“But you missed. You wouldn’t have missed if you’d practiced.”
“I do practice! And there was blood. So I must have shot her, see?”
“I see that if you really cared about my safety,” Signe said precisely, “you would practice every day instead of whining out endless excuses.”
“They aren’t excuses! I have real work to do, you know.”
“What I want to know,” Signe replied silkily, “is how she knew about your escape route.”
“How does anyone know about anything? Lucio must have told her.”
“And who told him? You promised me we could trust those builders, but you can’t trust anyone these days. Avior snaps his fingers and flutters money at them, and they can’t spill our secrets quickly enough.”
“Let’s not argue about this again,” Silvertip groaned. “You got your manor—”
“Yes,” said Signe, television’s perfect wife, always in the background, always smiling and supporting her husband, “I got a building. A manor. And in the meantime, the king sits fat and complacent on his throne and you neglect your target practice.”
The conversation paused as water ran, teeth and hair were brushed, and the Ostbergs generally engaged in their nightly routines. They exchanged habitual comments, mostly neutral and all mundane.
“There is one other option,” Signe said, once she and her husband had settled into bed.
“No,” Silvertip said. “No, Signe. We’ve discussed this.”
“He will turn on you.”
“Yes, but until then, we need him. We need to be united.”
“He’ll know about you by now. His spy will have seen to that. You need to be ready to make the first strike.”
“Yes,” Silvertip sighed. “I know.”
“I only nag because I’m worried about you. You know how much I love you.”
The Ostbergs clicked off their bedside lamps and snuggled down in the middle of the bed.
“Yes,” Silvertip breathed. “I know.”
Signe fell asleep quickly; her husband took longer. They shifted and grunted their way through the light stages of sleep and into the paralysis of deep sleep.
I could have emerged then, but I didn’t. Maybe some instinct stopped me, or maybe I was only so stiff and aching and hungry and nervous that I chickened out. In any case, while I was vacillating, Signe cycled into lighter levels of sleep, which was no good.
The next time they entered deep sleep, I was ready for it. I slithered out from beneath the bed, my limbs like rubber hoses, my back screeching at me, my shins as bruised as the rest of me. I’d never spent hours upon hours in box springs as a child, and I’d been more limber then. It took real strength of will not to go through stretching contortions right there in the middle of the floor and instead get to work.
The curtains were drawn, but a sliver of moonlight slicing between them and reflecting off the mirror gave me enough light to maneuver. I couldn’t see any matching light from outside the bedroom door—the carpet was too thick—and the guard was quiet, but I had no doubt he was there.
I brushed my fingers over the doorknob to ensure it was locked. It was. Which meant the door could’ve stopped a particularly determined four-year-old, but definitely not a trained knight. In his construction efforts, Silvertip had apparently not invested in a reinforced bedroom door.
The thick carpet would provide some soundproofing, but I’d better also make sure they couldn’t call out—or wouldn’t.
I flitted to Signe’s well-stocked vanity and spent several Jenga-intensive minutes identifying and excavating hairbrush, powder brush, and powder foundation. Presentation, as they say, is everything.
I retreated to the bathroom with my bounty and got to work.
Signe’s skin was pink to my brown, and caking her powder on gave me a ghostly, chronically ill sheen. I blended the color down my neck and dabbed it on my hands but avoided the area around my eye sockets and outer jaw to achieve that stylish I-haven’t-slept-in-days look.
My hair came next. It’s naturally straight and goes straighter under the influence of water. After some initial trouble getting the brush through the mats, and a lot of bloody water running down my neck and arms, I succeeded in styling it: part in the dead middle, curtains on either side of my face, a few strands falling over my eyes.
The blood helped. I looked like something out of a Japanese horror film.
The Ostbergs were where I’d left them, snuggled up in their extravagant bed, sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Neither one shifted when I went through the jewelry atop Signe’s dresser. For all she’d put on a show in Pius’s presence, she obviously hadn’t been worried enough to lock it up. And she had some heavy, expensive loot. The necklace I used to tie her ankle to her husband’s must’ve cost more than I make in a year. It had plenty of sharp, fat jewels and square platinum settings to dig into her skin when she struggled.
I left her other leg free as I tucked her in nice and tight and went for some glue. Lash glue? No; it wasn’t strong enough. Ah—nail glue. I couldn’t read the lettering in the dark, but the bed of fake nails gave it away. If it was any good, she’d need a proper solvent to get it off. I dabbed it liberally on her lips and let time do its work.
With some regret, I left Silvertip’s lips alone. He had to be able to talk, and he didn’t strike me as a screamer.
Maybe five minutes had elapsed. In another two, I’d finished my preparations. I perched on a chair on Signe’s side of the bed—feet on the seat, hunched over my knees, watching them through my hair, head cranked to the side, near arm dangling, far arm supporting.
I aimed Signe’s bedside lamp at her eyes and clicked it on.
She’d been sleeping deeply, but the light was bright and intruded no matter how she shifted. She grunted and would’ve mumbled if she could’ve opened her mouth. She rolled to face her husband, and the necklace around her ankle restricted her from rolling further. She flopped back to face the ceiling. Her eyelids fluttered, opened, squinted. Her hand shaded her eyes as she looked toward the light—and toward my shadowed presence. She didn’t understand. She frowned and squinted harder. I saw the exact moment she panicked.
Her thrashes and desperate hums didn’t take long to wake Silvertip, but it must’ve felt like ages to her. When he did wake, he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t open her mouth and tell him what was wrong, and that made her panic harder. She stabbed a finger at the chair where I’d been sitting, only to find it empty.
“I could kill you,” I said.
I’d been right about Silvertip: he wasn’t a screamer. His voice disappeared entirely, and if he hadn’t been in bed, he would’ve fainted. His hands scrabbled for the gun on his bedside table, and then he was aiming it at me and squeezing the trigger wildly. The gun clicked empty every time.
I lifted my fist so that he could see it clearly and then opened my fingers. Bullets tumbled to the carpet. “I could kill you,” I said again. My back was to the door, my head tilted to the side, my arms loose. Not the parody pose I’d put on for Signe, not now they were awake enough to discern and, perhaps, find it ridiculous.
Signe’s clawing fingers tore at her lips as she pushed herself upright and back, as she flattened against the headboard, but she stopped trying to scream. She was recovering quickly, despite everything, and if she could’ve spoken, I might’ve been in trouble.
“What do you want?” Silvertip had meant to demand it, but the words emerged in a harsh croak. “What did you do to my wife?”
“Your men are incompetent,” I said, “your methods infantile. Fourteen hours, you’ve searched for me; fourteen hours, you’ve failed to catch me. I watched you run around and I watched you sleep, and you never knew I was here.”
Silvertip licked dry lips, eyes flitting from me to the door and back again.
“I could kill you,” I said a third time, “but I’ve been ordered not to.”
Silvertip stilled and Signe grasped his arm. Finally, I was be
having like they expected me to, admitting what they believed to be true. I had them, if ever I would.
Running a hand nonchalantly through my hair to normalize it as I went, I stepped toward the door and flicked on the main light. Then I went and perched again, this time at the foot of their bed. I even tried a clipped, professional smile to go with my clipped, professional tone. “Your treatment of me has been unacceptable,” I said, “but I like to think of myself as merciful—and obedient.” I quirked my eyebrows, and let the smile become faintly humorous although no less hard. “Consider this a learning experience, Otto. My employer does not appreciate your games, and neither do I. If it weren’t too late in the day to change our plans—but as you yourself pointed out as you were climbing into bed, unity is important.”
Unhurried, I removed my glasses, polished them, and hooked them back over my ears. There’s nothing quite like glasses for peering at people. “My employer,” I informed Silvertip, “is especially interested in any information you might have regarding Prefect Edenfield.”
Silvertip swallowed, but he’d spent decades as a politician, and he wasn’t about to let a little thing like midnight assault ruin his recovery time. “You’ve spoken to him?” he asked. “To your employer, I mean?”
“I’ve made a full report.” I smiled again, not like I meant it. “Now, about Edenfield.”
Chapter 18:
False Accusation
Francis was awake when I got home. He looked at me, I looked at him, and then I went and piled leftovers on a plate. I didn’t bother with the microwave. It had been a good twenty hours since my last meal, and I was hungry.
I wasn’t the only one who’d been craving food. Evidence of unhealthy living littered the table: chips, cookies, doughnuts, and soda cans. For the past thirty-three years, Francis has managed to convert lack of sleep and poor eating habits into muscle, but I’d lectured him more than once on what would happen if he didn’t reform. He’d smiled, nodded, agreed, and regressed every time insomnia struck.
By the cavelike quality of his face and the mechanical movements of his arms, he hadn’t slept a wink this night and possibly not the previous one either. Red rimmed his eyes like puckered lips.
I stuffed two chocolate-covered doughnuts into my mouth and dug into cold soba and fish.
“You have blood in your hair,” Francis said.
I nodded. “I hurt my head.”
He kept watching me as I shoved noodles in my mouth. I’m pretty good at putting up with uncomfortable stares, but he’s even better at giving them. He kept this one up all through the fish, and I’d barely begun on the noodles before I gave up and said, “Let me take a shower, and then you can disinfect me.”
“Hmm,” Francis said.
I’d seen myself in the mirror by daylight in Silvertip’s bathroom and again by moonlight. It hadn’t mattered, then; what had mattered was first that I stay hidden and later that I frighten. Only after I left Francis to take that shower did I really stop and process my appearance.
I was filthy from head to foot, thick with dust and cobwebs. The makeup I’d applied to hide my adventures in the forest was gone, save for the black gathered under my eyes, leaving plenty of little slashes and big bruises perfectly visible. Silvertip’s bullet had grazed the left top of my skull and taken away a strip of hair on either side of it. The graze itself looked remarkably shallow, considering how much blood it had produced and how much it had hurt. Faint blood trails decorated my forehead, cheeks, neck, and arms. I must’ve been dripping blood-filled water over Silvertip’s coverlet and carpet the whole time I’d been chatting with him.
Blood stained my shirt too, especially the collar and the left sleeve, which was soaked down to the wrist. I looked like I was going to a Halloween party, only too ghastly.
I stripped off my ruined clothes and took a closer look at the damage. And oh my, how I hurt, and in what creative variety. None of my injuries was severe, but each contributed its own brand of vindictiveness, from my lacerated knees to my finger-bruised neck. And these were the wages of victory!
Not for the first time, I wished those magical med packs in videogames existed in real life. I wouldn’t have minded an Undo button, either.
“You look awful!” Luc burst out, when I returned to the kitchen after my shower—freshly scrubbed, dressed in loose clothing, and feeling infinitely refreshed.
“She looks better than she did before,” Francis commented. He’d cleared and sanitized the table to make room for the first-aid kit. Not his little one, either: the giant one he brings to construction sites in case he has to staunch a stump or impalement.
I guess I could’ve felt touched or honored or something, but I mostly felt weary. I pulled up a chair next to him and slumped into it. Though it was my softest, my sweatshirt scratched various fine cuts on my arms and rubbed against the giant bruise that extended down one side of my body, where I’d slammed into the concrete ledge.
“Your wrists too?” Francis asked.
I nodded. The cuffs had done a real number on me.
“What’d you do, wrestle a bear?” Luc asked unsympathetically.
“Yes, that’s right,” I said.
“Bear scratches don’t look like this,” Francis said, examining my scalp. He’s not squeamish about blood unless it’s his own. “This is ugly. You should get stitches.”
“You do it.”
“Are you sure?”
I was sure that hospitals were required to report gunshot wounds, and that I really didn’t want to deal with reeves right now—and that I didn’t have time anyway. “I’m sure.”
Francis shrugged and dug through his supplies. He’s competent, if no artist: he went in for a basic medical training course a couple of years back, and I know he’s had to deal with various emergencies since then. Of course, that didn’t mean he had access to anesthetics. . . .
“Luc said you were arrested,” he commented as he readied a surgical needle.
I forced my eyes away from it. “Did he.”
Luc tensed, but I didn’t start in on him. It had occurred to me more than once, during my long night in the cell, that he had betrayed me; but I hadn’t thought he had. That would’ve taken moral fiber.
“Weren’t you?” Francis asked.
“Arrested? No. A couple of knights showed up here and brought me in for questioning, but I was never charged. They kept me overnight to soften me up before interrogating me. Turns out that I’m a master criminal—or the woman who stole my identity is. Turns out—”
Francis started in on my head. I’d done my best to wash the graze in the shower, but the water had hurt like crazy. Despite this, I had managed to get my hair clean on the rest of my head. As for the grazed area itself—well, the hair had been blown clear away. I felt the tickle of scissors against hair, and knew Francis was delicately cutting off more. I was going to do some artistic coiffing until it grew back.
As Francis dabbed on cooling antibiotic cream, I heroically went on with my story.
“Anyway, she’s a total psycho, and they thought I was her,” I said. “But Prefect Silvertip had met her in person, so he knew they’d arrested the wrong woman the moment he saw me.”
“The prefect was there?” Francis breathed, in awe of my brush with celebrity.
“He sure was,” I said ruefully. “Which was great—he was very kind about the mix-up—until my namesake showed up, guns blazing.”
I broke off as Francis started suturing, because I wanted his full concentration on that, and because I was busy whimpering. Only after he tied the last knot did I go on.
“Thanks,” I gasped. “How bad was it?”
“Bad enough,” he said. “So what happened?”
I made a face. “It was horrible. I didn’t know what was going on most of the time, and I kept thinking—this is the worst part of it—I kept thinking about how I was late for picking up my boss and he wouldn’t know what had happened. Isn’t that stupid? I spent hours hiding in a dusty old cl
oset and more hours in the foundation of a bed, hoping I wouldn’t get shot. It took hours and hours for the knights to—ow!”
“Sorry,” Francis said. He was examining my wrists again. “This happened at the reeve station?”
“At Silvertip Manor. That’s why—”
“Don’t touch that. Let me.”
“It itches!”
“I said don’t.”
“What were you doing at Silvertip Manor?” Luc wanted to know.
I rolled my eyes up at him and he flushed but didn’t recant. “I told you,” I said, “they brought me to the prefect. There was a lot of the knights accusing me and me being really confused, and then once the prefect verified I was who I said I was—or I wasn’t who they thought I was—they were going to send me away without explaining anything. The prefect had to intervene, or I wouldn’t know even the little bit I’ve told you . . . which I wasn’t supposed to tell you, by the way, so don’t spread it around.”
Naturally, being my brothers, they weren’t satisfied with this summary of a story. They dug in, demanding details, wringing every last minute of my adventure out of me.
I didn’t mind. I had a good story ready, plenty of embellishments to spread like pâté over store-bought wheat bread, and time to kill as I packed.
“There’s one good thing to come out of this,” I said cheerfully as I zipped up my suitcase. “The prefect felt so bad about dragging me into the whole mess that he loaned me an official government van. I can drive it instead of taking the bus—and I can even use the official lanes, if I want.” I glanced at the clock. “I’ll call my boss at eight to let him know I’m coming—I figure better late than never. Don’t let the apartment burn up while I’m gone.”
“You’re not going,” Francis said.
My mouth widened derisively. “Excuse me?”
Francis didn’t laugh and he didn’t tell me he was joking. His brow lowered, and he straightened. At some point, he had planted himself in my doorway. He wasn’t bulky enough to fill it, but he sure tried. “You’re in no condition to work,” he said. “You’ve been through a highly traumatic experience, and you’re obviously in shock.”
Bargaining Power Page 19