Mourningbird

by Brock Deskins

  “Have you learned to live with it? I suppose you have, just as I have learned to live with this leg that no longer functions properly. I can get around, but I can never get back what was lost. I think you suffer in much of the same way.”

  “I don’t have a limp.”

  “No, your injuries are on the inside, and those can leave a person crippled even more than a bad leg—” he nodded at Cleary “—or arm.”

  “I’m not a cripple!”

  “Aren’t you? We have done some research on you recently. Mr. Cleary is no stranger to the ways of Wayward House. He knows how they operate, how they take advantage of and mistreat their wards. Occasionally, they employ a person of particularly foul disposition who leaves the children under his auspices with scars that never completely heal.”

  Conner pulled the hood off of the man’s head. Kiera gasped and took a step back, her heart racing as old terrors burst from the shadows of suppressed memories. The fear was momentary, a flash in the pan before the fire of rage burned all other emotions and thoughts to cinders.

  Kiera moved so fast it took both men by surprise. One moment she was stepping away, her eyes wide with shock, the next she was in a headlong dash, eyes narrowed and focused on Remus’ terrified face. She leapt into the air, her knees parted to clamp around the man’s torso. Remus and the chair he was tied to fell back under the impact, his head striking the stone floor with a dull thud.

  A long, animalistic cry erupted from Kiera’s mouth, the force of it making her throat burn as she brought her elbow down in a wild flurry of strikes. Remus’ strangled cries became more garbled as blood filled his mouth and saturated the gag. Kiera stood and delivered several kicks to his side and stomped on his chest. She could hear and feel several of the ribs break beneath her pummeling foot.

  When Kiera finally relented in her assault and stood over Remus, gasping in short breaths of air, Cleary slid a dagger across the floor where it came to a stop near her feet. “Go on and finish it.”

  Kiera stared at the knife for a moment before kneeling down and picking it up. She held the blade near Remus’ swelling, terrified eyes and said, “You know what’s stupid about abusing children? They never forget, and they don’t stay children forever.”

  The knife darted in and cut the gag tied around Remus’ head. He spat out the sodden wad from his mouth and coughed up blood as he lay on the floor sobbing.

  “I had better not ever lay eyes on you again, Remus. This would be a very good time for you to find a new city to call home.” Kiera tossed the knife at Cleary’s feet. “You want to kill him, go ahead. Like I said, I’m a thief, not a killer.”

  “I still think you would make a valuable asset,” Conner said. “There is a lot more to the job than killing, Kiera. Most of it is infiltration and gathering evidence so that criminals are brought to trial. You have a lot of talent. That is evident. With the right training, I think you could be exceptional. I would pay you a respectable salary. Certainly more than you make stealing. I have resources at my disposal that can help keep you safe from people like Fred and Nimat.”

  “I already know how to fight, and I don’t need you or your money or your fancy house to keep me safe. I have managed this long on my own, and I can continue to do so without your help.”

  The former inquisitor crossed his arms and stared at the girl for several uncomfortable seconds. “All right, but before you leave, I need you to answer some questions. Why did you steal the arcanstone?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “The hell you didn’t,” Cleary exclaimed. “Don’t think to play games with us, girl. I know it was you at Fred’s, and I know you took the stone from me.”

  “I didn’t take your stupid stone because you didn’t have it!”

  “What are you saying?” Conner asked.

  “I thought he had it, and I thought I stole it from him, but it was nothing but dead weight. Someone got to him before I did.”

  Cleary shook his head. “Not possible. I ran from the warehouse the moment I took the stone from you. Five minutes later, you jumped me and stole it.”

  “It took me longer than that to find you. You were standing in the middle of the street when I caught up to you. You were staring ahead without moving like you were waiting for someone. That’s why I hesitated to jump you. When you took a swipe at the shadows, I figured you were losing it, and that’s when I made my move.”

  Conner turned to Cleary. “Are you sure about the length of time?”

  “Of course I am! I ran off as best I could while bleeding out. I thought I saw movement on the street and stopped. Wait…someone flashed a light in my eyes and I took a swing at them. But there wasn’t any lapse in time. The light flashed, I swung, there was no one there, then a moment later she came at me.”

  “Kiera, did you see a flash of light?”

  “Yeah, but I was still a block away or more. I thought maybe one of the gas lamps blew.”

  “Mr. Cleary, are you certain of the timeliness of events as they transpired?”

  “Absolutely, unless I was unconscious for a spell.”

  “Or very disoriented?”

  “I did feel like my brain was a bit scrambled.” He looked at Kiera. “I definitely wasn’t fighting at my best.”

  Kiera snorted. “Losers always have excuses.”

  “Keep ruffling your feathers at me and I’ll pluck them from your hide.”

  “Whatever. It’s obvious I don’t have your stone, so can I go now?”

  “It’s hardly obvious,” Conner said.

  “It is if you’re not an idiot. There are two possibilities. One, I’m telling the truth. Two, I’m lying; I took the stone from your man and gave it to Nimat in exchange for wiping out my debt and killing Fred. Either way, I don’t have your damn stone, so now I’m leaving.”

  “There is one more thing I would like to discuss,” Conner said.

  Kiera sighed and turned back. “What?”

  “I mentioned a job.”

  “And I told you I’m not a whore, so you can go screw yourself…or each other if that’s your thing. I really don’t care.”

  “And I told you that’s not what I want.”

  “It’s been my experience that men want two things, sex and money, and I’m not handing out either one. I listened to your offer and reject it. I’m leaving.”

  Cleary moved to intercept her, but Conner grabbed him by the arm to restrain him. “Kiera, I hope you will keep this conversation secret.”

  Kiera twiddled her fingers over her shoulder. “Add being a snitch to the list of things I don’t do.”

  The two men watched Kiera walk away without another word until she left.

  “We’ve created a loose end,” Cleary said.

  “She’s no threat. Even if she went to the gendarme, she could tell them nothing that the inquisitor does not already know or at least suspect.”

  “Now what? We still lack an operative, and I don’t know who else to recommend. I’m not even sure why I thought she would work.”

  “Do you believe in fate, Mr. Cleary?”

  Cleary scrunched up his face. “You mean that some outside force moves us around like pieces on a giant chessboard? No, not in the slightest.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing the fates don’t care what you think. She’ll come back around one way or another. Her constant reappearance in affairs far bigger than her is too great to be mere coincidence.”

  “If you say so,” Cleary said with a dissenting grunt.

  “Not me, fate.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Kiera’s flight through Midtown, and the emotional battering she had both delivered and received, had left her exhausted and more than a little frustrated. Despite her fatigue, she felt the need to release some of her pent-up anger as well as work on her combative skills.

  “Wesley!” Kiera called out, but she received no answer.

  She poked her head in the few rooms she had access to, but Wesley was nowhere to be found. Kiera felt
a tingle of anxiety course through her body, but she pushed her worries away, clinging to the likelihood that he was still working or maybe hanging out in some dank drug den getting high.

  Kiera went to her training room, turned a crank handle protruding from the wall, and wound the large spring attached to an impressive clockwork system hidden behind the walls and under the floor to its maximum compression. The automated system was not nearly as good as having a person controlling it since the movements were predictable, but it was better than nothing.

  She triggered the release, and the machine whirred, clunked, and clanked into motion. Kiera leapt into the swinging wooden appendages and battled the mechanical beast until she was so exhausted that she began taking more hits than she could deliver or block.

  Despite her willingness and above average ability, Kiera had no love of fighting. It was a means of protecting herself and her friends—her family. She never found satisfaction in hurting people regardless of Wesley’s assertions, with a few exceptions she had not noticed until getting her hands on Remus.

  As was the case with the disgusting man in the public rations queue, she had to admit to herself that she did feel a measure of gratification having finally administered a form of justice to Remus. While she had buried the memories and emotional pain of his abuse deep within her psyche, they still affected her.

  Returning those abuses to him had been liberating and almost uplifting. Her soul felt just a little bit lighter. In a rare moment of empathy, Kiera thought about how many people were in this city carrying the same burdens and what it would mean to them if someone could do something to lift some of that from their shoulders. She found that the thought of doing so filled her with similar feelings of satisfaction.

  Distracted by her thoughts, she failed to note the shifting gears, and one of the fighting pillar’s upper arms swung around and clobbered her in the back of the head. Kiera cursed, blocked the return swing, and delivered several swift strikes in retribution. She chastised herself for her fanciful thoughts and quashed them.

  Her excess energy finally spent, Kiera relented to her fatigue. It was hours before dark, but sleep called to her and she answered. Not even the pain of her newest bumps, bruises, and abrasions could keep her awake.

  ***

  Nimat moved through the passages beneath her subterranean home with ease and perfect awareness of her surroundings while almost anyone else would be all but blind in the darkness. The only disturbance that reached her ears was the sound of an occasional skitter lizard scrambling from her path.

  The attack came without warning. The assailant moved with uncanny stealth, and yet Nimat was able to leap aside, draw her slender blades, and parry what should have been a lethal strike.

  Her opening gambit thwarted, Naia threw herself into her attack with wild abandon. Naia wove her knives in a dizzying flurry of slashes and jabs. Nimat’s blades mirrored the girl’s, not just in appearance but motion. Sparks flew from the ringing impacts of clashing void steel.

  “Enough!” Nimat ordered.

  Naia’s blades instantly vanished into their sheaths as she dropped to her knees, bowing her head in supplication.

  “You have learned much. It is time for you to put your skills to use. Someone has stolen from me, and I want you to find them and my stone.”

  Naia’s head snapped up and a gleeful smile lit her face. “I get to play outside?”

  Nimat’s hand came around in the blink of an eye, and the sound of colliding flesh echoed through the room. Naia could have blocked or avoided the fierce slap, but that would have only made Nimat angrier.

  “You are never to be seen or heard! That is how you stay alive. That is how you kill.”

  The girl cast her eyes to the floor once more and signed, “Yes, Mahsa. Forgive me.”

  “I understand your enthusiasm, but you must never let your emotion overrule your training. There is one out there like us, but he is not with us. He is very dangerous, and you must not let him see you. If you find him, you will tell me, and I will deal with him.”

  “What if someone else has your stone?”

  Nimat stroked her daughter’s hair and caressed her cheek. “Punish them. Make them bleed for your mahsa, and bring back what is mine. Go.”

  Naia scurried away like a wild animal released from its cage. She moved as swiftly and silently as a shadow. Few of Undercity’s denizens noted her passage. Those who did caught little more than a flicker of movement and felt the feather-soft brush of air disturbed by her passing.

  She emerged on the surface and found night had fallen, and yet it was like stepping out into the sun compared to the darkness of her normal existence. Both moons, Bronte and Niobe, cast their light upon the city, which was far more than she needed to see clearly. She gazed up at the luminous orbs hanging in the sky and smiled despite the discomfort their brightness caused her.

  Naia turned her attention to her duties and streaked across the city, relishing the freedom she felt as she sprang across rooftops and sprinted down alleys. Small but pure arcanstones adorned a pair of bracelets encircling her slender wrists, providing her with the energy needed to sprint across the city without stopping to rest.

  She reached the warehouse where her mahsa had lost her precious arcanstone and found it swarming with gendarmes. Their presence did not concern her and only made her visit that much more entertaining. Naia scaled the side of a nearby building and leapt to the roof of the warehouse. She peered over the side to see if any of the soldiers had noted her landing. They had not, so she found a small stone, threw it at one standing below her, and giggled when it clanged against the gendarme’s helmet.

  The man spun around in a circle, righting his helmet. “What in the Tormented Plane? Someone check the roof!”

  Naia ignored the gendarmes scrambling about trying to find a way up and padded across the roof to a shattered skylight. She sniffed along the edge as if inhaling a long line of dream dust and flicked her tongue out like a snake tasting the air.

  Her red lips curled into a smile at a familiar scent and taste. “Chicken girl. Bawk, bawk.”

  She leapt through the hole and landed upon a tall stack of crates with no more noise than one of the many skitter lizards scurrying about the building. More gendarmes stood within the interior, guarding it during the night while they continued their investigation.

  Naia ignored the men, intent on prying out secrets their inferior eyes were unlikely to uncover. She hopped across the tops of the crates, sniffing and tasting the air. A strong aroma of foul magic made her crinkle her nose in disgust. It smelled like Mahsa but more putrid. Perhaps it was only because she was unfamiliar with the one who had cast it, as it was similar to that of Nimat and, to a lesser extent, her own.

  She also smelled blood tainted with bile, giving evidence to the creature having been wounded. Naia licked at the air and detected a purer source of magic having been used, that of arcanstones. She slithered along the shadowy passageways created by the stacked crates, avoiding the pools of light cast by the occasional lantern.

  The trail of magical residue still faintly cloying the air led her to a dark corner of the warehouse. Naia was not certain what it was that drew her attention, but she identified it the moment she laid eyes on it. She had to reach her arm into the empty space between the bottom of a crate and the floor to retrieve it from its hiding place.

  Naia studied the object she held. It looked like a metal mushroom with several small, faceted bits of mage glass set along the cap’s outer ring. A length of shimmersilk cord dangled from the stem end and appeared to have been severed. The techno-scribings were intricate and complex, some of the best she had ever seen.

  She licked the grapnel and smiled. “Bawk, bawk.”

  Naia pocketed the grapnel and could have made her escape with more ease than she had her entrance, but it was rare that Mahsa let her out to play, and she was not about to squander the opportunity. She clambered to the top of the crates and looked down the warehouse’s
expansive length. Her eyes settled on the lanterns hanging on several posts and she reached out to them one by one as if to take them. The arcanstones in her bracelets glowed ever so slightly as she channeled power from them and snuffed out the flames of every other lantern.

  The gendarmes went on alert but had not yet begun sounding an alarm. They drew blades, readied muskets, and stalked toward the extinguished lamps with slow, wary steps. Naia singled out a young man holding his musket in trembling hands and drew a long, slender blade.

  She crouched next to a stack of crates in the main aisle and wrapped herself in shadows. The gendarme recruit walked past her so close she could have reached out and touched his leg if she so desired. Naia stepped up behind him and blew in his ear. The young man spun about, his wide eyes opening even further until his pupils were a dark stain on a field of white.

  Naia tapped him twice on the nose with her forefinger. “Bawk, bawk.”

  Her knife flashed down before he could utter a sound, sliding between his flesh and the leather belt encircling his waist. Naia grabbed the waistband of his trousers in the same motion, pulled them down below his knees, and shoved him over backward.

  The gendarme finally caught enough breath to let out a strangled cry as he toppled, his musket discharging into the roof upon striking the floor. Naia’s manic laughter accompanied the chorus of gunfire when the other gendarmes unleashed a volley at her fleeing form as she leapt atop the crates and sprinted across them. Having had her fun, she threw herself at the hole in the skylight, grabbed the edge with one hand, and flipped onto the roof without the slightest bit of effort.

  She ignored the furious shouts from below as she tasted the air, picked up the “scent,” and ran off into the darkness. The trail of energy was faint, being a day old and passive in nature. Expended energy left a heavier residue, and if she had not listened to Kiera’s recounting of events and known the path she had taken, she probably would have lost it.

  It was lucky that she was still in Midtown where there was little in the way of arcanstones being used. Had it been Liberty, she definitely would have lost the trail amidst the background residue of everyday mage glass trinkets and arcanstone-powered devices.