by Jay Posey
“What do they sell?” Wren asked suddenly.
It was a good question. There didn’t seem to be much that the people outside of Morningside could provide to those inside. Hand-crafted trinkets, perhaps. Something just endearing enough to attract the charity of a wealthy city-dweller. But Three’s quick eye saw little in the way of goods among those preparing to enter the city. It clicked for him, then. Most of the outcasts that made a living in Morningside probably did so by selling themselves, in one way or another. Indentured servitude. Freedom for security.
“Don’t know, Wren. Maybe they’re all musicians.”
“That sounds fun,” Wren said. Then with barely a pause added, “How do we get inside?”
“Quickly,” Three answered. “And with big smiles.”
Wren looked up, not understanding. Three just looked down and winked. Wren held his hand a little tighter.
Within a few more minutes, a gate was looming ahead of them. Not the same gate they’d entered before, though not far from it either. A steady trickle of people had already started making its way into the city.
“Hold on a sec,” Three said, stopping. Wren turned to face Three, and in the next moment Three had him under the arms and was picking him up. Three lifted the boy up over his head and set him on his shoulders.
“Won’t they be looking for us?”
“Yeah,” Three said. “But we often see what we expect, and miss what we don’t.”
As they approached the gate, Three moved up alongside a woman who was carrying two large cases, one stacked atop the other. She was a few years older than he was, with wrinkles just starting at the corners of her eyes. Brown hair pulled back in a loose knot, with wisps floating on either side of her face. Not particularly attractive.
“Ma’am, we’re headed the same direction,” he said, smiling. “Can I carry those for you?”
The woman smiled faintly but shook her head. “Oh no, I can manage. I do it every day.”
But Three was already taking the top case. The woman tried to protest, but she needed both hands to hold the other, so there wasn’t much she could do. Three fell into step with her, close enough so their shoulders brushed as they walked, and just kept smiling.
“Whew, one of these is heavy enough,” he said. “You must be the strongest woman in Morningside.”
“It’s really OK,” she said, though already he could tell she didn’t mean it. “I can manage.”
“You already said that,” Three said with a wink. “Day in, day out, you manage it. You deserve a break.”
“Well, thank you.”
“It’s my sincere pleasure, ma’am.”
They were maybe fifty feet from the gate. Three counted four guards. One more than the other gate had last evening. The guards were scanning the people as they passed, but so far they hadn’t stopped anyone.
“I usually come in through the south side,” Three said. “Do they always post four on this gate?”
“Just one most days, sometimes two,” the woman said. “I don’t see Jonas, though. He’s always here.”
“Day off maybe.”
Thirty feet. Three slowed his pace just enough to let another pair of travelers catch up. The woman instinctively matched his stride without even seeming to notice.
“No, yesterday was his day off. Something must be going on inside.”
“Parade for the Governor, I bet.”
The woman snorted. “And me in my work clothes.”
“You look lovely, ma’am. If you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I do mind, because it’s not true,” she said with a slight frown. But then a smirk appeared. “But keep talking anyway.”
“If those are your work clothes, I’d hate to see you in your finery. I might be tempted to flirt.”
“I don’t remember what that’s like.”
“Neither do I, ma’am.”
They shared a laugh then, though only the woman’s was genuine. Fifteen feet. One guard was scanning the horizon in an unfocused way, two of the guards were looking at the pair of travelers that Three had let pass. But the other was staring right at him.
“How you doin’ up there, buddy?” Three asked Wren.
“OK.”
“You smilin’?”
Wren didn’t answer, which meant the answer was no. Ten feet. The guard’s eyes narrowed. His hand went down to his belt. So Three did the only thing he could.
He lurched forward suddenly, fumbled the case, and went sprawling on his hands and knees right at the guard’s feet. The woman gasped, and Wren let out a little yelp. But somehow the boy managed to land on his feet just a step or two beyond the guard. Though a trained eye might’ve picked up on the way Three had kept Wren from falling, or how gently the case went to the ground without tipping over or spilling its contents, to the surrounding crowd it looked entirely as if he’d just tripped over his own feet.
Three burst into laughter then. A raucous, foolish guffaw that guaranteed all eyes were on him as he rocked back on his knees and hung his head in mock shame.
“Honey, are you alright?” the woman asked.
“Fine. I’m fine.” Three looked up at the guard, locked eyes with him. Smiled. “Just an idiot.”
The guard searched his face for a moment. Then quickly reached down and took his arm. Firm.
And helped him to his feet.
“Sure you’re OK, sir?”
Three kept smiling, and clapped the guard on the shoulder. “Broke my pride, but I think that’s it.” He picked the case back up and dusted it off.
“Well, try to be more careful,” the guard said. “Lucky your son’s so quick on his feet.”
“Yes, sir, I am. Lucky to have him. You have a great day,” Three answered with a nod.
And with that, Three and Wren breezed inside the city. They walked with the woman to the tea-house where she worked, Three alternating between apologizing and flirting the whole way there. By the time they parted ways, she’d made not so subtle invitations for him to meet her at sundown, and suggested that some kind of repayment was in order for his kindness. Three assured her it was not, and made as clean a getaway as he could.
Once they were back out on the street, he took Wren by the hand.
“Sorry if I scared you,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna let you get hurt.”
“I know,” Wren said.
“You OK?”
Wren nodded.
“Ready?”
Wren nodded.
“Alright. Where is she now?”
“This way.” Wren tugged Three’s hand, and gently guided him through Morningside’s elegant streets and walkways.
There was a heavy sleepiness to the city, as if the citizens were waiting for the outsiders to take care of the morning. The further they moved away from the gates, the fewer people they saw. Wren led Three through an unfamiliar quarter, heavily shadowed by the wall at sunrise. He stopped suddenly, and drew Three to one side, slipping into an alley between two darkly-windowed buildings.
“She’s there,” the boy said, pointing to a squat, one-story building further down the path. It was quiet here, almost untouched by the distant murmuring of the rest of the waking city.
“Is she alone?”
Wren shook his head. No point in going in, then. Three scanned the area. It was too open here. But further down the alley…
Three crouched down on a knee, and put his hands on Wren’s shoulders.
“I need you to do something brave,” he said.
Wren stared back with his deep sea-green eyes, intent but watery. Afraid, but trying desperately not to show it. The boy nodded.
“I need you to let her see you.”
Wren stood utterly still. Eyes wide, jaw clenched. His breathing quickened.
“Stand here at the end of the alley. As soon as she sees you, just turn and walk down there.” Three pointed back down the alley between the two buildings, to where they backed up against the city’s great wall. “I’ll be right the
re, waiting. I’m not gonna let her hurt you, OK? Don’t run. Just walk. Even if she calls your name, don’t run or turn around. Just keep walking. Think you can do that?”
A long pause. Then Wren shook his head slowly.
“I don’t think I can,” he said. “I can.”
Three squeezed Wren’s shoulders. Ruffled his hair. “I’ll be right there.”
Wren nodded. Three took to his feet and walked down the length of the alley. Forty feet, maybe. It opened into a small sort of courtyard between the buildings and the wall, though the space seemed mostly unused. Three was relieved to find there were no windows back here. He turned and looked back to Wren, who was watching him. Three nodded and gave the boy a thumbs-up. Wren waved and disappeared around the corner.
The next few minutes were the worst Three had suffered since the night he’d lost Cass. He hadn’t meant for Wren to leave his sight, and he cursed himself for not telling the boy that explicitly. But there was nothing to be done about it now. He couldn’t risk getting caught out in the open, not when Wren might turn the corner at any second with Jez close behind. The seconds crawled by, and Three fought to still himself, fought to silence the voices screaming in his head at how foolish a plan he’d made, how he’d endangered Wren, how Jez had probably already caught him. What was taking so long? Three slid low to the ground and risked a peek around the corner. Where was Wren? How much closer to the building had he gone? There was a distant sound, a high pitch, muffled. Was that Wren, calling out? Three stood back up. This wasn’t going to work. Wasn’t working. He cursed himself for not thinking it through, for putting Wren in harm’s way. He had to get him back. Three was just stepping into the alley when Wren rounded the corner at the opposite end, walking carefully towards him.
The boy’s face was bloodless, ghostly white, and even from this distance, Three could see he was shaking. But he held strong, kept his pace steady. Three motioned for him to keep coming, and then slipped back into the shadows of the courtyard.
He could hear the boy’s shuffling footsteps echoing down the alleyway. Closer. Almost there. And then.
“Wren?” A woman’s voice. Warm. Tender. Not at all what Three had expected. “Wren, sweetheart, is that you?”
But Wren did just what Three had told him. His pace didn’t falter. A few seconds later he came into the courtyard and headed straight for Three. Three pressed a finger to his lips and waved Wren into the far corner, furthest from the entrance. Wren nodded and moved there quickly, curling himself into a tight ball, hands over his ears and terror in his eyes.
Three crept silently to the edge of the nearest building, moved into position, poised to strike. He could hear her approaching cautiously, footsteps falling fainter the nearer she got. Then, silence. Three strained to hear her.
“Wren?” she said again.
She had stopped about two-thirds of the way down the alley. But it was alright. Either she’d come all the way to investigate, or she’d wave it off and turn back the other way. If she didn’t come to him, Three could cover the distance and take her down before she made it back to the street.
“Is there someone back there with you, sweetheart?” It shouldn’t have mattered, but Three couldn’t help but notice the perfect quality of Jez’s voice. Rounded and full, pleasantly deep. Resonant. “Why don’t you come out where I can see you?”
Without even realizing it, Three started edging towards the alley. He caught himself.
“It’s alright,” Jez said. “I want you to come out.”
Her voice seemed to come straight from inside his own head, a honeyed droning that filled Three with a sense of complete calm. And he remembered how beautiful she was. Vividly he saw her in his mind, her perfect features, her perfect form accentuated by her fitted bodysuit. Three felt himself sliding dreamlike, even as one part of his mind raced to analyze what was happening. Some kind of vocal implants, most likely. Wren had warned him. But the most common ones worked through connection, like a virus for the mind. Three had never experienced anything like this before.
“Come out. I just want to see you.”
He knew exactly what was happening. The frequency of her voice was being tuned to modulate the electrical impulses in his brain, inducing a dream-like state that left him dangerously open to suggestion. And even knowing this, he couldn’t keep himself from stepping into the alley.
“There you are,” Jez said with a suppressed smile. Seductive. “I’m so glad to see you.”
She took a step closer. Three’s arms hung limply at his sides, while the tiny part of his mind that was still his own screamed for him to act. He would have to destroy her… but not yet. He wanted to hear her, to see her, just a little longer. He felt so warm, so comfortable. She started walking toward him now. Not the stalking, bird-like movements he’d seen before. Fluid. Feline.
“I was hoping I could be the one to find you, you know,” she said, her voice low. “I wanted to be the one.”
Her smile. Her eyes. Everything about her said she loved him. Desired him. But Jez was going to kill him. He knew it. And he accepted it. It would be alright.
“Asher will love me for being the one.”
Six feet away.
And suddenly an arctic light pierced the veil, a pulse of blinding white shocking him back to himself. He reflexively shielded his eyes. In the next instant he glanced back to Jez, who was momentarily stunned by the flash. Their eyes met for a split second, and as she opened her mouth to speak, Three closed the gap and lashed out, striking her across the throat with the web of his hand.
Jez reeled backwards choking, but as Three advanced she snapped her head around, whipping her long braids towards him. Not realizing the threat he tried to strike through the attack, but felt the sudden impact and sting across his face as the razortips woven in her hair bit deeply into the flesh of his cheek and neck and brow. The shock blurred his vision, and he missed his target.
Three followed with a forearm, but Jez slipped the blow and swiped upward with her palm, aiming for his eyes. Three threw his head back, narrowly dodging the attack. He snatched her wrist with one hand and wrenched her elbow with the other, using the leverage to slam her face-first into the alley wall. Before she could rebound, he drove his knee into her lower back. And as she arched backwards from the strike, he grabbed her head in a lock and twisted nearly to the point of breaking.
It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been in her position, a fraction of an inch and a few pounds of torque from dead. Jez started to go slack, and Three forced her down on to her knees, keeping a strong stance behind her. Another day, in that critical moment, he would’ve snapped her neck without hesitation. But the sudden realization that if not for Dagon’s mercy he would be dead was enough to give him pause. Locked together as they were, his cheek pressed hard against the back of her head, Three could hear her choking breath as Jez’s throat continued to spasm from his blow. The whole left side of his face was wet and sticky with blood, one eye blinded with it.
“Please,” Jez rasped, barely forcing the word out through his chokehold. The power of her voice was gone. So, it seemed, her will to fight. Jez wasn’t like Fedor or Kostya. She wasn’t a fighter. She was a manipulator, a seductress. And somehow, now, caught in his arms that were so much stronger, she seemed suddenly fragile. Not altogether unlike Cass.
At the far end of the alley, towards the city, the white light continued to pulse. Three recognized the source now. Wren’s strobe from the Vault. He’d forgotten the boy even had it. Three glanced behind him with his good eye. Wren was there, standing in the courtyard. Watching. Three loosened his grip on Jez.
And suddenly–
“Asher, he’s here!” she called out in her damaged voice.
Three strengthened his hold.
“Wren,” he called. “Look away.”
He left her body behind the building and together with Wren fled towards the center of the city. They were careful to dodge other citizens until Three could get the bleedi
ng stopped and the blood washed off his face. Crouched behind a one-story clothing shop, he used a maintenance pump to splash ice cold water across his latest wounds, and scrubbed them clean as best he could.
The cuts sprayed across his face were thin but deep, the kind of precision pain only a razor can deliver. The one across his eyebrow was the worst. He was fortunate not to have lost the eye completely. Wren stood quietly by, pale with fear, brave in his silence.
Three wiped his face and shook his hands dry as well as he could, and caught Wren’s eye. “You OK?”
Wren nodded slightly.
“Where’s Ran now?”
Wren’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “Heading back towards the middle of the city.”
“Governor’s compound?”
Wren shrugged. “I guess. Yes, that seems right.”
Three wondered why. Why Asher wouldn’t send Ran after them immediately. Frightened? He probably didn’t know about Dagon yet, not for sure. But he’d lost Fedor and Jez within eight hours. Maybe in his panic, he was calling all security back home. But Three’s hope of that was quickly lost. The next moment, all across the city, alarms began to blare.
Wren reflexively stepped into Three’s body, buried his face against Three’s neck. Three threw his arm around him protectively.
“They’re coming!” Wren said in a terrified whisper. He gripped Three so tightly, it nearly choked him.
“I’m not gonna let ’em take you, Wren. Not now.”
It was a promise. He said it, and he meant it, even though he had no idea how he was going to keep it. His brow still hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, but if they were alerting the whole city there was no reason to worry about that now. And there was no way to figure out a plan, no time to strategize. Three didn’t know how many guardsmen a city the size of Morningside had, but it was likely in the hundreds. They had to move.
“Come on, Wren,” Three said, picking the boy up.
Morningside’s security forces would most likely seal the gates, and work their way from outside in. That made the Governor’s compound literally the last place they’d look. And maybe he’d get a shot at Asher before all was said and done.