Clarity's Edge: Technopaladin, #1

by Elizabeth Corrigan

  A few of the men looked at Archer askance when she indicated he was responsible for her presence, but if she expected any of them to gainsay their apparent leader, she was disappointed. “I took you here to show you what was happening, and you’ve shown no understanding of the realities of the situation,” Archer said. “Now Garrett wants to talk to you.”

  Clarity swallowed. She was still pretty sure Garrett wasn’t going to kill a paladin, but she couldn’t imagine the crime lord didn’t want to threaten her in some way. “Fine,” she said, relieved her voice didn’t reveal her inner trembling. “Let’s go. But leave my friend be. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “He’s a paladin in the Azure District,” Archer said. “That’s cause enough for him to suffer.”

  Clarity didn’t argue. She couldn’t change his mind, and she wasn’t sure Archer had the technology to call off his men in any case. She was back to empty hope. “Let’s go then.”

  Archer kept his laser pistol up and pointed at Clarity as they started down the street. Two of his remaining men stood in front of her, leading the way, and she had to assume the other one fell into step behind Archer. As they moved through the dark streets, one of the men whispered, “Archer, did you really bring a paladin here?”

  Clarity couldn’t see the look on Archer’s face and didn’t dare turn around, but she could hear the glower in his voice when he spoke to his subordinate. “Grace vouched for her,” he said. “I had no idea she’d try to ruin everything.”

  Clarity found herself oddly calm at Archer’s words. Things might not be as black-and-white us-vs-them as people like Confidence and Archer wanted to think, but at least she had the moral high ground in this instance. “Explain to me how giving medicine to children is ruining anything, much less everything.”

  Archer and his men said nothing for a long moment, then a voice ahead of her spoke. “We have a system here. It may not be what you’re used to, but it works for us, and you have no business questioning it, child stealer.”

  Clarity resented the accusation, as she had personally never taken a child, but she accepted the insult as it was intended. She gestured at a building with a giant hole in the side and boarded-up windows, even though the thug who had spoken couldn’t see her. “How is your system working out for you? Your streets are empty, your buildings are abandoned., and your people dress in rags and fear for their children’s lives.”

  “Are you saying you have no poverty outside the Azure District? That there is no crime? I know better, paladin,” the man said. “I’ve been outside the district, and while you may live in your perfect city on a hill, not everyone is so lucky.”

  “No one here seems happy,” she said. “Not even you.”

  Clarity felt the laser pistol press against her back. “That’s enough out of you, paladin. You want to argue your superior moral code, you can do it to Garrett. Somehow, though, I think you’ll keep your mouth shut in front of him.”

  Clarity wanted to mutter something about someone hiding in the shadow of his boss, but she decided not to rock the boat any further. She doubted she would be as scared of Garrett as Archer thought, if only because she didn’t know enough about how horrible he was to be frightened. He was only one man, not a monster, and she had dealt with men who wanted to undermine her before.

  Eventually, the thugs stopped outside of a building and nodded to her to walk up the front steps. She had expected Garrett to reign from some grand building where he could lord it over his subjects, but the rowhouse didn’t look any different from any of the other buildings on the street. Wondering if there was some kind of trap, Clarity pushed herself up the stairs and examined the door.

  Archer nudged at her back again. “What are you waiting for? Open it.”

  Clarity did as she was told. She didn’t know how she would tell if the door was rigged anyway. Nothing happened as she turned and pulled the knob, so she entered the dimly-lit front hallway. She was about to ask which way she should go when she heard a scream from the back of the house. Her paladin instincts had her moving toward the sound before she could think better of it. She passed through a doorway, and the hall opened up into what she wanted to call a kitchen, since it had cabinets, a stove, and a refrigerator. The fact that a shirtless man was tied spread-eagle between those cabinets with his lashed, bleeding back facing the doorway led her to believe the room doubled as a torture chamber.

  Standing between Clarity and the man she knew she could not save was a tall, wiry man with dark, graying hair and empty blue eyes. His clothes were finer than those of the average Azurite but no nicer than those of the thugs who hurried to catch up to Clarity. In his hand, he held a long-handled whip with a vicious-looking spike on the end. As she stepped into the room, the man gave her a wicked grin and struck the tied-up man. The blow crossed one of his other wounds, and the victim cried out in agony.

  “Garrett, I presume.” Clarity tried to act as though a man being tortured didn’t affect her, even though every instinct she had told her to rip the whip out of Garrett’s hand and punch him in his smug face. She was on his turf, though, and she had to play by his rules.

  “Ah, the little paladin girl who’s been ruining my plans.” Garrett’s voice came out smooth and silky. “Rumor had it you weren’t coming back to my district, but I knew you wouldn’t stay away. Your kind can never keep their noses out of other people’s business.”

  “Paladins have stayed out of the Azure District for nearly two hundred years,” Clarity said. “We were probably due for some interference.”

  Garrett laughed as if Clarity had said something outrageously funny. “Oh, I am well aware of what most paladins think about us, and that most of them wouldn’t lift a finger to improve our lot. You are not like them, which makes you interesting. I knew I had to meet you.” Still looking at Clarity, he whipped his victim again.

  Clarity cringed as the man screamed. “Do you have to do that?”

  “Of course not, but you can’t stop me, can you?” Garrett struck the man again, as if to prove his point. “You see, this individual came here to inform me that a paladin found out about my deal with a clinic to get medicine for my people. Now the clinic refuses to deal with me. While that allows me the unique pleasure of making good on the threats I’ve been holding over their heads, I have to go to the trouble of finding another supplier. In the meantime, my people won’t have what they need. Possibly some of them will die. Whose fault do you think that is, paladin?”

  “You’re trying to make me feel guilty,” Clarity said. “It won’t work. I’m not intentionally injuring someone who works for me, and I don’t need to use threats to get medication from people.”

  “Funny,” Garrett said. “That’s not what I heard.”

  Clarity barely had time to ponder what he meant when the door to the house opened and a muddle of footsteps thumped down the corridor. Before Clarity could turn around, something---no, someone---fell in a huddle at her feet. Cass, she realized, closing her eyes.

  “Sir, we captured the other one,” one of the thugs said. Cass didn’t stand, but he glared at Garrett with a hatred Clarity couldn’t completely fathom.

  “What do you want from us?” Clarity asked.

  “What do you think I want with you?” Garrett asked. “You come into my district and interfere with my business. It only makes sense that I would desire to dissuade you from continuing by any means at my disposal.” He punctuated his last word with a whip, clearly designed to illustrate the kind of means he meant.

  “Perhaps,” Clarity said. “But you are a very busy man. If you just wanted to discourage our presence, you could have sent your minions to beat us up. You clearly have the superior numbers. You wouldn’t have to reveal one of your headquarters at all. Which leads me to believe you have a purpose in bringing us here.”

  “Ah, yes, this residence.” Garrett smelled the air, as if he could breathe in mor
e than the copper scent of blood. “One of my favorites, though you are quite correct that I have others. Do you recognize the place? This is the building in which the paladins killed Enos Ramley.”

  Clarity closed her eyes, realizing she stood above the site of such a tragedy. “The paladins did not kill Enos Ramley. His father did.” Her words sounded hollow.

  “You don’t seem entirely convinced,” Garrett said. “You’re a smart girl. You know every event has more than one cause. Paladins deserve at least some credit for the boy’s demise.”

  Clarity said nothing. Cass, for his part, looked back and forth between Clarity and Garrett as if they spoke some secret language he didn’t understand.

  “You are quite correct, though, that I had a purpose in bringing you here,” Garrett continued. “As I said, you’re a smart girl, and a resourceful girl. One who isn’t afraid to break the rules when appropriate. Some of my Azurites have taken a shine to you, and you clearly want to help them. You have inside knowledge of the paladin order. I could use someone like you on my team.”

  Clarity gaped at him. “You want me to work for you?”

  “Indeed. Are you so surprised? You clearly don’t belong with the paladins.”

  Clarity didn’t let her expression shift, but his last statement made her more uncomfortable than anything he had said to that point. I belong with the paladins, don’t I? “I suppose if I say no, you’re going to threaten to tell the paladins everything you know about what I’ve been doing.”

  Garrett rubbed his chin. “Would that make you say yes?”

  “No.” The calm that had come over Clarity before was in full force. “I made my choices knowing full well what the consequences might be. I helped your people, regardless of how the paladins would feel about it, because it was the right thing to do. And now for the same reason, I say that I will not help you. Do your worst. I am not afraid.”

  Garrett looked down at Cass for the first time. “And what if I were to hurt your little friend here?”

  “You and I are not enemies, Garrett.” Clarity’s voice was cool as the late autumn breeze. “Harm a hair on his head, and that will change. You will not like the consequences.”

  “So brave and confident. A pity.” Garrett seemed more to be musing to himself than speaking to Clarity. He waved his hand toward the door. “Very well, you may go. I accept your unspoken promise not to return. If you do, all these consequences we have spoken of will come to pass.”

  Clarity nodded and glanced down at Cass. She worried he had remained on the ground because he had been injured. She certainly couldn’t carry him out of the district with her crutches. But he stood up when they were given permission to leave and turned with more ease than she did.

  Most of the guards behind them parted, but Archer remained in their path. “You’re letting them go?”

  “Yes,” Garrett said. “It won’t matter for much longer anyway.”

  Archer curled his lip at Clarity but stepped aside. One final whip and scream assailed her ears as she and Cass made their way down the hallway toward the door and freedom.

  Chapter 21

  Garrett’s final words echoed in Clarity’s mind as she stepped out onto the street. What does he mean, it won’t matter? Is he going to do something to make them reject my aid? The thought should have been a relief. If no one wanted her help, she could content herself with saving the children she had. After seeing Garrett’s kitchen, though, she worried he might make a bloody example of anyone who had dared defy him by accepting medication from a paladin. But she couldn’t worry about that. She needed to get out of the Azure District and back to the Citadel before anything else happened.

  “You okay?” she asked Cass, who was still oddly quiet.

  “We got out,” he said. “I was sure we were goners. I kept telling myself over and over that he wouldn’t kill a paladin, but when I saw him whip a man right in front of us, I didn’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Where’s Al?” Clarity asked. “Did he make it out?” She didn’t like the owl as much as she liked Cass’s sweet, little cat, but she hoped for his sake that the owl was on his way back to the Citadel.

  “No.” Cass’s voice was hard, as if a well of emotions he wasn’t letting out lay under it. “And before you ask, we’re going to find him before we go. I’m not leaving him here to rust in the alleys of the Azure District.”

  “Okay.” Clarity wasn’t sure what to say. She supposed she wasn’t much better with emotions than Cass was. “You can fix him, right?”

  Cass was silent for so long, Clarity wondered if he hadn’t heard her, but finally he spoke. “I don’t know. He said not to, but I suppose it will depend how badly damaged he is. I have a back-up of his memories, but it won’t include his most recent experiences, the ones of him coming here and… I should talk to Meg. Meg would know what he would want.”

  Meg had said she and Al were not sentient, but Clarity had to wonder. Cass treated them as if they were their own agents, though that could have been a habit he had developed.

  She followed him through the streets, and both of them seemed too lost in their own thoughts for words. Clarity ran the events of the night over in her mind. Since she no longer had to show a strong face to her adversary, her thoughts had started to come apart. At so many points in the previous few hours, she should have felt in fear for her life. Garrett might have known killing a paladin would bring him unwanted attention, but any one of his guardsmen could have felt differently, or at least not minded harming her. Clarity didn’t know how she would have explained another broken limb, or a black eye, or lashes on her back.

  She shuddered at the thought of what Garrett was doing to the poor man tied up in the kitchen. She hated even more the realization that somehow or other, she’d given Garrett the impression she might join him. Even if the world were black and white, Azure District vs. Amethyst Star, why hadn’t he realized she was firmly on the paladin side of the equation? Saving people without thought for reward was what paladins did, wasn’t it? It certainly wasn’t what Garrett did. She didn’t want to face the fact that she didn’t belong in either camp.

  As they turned a corner, Cass rushed forward and dove to the ground next to what looked like a pile of metal. As Clarity got closer, she could see it was vaguely owl-shaped. Al looked as though he had been bludgeoned with some kind of blunt instrument, which Clarity suspected was exactly what happened. The glass of his right eye had shattered, and indeed that whole side of his head was caved in. Some kind of viscous liquid oozed from his side.

  Cass picked up the limp creature, and a bolt fell off and rattled down the street. Clarity couldn’t see Cass’s face, but his stillness suggested great despair. She didn’t want to rush his grief, but at the same time, she worried about staying for too long in their current environment. She took a step closer and pulled her crossbody satchel off. Setting her crutches aside, she crouched down beside Cass and put a hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at her, and she could not remember any point in her life that would have led her to have such a look of devastation in her eyes as he had in his.

  “Cass.” She winced. Her voice seemed too calm and practical for such a moment.

  A lone tear trickled down his cheek. “It’s stupid, I know. He wasn’t real. He’s just a robot, just a thing I made.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.” She held out the satchel. “I was going to offer you this to carry him in.”

  Cass stared at the bag for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you. That’s probably best. I---” He broke off, as if he didn’t know what he was or had or anything to complete the sentences. “Thank you.” With clumsy fingers, he took the satchel from her and placed the owl inside.

  Clarity thought that might be it, and they could get on their way, but Cass didn’t move. He stared down at his hands, covered in whatever fluid had been seeping out of the broken machine. />
  “Cass,” Clarity said again. We have to go, she planned to continue. Before she could, though, Cass turned and wrapped his arms around her in the hardest hug she could remember experiencing. She was startled for a moment, until she realized his body was wracked with sobs.

  “It’s okay,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure it was. “It’s okay.”

  She had no idea how long they sat there in the dark alley of the Azure District with their arms wrapped around each other. Clarity only knew she couldn’t be the first to let go, not when Cass was breaking down, with her as his only lifeline. Eventually, slowly, his ragged breathing calmed, and he pulled back. She expected him to look away, embarrassed, and in fact, she hoped for it. She wasn’t used to this level of raw emotion, and she felt more terrified than she had standing in Garrett’s kitchen.

  Cass didn’t look away, though. He locked his gaze on hers, and a shot of electricity seemed to run from him to her. He moved his hands to either side of her face, his fingers in her hair. A thought flickered through her head that he was probably getting Al’s toxic liquid on her face and in her hair, but she was quickly distracted by the feel of his hands on her face. His right hand lay warm against her cheek, kindling something in her she hadn’t thought she was capable of feeling, while his metallic left hand cooled her skin, bringing her a centered calm.

  She looked into his eyes, and for the briefest moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. She wanted him to kiss her. She needed nothing more at that moment than to feel Cass Hughes’s lips on hers. She had to know if his mouth had the same ability to ignite and calm her that his hands did.

  Disappointment arced through her when he instead leaned his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She didn’t know what he was apologizing for but also realized she didn’t need to. In the grief- and adrenaline-filled moment, she could forgive Cass anything. “It doesn’t matter.”