NOW
Drailey gingerly slid into the chair opposite Mawren. She didn’t bother hiding the stab of pain in her arms.
A very rare steak lay bleeding on the plate before Mawren. A serrated knife dangled in one hand. She smiled as she looked Drailey over, a sheen of sweat coating her stubbled scalp. Her pointed teeth were the same shade of smeared pink as her plate. “Having a fun night I see?”
Drailey shrugged. “Sure, why not.”
“That’s the spirit,” Mawren said, and stabbed another piece of steak. She chewed it noisily for a minute while she watched Drailey through those unreadable goggles of hers. Drailey stared back, not caring what she saw.
When Mawren had swallowed, just as noisily, she laid the knife across the plate with a jittery screech. “So, how’s your sister making out?”
THEN
Drailey burst through the backdoor of the clinic, lungs heaving from her sprint through Flats. She found her sister atop a pallet in the corner of the next room.
Belesa was not well. The all too familiar harsh burnt smell hung in the air, thicker than Drailey had ever experienced. Everything about the scene was wrong.
Her sister’s head rested in a shallow pan full of oily liquid, but that was all. The rest of her body, clad in a thin shift, lay sweating and quivering atop a pallet. Her hair, and the skin down her neck and across her chest, were grey, nearly white. Her usually gentle face was now twisted and contorted.
Drailey collapsed on the edge of the pallet, trying to catch her breath, and lay a hand on her sister’s forehead. Heat baked her skin. She clenched her jaw tight. What had happened was all too apparent, and she had only herself to blame. She’d known it would be close, but she hadn’t expected this.
Hurried footsteps echoed in the next room and Glad rushed through the door, clearly in search of the intruder into her clinic. The Mediker’s gold cross with the waving cross bar stood out from her white lapel. The material crisp against her dark skin. When she saw Drailey, her face shifted from one kind of concern to another.
“How is she?” Drailey asked.
“She’s had a fever for three days. She hasn’t woken in two.”
They were near the brink. Drailey stroked her sister’s cheek. She didn’t respond.
Drailey forced her jaw loose. “Glad, I need you to front me the medicine. I can pay you soon, I found something to sell.”
“You think I’d let her suffer over money?” Glad’s eyes were hard. Drailey’s face flushed. She’d never thought of the woman as mercenary, but. . . “Coins aren’t the problem. There’s no mnemoil.” Exhaustion slid along the lines in Glad’s face.
Drailey blinked. “If you’re out, I’ll go find more.”
Glad shook her head. “Listen to me, Drailey. There’s not a drop to be had in this city.” She pointed to the pan beneath her sister’s head. “That’s the last of it. I’ve been stretching it as far as I dare, but I’m out and so is everyone else.”
“The suppliers—”
“Aren’t the problem. Doses are still coming in, but we aren’t getting them.” Her lips stretched tight. “Someone took control of all the mnemoil in the Del.”
“Who could. . .?” Drailey’s throat seized up as she discovered the answer waiting in her mind.
Glad finished the terrible thought. “Palmero.”
“What the hell is he doing? Inflating prices?”
For people without coins to spend on it anyway.
Glad took a deep breath. “Rumor has it he’s squeezing someone higher up the tree. Maybe a council member, maybe one of their family.”
The Del and its stupid endless games for control of the city. Drailey wanted to scream. She stood instead. “How long does my sister have?”
“A day, no more.” Glad laid a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry.”
Drailey stumbled outside into the early night and sucked in a lungful of clean air. She felt ashamed doing it, as if she’d been holding her breath even though she knew the sickness wasn’t contagious. Not like that anyway.
Her exhausted mind ached, but now more than ever, she had to think. Maybe Glad was wrong. Maybe she hadn’t looked in the right places. Drailey clenched her satchel. Maybe Glad hadn’t had enough leverage, but with the artifact she’d brought back. . .
She immediately knew all these ideas were crap. If anyone could’ve located what Belesa needed, it was Glad. But she saw no other way out. Her sister desperately needed mnemoil and she had to find it. Even if she had to go to Palmero to get it.
“Little birdie ran before thanking me,” a voice said. Drailey froze. Prey before the predator.
Mawren leaned against the wall across the street, just visible at the edge of the light cast by the lantern over Glad’s door.
Unlike every other street in the Del, this one was empty. Even partying crowds avoided the clinics. Ignorantly avoided those inside.
Drailey slowly turned.
For a moment Mawren looked her over, head to toe. In the dark the killer’s goggles flashed, maybe a trick of the light, but her gaze paused on the satchel, and Drailey tensed. “Interesting bag you have there.”
Shit. She could guess the following words, the demands for repayment. She had no time for them, not now. She needed all of her resources. She’d have to somehow put the woman off for a couple days. She had no idea how.
“You need mnemoil,” Mawren said.
Drailey was caught flat footed. “What makes you think that?”
The red haired woman tilted her head as if sniffing the air. “You want to play games, little bird?”
Drailey couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted to play with her. “What’s it to you?”
Mawren pushed off from the wall, took a couple steps closer. “Maybe I know how the bird can get some.”
Drailey’s heart and stomach leapt in opposite directions. This was much worse. Owing this killer for pulling her out of a scrap was one thing. Owing her for Belesa’s life would snap a chain shut around her throat that she’d never escape.
At the moment, did it matter? Glad had said one day. If anyone could take what Palmero had seized, it was Mawren, or her boss.
“What do you want?” Drailey asked.
The thin woman smiled, and her hand moved. Not a lightning snap, but a casual toss. Drailey caught the leather tube, stared at it.
A foot-long messenger’s case, the leather worn. In the light of the lantern the end cap was dark, as if stained with. . .
Drailey looked up to an impassive Mawren then back to the tube. With a feeling that she was damning her own soul, she pulled the cap loose.
A long piece of paper curled inside. She unrolled it and found thick lines of indecipherable characters.
“It’s encoded,” she said.
“And?” Mawren said.
Drailey glanced at the sheet again. “How much you want for me to decipher it?” she asked.
“So you can crack this code?”
“You know I can, or you wouldn’t have brought it to me. How much?”
“Solve it and we talk.”
It was a terrible deal, a fool’s deal. It was her only deal and they both knew it. “I should take it back to my shop,” she said, eyes already moving over the text, searching for patterns.
“You have that much time?” Mawren asked.
Just how much did she know?
“You sure you want to stay here?” Drailey nodded towards the clinic.
The woman’s angular face didn’t change.
Drailey pulled a notebook from her satchel, leaned back against the wall beneath the lantern, and got to work.
NOW
Rather than responding to Mawren’s question about her sister, Drailey leaned back in her chair and patted her satchel. “It’s here.”
Mawren’s cheek twitched. “Then you should show me.”
A breeze slid across her neck, and Drailey tasted the scents of smoke and impending rain on the night air, felt the ink staining her fingers. He
re’s where she’d find out how this ended. “We need to discuss our deal,” she said. Her palms sweated, but her voice didn’t shake. Much.
Mawren’s lips curled at the edges. Drailey knew better than to think it was a smile. “Our deal? I gave you your day, little bird. Your time’s up. Your sister’s time is up. But by all means, take more time, speak your little words, if you think they’ll change what you owe me.”
Drailey drew a breath.
THEN
Drailey let her breath out in a rush. Her hands shook, and her notebook with them. In the light from the lantern over Glad’s door, she stared at the figures on the stained pages.
“This is the mnemoil formula,” she said, then heard herself ask, “How’d you get it?”
Mawren laughed. It was a terrible sound in the cold hours before dawn. Drailey barely heard her. Her mind was racing along new paths, taking in ingredients, the techniques described. The process was complex, but doable.
She wanted to shout, “We can save everyone!”
Mawren watched her closely.
Palmero. The council member. Now this.
Drailey understood.
Breaking the code had been the glimpse through the keyhole, and Mawren knew it. Beyond lay a new world Drailey dreaded, but desperately needed to enter.
“What are you going to do with this?” Drailey asked.
The corner of the killer’s lip twitched, but Mawren remained silent, waiting. She was going to make Drailey say it and owe her one more time.
“The formula alone won’t do you any good,” Drailey said. “The process is too complex, you can’t just mix a couple vials and be done. Only three or four people in the city can complete this successfully.”
“And you, little bird, you are one of them?”
There it is. She fixed the image of Belesa in her mind, and said the terrible words she’d held back. “Give me one day and you’ll have your medicine.”
“How much?” Mawren’s cold voice sounded almost eager.
“Enough for—” Drailey stopped herself from spitting out, “for control.” Instead she said, “For several doses. A few weeks’ worth.”
Mawren stared at her closely.
Drailey fixed her eyes on the wall across the street rather than meet that blank gaze. “I’ll get what I need and you’ll have what you want. Deal?”
The corner of Mawren’s mouth quirked. “Bring me twenty vials, and we’ll go from there.”
Drailey couldn’t speak for a moment. Too many emotions battered her. She did her best to focus. “Twenty vials,” she said at last.
Mawren sauntered across the alley, took back the messenger case, and placed a long nailed finger upon Drailey’s cheek. The killer’s skin was hot, but Drailey still shivered. “You’ll keep our little arrangement to yourself. Won’t you,” she said.
Drailey nodded.
“By midnight then, little bird. Come to me at the Castellan and show me my prize.”
NOW
Drailey withdrew an oilcloth-wrapped bundle of vials and placed them on the table. The voices of the Castellean’s patrons babbled on in the background.
Mawren looked down at them for a long moment. When she looked back up she was not smiling. “That’s not twenty vials.”
For once, Drailey met her stare. “No, it’s not,” she said.
THEN
Drailey had no idea how to solve the sudden enigma of her life. She’d not exaggerated when she said the process was difficult, that it required special skills and equipment, the latter of which she didn’t have.
She might’ve gone mad after she left Glad’s clinic. In those hours before dawn as she pictured Belesa slowly burning to death from the inside while Drailey fried her brain with strong tea to stay awake. She might’ve, except that as she searched her pocket for spare coins for the tea, she found the crumpled note imparted by the scurrier hours before.
As her eyes skimmed the brief text, and she recognized the signature at the bottom from years past, an awful plan unfolded, no less terrible than Mawren’s violence, and just as deadly if she failed. As if that mattered. She had no other way out.
Once the sad wave that hit her after seeing that name on the page had crested and broken, she got to work. For several hours she schemed, called in debts, and pulled help from unlikely sources. Until finally, she had the supplies she needed, and just maybe enough coins to get her through everything alive.
When the sun rose, she put her madness into motion.
“I’m the new chemist,” Drailey said to the man standing at the weathered warehouse door.
The narrow-eyed fellow squinted at Drailey as the sun rose behind her. Drailey didn’t so much as blink. “Listen, I don’t have all day, Gratt sent me. Said you were behind on production.”
Another squint before he pounded on the door.
A moment later the door opened and a shorter man with a long face, not dissimilar to some tragic horses Drailey had known, glared out. “What?”
“Says she’s the new chemist, Calide. Says Gratt sent her.”
Calide looked Drailey up and down, but without much real judgement in his eyes. As if it was something he’d seen others do at this moment rather than an actual inspection.
“If you don’t need me I’ll go,” Drailey said, hitching her satchel higher on her shoulder. “Gratt said I was supposed to take over for Hadene, but. . .” She took a step away.
“Wait,” Calide said. He looked to the other man, then Drailey, then sighed and nodded inside. Drailey followed him.
Finding the warehouse hadn’t been hard. Palmero’s location wasn’t exactly a secret, but Drailey was taken aback by the size of the place.
Copper vats, interconnected by a series of pipes, filled the warehouse in tight rows. No heat radiated from them now, but if they were all running, they’d put out gallons of the nastiness they made here. The design was beyond impressive. Her heart ached as she imagined how many hundreds of lives this place had ruined.
Dammit, Hadene. Why the hell’d you have to be so damn smart all the time.
“Good thing you’re here,” Calide said as he led Drailey deeper into the warehouse. “Sauce reserves are running low. Distribution will be damn glad for a new batch.”
I’m sure. Drailey only nodded.
They weren’t alone. Between tanks, vats, and various cylinders, more than a few men lounged about. None smiled as Drailey and Calide passed.
Eventually they wound up in a back corner of the warehouse and Drailey knew this was their destination before Calide said a word. In fact, from the moment she laid eyes on the machine, she stopped listening to anything the man had to say.
The device was huge and clearly ancient by hundreds of years. Large pistons gleamed behind layers of interconnected gears. Above, a catwalk led around a series of funnels and tubes. Pipes snaked outward in a dozen directions and disappeared into the warehouse.
Drailey could only guess as to its original purpose, but the last chemist had clearly made a large number of modifications to bend the thing to her will.
Dammit, Hadene.
It was also immediately clear why they’d needed her. The old machine was as cold and silent as the rest of the warehouse, and would remain that way until someone who could operate the control panel arrived.
Drailey stepped forward and laid a finger upon the glass panel etched with copper symbols. Her finger tingled with heat, and she pushed out a sliver of energy. Deep within the machine a dull thunk sounded. Its deep tone rumbled back from the walls.
Calide took a quick step back.
Drailey let a sad smile escape. She’d never fed anything this large before, and at any other time she would’ve been grinning from ear-to-ear at the opportunity to see what she could do with this much oldcraft at her command. Any ongineer would. Tonight was not one of those times.
“Do you need our formula?” Calide asked behind her as Drailey unslung her satchel and dropped it on a workbench.
“Oh, w
e’ll be making something new today, Calide. Something special.” Drailey pinned the man in place with a hard look. “Let’s get to work.”
Hours later, Drailey looked up and realized the sun had set outside. Only a dim smear of light leaked through grimy windows above.
She stretched, cracked her back, and groaned. The toxic fumes burned her gritty eyes, beat at her throbbing head. Distant memories of her bed rotted in the back of her fading mind.
Twenty shimmering vials stood on the wooden bench before her. The cost paid, now precious few hours remained to brew Belesa’s doses.
She wiped her hands on a filthy scrap of rag, but barely felt the rough material. Her palms and fingers tingled from the exertion of the outlay into the machine, and she gritted her teeth against the constant needling sensation. It was going to be a struggle to finish.
The rough clearing of a throat drew Drailey’s head around.
A figure in a beige coat stood a dozen feet away. A man Drailey hadn’t seen before. Thin, stooped, and peering suspiciously at Drailey. He wasn’t alone. Calide wrung his hands nervously beside him. Beyond them, three more men stepped into view.
Drailey swallowed.
“That don’t look like Sauce to me,” the newcomer said.
“She. . . she said it was a new formula, Sandorf,” Calide said.
Sandorf spat, and Calide took a step back. “She say Gratt ordered that as well?”
Calide’s mouth opened and closed like a boated fish.
“Found Gratt and his boys not an hour ago,” Sandorf said. “Stiff dead.”
The sweat on the back of Drailey’s neck froze.
Shit.
Thoughts of flight rose up, but she forced herself to move slowly. She dropped the rag and laid her hand as casually as she could upon the machine’s controls.
Out amongst the vats and connecting pipes the shadows of more men moved.
How many men had she passed by on her way in? A dozen?
Drailey’s distance from the building’s entrance came back to her quite clearly. So much for the nicely planned escape.
Double Blind, A Gearspire Story Page 2