Double Blind, A Gearspire Story

by Jeremiah Reinmiller

  Double Blind

  A Gearspire Story

  by Jeremiah Reinmiller

  Copyright © 2016 Jeremiah Reinmiller

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or any portion thereof, may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews and certain noncommercial uses as permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. All events and characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, are purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com

  Double Blind / Jeremiah Reinmiller – 1st edition.

  You can learn more about the author at jqpdx.com.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Start Reading

  Thank You

  About the Author

  NOW

  Crumbling bricks dug against Drailey’s cheek. Tilted paving stones bit at her boots like neglected incisors. A rank warm breeze slid across her shoulders like the fetid breath of an angry god. Overhead, heavy clouds threatened rain.

  Chewed up and spit out, that’s about right.

  Her skull throbbed agreement.

  She left her face against the cool bricks a bit longer. They smelled of mold and dirt, but just then, she didn’t care. She’d smelled worse of late. The sharp chemical whiffs of it clung to the yellow leather of her jacket; strongest where the black scorch marks ran up along her sleeve. She’d probably have to burn the thing when this was all over, but at least her hand had stopped throbbing.

  She sighed once more into the evening.

  She’d been back in the Del a single, solitary day. How had so much gone wrong in so few hours? She ignored the answers as they flooded into her mind, instead raised her head to the task at hand.

  Midnight was coming up fast, but the Night of Bindings, the second to last night of Advent, meant drunken, ragged throngs still staggered by in the street. Most were young, of an age with Drailey herself, though at the moment she felt quite a lot older. The thick smells of cheap wine and cheaper drugs wafted from them. Probably Sauce in this neighborhood.

  She turned her observations to the building across the street.

  The Castellan, four stories of heavy solemn stone architecture, stood amidst a row of crumbling plaster and chipping paint. Very old from the style, and poorly maintained: grime-coated windows, soot-stained walls, faded, limp festival banners flanking the lone door. All as expected for anything so near the Flats.

  For a moment she wondered again about the choice of location, then filed it all away and pulled herself upright with a wince. The cool bricks hadn’t helped her skull in the least, but she’d needed the moment. She’d had so few of late.

  Late. Time’s running out again.

  She started to wipe her tingling, damp palms across her chest and thought better of it. Dirt and ash and fates knew what else already coated her poor cerulean linen shirt. The inky stains on her fingers could only make things worse. She combed them through her tragically tangled brown hair instead, and adjusted the strap of her satchel one more time.

  All right then.

  She hurried between partiers. Time was almost up and she waited for Drailey upstairs.

  THEN

  Warm afternoon sunlight filtered down on Drailey as she stepped around the charred bones of a burned-out cart, and turned the corner for home. Even among the typically rundown buildings in Flats, it was good to be back in Del’atre. The city remained just as crowded, the remains of the ancient crumbling mountain that formed the city’s walls just as bleak. But for all that, she was happy to have made it back in one piece.

  Her satchel, swinging heavy against her hip had something to do with her mood. It was a good weight and it buoyed her spirits, but mostly she wanted to see her sister again. She’d been gone two weeks, and in Belesa’s condition that was two weeks too long.

  It was the first time she’d left her side since her sister was infected, since the mad tragedies rattled the city around them. Only desperation had taken her away to Shelling for a job. She hoped she’d made the right decision. Her sister’s condition, more than the artifact she’d pulled from beneath the streets of Shelling would soon prove if her trip would result in a blessing or a curse.

  The hour was yet early, but aside from beggars crouched against foundations, the streets were nearly empty. Even the threadbare poor in the Flats would celebrate along with the rest of the city tonight.

  Three more nights of Advent remained. Contrition, Bindings, and Advent. Three more nights to celebrate that the land had survived the centuries since their ancestors crawled back up top and started over again. No one around here would waste them.

  She turned onto the final narrow side street—a trash strewn alley optimistically named Opportunity Lane in some bygone time—and nearly collided with a child rushing the other way. The little girl skidded to a stop just in time, and peered up at Drailey with big brown eyes. Her rough clothing said street urchin, but the S tattooed on the web of her right hand, the hand that shoved a crumpled piece of paper into Drailey’s palm, said something else. Before she could open her mouth, the tiny scurrier bolted past and disappeared down a side street.

  It was a curious encounter in this place where most shops gaped empty, and especially strange for Drailey at this point in her “career,” but hope still flared. If she was very lucky this note might contain an actual job request. And if it was something else, something more expected and demanding, well, that would be another thing she’d face tomorrow.

  After four endless days on a matik-drawn wagon all she wanted was to make sure Belesa was okay, secure the item in her satchel, and collapse into bed. As her front door came into view she could almost feel the blankets. Then she saw the three figures out front. The three, big, tough looking figures. And she felt something else.

  None wore gray and white, so Directorate guards were out. And there wasn’t a speck of a uniform among their tall collars, dark leather, and heavy boots, so city guards were out also. The tips of cudgels and scabbards peeking from beneath coat hems spelled out everything else.

  Drailey clutched the strap of her satchel, slowed her pace. How had they found out she was coming? She hadn’t told a soul, and no one within a hundred leagues knew what she carried. Maybe they were here for something else.

  Yeah right.

  Forty feet remained, with only boarded up doorways in between. But they hadn’t seen her yet.

  Drailey started to turn, heard a boot scuff. Behind her.

  That narrowed things down. She wasn’t putting three men at her back. Instead of turning she dropped a hand into her satchel.

  “Well, there she is,” the heavy-set man in the middle said.

  Behind the man, the setting sun burned low in the alley’s slice of sky, casting his face in deep shadows. Draper could still tell he was, well, ugly. His nose was flat, bent, his brows and cheeks badly scarred.

  The man stepped to the front of the other two.

  Drailey’s fingers closed around a small sphere within her satchel. Heat crackled where her skin contacted its smooth surface, but she held it in check. For now. She stopped fifteen feet from the thugs.

  “I am usually where I am,” Drailey said. Her heart was pattering like a drunken sparrow, but in this neighborhood showing anything close to fear was not the way to go.

  The man’s lips twisted, making his face even less pleasant. “We need to talk to you, Drailey.”

  “Did you make an appointment? I’ve got a pretty full calendar. Active social life and all.”

&nb
sp; “You’ll make time for us.”

  None of them had so much as glanced at her satchel. In fact, except for Mr. Rough Face, the other two showed little interest in her at all. The bearded, taller man to the left leaned up against the wall of Drailey’s shop. The one to the right was picking his nails with a pocket knife. If this was an ambush or a shakedown, it was the most casual one she’d ever experienced.

  “Why? You want to hire me or something?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Drailey had not expected that. None of them looked like the hiring kind. “Is that so?”

  “You want to go inside to talk it over?”

  Drailey didn’t want them one step closer to her sister. “Out here’s great. Working on my tan.” She angled her face to catch more of the fading light.

  The bearded man against the wall snorted. Rough Face shrugged. “One of my boss’s operations could use a girl of your—” he glanced to the shop door and back to Drailey— “talents.”

  “Who’s that? Your boss.”

  “It matter?”

  “It does, yeah.”

  The man smirked. “Palmero.”

  Drailey suddenly felt very cold. She might not run in those circles, but she knew that if you traced the omnipresent tendrils of The Del’s underworld back from the street corners, you always wound up at a few roots. If Palmero wasn’t the darkest of the roots, he was the largest, and most violent.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You haven’t heard the offer.”

  “Doesn’t sound like my scene, but thanks for stopping by.” She took a couple steps toward her shop.

  “That’s disappointing. Hadene recommended you.”

  Drailey came up short. She hadn’t heard that name in years. Since school; back when that was still a thing. But her immediate thoughts were that she knew what the job was, she knew where she’d seen this man, and she knew the man was lying.

  “Wonder why she’d say a thing like that,” Drailey said.

  “You’re the girl for the job.”

  Drailey sweated. Only a very few circumstances would lead to this conversation. “The work’s technical then, I take it.”

  “Chemical, to be more precise.”

  Hadene had gone to work for Palmero a year after she and Drailey got out of school. It had been a fun year. She was smart and pretty, and friendship had budded into something more. They broke up over Hadene taking the job. She wanted the money, the safety. Drailey didn’t want her making drugs for the scum of the city.

  Drailey hadn’t seen her since, but that last night, a man had escorted Hadene off into the Strip. A man with an already broken nose, but not yet so many scars.

  She pushed down the tightness in her chest, readied the sphere in her hand. She only had three of them left and didn’t want to waste one on this brute. Or think about the mess she’d have to cleanup afterward. But then again, the longer this conversation went on, the fewer clean exits she saw.

  “Sounds interesting, but I have to pass,” Drailey said. “Be sure to thank Hadene for the kind words.”

  The man cleaning his nails chuckled. “Be sure to do that.” He glanced at Rough Face. “Gratt.”

  Goosebumps ran up the back of Drailey’s neck at the way he made the comment. A job for Palmero wasn’t one you simply quit.

  “Offer might’ve been the wrong word,” Gratt said. “Palmero insisted we take you to see him. Personally.”

  As if that was some kind of signal, Gratt’s friends moved for the first time.

  Well, shit.

  Drailey slid to her left, put the wall against her shoulder. Her fist closed around the sphere in the bag and she readied the heat in her palm. If she was lucky she might take out two of them, and maybe she could make a break for it.

  The bearded thug stopped beside the door to Drailey’s shop and rapped it a couple times with one knuckle.

  Gratt smiled. “Unless you want us to go inside so we can convince you.”

  Drailey wasn’t cold any more. She scooped up another sphere in the bag.

  Fighting four men was a bad idea, but threatening her sister was an even worse one.

  “So what’s it going to be?” Gratt asked.

  Drailey opened her mouth to tell Gratt what he could do with his request, but heard a new pair of footsteps.

  They echoed, sharp and hard, from the alley behind the men. Gratt looked back over his shoulder as a thin figure came into view, her mohawk burning as the sun set upon her shoulders.

  As Drailey’s eyes took in the approaching woman, she cursed under her breath.

  What the hell was Mawren doing here?

  NOW

  Mawren sat at a table near the edge of the roof, her red mohawk visible by candlelight. Night-draped Del’atre spread out in the background. The woman hadn’t seen Drailey yet, but that wouldn’t last long.

  The Castellean’s rooftop had been converted to a lounge in years past. Drailey had never seen it for herself; access was impossible unless you ran in the sorts of circles she usually avoided, but word of the meeting must’ve been left before her arrival. The burly man at the top of the stairs had nodded Drailey in before she could say a word.

  The tables were occupied with your typical Del underworld riffraff. Girls from the Strip in dresses designed to flaunt as much as they concealed. Tough young men covered in tattoos and whatever else they thought looked menacing. Further back at the edges of the roof, the really dangerous quiet men in simple dark coats. Most older, grizzled and impassive to just about everything.

  The view from the roof, unobstructed in all directions for several blocks, was even more impressive. East, the sounds and lights of the surface Strip beat against the heavy clouds. West, smoke billowed from glowing stacks in the few factories still operating. South, the city descended to the docks, the ships, the river Vita, vast and dark in the night. Flames burned down there. Maybe people celebrating a bit too hard.

  Maybe something else.

  Drailey crossed the floor, ignoring the looks she caught and keeping one hand pressed against her satchel. She made it a dozen feet before Mawren saw her, and the woman’s lips parted. Drailey’s spine twitched. Damn she hated that smile.

  THEN

  Mawren smiled and her teeth, all pointed, flashed in the sunset as she stopped a half-dozen feet down the alley beyond the men. Her crimson mohawk gleamed, her pale skin stood-out sharp against the red shirt she wore under a black-leather vest. Large black goggles concealed her eyes. She might’ve been beautiful if her features weren’t so severe.

  Drailey had never met her, but her appearance was too unique for her to be anyone else. Her boss was just as infamous as Palmero. And maybe even scarier.

  Gratt shielded his eyes against the sun with one hand. “Awful far west, ain’t you, witch? You wander away from Hartvau’s side and get lost?”

  Hartvau and Palmero’s forces at the same time. This was one hell of a day.

  Drailey clutched the two orbs, considered scooping up her third, and final one.

  Mawren cocked her head to the side, as if to examine the man more closely, and Drailey got the distinct impression of a snake looking at a meal.

  “What?” Gratt asked.

  Mawren’s hand blurred when it moved, whipping up and out. Gratt made the softest, wet, coughing sound, and slumped sideways. His companions cursed and rushed forward.

  Drailey pressed herself into the wall as the violence unfolded like an ugly paper flower. She thought she could handle herself in a fight, but there was no fight here. Only slaughter.

  The bearded thug swung for Mawren with spiked iron knuckles. She ducked, his hand swept through her mohawk. Blood sprayed, arterial bright. He gasped and staggered away.

  The guy cleaning his nails didn’t do much better, even with the cudgel and knife he’d produced. He took one stab, she slapped his hand away. He screamed, the knife fell. She pounced, lips stretched in a vicious grin. Her fingers were around his throat. In his throat.


  Bloody cries flowed along the alley walls.

  The fourth man had crept up on the scene to stand at Drailey’s shoulder. She nearly lashed out, but he was younger, little more than a teenager and his eyes were wide, panicked. A knife hung forgotten in his fist.

  Mawren saw him as well.

  The teenager spun, her hand blurred again. He pitched forward on his face with a meaty thud.

  The alley fell still. Crypt quiet.

  After a couple blinks, a couple breaths, Drailey looked down at the body beside her. The teenager was already dead. Beneath him blood trickled between the paving stones, lost life running a senseless maze. A silvery hilt stood out from the back of his twisted neck, the skin around it mottled green and black.

  With a strange detached curiosity, Drailey knelt.

  Clotted veins, accelerated decay. Poison?

  Using a kerchief from her pocket, she plucked the weapon free. The knife was heavy for its thin size, the blade deeply grooved. Flakes of a black powder filled each line in the metal. Drailey was very careful not to touch them.

  For a moment more, she stared down stupidly at the weird blade in her hands, and then with a snap, like a burst bubble, the situation came back to her.

  Belesa.

  She was standing again, and turned for the door.

  As if reading her thoughts, Mawren said, “Not here, is she.”

  Drailey looked at her, head feeling thick, and stupid.

  The killer gestured to the door, her fingers red and wet, and tipped in sharp steel, like a set of the world’s deadliest thimbles.

  Nothing stood out about Drailey’s door at first, no notes, or notices, only the faded lettering badly needing fresh paint:

  Drailey

  Retrographer - Revivalist - Ongineer

  Then she saw the small chalk mark on the door jamb, a cross with a wavy horizontal bar.

  Drailey spun, without thought for bodies or blood or killers, and sprinted back up the alley.

  Behind her, a sharp laugh accompanied her flight.