by Jay Posey
Three burst into laughter then. A raucous, foolish guffaw that guaranteed all eyes were on him as he rocked back on his knees and hung his head in mock shame.
“Honey, are you alright?” the woman asked.
“Fine. I’m fine.” Three looked up at the guard, locked eyes with him. Smiled. “Just an idiot.”
The guard searched his face for a moment. Then quickly reached down and took his arm. Firm.
And helped him to his feet.
“Sure you’re OK, sir?”
Three kept smiling, and clapped the guard on the shoulder. “Broke my pride, but I think that’s it.” He picked the case back up and dusted it off.
“Well, try to be more careful,” the guard said. “Lucky your son’s so quick on his feet.”
“Yes, sir, I am. Lucky to have him. You have a great day,” Three answered with a nod.
And with that, Three and Wren breezed inside the city. They walked with the woman to the tea-house where she worked, Three alternating between apologizing and flirting the whole way there. By the time they parted ways, she’d made not so subtle invitations for him to meet her at sundown, and suggested that some kind of repayment was in order for his kindness. Three assured her it was not, and made as clean a getaway as he could.
Once they were back out on the street, he took Wren by the hand.
“Sorry if I scared you,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna let you get hurt.”
“I know,” Wren said.
“You OK?”
Wren nodded.
“Ready?”
Wren nodded.
“Alright. Where is she now?”
“This way.” Wren tugged Three’s hand, and gently guided him through Morningside’s elegant streets and walkways.
There was a heavy sleepiness to the city, as if the citizens were waiting for the outsiders to take care of the morning. The further they moved away from the gates, the fewer people they saw. Wren led Three through an unfamiliar quarter, heavily shadowed by the wall at sunrise. He stopped suddenly, and drew Three to one side, slipping into an alley between two darkly-windowed buildings.
“She’s there,” the boy said, pointing to a squat, one-story building further down the path. It was quiet here, almost untouched by the distant murmuring of the rest of the waking city.
“Is she alone?”
Wren shook his head. No point in going in, then. Three scanned the area. It was too open here. But further down the alley…
Three crouched down on a knee, and put his hands on Wren’s shoulders.
“I need you to do something brave,” he said.
Wren stared back with his deep sea-green eyes, intent but watery. Afraid, but trying desperately not to show it. The boy nodded.
“I need you to let her see you.”
Wren stood utterly still. Eyes wide, jaw clenched. His breathing quickened.
“Stand here at the end of the alley. As soon as she sees you, just turn and walk down there.” Three pointed back down the alley between the two buildings, to where they backed up against the city’s great wall. “I’ll be right there, waiting. I’m not gonna let her hurt you, OK? Don’t run. Just walk. Even if she calls your name, don’t run or turn around. Just keep walking. Think you can do that?”
A long pause. Then Wren shook his head slowly.
“I don’t think I can,” he said. “I can.”
Three squeezed Wren’s shoulders. Ruffled his hair. “I’ll be right there.”
Wren nodded. Three took to his feet and walked down the length of the alley. Forty feet, maybe. It opened into a small sort of courtyard between the buildings and the wall, though the space seemed mostly unused. Three was relieved to find there were no windows back here. He turned and looked back to Wren, who was watching him. Three nodded and gave the boy a thumbs-up. Wren waved and disappeared around the corner.
The next few minutes were the worst Three had suffered since the night he’d lost Cass. He hadn’t meant for Wren to leave his sight, and he cursed himself for not telling the boy that explicitly. But there was nothing to be done about it now. He couldn’t risk getting caught out in the open, not when Wren might turn the corner at any second with Jez close behind. The seconds crawled by, and Three fought to still himself, fought to silence the voices screaming in his head at how foolish a plan he’d made, how he’d endangered Wren, how Jez had probably already caught him. What was taking so long? Three slid low to the ground and risked a peek around the corner. Where was Wren? How much closer to the building had he gone? There was a distant sound, a high pitch, muffled. Was that Wren, calling out? Three stood back up. This wasn’t going to work. Wasn’t working. He cursed himself for not thinking it through, for putting Wren in harm’s way. He had to get him back. Three was just stepping into the alley when Wren rounded the corner at the opposite end, walking carefully towards him.
The boy’s face was bloodless, ghostly white, and even from this distance, Three could see he was shaking. But he held strong, kept his pace steady. Three motioned for him to keep coming, and then slipped back into the shadows of the courtyard.
He could hear the boy’s shuffling footsteps echoing down the alleyway. Closer. Almost there. And then.
“Wren?” A woman’s voice. Warm. Tender. Not at all what Three had expected. “Wren, sweetheart, is that you?”
But Wren did just what Three had told him. His pace didn’t falter. A few seconds later he came into the courtyard and headed straight for Three. Three pressed a finger to his lips and waved Wren into the far corner, furthest from the entrance. Wren nodded and moved there quickly, curling himself into a tight ball, hands over his ears and terror in his eyes.
Three crept silently to the edge of the nearest building, moved into position, poised to strike. He could hear her approaching cautiously, footsteps falling fainter the nearer she got. Then, silence. Three strained to hear her.
“Wren?” she said again.
She had stopped about two-thirds of the way down the alley. But it was alright. Either she’d come all the way to investigate, or she’d wave it off and turn back the other way. If she didn’t come to him, Three could cover the distance and take her down before she made it back to the street.
“Is there someone back there with you, sweetheart?” It shouldn’t have mattered, but Three couldn’t help but notice the perfect quality of Jez’s voice. Rounded and full, pleasantly deep. Resonant. “Why don’t you come out where I can see you?”
Without even realizing it, Three started edging towards the alley. He caught himself.
“It’s alright,” Jez said. “I want you to come out.”
Her voice seemed to come straight from inside his own head, a honeyed droning that filled Three with a sense of complete calm. And he remembered how beautiful she was. Vividly he saw her in his mind, her perfect features, her perfect form accentuated by her fitted bodysuit. Three felt himself sliding dreamlike, even as one part of his mind raced to analyze what was happening. Some kind of vocal implants, most likely. Wren had warned him. But the most common ones worked through connection, like a virus for the mind. Three had never experienced anything like this before.
“Come out. I just want to see you.”
He knew exactly what was happening. The frequency of her voice was being tuned to modulate the electrical impulses in his brain, inducing a dream-like state that left him dangerously open to suggestion. And even knowing this, he couldn’t keep himself from stepping into the alley.
“There you are,” Jez said with a suppressed smile. Seductive. “I’m so glad to see you.”
She took a step closer. Three’s arms hung limply at his sides, while the tiny part of his mind that was still his own screamed for him to act. He would have to destroy her… but not yet. He wanted to hear her, to see her, just a little longer. He felt so warm, so comfortable. She started walking toward him now. Not the stalking, bird-like movements he’d seen before. Fluid. Feline.
“I was hoping I could be the one to find you, you kn
ow,” she said, her voice low. “I wanted to be the one.”
Her smile. Her eyes. Everything about her said she loved him. Desired him. But Jez was going to kill him. He knew it. And he accepted it. It would be alright.
“Asher will love me for being the one.”
Six feet away.
And suddenly an arctic light pierced the veil, a pulse of blinding white shocking him back to himself. He reflexively shielded his eyes. In the next instant he glanced back to Jez, who was momentarily stunned by the flash. Their eyes met for a split second, and as she opened her mouth to speak, Three closed the gap and lashed out, striking her across the throat with the web of his hand.
Jez reeled backwards choking, but as Three advanced she snapped her head around, whipping her long braids towards him. Not realizing the threat he tried to strike through the attack, but felt the sudden impact and sting across his face as the razortips woven in her hair bit deeply into the flesh of his cheek and neck and brow. The shock blurred his vision, and he missed his target.
Three followed with a forearm, but Jez slipped the blow and swiped upward with her palm, aiming for his eyes. Three threw his head back, narrowly dodging the attack. He snatched her wrist with one hand and wrenched her elbow with the other, using the leverage to slam her face-first into the alley wall. Before she could rebound, he drove his knee into her lower back. And as she arched backwards from the strike, he grabbed her head in a lock and twisted nearly to the point of breaking.
It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been in her position, a fraction of an inch and a few pounds of torque from dead. Jez started to go slack, and Three forced her down on to her knees, keeping a strong stance behind her. Another day, in that critical moment, he would’ve snapped her neck without hesitation. But the sudden realization that if not for Dagon’s mercy he would be dead was enough to give him pause. Locked together as they were, his cheek pressed hard against the back of her head, Three could hear her choking breath as Jez’s throat continued to spasm from his blow. The whole left side of his face was wet and sticky with blood, one eye blinded with it.
“Please,” Jez rasped, barely forcing the word out through his chokehold. The power of her voice was gone. So, it seemed, her will to fight. Jez wasn’t like Fedor or Kostya. She wasn’t a fighter. She was a manipulator, a seductress. And somehow, now, caught in his arms that were so much stronger, she seemed suddenly fragile. Not altogether unlike Cass.
At the far end of the alley, towards the city, the white light continued to pulse. Three recognized the source now. Wren’s strobe from the Vault. He’d forgotten the boy even had it. Three glanced behind him with his good eye. Wren was there, standing in the courtyard. Watching. Three loosened his grip on Jez.
And suddenly—
“Asher, he’s here!” she called out in her damaged voice.
Three strengthened his hold.
“Wren,” he called. “Look away.”
He left her body behind the building and together with Wren fled towards the center of the city. They were careful to dodge other citizens until Three could get the bleeding stopped and the blood washed off his face. Crouched behind a one-story clothing shop, he used a maintenance pump to splash ice cold water across his latest wounds, and scrubbed them clean as best he could.
The cuts sprayed across his face were thin but deep, the kind of precision pain only a razor can deliver. The one across his eyebrow was the worst. He was fortunate not to have lost the eye completely. Wren stood quietly by, pale with fear, brave in his silence.
Three wiped his face and shook his hands dry as well as he could, and caught Wren’s eye. “You OK?”
Wren nodded slightly.
“Where’s Ran now?”
Wren’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “Heading back towards the middle of the city.”
“Governor’s compound?”
Wren shrugged. “I guess. Yes, that seems right.”
Three wondered why. Why Asher wouldn’t send Ran after them immediately. Frightened? He probably didn’t know about Dagon yet, not for sure. But he’d lost Fedor and Jez within eight hours. Maybe in his panic, he was calling all security back home. But Three’s hope of that was quickly lost. The next moment, all across the city, alarms began to blare.
Wren reflexively stepped into Three’s body, buried his face against Three’s neck. Three threw his arm around him protectively.
“They’re coming!” Wren said in a terrified whisper. He gripped Three so tightly, it nearly choked him.
“I’m not gonna let ’em take you, Wren. Not now.”
It was a promise. He said it, and he meant it, even though he had no idea how he was going to keep it. His brow still hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, but if they were alerting the whole city there was no reason to worry about that now. And there was no way to figure out a plan, no time to strategize. Three didn’t know how many guardsmen a city the size of Morningside had, but it was likely in the hundreds. They had to move.
“Come on, Wren,” Three said, picking the boy up.
Morningside’s security forces would most likely seal the gates, and work their way from outside in. That made the Governor’s compound literally the last place they’d look. And maybe he’d get a shot at Asher before all was said and done.
They raced together through the streets as citizens began flooding out of their homes, and it didn’t take long before Three realized something else was going on. Something terrible. The citizens of Morningside were in a panic, fleeing together in a mad rush, a churning human current that swept Three and Wren along with it, all going in the same direction. Towards the Governor’s compound. And then above the cries of panic, Three heard a shriek that pierced his heart.
The Weir were attacking.
Thirty-One
Three and Wren were among the first of the crowd to reach the Governor’s compound, and as they approached, Three slowed his pace. Already a thin line of citizens was pressed against the gate, pleading with the guards on the other side to let them in. The guards stood dispassionately, clad in black, grim-faced and motionless. Their only job to protect the Governor, not his subjects.
“Governor Underdown! Governor, we need you!” came the cries. “Governor, please!”
From the clamor of the crowd, Three picked out news that the eastern gate was already overrun, that the guards had been cut down before they could seal it. The Weir were inside.
Three’s mind reeled at the prospect. He had walked the open for decades and never once seen the Weir roaming in daylight. Images flashed from his walk through the streets the night before, images of the people he’d passed. So clean, so carefree. Soft. He could only imagine how quickly the Weir must be cutting through them now.
Wren was sobbing on his shoulder, sucking in choking breaths, gripping Three’s coat in his trembling fists. “Asher. He’ll know. He’ll know I’m here!”
“I know, Wren,” Three answered. “We’re counting on it.”
The crowd swelled as more citizens joined the ranks, crushing together around the compound, piling against the gates, clamoring for Underdown to appear. Their Governor. Their savior. Three kept clear of the crowd, held steady around the edges, alert for any sign of the Weir. Watching for Asher.
“Tell me if Ran shows up,” Three said. Wren didn’t respond, so Three dug the boy’s face out of his shoulder and looked in his eyes. “I need you to do that for me, OK?”
Something shifted in Wren then. He caught his breath, wiped his eyes and nodded, and though he lay his head back on Three’s shoulder, he didn’t hold on so tightly.
Moments later, a cheer went up from the crowd. Both Three and Wren looked to the mob of people, then followed their collective gaze up to the wall. There, next to one of the towers to one side of the gate, he stood.
Underdown.
He was tall, nearly six and half feet by Three’s guess, with pale blond hair and a powerful frame. Even from this distance, the resemblance was striking. If there’d been any lingerin
g doubt about whether Cass had told the truth about who Wren’s father was, it was dispelled. The Governor could have been Wren, thirty-five years older. Whatever catastrophe was about to befall Morningside, Governor Underdown had arrived to thwart it. Silence fell over the throng of citizens, though in the distance Three could hear the cries of the Weir approaching.
Three started to press his way into the crowd, a new idea forming. If he could just get close enough, maybe he’d be able to force a confrontation between Asher and Underdown. But as he neared the Governor, he stopped. The look on Underdown’s face was not the cool confidence Three had expected. Nor the grim determination of a seasoned warrior before battle. The eyes too wide, the lips colorless. The look of a man caught in a lie. Powerless.
He opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again wordlessly. At a loss. Somewhere nearby a Weir shrieked its electric call. Three figured they had two minutes, maybe three.
“People of Morningside!”
Another voice now. Younger. Cocky.
Asher.
“People of Morningside, you have been deceived!”
He strolled along the wall, making his way towards the Governor casually, hands clasped behind his back. Three had never seen him before but he knew him instantly. Shaggy brown hair, sharply handsome, he had just enough of Cass in his cheekbones to make Three hate him. Seventeen, maybe eighteen years old, he walked like he owned the world. Now that Three saw him, he couldn’t believe this was the little punk they’d been running from for so long.
“Your beloved Governor is a fraud,” he said, with a smirk. Like it was some cruel joke he’d pulled. “Tell them, Governor. Tell them how you lied.”