Quote the Drow Nevermore

by Martha Carr

  Sir stormed toward the open door and Rhynehart, who was standing beside it. “You have ten minutes, halfling.”

  “Twenty.”

  The man stiffened but didn’t turn around.

  The halfling gave the orc girl a small reassuring smile. “And if twenty minutes isn’t enough for our conversation and I say we need more time, we’ll get more time.”

  Sir grunted and stormed into the hallway. Sheila followed him without a word. Cheyenne felt Rhynehart’s eyes on her even as he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

  The room fell silent. Cheyenne studied the orc girl still sitting in the chair. Normal heartbeat, clear as a bell. At least she’s not scared of me. “How’re you doin’?”

  The girl shrugged. “The dude with the mustache is only entertaining for so long. After that, I just want to punch him in the face.”

  Cheyenne snorted. “I know the feeling. Mind if I sit?”

  “Not really.”

  The halfling lowered herself into the second armchair and folded her arms. “So. Now everyone knows you can talk. Why haven’t you?”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. “I know FRoE agents when I see them, and I don’t trust any of them.”

  “Even when they got you and the other kids out of that mansion?”

  “Yeah.” Slowly, the girl leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “Even then.”

  “They really do want to get you home.”

  “Trust me, I’d love to be home right now. My uncle’s probably crapping his pants, wondering why I haven’t turned up yet.”

  Cheyenne fought back a laugh. “Somehow, that isn’t hard to imagine.”

  “Yeah. You met him. He talks a big game and likes to play warlord until somebody gives him a good shakedown. Then he’s just…” The girl wrinkled her nose. “Annoying.”

  “I remember.” Nodding, the halfling offered a little shrug. “I’m surprised you recognized me.”

  “Your face doesn’t change with the rest of you.” Smirking, the girl studied the half-drow’s face and shrugged. “Kinda hard to forget when the only other thing you said to me was about that necklace.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I’d really like to get that back, by the way. It was a custom-made thing. From a friend.”

  Cheyenne nodded slowly. “Yeah, I’m sure we could figure that out. Might be a little while, though. I don’t have it with me.”

  “That’s cool.” The orc girl chuckled. “You know where I live.”

  “Yeah.” Glancing at her lap, the half-drow couldn’t help but smile. This girl’s got guts. I’ll give her that. “What’s your name, kid?”

  A frown creased the orc girl’s thick brow, and she leaned away from the halfling before looking at the closed door. “I can’t.”

  “Hmm. I’m just taking a wild guess here, but something tells me you’re trying to protect your uncle.”

  The girl shrugged and kept staring at the door.

  “Okay. They find your name in the system, it pulls up Durg Br’athol right next to it, and you’re trying to help him keep his name clean.” Cheyenne chuckled. “At least with the FRoE, right?”

  No response.

  “Listen, I’m gonna tell you a little secret, okay? Well, I guess it might not be much of a secret anymore, but it might help.” The half-drow propped her forearms on her thighs. “I don’t trust the FRoE either. Not completely. Sure, they’re pretty reliable when it comes to busting the guys who need to be busted, and I know they’ve got my back when we’re in the middle of it. At least some do. But beyond that? They’re a pain in my ass.”

  The girl gave a little laugh, still unable to look at Cheyenne. “You’re not FRoE.”

  “I am not FRoE. More like an independent contractor.” Getting paid in visits to Chateau D’rahl.

  Taking a deep breath, the orc girl slowly turned to the halfling with her yellow eyes. “My name’s not even in the system.”

  “Really?” Cheyenne swallowed. “How’d you manage that?”

  “Well, my Border crossing wasn’t exactly legit.”

  Raising her eyebrows, the halfling leaned back in her chair again. “You were smuggled Earthside.”

  “A few months ago, yeah. My uncle sent word for me, and the guys back home did their jobs.”

  Durg was shaking down other magicals to pay for an unregistered crossing. I bet he just got too used to it to stop. This is getting complicated. Cheyenne clenched her eyes shut and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, the girl didn’t look any more apologetic than she had before she’d spilled the beans. “Which reservation?”

  The girl shook her head. “No rez.”

  “Huh. You’re gonna have to explain that one, ‘cause I’m pretty sure a Border portal doesn’t exist without a reservation sitting right on top of it.”

  “Yeah, I know how it works. Most of the time.” The orc girl glanced at the ceiling. “A new portal opened in the last…I don’t know. Year? Eight months? The FRoE doesn’t know about it. Most people don’t know about it, but word gets around if you talk to the right people, I guess.”

  Cheyenne blinked. No wonder she didn’t talk. That opens up a whole new shitstorm for everybody. “Where’s the new portal?”

  “I don’t know. My uncle picked me up when I crossed and took me right back to his house. I’m just starting to get a handle on Richmond.”

  “So, it’s not in Richmond.”

  “No. The drive was a couple hours, though.” The girl shrugged and finally looked like she wished she could say more. “Two or three, I think.”

  “Well, that narrows it down, I guess. You think your uncle would remember where it is?”

  “Maybe. Are you gonna go ask him?”

  “I don’t know.” The halfling raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure I want to know more details, you understand?”

  “Between a drow and a FRoE place. I get it.”

  Cheyenne chuckled. “I knew you had it together the first time I met you.”

  “I knew you weren’t really gonna kill my uncle. Guess we both have pretty good intuition.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we do.” They exchanged smiles, then Cheyenne slapped her thighs and pushed to her feet. “Okay. Let’s get you home, huh? It sucks to be cooped up in this place for longer than ten minutes.”

  The orc girl stood and smoothed down the front of the oversized t-shirt some FRoE agent had given her to replace the creepy black robes her kidnappers had dressed her in. “My name’s Aksu, by the way.”

  The halfling’s smile widened, and she stuck out her hand. “Cheyenne.”

  They shook, and Aksu frowned. “That’s not a very drow name, is it? Even for a halfling.”

  “Yeah, well, I got the short end of the drow-role-model stick.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Cheyenne laughed again and headed toward the door. “I’m starting to think I’m better off the way things turned out.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  When the door opened, Cheyenne found Rhynehart, Sheila, and Sir standing halfway down the hall. Sir scowled at her, and his eyes widened when Aksu stepped into the hall behind the halfling.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m taking her home.”

  “I don’t remember giving you the go-ahead for that, halfling.”

  Cheyenne kept walking toward the major. She stopped about a foot away and narrowed her eyes. “I got the go-ahead when you called me to do what you can’t. It took you two days to do that, and it took me about ten minutes to get her name and her story. Now I’m taking her home.”

  Sir’s nostrils flared when he took a quick sniff, and he leaned down to meet the five-foot-four halfling’s challenge. “I don’t like the way you smell when you get cocky, Cheyenne.”

  “The feeling’s mutual.”

  “And I don’t like hearing that you know something we don’t.”

  Cheyenne raised her eyebrows. “You can’t call me i
n to fix something you broke and expect me to let you read my diary afterward. I can do things you can’t, and I can know things you don’t, and you’ll just have to deal with it. Major.”

  The man’s beady eyes locked on hers, his mustache bristling when his upper lip twitched. “If you keep cutting it close like this, you’re gonna end up a lot bloodier than you expect.”

  The halfling grinned. “Are you threatening me, Sir?”

  “Threats are for pencil-pushers and store clerks, Cheyenne. This is a professional courtesy. And don’t forget our little arrangement, huh? If you can’t figure out why that lunatic drow behind bars turned himself back in to keep playing prisoner just for fun, you’ll have to go through me every time you want to have a little chat. And believe me, halfling, I don’t like holding your short leash any more than you like being tied to it.”

  Cheyenne lifted her chin and took a small step forward so Sir was looking straight down at her. “You know what a mantis shrimp can do when it starts punching the water?”

  “What the hell does a goddamn shrimp have to do with any of this?”

  “Look it up. You can tell me about it the next time you call.” With a curt nod, Cheyenne stepped around the major and brushed past him down the hall. She looked over her shoulder to nod at Aksu. “Come on.”

  Without a word, the orc girl followed the drow halfling down the hall. Before they stepped out into the common room, Aksu leaned toward Cheyenne and muttered, “He really doesn’t like you.”

  “You don’t have to like someone to need their help. I think it’s one or the other with him, though.”

  The other agents sitting around at the tables in the common room looked up when Cheyenne and the last kidnapped magical minor entered. Someone started clapping, and a less than enthusiastic round of applause made its way toward them. The halfling smirked and kept walking. Aksu frowned at the agents, then looked at the halfling. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I’m pretty sure that’s for you.”

  “What?” The orc girl stepped around Cheyenne to put the halfling between her and all the FRoE agents nodding at her and clapping like they’d just been forced to sit through the most boring speech of their lives. “I didn’t do anything, either.”

  “You should give yourself more credit.”

  “Hey, Goth drow,” Bhandi called. Aksu snorted at the nickname. “I’m free for a ride-along if you two want some company.”

  “You’re not getting in my car, Bhandi.”

  “Oh, come on. She gets to sit in there. I’ll just sit in the back and shut up. You won’t even know I’m there.”

  Cheyenne shot the troll woman a little shrug before leading Aksu to the compound’s empty front lobby.

  Behind her, Bhandi thumped a hand on the table and growled, “I show a drow halfling a good time with fellwine, and she won’t let me in her damn car.”

  “You and fellwine in the same sentence, Bhandi?” another agent shouted. “Nobody’s having a good time but you.”

  Laughter spilled down the hall as Cheyenne pushed open the front door and held it for Aksu. The orc girl frowned over her shoulder but didn’t stop. “Credit for what?”

  “Huh?”

  Aksu studied the parking lot and the line of black FRoE vehicles stretching from front to back. “You said I should give myself more credit. For what?”

  Cheyenne shoved her hands into her pockets and smirked. “For being tough. I don’t know how hard Major Sir tried to interrogate you, but I know that after two days of watching spit fly from under that mustache, I would’ve tried to rip it off.”

  The girl let out a low, surprisingly self-aware laugh.

  The halfling studied her sidelong and smiled. “And because you kept it together after almost two days of being locked up with a bunch of other kids who didn’t belong in that mansion, either.”

  “Like radan.”

  “Like what?”

  Aksu stuck her hands in the pockets of the baggy sweatpants the FRoE had loaned her and shrugged. “Livestock back home.”

  “Oh, yeah. I thought I recognized the word. But the stories I heard were about a bunch of whatever those creatures are running around wild in some fields or something.”

  “They used to.” Aksu swallowed. “Not so much anymore. Now it’s just a bunch of Crown agents rounding them up into pens. The kind they don’t come out of again.”

  “Got it.” Cheyenne pulled the keyless fob out of her pocket and unlocked the Panamera. A quiet chirp greeted them, the headlights flashing in the mid-morning sun. She stopped right in front of her car and turned to meet the girl’s yellow-eyed gaze. “Here’s the thing, though. You came back out again. You’re not a radan. You’re a smart kid who’s making the most of a pretty sticky situation on more than one level. Honestly, that should’ve gotten you a standing ovation when we walked through there, but I’m starting to get the feeling that outside active field operations, those agents are a bunch of slackers.”

  The orc girl snorted and shook her head, turning her attention to the half-drow’s shiny new black car.

  I saw those tears. She’ll be okay.

  Aksa looked at Rhynehart’s Jeep just on the other side of the Panamera, then leaned sideways to peer past it at Sir’s Kia Rio. “Who were you trying to piss off?’

  Cheyenne laughed and slipped between the Jeep and her car to open the driver’s side door. “You know, I don’t have to try that hard anymore.”

  With another slow shake of her head, the orc girl opened her door and slid into the passenger seat. “Woah. I didn’t know something like this even existed.”

  “It sure does. Hey, you’ve picked up on things pretty quickly for only being Earthside a short time.”

  Aksu shrugged. “Yeah, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.”

  “Really? I have some troll friends who’ve been here for over a year, and their kid still had to remind them what a car is.”

  “Probably easier for the younger generations.” The orc girl wrinkled her nose and hastily buckled her seatbelt once she saw Cheyenne doing the same.

  “That makes sense, actually. It’s like that over here too with technology, or so I’ve heard from the older generations.” The halfling started the car, grinning when the engine purred and rumbled smoothly beneath her seat.

  “Like smartphones and computers and stuff?”

  Cheyenne snorted. “And stuff. Yeah. You got a handle on all that too?”

  “That was like the first thing.” Aksu peered briefly out the window as the Panamera pulled away from the FRoE compound. “You know, most of the O’gúleesh making the crossing come from way outside the capitol, right? Farmers and traders and…I don’t know. Fishermen, I think. Not a lot of people leave the cities, even after everything—” The words stuck in the girl’s throat.

  The halfling spared her a quick glance, but the orc girl just shook her head again, still gazing out the window. Something’s happening over there, and nobody wants to talk about it. “How come?”

  Aksu said, “It’s more convenient. I totally get wanting to leave a ranch or a village with a bunch of shacks to come Earthside and try to make things a little better. Nobody wants to give up city life and all the things that come with it to move backward by coming across the Border.”

  “Backward with what?”

  The girl shot the halfling a sidelong glance and smirked. “Technology. And stuff.”

  “What?” Laughing, Cheyenne did a double-take as she drove down the frontage road toward the gate towers. “Technology over here is a step down?”

  “More like jumping off a cliff.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.” The girl scratched her arm and dropped her head back against the headrest. “I started school here. Junior year. It kind of feels like I walked back into the nursery, only everyone’s, you know, my age.”

  Little Goth teen just called humans babies. Okay.

  “Oddly enough, I know exactly what t
hat’s like.” Cheyenne slowed the Panamera to a stop outside the gate towers and turned to look at her passenger. “Before we get outta here, I need you to promise me something.”

  Frowning, Aksu glanced at the booth in the gate tower with room enough for one person—despite being empty—then met the halfling’s gaze. “Depends on what it is.”

  The halfling snorted. “You’re startin’ to sound a lot like someone I know.” She sounds like me. “That’s a good thing. And here’s the deal. Normally, anybody coming on and off this base who isn’t technically supposed to be here either takes a sleeping pill or gets a bag thrown over their face. Or a sleeping mask. They don’t want people figuring out how to get back here, for obvious reasons.”

  “Yeah, super obvious. Trust me, I don’t plan on ever coming back.”

  “I believe you, and I don’t blame you. But I gotta tell you, okay?” Cheyenne glanced in her rearview mirror and saw nothing but a straight, empty stretch of road behind her. Bet they’re waiting to see if I remembered, too. “I don’t have any sleeping pills or face bags, so I’m not gonna try to blindfold you. You don’t need it. I just need your word that you won’t tell anyone where this place is.”

  Aksu studied the halfling’s raised eyebrow, then pursed her lips. “You’re putting a lot of trust in an orc girl whose uncle pissed you off enough to do whatever you did to him.”

  Cheyenne snorted. “Well, you’ve been a lot easier to talk to.”

  That made the girl laugh again, and she stared into her lap. “All right. How ‘bout this? I won’t tell anybody anything about this place if you don’t tell anyone how I got Earthside.”

  “Huh.” The halfling blinked and mulled over the deal. Now I’m the one tightening the drawstring. Awesome. “I can promise you I won’t say anything about your uncle sending for you or the magicals who got you across under the FRoE’s radar. But if things get dicey with that secret Border portal, I might have things to say to various people about that part.”

  Aksu shrugged. “As long as my name stays out of it, sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

  Cheyenne dropped her hand off the steering wheel and held it out toward the girl whose uncle had put Ember in that wheelchair. Everything still has a price. “Deal.”