his guns and knives long ago in his haste to sift through the piles.

  Which meant there was only him.

  Manivietto’s grip was oddly firm, considering he’d miraculously managed to survive a blast and the ensuing collapse of a concrete building that had somehow managed to land him under a pile of rubble.

  “Bring her to me,” Manivietto hissed.

  Sanger brought his gaze back to Manivietto’s face, so eerily similar to Tessa’s. His heart pounded in his chest. “Who?”

  Manivietto’s lower lip trembled, and his eyes gleamed with some sort of inhuman emotion. Not love. Not hate. Something more. Possession maybe. “My woman. The one with white hair.”

  Sanger tugged at the man’s grip experimentally. The grip around his neck wasn’t iron. He could break it. The question was, could he break the grip faster than Manivietto could pull the trigger on the gun grinding into his temple.

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  “Do you know where Tessa is?”

  “My slave, bring her to me. Along with a hover.” He swallowed thickly, like his throat was coated in the same filth and grime as Sanger’s. “Give me safe passage, and I’ll leave this shitpit to you.”

  Sanger shifted his grip a little, maneuvered so his right elbow hovered just over Manivietto’s ribcage. He could dig in hard enough that Manivietto would be forced to move his torso. It might instinctively cause a tug on his gun arm, shift the angle, giving Sanger the chance he needed to pull free.

  Just as he started to apply pressure, Manivietto tilted his face up toward the pink sky above and roared, “Briella, my slave. Come to me.”

  Sanger froze.

  So did Tor, ten, maybe twenty yards away. Shane was on the other side. Freysa. A triumvirate of death, slowly circling in closer to Manivietto. In five yards, they’d have a clean shot at Manivietto. But would they be able to kill him before he squeezed the trigger.

  Sanger wasn’t sure he cared, but he knew Tor and Shane and Freysa.

  It wasn’t a chance any of them would take.

  “BRIELLA!”

  Silence loomed, but for the occasional scuff of a foot on concrete, the shift of rubble, a cough from the crowd.

  “Was Tessa there when you got to the aerie? Did you see her?”

  “Bitch lured me there. Somehow faked the tracker.”

  Hope, Sanger discovered, in that moment could hurt as badly as any amount of grief. It burned through his heart, prickled along his skin. Tessa was smart. She was a fighter. She’d promised she’d be waiting for him.

  Why would she kill herself?

  She had promised after all.

  She’d said she loved him.

  “BRIELLA!” Manivietto roared again, grinding the gun against Sanger’s temple. The pain was welcome. He’d take any amount of pain as long as it came with hope. He clung to it like a man on the edge of a cliff clings to a root, with slipping fingers, burning skin, and desperation. But tempering that desperation was trust. Tessa wasn’t a gentle felana. She was a woman with a hard left hook, a woman who kicked when scared, clawed when threatened, and planned when she wanted something. She was brave and smart and strong and powerful. She wasn’t a quitter. She’d stopped this whole war.

  She’d saved many lives. Thousands of lives.

  He should have fucking listened to her.

  “Get me my Briella.”

  “You have a gun to my head.”

  “Call her. Make her come to me.”

  Shane perched on a flat berm of debris and raised a brow.

  Freysa was behind him. Sanger couldn’t see her, but he could feel her there.

  Tor shouted out, “anyone know who he’s talking about?”

  The crowd murmured and hemmed.

  “Me,” said a clear and accented voice, and the white-haired woman emerged, her bare feet bloody and nearly black from soot as she walked over stones, her head held as high as a queen’s despite the filthy rags she wore.

  “He means me.”

  She walked past Tor, so close, his shoulder bumped. She moved with some kind of ethereal grace, like a fairy from another world. Her strange, white eyes leveled on Sanger, communicating something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something that spoke of trust. Patience. Hatred. A kindred soul. Tessa too. Someone who wanted revenge.

  Tor’s body rocked slightly as she passed. Maybe she reminded him of Klym. Graceful, blonde, proud and Argenti. Or maybe Tor just had a poor foothold.

  Manivietto licked his parched lips. “Good slave.”

  In a lithe gesture, she lowered down to her knees beside Sanger, her hair falling over her face like a dirty veil as she lowered her lips to Manivietto’s cheek. “I’m here, master. Always.”

  Manivietto’s breath hitched. A gasp or maybe a sob, his body shuddered.

  The slave woman slanted her gaze toward Sanger. The muscles of her face didn’t move, but somehow, the look in her eyes asked are you ready?

  He braced himself. Offered the barest ske
tch of a nod.

  “I was so worried,” she said, shifting her hands.

  She had a knife.

  It all made sense suddenly. The bump as she’d passed Tor. The way his body had moved. He’d handed her his knife.

  “Let me help you stand, Master.” Briella wrapped her free hand around his back as though to help him move.

  Manivietto accommodated the motion by shifting his grip.

  Sanger drew in air that smelled of Manivietto’s impending death, preparing for the fight. Time imploded on itself, into nothing more than a blur of flying limbs.

  Briella brought her knife down, straight into Manivietto’s stomach, arching up to breach his liver.

  Sanger twisted, shoving at the gun arm. A shot fired off, a clatter of glass sounding behind them.

  Followed by three more shots. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Freysa.

  Tor.

  Shane.

  Ears ringing, vision clearing, Sanger took to his feet.

  Manivietto was dead already. One of them shot him in the head. One in the back. Another through the center of his chest. Once Briella sat him up, they’d all had a clear path.

  Briella stood, then swayed so dramatically, Sanger grabbed her by her armpits and held her upright. She blinked up at him, her hand pressing against her chest, leaving smears of blood.

  “She’s not here,” he said, looking from person to person until he found the only other person who cared as much as he did.

  Leyla. Her face was ravaged. Tracks of tears battled with dark soot, mottled skin and red eyes. Grief in picture form.

  “She’s not here,” he shouted.

  Leyla’s shoulders lifted. It wasn’t much. But it was a small gesture, as she stepped forward, her harem pants dingy and torn in places. She’d been digging as tirelessly as him. “Where?”

  “I don’t know. She wasn’t here when Manivietto arrived. She’d have been heading back.” To meet him. She’d promised. And she wouldn’t have known the blast was in the tunnels. “She’d have been running from here to the Night Market.”

  He started making his way across the piles, hauling Briella with him. She hissed, tripping on her bare feet. So he pushed her at Shane, who hefted her up into his arms, carrying her like a baby. Her eyes were wide and ravaged. She looked like someone who’d just cut out half of her own heart.

  “Quinton,” she said, so softly he barely even heard her. “Quinton was waiting at the Night Market. What if he ran into her?”

  Sanger nodded. Quinton, Manivietto’s right hand man. He’d have seen the blast. Seen the landing Argenti army, the surge of light coming from over the mountains as Tor’s army arrived. He’d have known the Boss was making a play too, since he’d moved the explosives to the tunnels himself. And the river only ran in one direction.

  Tor stepped up by Sanger’s side. “Where do the tunnels lead?”

  “First stop is a farmstead on the other end of the swamp.”

  43

  are you ready to beg?

  TESSA stared at the green fungus swirling along the tunnel walls as Quinton rowed their boat upriver.

  She’d woken up in one of the warehouses, head pounding, trussed up like a grazer, mouth dry, only to be unceremoniously dumped in a boat. She wasn’t sure, but she got the impression that Quinton had been waiting for something. Something big. And as soon as it happened, he’d dumped her in the boat and set off.

  Which was how she’d gotten here. On a boat. Underground. Heading upriver, which meant out of Didgermmion. Away from the coast. Inland. To the mountains most likely.

  There was a rhythm, she realized, after a few miles of tunnels. The fungus liked the wettest places best, the places where the water clung to the tunnel’s surfaces. The vines liked the dryer places. The ones closest to an opening. The openings were few and far between, a pinprick of illumination would pierce through the darkness, a shaft of dust-riddled light.

  A few drops rained down every once in a while. It reminded her of the falling droplets in Sanger’s bathhouse.

  One hit her on the forehead with a wet plop.

  He’d think she was dead by now. It made her chest hurt imagining that. He’d be feeling guilt, shame, self-loathing, rage, anger, frustration, grief.

  He shouldn’t have to go through that.

  Quinton was silent company, rowing tirelessly against the current, taking them farther and farther from home, from Sanger.

  A week ago, she’d have given anything to be in a boat headed out of Didgermmion. Now, she was desperate to get back to it.

  She fidgeted, tugging at the ropes Quinton had tied there. It hurt when she moved her injured wrist. The ropes were too tight.

  The knife in her boot pressed against her calf.

  She could pull it, if she sat on her feet. She could twist enough to get her fingers down into the boot, pull it, angle it upward, try to cut the rope, use the knife on him. But if she fucked up, if she dropped the knife, then Quinton would know she had it. And he’d be able to take it from her easily.

  She needed a distraction, a shift of his focus. Because right now, and for the last hour they’d been rowing upriver, he’d done nothing but glare at her, his hooded eyes expressionless.

  She shifted dramatically, hoping Quinton would read that as boredom, that maybe if she talked enough, annoyed him enough, he’d share his plan with her just to get her to shut up.

  So, she kicked out her leg and propped her foot on the edge of the boat, staring at the place the knife was. A few inches down, pressed into the outside of the right boot. She’d have to get her body on top of the boot, her hands to the spot. On her knees would be the best way. Then she’d have to remove the sheathe. It was a maneuver she’d practiced a hundred times. A thousand maybe. It was the same knife she’d pulled on Sanger the night they’d met. But she’d never done it in secret, with her hands behind her back.

  And that was the easy part. The hard part would be cutting the ropes.

  Her best chance lurked in the place between surprise and anger. Make him mad, get him close, make him stupid.

  She sighed, loud and exaggerated. “I miss my Prime.”

  Quinton said nothing.

  “He smells like candy and sex. And migane di vaniiya, Quinton, you should see his cock. The thing is perfect. So perfect. Like it was cut from the gods themselves.”

  Nothing.

  “You ever met him?”

  Nothing.

  She flapped her hand in the air. “No, probably not. He’s so tall.” Mega heavy lovesick sigh. “My Prime.”

  “You think if you wax poetic about the prowess of that bastard, I will become enraged, come over there on unsteady feet and let you push me in the water.”

  “I was also considering trying to strangle you with my shoelaces.”

  The water slopped against the side of the boat.

  “How’d you intend to get out of your ropes.” Quinton’s voice echoed.

  Tessa sighed again, this time sadly. “I was thinking maybe I could sweet talk you into helping?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Even if I tell you these ropes are hurting me?”

  “I don’t give a shit if you’re in pain. Or if you go into a heat at my feet.” Quinton’s jaw hardened, the beast inside him rearing to the surface. “You can talk about how much his dick turns you on, how wet it makes your pussy, and all that might happen is you might turn me on enough I decide to sample the goods. I doubt you want that though.”

  “Ugh. You got that right,” Tessa said fast, shuddering.

  “Then shut the fuck up. I’m taking you out of here, we’re going to ride this river as far as it goes, finding a defensible spot he can’t find us, and then we’ll com him and arrange a transfer. I don’t particularly want to hurt you, but believe me when I say, I will cut out your tongue if you annoy me with your yapping, and if you attack me, I’ll cut off your fucking hands.”

  “Well, that escalated quickly.” Tessa breathed in around the fear, let
it come, accepted it. Panic helped no one. And he was lying. He had to be. With Manivietto gone, there was only one authority in Didgermmion.

  She blew out a heavy sigh. “I don’t think you’re going to do any of that, though. Because Sanger will kill you for sure if you touch me. In fact, if you touch one little hair on my head, I think he’ll make it long and slow. And I think you know that, too. I think you know that your only chance of making it out alive is to take me to him.” She forced a tight little smile to her lips. “And beg for your life. Are you going to beg Quinton?”

  The oar came out so fast, Tessa barely had time to react. She tried pulling back, tried to turn away so it would be a glancing blow. It didn’t matter. It slammed into her face, smashing into her orbital bone so hard her vision went white and bright as the sun.

  “Fuck,” she hissed, falling sideways, trying to curl around herself which was nearly impossible with her hands behind her back. A second strike got her right in her ass, the bony part. “Stop. Stop,” she panted, blinded and deafened by pain.

  A third blow got her in the back of her knees. Fuck, that hurt. She didn’t bother asking him to stop, just laid there, curled into herself, instinctively protecting her face and vital organs, and waited.

  The blows, stopped. “Shut the fuck up, you stupid cunt.” Quinton settled back into his rhythm of rowing. “Make another sound and I’ll take of my sock and gag you with it.”

  Tessa stayed quiet.

  She’d learned something.

  She didn’t need to be on her knees to access the knife.

  She could do it on her side.

  She was on her side, head at the front of the boat, her knees bent, only a few feet from Quinton.

  But what he couldn’t see was that her roped-up wrists rested just above the top of her boots.

  Leather, familiar as her own face, touched against her finger tips.

  She’d just gotten her hands on the sheath.

  And inside that sheath was a knife.

  44

  crazier than you