As the speech wrapped up, the crowd again taking its feet and applauding, Kay began looking for an exit. She’d been here too long.
“What did you think?” came a voice from just beside her. She turned to see the soldier Reagan, leaned in close. Before she could move he punched her hard in the chin, slamming her head back into the wall. As she fought to regain her bearings, he opened one of the nearby doors and shoved her inside, the sounds of struggle hidden by the roaring applause at the end of the doctor’s speech. She fell hard, crashing into a desk in some sort of study. Reagan quietly closed the door behind her.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you again.” He was walking towards her, heavy steps on the wooden floor. Kay reached for her baton, fingers fumbling as she realized all her weapons were outside. “Not this time, honey.” He lifted her off the ground with one big hand, then punched her in the face again, this time all his weight behind it. Her head bounced on the ground when he let her go, unconscious.
Chapter 13. New Something Rises
“You got one?” Followed by indistinct mumbling.
Kay drifted slowly back to consciousness. With it came pain. The back of her head felt thick and heavy. Her jaw was on fire. There was a rag in her mouth, a gag tied over it. She was on the ground, inside, stuffed in a corner. Lying on her side. Hands and feet tied tight.
She opened her eyes carefully. The room was dim, just a few candles. She was looking at boots, three pair, clustered near the center of the room. She was able to raise her head, fighting a wave of nausea, to see Doctor Banden Milo staring at her through his dark glasses. Reagan stood next to him. A third man she didn’t recognize was with them. He was younger than most of the Gol at the Red Canopy dinner. An air of efficient motion about him. Short, spiky hair.
Doctor Milo studied her for a moment, face expressionless, before turning back to Reagan. “And you didn’t draw her here? She just showed up?”
“Yeah,” Reagan said, “she was here with some younger guy. Looked like a full Gol. I looked for him after getting her tied up. Couldn’t find him. She was posing as a server.”
“And this is the one you tried for before?” The doctor turned to the third man, exchanged a look.
“She threw some sort of poison in my face,” Reagan said. “I haven’t seen her since.”
“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you about the craftiness of mixed breeds. The idea of an honest fight is repulsive to them.” The doctor was looking at her again. “I can see the wet in her blood. No problem there. Is she well known to be mixed? Who does she serve?”
“She’ll be a good fit. She runs a business. I think she looks for runaways. Established in the community. No criminal record far as I know. There was a reason I picked her the first time.”
“The time you failed,” the doctor said offhand. “How far Celest has fallen that a wetblood runs a business.” He turned from her to look at the third man. “Do we care it’s a woman?”
The third man shrugged. “More important we get it done clean than who we do it with. Makes sense to work with what we’ve got.”
“And could we do it tonight?”
“I think so. Time is tight. It will get the Straps involved, test their mettle. So long as we’re okay backing out if the family doesn’t fall the right way. If that happens we snip the loose threads and try again tomorrow night.”
“Okay, I like it. I like her.”
The men had reached some agreement and each started moving off on different business. Kay mumbled through her gag, hoping to engage the doctor. He glanced at her with complete disinterest, as though a fly had buzzed near him. She felt a chill.
Reagan leaned in over her. “Now you just keep quiet, little one. No one cares what you’ve got to say.”
…
Kay laid on the hard floor another few hours. At first the doctor, Reagan, and the third unnamed man kept coming and going. Then for a long time the room was empty, leaving her alone to try and work at her binds. She made little progress.
Midnight was drawing close when the door opened and a few large men entered. They gathered around Kay, leaning in to look closely at her. Their eyes reminded Kay of those in the crowds in Farrow, looking for Keara the Bug’s blood. Somewhere between uncaring and disgusted. Kay met their gaze firmly.
They all had the same traditional Gol haircut, shorter on the right side. All wore white canvas straps, similar to suspenders but interlocking under their armpits, forming a white H-shape over their black shirts. These must be the youth army the doctor had referenced, the militia. The Straps. Size seemed to be a prerequisite. They were huge.
The men didn’t bother talking to her, just all reached out and picked her up. Kay resisted the urge to fight. She’d save that for when she knew where she was and had a chance to escape. They turned her, one sliding his arm between her arms, tied in front of her, and her body. Another grabbed her feet. The third gripped her front and side, not being shy about taking a quick feel of her breasts. They carried her out of the room sideways like a log.
She focused on her surroundings, trying not to give in to the fear that threatened, her utter lack of control of her fate. As best she could tell she was still in the Renlan House, near the back of the ground floor. But in a different wing from where the gathering had been. No signs of lingering guests or servants cleaning up.
They pushed open a door, letting her slide down a bit. She felt the night breeze. “Wait,” one said to the others. He looked at her face and straightened her gag. She fought to speak again but he ignored her. “Okay,” he said, and hoisted her back up. They walked outside into a dark lane. There was another man ahead, same uniform, waving them forward. A lookout signaling all clear.
The Straps appeared disciplined and organized. Kay’s hopes of rescue were sinking. Even if Joah hadn’t been caught and was somehow able to find her, he could never overpower so many. She didn’t know where Abi was. Amos was getting drunk with the Bosun. She wasn’t able to turn enough to see the Fire Eye above. Her view was a series of hedges as they hustled her down the lane to her unpleasant fate. She was alone.
After only about a quarter-mile, another Strap waved them through a small opening in the hedges lining the lane. A servant’s entrance to another mansion. The back door was held open. They had to shift around to get her through, one of them banging roughly into the doorframe. They hauled her up a flight of stairs and down a dark hallway. Kay was looking around as best she could, only really able to see one of the hallway walls, when she saw the first streak of blood. It was joined by another, then a lone bloody handprint. Small. A child’s. The Straps turned off the hall and entered a large study. The smell of blood was overpowering.
Kay was glad the gag held in her gasp of horror. She was looking directly at a pile of dead bodies. A freshly murdered family. Four men, two women, and a child.
“Just drop her there.” The third man’s voice.
The Straps complied and Kay fell to the ground. They made sounds of relief as they shed their burden, horribly out of place next to the dead family. Kay couldn’t stop staring at the child. Did she need to take a notch off her bracelet? She’d failed to help him. Fires that left good Farrow dead. Where did he fall on her balance sheet?
“Are we all set?” Reagan’s voice.
“Turn her over.” The third man.
Kay felt a boot prod her over. She rolled and looked up at Reagan. He saw the fear on her face and laughed. “She’s freaking out.”
The third man walked into her line of sight, looked her up and down. “Don’t forget to unbind her and get her bloody when you’re done.” He looked at Reagan. “You’ve got five minutes, then the Guard comes.” Reagan nodded. The third man left, taking all the Straps with him, leaving Kay alone with Reagan and the dead.
Reagan walked back to a corner of the room, giving Kay a chance to study the room. It was a nightmare. The bodies were piled on one side. There was a long bloody knife in the center of the room. On the f
ar walls someone had written the words NEW FARROW RISES in blood. It looked closer to black than red on the grey stones. Reagan chuckled, following her eyes. “The only unbelievable part of this is the idea that a wetblood could spell all the words right, eh?” He turned his back, busy getting a noose over one of the beams overhead and looking for a place to anchor the other end.
Kay stared at Reagan. She couldn’t count on him untying or ungagging her and giving her a chance. He would slide the noose around her neck while she was still bound. And once he did she was dead.
With the thought of the noose around her neck, Kay felt a surprising calm fall over her. She’d been threatened with hanging before. She’d found a way out then and she’d find one now. The Fire Eye was somewhere above her. And the knife was in the center of the room. That was the way this time.
She crawled quietly towards it, no time to lose, thinking about the Red Canopy’s plans. Reagan was to hang her. Cover her in blood. Make it look like she was some mixed-blood agent of the Farrow and had killed the noble family as some sort of warning. Then she hung herself in guilt or just because she was crazy. Reagan gone, all the Straps gone. An open and shut for the Home Guard, the guilty party hanging right in front of them, weapon at her feet that was used for the horrible crime. And this would position Doctor Milo to fan the flames of anti-Farrow sentiment just as the refugee council was beginning deliberations. To call for mixed-bloods to be set outside the city and push for the Farrow to be driven back to die at Winden hands.
She got to the knife with two quiet scoots across the floor and managed to catch a clean grip on it between her bound feet. She slid her hands close and started working the cords against the bloody blade. It was razor-sharp and her bonds frayed immediately. Reagan’s back was still to her. So tonight’s events probably meant Reagan hadn’t been bought off by Doctor Milo or the Red Canopy specifically to counter Ban Terrel. He was just on the prowl for a mixed-blood to bring the doctor and Kay had fallen into his lap. Twice. She still didn’t know what connected Ban Terrel and Doctor Milo. The only link between the two was that the Fire Creep had sent a message that the girl needed to stay lost and the Fire Creep had received a messenger from the House Renlan, where this plot had been hatched. The only other link was Kay herself, who would be dead in a few seconds if she didn’t get loose.
Her hands were free and she had started working on her feet when Reagan finally turned and gave a yell. “No!” he shouted and ran towards her. She was able to sever the cords on her feet in a last, clean slice. Reagan wound up to kick her, and just as his heavy boot swung forward, Kay rolled to the right. She pulled up to a sitting position as his leg sailed past and leaned over to strike the back of his support leg, sending him to a knee. Before he could rise she drove the knife deep into his back. As he fell away, howling, she ripped off the gag around her face and spat out the rag stuffed in her mouth. She watched him squirm for a few moments. “Where have I seen you in this position before?” she asked. He writhed on the ground, his blood mixing with that of the dead family they shared the room with.
Over his yells, she heard a door being kicked in below. The Home Guard had arrived. They’d follow the blood up here in moments. She had work to do. She turned to the wall. Reagan had secured the other end of the rope which held the noose to a ring in the wall. She cut the rope with the knife. The noose fell to the ground next to Reagan. She turned back and picked it up. Threw it around Reagan’s neck and pulled it tight. Reagan gave a fresh cry and began to pull at it with his thick fingers. Kay grabbed the other end of the rope, dangling from the rafter just overhead and twisted it around her hands twice.
“This is faster than you deserve,” she said. She dropped low, throwing all her weight onto the rope. It wasn’t enough to pick Reagan up off the ground, but it did break his neck in a clean snap. She let go, rubbing her hands to hopefully clear any rope burns. It would look like Reagan had tried to hang himself but the rope had broken. She pushed the knife under his crumpled body. Trying not to look at the dead family, she walked over to that side of the room and put both hands down firmly in a puddle of blood. Went back to Reagan and wiped it onto his hands. There were boots on the stairs now. Back to the puddle, hands in it again, then over to the wall where she did her best to destroy the word FARROW from the message written in blood. No time to make it perfect, it just needed to be unclear. The sounds were getting closer, just down the hall.
Her face would look bad from its earlier beating, but not bad enough to be the only survivor of this bloodbath. Kay drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and ran directly into the wall in front of her. As she fell to the ground, blood pouring from a fresh cut under her eye, she let the horrors of the night wash over and opened her mouth to scream. It proved to be exactly what she needed and she kept screaming, long and deep, as the door was kicked in and the Home Guard rushed in with swords drawn.
Chapter 14. The Home Guard
It took until dawn for Kay to extricate herself from the questions of the Home Guard. There had been a lot of confusion, the first arrivals being poorly equipped to handle a room full of bodies and a single, apparently hysterical survivor. During the chaos of the first hour, Kay had been able to learn the name of the late Coulet family and think through a story as to why she was there. Which was good, because she needed it when the real investigators came. Two detectives arrived, the uniformed Home Guard straightening as they entered the room. It immediately became clear a chain-smoking, rumpled detective named Sol ran the show. He took one look around the room and cleared everyone out.
He followed them out a few minutes later and asked Kay to tell him everything that happened. He didn’t write anything down, just stared into her eyes intently as she launched into her story. She kept it as simple as possible so as not to trip up on any details. She’d decided it would be too much to point directly at Red Canopy. If they were fingered early and without clear evidence, the consequences would be minimal and Kay might find herself reduced to a pawn in a political game. She’d spend the rest of the Fire Eye in a cell. She needed this to come off as simply as possible. The more they dug the more they would realize she had no reason to be there. She needed to diminish her presence, not allow the narrative to focus on her Farrow blood.
With Sol staring, she told him she’d been on her way home, just outside her office, when she was approached by a messenger from the Coulet family. He instructed her to pay a call to their home on High Street. She’d come directly here and had been ushered into a waiting room. She waited several hours. She’d remained patient because she was intimidated by her surroundings, not often on High Street and having no familiarity with the Coulets or real understanding of why she was there. Then she’d heard screaming from the hall and saw a crazed man chasing a woman. The woman fell and Kay helped her up, then followed the woman as she scrambled, terrified, upstairs to hide in the bedroom with the others. The man burst in and killed everyone in the room. In the confusion, he merely knocked Kay to the ground. She pretended to be dead and he forgot about her. She must have passed out, but woke up when she heard his body hitting the ground. He’d tried to hang himself and the rope broke. She was screaming because she was sure he would get up in a moment. Then the guards came in.
Sol didn’t ask many questions at first. He got her name, home and office addresses, and let her explain her line of work. Then he went back into the room. He talked to the guards who arrived on the scene first. He came back and began immediately grilling her hard, having correctly identified several problems with the scene. Who had stabbed Reagan in the back, it looked like with his own knife? Why did the rope appear to be cut by a knife rather than broken? Why take the time to write something on the wall that was basically indecipherable, NEW something RISES? Most importantly, why was Kay in the house?
She let herself speculate on the last, telling Sol she suspected a missing child. When he pointed out their only child’s presence among the dead, she told him about how she was often hired by rich families
who had received a kidnapping threat or thought their children were considering running away. Sol doubted either applied to the Coulet family. When Kay couldn’t elaborate, he pressed her on who may have been the reference who led them to Kay.
He was clearly dissatisfied by her answers and the whole situation. Kay’s stress was rising as he peppered her with round after round of questions. She wanted to get out of the house and under the Fire Eye. Luckily, a few other Home Guard arrived, several who knew Kay from her work as a fetch, ones who respected her for her contributions to cleaning up missing persons reports. A few of them pulled Sol aside and after that he was a little softer. He started talking to her more as an ally. He stressed that he wanted this cleaned up, and as gruesome as it was, all signs pointed to Reagan as a lone killer. But he needed to make certain they weren’t missing anything. She said she’d help. He offered an escort back to her office but Kay declined. She’d have to do some work shaking any potential tails from the Straps and Doctor Milo. They still might not know her name and where she lived and worked, though they’d probably be able to buy that info off the Home Guard once it circulated past Sol. He at least gave the impression of incorruptibility.
When she was finally cleared to leave, Sol stressing that he knew where to find her, Kay checked the street carefully. She didn’t see anyone following her in the early morning sun but doubled back a few times anyway. About halfway to the office, she finally caught sight of Joah. He was a block behind, also checking her tail. She gave him a small sign to keep his distance. The walk gave her some time to think. She needed a few moments of privacy. She had left the offices last night with pressure on her from the Farrow and Ban Terrel. She was coming back with two new sources of stress. Sol and the Home Guard didn’t seem ready to sweep the bodies under the rug. And Doctor Milo and the Straps would be looking for the mixed-blood who could tell the real story of what happened to the Coulets. At least they hadn’t ever thought her worthy of a name. She’d never heard them get it from Reagan. It might take them a while to track her down. But soon they would.
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