Jessie glanced around quickly for any sign of Corin, but he must have already gone deeper into the mansion. Even with the engines and fires and occasional screams still audible from outside, the receiving room felt strangely quiet with no one else in it. Jessie ran to the nearest couch, trying and failing all the while to ignore the searing pain in her leg and the spreading wet spot on her pants surrounding the wound, and crouched behind it, her crossbow ready and pointed at the door. The raiders all had to be on the ground by now, and she was certain that at any moment a group of them would come charging in after her. When nearly a minute passed without anyone coming in, however, Jessie risked setting down her crossbow long enough to take a look at her leg.
It was difficult for her to see with only the flickering feeble light from outside, but the wound didn’t appear to be anything too serious. The pain was enormous as she gingerly pulled away flaps of fabric that had been pasted to her skin with blood, but it didn’t look too deep. The bolt had only grazed her. She had been incredibly lucky.
She had also been incredibly stupid, now that she had a chance to think about it. What was she supposed to do now that she was in the mansion? On the outside it was surrounded and there was no way she would be able to make it out if she found Corin. There were also the raiders who had landed on the roof to think about. She hadn’t seen which direction any of them had gone, and she didn’t think there were too many ways off the roof that didn’t require going through the mansion first. If she left her current hiding place she was more likely to find one of the roaming squads before she found Corin.
Jessie shook her head and quietly cursed herself. Why had she followed him? She had a certain soft spot for him, that was true, but it wasn’t like she really cared about him one way or another. Or at least she hadn’t thought she did. Her actions seemed to suggest otherwise now.
And he was wandering around in the mansion somewhere, still drunk, while roving squads of angry armed women patrolled it in the dark. He was going to get himself killed. Jessie might very well get killed, too, but she at least had the advantage of sobriety. Corin’s chances of survival would only increase if Jessie could find him.
After ripping off a portion of her sleeve to use as a bandage for her leg, Jessie slowly got up from her hiding spot and, as quietly as she could, started towards the main hallway. From outside she could still hear the engines and the fires, but most of the screaming had stopped. For some reason Jessie didn’t find that comforting at all.
The hallway in both directions looked deserted, but Jessie kept close to the wall and stayed in the shadows just in case. She had no idea what these raiders were capable of, and for all she knew they had been trained in all manner of sneaky tactics. She could be staring right at one down the hall and not even know it.
Okay, too much imagination going on, Jessie thought. Just concentrate. She couldn’t even guess at which direction Corin might have gone, so she mentally flipped a coin and went in the direction of the mayor’s office.
The office door was ajar, and Jessie listened carefully for any signs of movement inside before she pushed the door open the rest of the way. The center of the room was taken up by a large wooden desk and the walls were lined with bookshelves, but one of the bookshelves had tipped over and created a triangle with the desk. Under the pile of books that had been deposited on the floor Jessie could see a pair of legs sticking out.
“Corin?” Jessie whispered, and she made her way around the desk and shelf until she could see other side of the book pile. There were no windows in here and there was no light to speak of, but Jessie could still see just enough of the body’s shape to know it wasn’t Corin. She stooped down, trying not to hiss at the pain in her leg, to get a closer look. It was a woman, but Jessie had to wait until her eyes adjusted a little more to realize it was the mayor. Jessie put a hand down on the floor to steady herself but pulled it back when she felt the wet warmth of blood. She could see now that the mayor had a crossbow bolt sticking out of her throat.
“Dear gods,” Jessie whispered. “What is happening?”
“Have at you!” Corin screamed. He jumped through the door and landed in a wobbly sort of fighting stance, the pitchfork still in his hand and brandished in front of him like a spear. Jessie suppressed a startled squeak as she tried to turn around and stand back up at the same time, but instead she managed to lose her balance and tip over into the mayor’s blood, unintentionally obscuring herself from Corin’s view behind the desk.
“Who’s there?” Corin said. “Come out or I’ll gut you like a- urghk!” Jessie got herself back up just enough to see over the desk as Corin slumped, dropped the pitchfork, and then fell to the floor. Jessie was about to cry out when she heard another voice from somewhere behind him in the hall.
“Got another one,” a deep female voice said, and Jessie immediately dropped back down to her hiding place behind the desk. Her heart threatened to beat right out of her chest as she held her crossbow tight against her breasts. If they’d killed the mayor and Corin then they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, too. If there was only one she might be able to pop up from her hiding place and kill the raider before she had a chance to take out Jessie, although she wasn’t sure how fast she could jump up with the damage to her leg. As the raider came down the hall, however, Jessie could clearly hear more than one set of footsteps. She might be able to kill one of them, but she wouldn’t have time to reload before the second raider got her. Her only hope now was to hide and hope they wouldn’t realize she was there.
The footsteps entered the office, and Jessie could hear the slight creak of leather as one of them stooped down next to Corin. There were several moments of silence before the raider spoke in a heavy accent Jessie could barely understand. “Pulse is still good. At least you used the right damned crossbow this time.”
The second raider, the one Jessie had heard speaking moments before, grunted. “That wasn’t my fault. In the dark the boy looked like a woman.”
“That’s why you use the tranquilizer darts when you don’t know for sure. Every man you accidentally kill is a little bit of lost profit. And you know how the captain feels about losing profits.”
“You’re not going to tell her, are you?”
“Not this time, but you need to shape up. You’ve been with us long enough to know what happens to screw ups around here. Help me carry this one back to the roof.”
“Just wait a moment. I thought I heard something else in here…”
“We don’t have time. Extraction is in less than five minutes.”
Jessie listened as they dragged Corin back down the hall. When they were completely out of earshot she slowly stood back up and looked after them. She couldn’t see them, but she knew where they were going. Again she realized just how stupid she must be to still willingly go deeper into all this, but Corin was still alive. She had no idea what they planned to do to him, but there was always the possibility death was still in his near future. She wasn’t sure that she could live with herself if she just left him to his fate.
She stayed as quiet as possible as she went back down the hallway. At several points she had to stop and find some improvised hiding place when she thought she heard whispering, but she didn’t see any more of the raiders. As she found the stairs and started to climb it occurred to her that the engines outside had taken on a slightly different sound, like they were starting to speed up. Whatever had happened here tonight was coming to an end, and so was her window of opportunity to save Corin.
There were no signs of movement when she got to the top floor. Another dead body lay outside one of the bedrooms, and a quick glance told Jessie that it was one of the mayor’s sons, probably the boy the two raiders had been talking about. The door to the bedroom was wide open and Jessie’s hair floated in a breeze coming from inside. Jessie walked in, keeping her crossbow in front of her, and went to the bedroom’s open window. The window looked out onto part of the roof, and out on it she could see half a dozen raiders. E
ach one grabbed a rope, and the ropes immediately started pulling them back up into the floating platform. The raiders weren’t the only things out on the roof, though. One of the rectangular objects that Jessie had seen earlier was resting on the roof with a long chain going up from its top into the platform, and now Jessie could see that it was a cage. Several unconscious men were heaped inside. Jessie didn’t have to think too hard to know that one of them had to be Corin.
All around the mansion other raiders were still being raised back up into the platform, but the ones Jessie had just seen on the roof were already all the way back up. Hoping any of the other raiders looking at her from a distance might mistake her for one of their own, Jessie climbed out the window and limped her way across the roof top towards the cage.
“Corin?” Jessie said as she reached the cage. A couple of the men groaned, but none of them seemed awake enough to be much help. The entire cage was made of a dark, rusty metal that flaked in her hands, but the bars and the door still seemed strong. The lock on the door looked fairly new.
“Oh gods, what am I going to do?” Jessie muttered. She shook the door, but although it rattled it certainly didn’t seem like was going to just open.
“Jessie? That you?” Corin said sleepily, and Jessie finally saw him slumped in a corner with some other unconscious man lying across his lap. Corin reached out through the bars for Jessie although he didn’t appear to even be aware he was doing it. “Did you bring the dragons?”
She had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but it was probably just from drug-induced delirium. “Don’t worry, Corin,” Jessie said. “I’ll think of something.” It was a lie, and Jessie knew it right away. There was nothing around on the roof that she could try to break the lock with, and her mind drew a blank on any other way to get him out. Still, to comfort him, she reached out and touched his arm.
Immediately his hand closed on her forearm. “Don’t worry, I’ll save you,” he muttered. Jessie was amazed at just how strong his grip was despite his drunk and drugged state.
“No, Corin, let go. I have to…” She didn’t know what she had to do, but she didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence anyway. The chain holding the cage began to retract, and the cage was lifted slowly into the air.
“Corin, let go! You have to let…” Corin’s grip still held as the cage lifted over her head, and her feet left the rooftop. She dropped her crossbow as she tried to beat Corin’s hand away. “Please! Let go!”
“Okay,” Corin muttered under his breath, and his grip finally started to loosen. Jessie looked down to see the rooftop falling away from her far quicker than she had expected. Not only was the cage going back up into the floating platform, but the platform was rising back into sky. The five feet below her quickly changed to ten, then twenty, thirty…
“No, don’t let go!” Jessie screamed. “Don’t let go!” She used her free hand to grab onto one of the bars, and Corin’s grip stayed on her arm.
“Make up your mind,” Corin mumbled, but Jessie barely heard him. She closed her eyes, praying to the gods that she wasn’t about to fall to her death, and didn’t even watch as the cage went all the way back up into the platform.
2
Jessie had a vague memory of an ill-lit, cavernous space and lots of confused shouting, followed by a sudden sharp sting in her back. After that she remembered nothing until she woke up in her cell.
At first she had been tempted to believe that none of the events of the previous night had actually happened. Better to think of it all as just a dream, roll over in her bed, and go back to sleep. Except this was obviously not her bed. It was far too small, and it didn’t even really have a mattress, just several rough and scratchy blankets piled on top of a board. This wasn’t her room, either. It wasn’t even much bigger than a closet. She could still smell the smoke from burning buildings on her clothes and her leg still ached when she tried to move it. The whole attack on Sun River had certainly been real enough.
The question, then, was where was she now? She could still hear the sound of engines humming from outside, so it was a safe bet that she was somewhere on the flying platform. The door to her room had a single bar-covered peep hole at eye-level, and it let just enough light into her room to show her that it was completely empty other than the bed. She stood up and went to the door to try the handle but wasn’t too surprised to find it locked. She certainly hadn’t expected to be allowed to just walk around.
She did have to wonder, however, why she wasn’t dead yet. The raiders certainly hadn’t been squeamish about killing people in Sun River. She thought back to the conversation she’d overheard in the mayor’s office. Apparently official policy among these people was to use non-lethal force when they weren’t sure. That might have explained it. She was sure she had caused a great deal of confusion being hauled up into the platform by dangling from the cage. Maybe they had thought she was one of them at first and had simply hitched a ride on the cage to avoid being left behind. Afterwards, however, it would’ve been obvious that she wasn’t one of them, so why keep her around? Why not just kill her with a real crossbow or even just throw her back out the hole?
She sat back down in bed and tried to wrap her mind around all this. She thought about her saloon, which was probably nothing more than splinters and ashes by now, and was mildly surprised to find she wasn’t that upset. Just as surprising was the fact that she was worried about Corin. Did they have him in a room like this one somewhere, or was he still in the cage? The raiders had obviously come specifically to take the men of Sun River, but she wasn’t sure what the reason might be. For all she knew these women were cannibals and the men were currently being turned into stew. Despite that grisly image, Jessie actually had to smile. She really needed to keep a leash on her imagination.
The distant echo of footsteps brought her out of her thoughts. She stood up and went to the door again, listening carefully to make sure she wasn’t just hearing things. She wasn’t. Someone was definitely approaching her door.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Who’s there? What’s going on?”
The footsteps stopped for a moment, then continued at a faster pace. There wasn’t much that Jessie could see through the peephole except that there was another door just like hers across the hall. The footsteps came towards her from the right and stopped in front of the door. She was sure they did. And yet she couldn’t see anyone standing in front of her.
“Hello?” Jessie said. Maybe she was just going crazy. Maybe there wasn’t anyone there after all. But after a few more seconds someone spoke.
“Was it nifty?” The voice was high pitched and had a thick accent similar to the one she had heard in the mayor’s office.
“What?” Jessie asked.
“Was it nifty?” the voice said again, this time with a hint of impatience. “Was the mission nifty?”
“Where… I can’t see you,” Jessie said.
“Oh, right,” the voice said. It cussed softly under its breath, a strange sound from such a small and high pitched voice, and then the person on the other side of the door jumped. Before disappearing back below Jessie’s eye line she caught a glimpse of a dirty little cherub-like face and a head of frizzy, unkempt brown hair. The girl might have been about ten, perhaps eleven at the oldest. “Did you see me?”
“Um, yes,” Jessie said. “Who are you?”
“Leech,” the girl said.
“Leech? What kind of name is that?”
“My kind of name,” the girl said. “But I don’t think it’s my real name. I just don’t remember my real name.” She was quiet for several seconds, and Jessie almost thought she had left when the girl banged something heavy and metallic against the door. “Hey! Answer the question already!”
Jessie struggled between confusion and a strange amusement. “Uh, what was the question again?”
She banged the door again. “Was the mission nifty? No one will tell me anything.”
The amusement drained out of Jessie and sta
rted to be replaced with anger. “Your people killed the people of my village and tried to burn it to the ground.”
The girl sighed. “See? I knew it would be nifty. They never let me join in on any of the fun stuff.” Leech’s voice went from melancholy one second to cheerful the next, and she held up her hand for Jessie to see. The metallic object she had hit the door with was a wrench. “I’ve got to get going now. The number twelve engine is going all kawumpf-kawumpf again. You know how engines get.” She jumped up again, this time waving at Jessie before disappearing again. “See you later at your execution!” Her footsteps disappeared down the hall, accompanied by the cheerful humming of some vaguely familiar song. It took Jessie a moment to realize it was a traditional Argonan funeral dirge.
3
As the hours passed and nobody else came near her room, Jessie found herself going in and out of sleep. She wasn’t quite sure how she could sleep so much at a time like this, although she suspected it was a side effect of whatever they had drugged her with. At some point while she slept someone had left a plate of stale bread and some meaty gray gravy just inside her door, and despite how terrible the stuff tasted she ate it all quickly. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she was hungry until the greasy aroma had woken her up.
Strangely enough, Jessie didn’t feel very worried about the bizarre young girl’s words. It wasn’t that she doubted their truth. It seemed entirely likely to Jessie that the raiders were indeed planning on killing her at some point in the near future, and the idea of dying did scare her. It just didn’t scare her as much as Jessie thought it should. Here she was sitting in the cell of some sort of flying ship waiting for a bunch of highly trained warriors to execute her, and yet it still seemed like a less horrific fate than serving a bunch of drunks for another twenty or so years before her body just one day finally gave out on her. Maybe the cell was starting to make her go stir-crazy, but the idea of dying soon actually felt kind of comforting.
The Twister Sisters Page 2