by Jackson Lear
I kept turning the dagger over in my hands, waiting. I ran through the timing of Qin’s escape. Even if he wasn’t free from his restraints before we arrived, Runaway’s signal would’ve told him it was okay to slip them off now. He’d cry out in victory. He’d work on freeing Myalla. It would be fiddly with a little arguing about how to do it properly but they’d get it done. The ropes would drop to the floor. They’d stand around the dark room. Now what? We must be in a basement. Is there a door? No. There must be a trapdoor, somewhere. Can you see where it is? No. I can’t reach the ceiling. What about that bucket? Tip it over and climb up. Still can’t reach it. You come over here and give me a boost. Do you have it? I got it!
The trapdoor would flip open. Qin would climb up. He’d offer a gentlemanly hand to Myalla and pull her up, using the ropes if necessary. They’d creep to the doorway and look out. I think we’re near the river, Qin would say. The sun is setting over there. South would be that way. Then he’d lead her past us as per Runaway’s instructions earlier that morning.
Greaser looked my way, his eyebrows knotting together. Runaway fidgeted, moving to the door to get a better view of the road. He stepped out, exposing himself, then returned. “They aren’t walking the other way.”
Greaser gnashed his teeth loud enough for us to hear. “When you tied the kid up, you did make sure he could get out by himself, right?”
“I know how to tie a rope,” said Runaway.
After a quick discussion we determined that Runaway hadn’t been singing loud enough. He returned a moment later. “There. Half the city has now heard me.”
We waited. And waited. And waited some more.
Greaser sent a wary look my way. So did Runaway. Both made a gesture to the open door which had been mostly closed just that morning.
Yeah. There was a chance we were too late.
But if someone had found Myalla, the bell at High Road would’ve rung out.
We crept to Qin’s hideout. Greaser finally had his shoulders hunched over. The moment Runaway found the trapdoor, he swore. The dust and rubble he had set on top of it when he lowered Myalla down had been thrown to the side of the room. We all drew our weapons and the others stood out of the way while I lifted the trapdoor open.
No one was inside.
I peered forward. “Myalla?”
Nope. No one. There had once been a set of wooden stairs here that broke apart in the fire. The reach from the ground down there to the floor I was standing on was about eight feet. Easy enough to climb if two people helped each other and easy enough to fail if one of you is faking a distinct lack of strength. In the corner of the basement was the bucket. If Qin followed our procedure, he would’ve put the bucket directly under the trapdoor to help him climb up. In another corner was half a loaf of bread. There’s no way Qin would’ve left food behind. I lowered the trapdoor back into place.
“Someone else got them out,” I said.
Greaser groaned at me. “I guess half the city is looking for the girl. Can’t be too surprised that someone got lucky.”
Runaway asked, “So why didn’t we pass any of the city watch? There wasn’t a single uniform for the last half a mile to see if anyone came back to get her.”
“Because they weren’t the ones who found her,” I said. “And, like idiots, we’ve returned to the scene of the crime.”
Greaser glared at us both. “I should’ve stayed with Lieutenant.”
I had the dinky dagger back in my hand before the first crunch of boots greeted us. Along with it came a smokehouse voice, calling to us with a uniquely entertained undertone to it. “Why don’t you three in there do yourselves a favor and toss your weapons onto the street?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The speaker stood by the burnt-out doorway, no doubt with a weapon in his hand. Erast accent, but the tone did not belong to city watch. “Your lives depend on you coming out here in hurry.”
Runaway signaled to us: ‘We need one of them alive.’
I nodded.
Greaser motioned for Runaway to follow him and for me to stay. I had little choice but to nod again. I wasn’t sure if being a closer meant that I was brave or stupid but I was acutely aware that refusing to back down went hand in hand with a short life expectancy.
My brothers in crime returned to the trapdoor and climbed down. Greaser tucked his fingers together, sprung them up quickly and waited until I nodded accordingly. I’d have back up but only in the form of Runaway. I guessed that being in a confined space worked better in Runaway’s favor than Greaser’s; Runaway was as nimble as a mouse in tricky situations. Greaser? Not so much.
I closed the trapdoor over and pushed myself against the wall closest to the doorway.
The speaker outside said, “I’m serious. Three of you against all of us? You don’t stand much of a chance.”
‘All of us.’ A minimum of three of them to even things out. Catch us off guard, use a little bravura to beef up the number they supposedly have out there. The question was, did they know whose daughter they now had?
I dug my free hand into my pouch and readied a handful of soot. “Let’s hear it.”
“Half the city is looking for the girl you kidnapped.”
That now put a minimum of six people out there. If we were dangerous enough to kidnap Castor’s daughter then we required more than just three of them to take us down.
“We didn’t kidnap her,” I said. “We caught someone from Gerera snooping about. He was part of a team of doctors who like to use the blood of children for magic. The higher-born the kid is, the better. It took some convincing but he eventually told us where he stashed Castor’s kid.”
“There’s a lot of ‘we’ and ‘us’ going about. Who are you?”
“You know that’s not going to happen.”
“No problem. We’ll just hurl a couple of these jugs of oil and nails inside. One word from our ballista guy and it won’t matter what your names are.”
I tossed whatever coins I had on me towards the open door. The clink and clatter to the ground caught the speaker’s attention.
“That’s not enough.”
“Where’s the girl now?” I asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
“You know they’re going to kill her, right?”
“Not my problem. It’ll be yours if we hand you over to Castor and tell him you took her, ‘cause as convincing a story as it is that you found someone from Gerera snooping around, we have our own person from Gerera and he insists that Castor wasn’t the target and that someone else has framed his people.”
“His name wouldn’t be Desten, would it?”
Silence followed.
I added, “Yeah, that’s what our guy said. He told us all about how you get a hefty discount on medicine as well. Or did. Your company is about to be played as fools. Your captain has been looking to renegotiate, yeah? How did that work out for him? If Destens junior, senior, and the old lady don’t like how these next few days play out, you lot are going to take the fall for Castor’s kid. Even I can tell you that’s going to be bad for all of us. Not for the doctors, though. They get to leave town. But when Castor finds that his kid is dead and your company is to blame, that kind of shit storm would target all of us, not just you. I can’t let that happen.”
More silence, this time disgruntled.
I called out. “Let me ask you something. They have their own muscle, right? So how come they sent you here instead of risking their own people?”
Another round of disgruntled silence, followed by a burst of, “Enough with the fucking around! We have a job to do. You three are going to come out of there or we’re going to start hurling these things inside.”
“There’s only me in here.”
“Bullshit. There are three of you inside that room.”
“Not anymore. The other two escaped and are circling around on you boys right now.”
A crunch of grit. A quick peek inside. An equally quick retreat back behind the wall.
Then came a whispered relay of information.
“There’s no way out of the basement,” said the speaker.
Curiously, they had yet to mention Qin. “Did any of you actually find the girl? Anyone in your company?”
“What does it matter?”
“Because it sounds like they found her. In a whole city how would they know where to look unless they had inside knowledge? They took her, stashed her, and conveniently found her here as well. Then they got Spider to position you guys here with the bullshit story of ‘in case someone returns.’ They told you exactly where to look, didn’t they?”
That pissed them off a bit.
“You should probably send someone to wherever they’ve taken her, make sure you’re not about to take the blame for her murder.”
Two of them peered into the room and ducked away again. “Where’d the other two go?”
“I told you. They found a way to escape.”
“Like hell they did. They’re in the basement.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Look, you don’t want to start a war, neither do we. You can come in here, do your job, and when you see that I’m telling you the truth you can tell Spider what I’ve told you. I don’t know when it’s going to happen but those doctors are going to fuck you over when they’re done with the girl. It’ll be soon. They’re already preparing to leave Erast, aren’t they?”
They needed a moment to debate amongst themselves. They hadn’t mentioned anything about needing permission to be in Ispar’s territory yet there I was, in clear violation of that. If they belonged to Ispar Company they’d know that I shouldn’t be there. They wouldn’t hesitate to point it out since that’s a good way of getting a bribe. It’s also a good way to start a war. One of the fastest ways is if someone dipshit in your company kills a rival who already had permission to be there. For that reason, the captain himself makes sure that everyone in his command knows who can and can’t be there.
So here’s how it looked: Spider had sent a couple of his guys from Vanguard into Ispar’s territory. It was their mess with the doctors. They had to clean it up. The guys a few feet away from me were on a tight leash. The thing is, they had no way of knowing who Ispar had or not had given permission to. There was a chance I was innocent in all of this, coming to warn them that we’re all about to be fucked over. If I was sent here by my captain and never returned, he’d send someone to Ispar. Ispar would send someone to Vanguard. Spider would have to deal with whoever was behind that wall with extreme violence.
It was an awkward decision on their part.
It was going to be extra awkward if they sent someone to Ispar to see if I was telling the truth.
Eventually the speaker said, “All right. We’re going to take you back to Spider. You can tell him everything you’ve told us. Let him decide.”
“My captain won’t like that,” I said.
“That’s between you and your captain, and I gotta say you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. Toss your weapon out here.”
I had a feeling the ‘or else’ follow up would see them toss a flaming jar of oil and nails into the room. Losing two daggers in the same day was going to cost me, but it wasn’t like I could take on six guys with that dinky little thing anyway.
I did as they wanted. I chucked Lieutenant’s dagger to the doorway.
One of the guys snorted. “What the fuck is that? A woman’s nail file?”
The speaker was less impressed. “I warned you about fucking with us.”
“That’s all I had on me,” I said.
“Bullshit.”
“Have a look for yourself.” I dropped the soot and held my hands up, empty.
The speaker peered inside, testing me while keeping one eye on the trapdoor. “Really?”
“My captain didn’t think it was a good idea to come here armed.”
“Yet you came armed anyway?”
“That was more for opening doors and windows,” I said.
The speaker, not exactly gifted with good looks or clean breath, gave me a disgruntled nod. He stepped inside, his short sword drawn and angled in front of him, ready to skewer me in case I charged forward. He was taller than me and lanky. His beard did what it could to cover burns and scraps across his face, but even so he’d had a rough time somewhere in the past. Since humans go for the chest more often than the face I’d say that he had to fight off some raving animal. One eye dipped down, half closed, the result of a scar that had healed over.
His friend came in after him. Sword drawn. Just as tall but broader. Chubbier, too. A human shield. Harder to break his ribs with a punch. Something about him seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite place it.
Two men. Both with swords. Me standing there with my hands up, unarmed and out of magic. I’d like to say that I’ve faced worse odds and lived to tell the tale but I was willing to bet that these two had seen worse odds as well.
The chubby one squinted at me with a slight half-turn of his jaw. He knew me. He couldn’t place me either but he had certainly seen me somewhere before.
“What happened to your face?” asked the skinny one.
“Our captive was a little violent when we apprehended him,” I said.
He nodded to the far side of the room. “Open up the trapdoor.”
“Nice and slowly,” added the chubby one.
I tried to figure out if I recognized the chubby one’s voice. Couldn’t. I guess I had seen him but had never spoken to him.
I opened the trap door. This left them with a problem. In order to peer down they would have to turn their attention away from me and expose themselves to whoever was in the room below.
“Get them to come back up.”
“You can come up now,” I said.
The twosome glared at me like a pair of idiots. “I said get them to come back up.”
“I can’t help it if they’ve either escaped or don’t want to climb up.”
The skinny one shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You can come with us. Easier to handle.”
“First tell me where the girl is.”
“That’s not how this works. You come with us. You answer every question our captain asks you.”
“I’ve got to be able to bring something back to my captain as well. If not Castor’s daughter, then the first girl they took. Where’s she?”
The familiar one looked to his friend, the answer unknown to him. That ruled out a few key Vanguard locations right away.
“Why would you care about her?” asked the skinny one. His tone was wrong. He’d heard something about her and probably about someone who looked a lot like me entering his territory and stirring up trouble.
“Her family has called in an old favor,” I said. “I’d like to find her.”
“She’s an orphan.”
“Not everyone at an orphanage is an orphan.”
“This one is.”
Is. Present tense. Good.
Unfortunately the very mention of the orphanage stirred something in them both. They locked onto me, the trouble-maker found.
The chubby one craned his head towards me. “Brayen?”
It was worse than I feared. “Not me.”
He snorted a single laugh. “Yeah, it’s you.” He turned to his friend. “This little pipsqueak used to cry himself to sleep.”
It was my turn to squint. “Jorna?”
He lifted his chin at me, sizing me up. “There we go. Gotta say, I haven’t thought about you since I left that shit hole. You’re no member of Ispar. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Looking for kidnapped girls.”
Jorna shrugged while still doing his best to stare me down. The skinny one asked, “That was you this morning?” He pushed his sword closer to my gut.
“I’ve been on a tight schedule.”
“There are formalities you should adhere to.”
“Have you heard about her?”
“Let’s see, have we heard about Kasera and Castor storming through our streets and knocking
down our doors, asking about a missing girl? You took her, didn’t you?”
I tried to reason with Jorna. “Do you remember Kiera? Disappeared twenty years back.”
“No.” Possible. He was a year or two older than me. He might’ve left before she disappeared.
“The doctors took her. Killed her. That’s what they do. They target orphans and they kill them.”
A smile crept over his face. “Is that why you’re here? Because of an old girlfriend?”
It was going to be rough. Two here, at least two more still by the door. Possibly four more by the door, ready to charge in. I knew all their tricks. They knew all of mine. I was out of magic. Greaser was low. Runaway should be fine but he wasn’t a mage. Two short swords were on me. Jorna, to my left. His friend dead ahead. The point of each blade was barely a foot away from my stomach. Easy thrusting range.
“Jorna, huh? Once a bully, always a bully.”
The grin faded from his face. “Says the little bitch who cried whenever I hit him.”
A grin in turn spread across my face. “I have stories about you too.”
There it came. A glare.
“Do you remember Orla? And Zeeya? As soon as you left, the truth came out.”
“You’re talking out of your ass, Brayen.”
I was one foot away from the trapdoor. Wide enough for me to drop straight down. Jorna’s tunnel vision started to kick in.
“Funny you should say ‘ass’. Orla said it was a donkey you were caught fucking. Zeeya swears it was a–” I kicked out in front of me, in an arc, against the skinny one’s blade and sending it towards Jorna. Jorna jolted out of the way. The skinny one was correcting. I threw myself forward, grabbed onto his forearm as tight as I could, stepped back into the hole of the trapdoor, dropping with all my weight and pulling the skinny one down with me.