“Hetzer,” the kid muttered. “So what’s it about now?”
“Kai . . .” Delmin gasped out.
“Easy, Del. We’re all going to keep it easy,” she said.
“You’re the Thorn’s friend, right? You too, Uni? What do you do for him?”
Delmin squeaked out. “I was there that night. Your friend—Hetzer. He tried to help me. One of those . . . one of those mages, they came for him and me. He stood his ground. Should have run, but he stood.”
The kid turned a bit. “You were there that night? Then where was it?”
“Warehouse, way up in Dentonhill. One of Fenmere’s.”
“All right, all right.” He looked hard at Kaiana, keeping the knife on Delmin. “I’m in some real fire here. Can Thorn help me out?”
Kaiana had to be honest. “No, kid, he can’t.”
“The blazes?” The knife came tight onto Delmin’s flesh.
“I think the Thorn’s in trouble,” Kaiana said quickly. “He went hunting someone last night. Someone causing a lot of trouble on campus.”
“The bloke he was trying to get the other night?” His hand pulled away again. “I owe that guy a bit of blood, I can tell you that.”
“That’s the one.”
Delmin suddenly reacted, a burst of wild magic, splitting him and the Prince apart. The Prince stumbled, but Delmin went flying to the ground.
“What—”
“Hey, Prince,” Kaiana said, directing his attention to her eyes. “Keep on me, all right? That guy, we’re pretty sure the Thorn got in trouble going after him. So we’re trying to find him.”
The Prince shrugged, put the knife back down, and slinked back into the shadow a bit. Kaiana noticed his hands and coat had a fair amount of dried blood on them. “So who’s this guy? You got a name?”
“Cuse Jensett,” Delmin said from the ground.
“Jensett?” the Prince said. “Blazes, that’s a Rabbit name.”
“White Rabbits?” Delmin asked.
“Red Rabbits,” the Prince said, a bit put off. His eyes narrowed. “I know one place where I think there’s a bunch of them.”
Kaiana nodded. “I’ll take it. Where?”
“Rabbits have been pressing their chins, you know? They recently pushed into an old brewery.”
“A brewery?” Delmin asked. “That would . . . that could be exactly the sort of place Jensett would need to do his work.”
“Where’s the brewery?” Kaiana asked.
“Tulip and Waterpath.”
“Thanks, Prince,” Kaiana said. She grabbed Delmin’s hand and pulled him up onto his feet.
“Hey, wait,” the Prince said. “If the Thorn needs help, if this guy took him down, then . . . I want a piece. Blazes, I owe him a piece.”
“You look like you’ve got enough trouble right now, kid,” Delmin said.
“Damn right I do. If the Thorn can’t help me out of it, then . . . might as well do something to make it worth it.”
Kaiana looked him over again. “Delmin, give him your coat.”
“Are you crazy?”
“He puts your coat on, hands in his pocket, and he won’t stand out.”
“How can we trust—”
The kid flipped his knife around and offered it, hilt first, to Kaiana. “If you two are really friends with the Thorn, I’ve had his back twice this week. I’m not going to quit that now.”
“Good enough for me,” Kaiana said, refusing the knife. “Right, Delmin?”
Delmin groused but handed over the coat.
Cuse and the old Rabbit had stepped away, conferring with some of the other Rabbits out of Veranix’s earshot. Veranix took the opportunity to determine how deep in the blazes he really was.
For one, he was nearly naked, so no weapons. He was bound in the metal coils, and attempts to move his hands proved fruitless. Magic equally so. Anything he pulled in was yanked out of him, presumably by the coils. If he understood that stuff better—like Phadre or Jiarna did—maybe he could at least come up with a way to circumvent that.
He laughed to himself. More likely, he’d simply understand what was happening.
“I honestly think it’s foolish,” the old Rabbit was saying.
“I don’t care. You have your plan, which I’ve done plenty for. Your revenge is no less petty than my own.”
“Fine, fine,” the old man said. “When will you be back?”
“No later than noon bells. The ceremony starts at eleven bells, and I’ll trigger things shortly after that. I’ll watch the carnage for a while, but from a respectable distance.”
“How far is that?”
“Honestly, Uncle, with this many numina batteries, it might just be that the whole campus is affected.”
At that, Veranix couldn’t hold back. The dam burst open. “I am going to tear you apart, Jensett! I will make you eat those batteries.”
“He is a little firefly, isn’t he?” Cuse asked idly.
“Like his father,” the old man said. “Cal wasn’t the brightest, but he could talk up a storm.”
“Well, you can reminisce with him. I’m off to destroy the University.”
“Good luck with that.”
The old man came back in Veranix’s line of sight. “Look, son, I don’t blame you for not liking the Rabbits. Reb was one of the first to turn on your father and your uncle when things went left.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do not insult me, all right, kid? Let me tell you, you’ve got a beef with Fenmere, well, so do we all. And this stuff here, that my nephew cooked up? It’ll take down Fenmere. Blazes, he tricked the man into giving him the starting funds. So we—the Red Rabbits—we’re going to make him suffer. Don’t you like that?”
“It’s not the worst thing,” Veranix admitted. “But I could use a better view.”
“I get it, kid. Your pop was a good man. I liked him. You want to do right by him. This’ll do it.”
“Humor me and define ‘this.’ Besides Cuse destroying the campus.”
The old man waved that off. “That’s his thing. His revenge on the University. You understand, I’m sure.”
“Understand?” Veranix said, feeling his anger flow through him. “I smack around effitte dealers and scum who work for Fenmere. Your boy there has been hurting and killing innocent people.”
“Eh, it makes him happy. And we want to keep him happy right now. He’s the one making the Red.”
“The Red?” Veranix asked. That was mentioned before. Cuse said he’d be fueling it, whatever that meant.
“We’ll take Fenmere’s whole market. The Red is better, and we can make it cheaper.”
“The Red is like effitte? And you’re making it? Here?”
“That’s right,” the old man said. He said it, pride filling his face, which then fell. Maybe he could tell by Veranix’s expression that he had just said the wrong thing.
Veranix slammed as much numina through his body as he could stand. The coils were sucking it away, growing hot around his wrists and ankles.
“What are you doing?” the old man asked.
The room was humming.
No matter how much numina he pulled, Veranix couldn’t beat the device.
But maybe he could break it.
The crew Colin had been given were older, tougher brutes. Tough enough to live as long as they had, but none of them particularly blessed with wits. If they had been, they would have made captain, given the time they had put in the streets. They were good for this job, though: bruisers who could crack skulls with the best of them.
Orchid Street was a pretty typical collection of shops for the neighborhood: a general store, a secretarial and post, a cheese maker, bakery, so forth. The north side of the street was clearly Prince terri
tory; they had a storeroom and a couple flops over there, nothing that mattered too much. On the south side they hadn’t bothered holding any flops or shops.
Rabbits had been seen on the corners on Orchid for the past few weeks, marking territory. The lines were fuzzy, and for the sake of the peace, the Pact, the Princes hadn’t made much noise over Rabbits making the south side of Orchid their own.
Now it was time for a racket.
“Oy,” Colin called as they approached the cheese shop. The shop owner—an older man with a thick mustache—was sweeping his stoop. He started to wave them off as they came over.
“No trouble, please.”
“No trouble,” Colin said. “We’re just here to help our neighbors.”
“Help?” the man asked cautiously, backing into the shop. “I don’t need anything.”
Colin moved into the doorway. “No? Because if you had, say, a rodent infestation, me and my boys could help you chase them out.”
“Rodents?”
“Rodents,” Colin said. “You know, furry troublemakers? Maybe in your basement, or one of your rooms upstairs?”
“No, no,” the cheese shop man said. “I got none of that. None, you hear?”
“Fine,” Colin said. He pulled a few ticks out of his pocket and handed the coins to the man. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who does have such a problem?”
The man glanced out the door and down the street, checking to see if any of his neighbors were watching. “You didn’t hear this from me, hmm?”
“Of course not.”
“Bennim, the sew-up, he’s got a problem in his place. A bad one.”
“Anyone else?”
“Gawkins.” The secretarial and post. “And I know he’d like some help with it.”
“You’re a good neighbor, friend.” Colin slapped him on the shoulder and led his boys down to the sew-up’s shop. “We’ll do right by him, eh?” he said to them. “Buy some cheese, bring it to Casey and the rest.”
“If you want,” one of the heavies said. Ment was his name. Big guy, no real imagination.
“Do people right, live like Princes,” Colin said. If nothing else, that was something his father had drilled into him. Vessrin, Jensett, Hallaran, the rest of his old friends . . . they never understood that. Colin wondered what the neighborhood meant to them at all.
The sew-up—a cheap doctor who asked few questions—was probably the main reason the Rabbits had moved in over here. Colin didn’t know Orchid as well as Rose Street, but if Bennim was any good, the Princes would have already locked him down as one of their own. So he was likely a drunk or clod with shaky hands.
Colin knocked on the door, but didn’t wait for any call from inside. The door wasn’t latched, so they just went in. The front parlor was a shabby sitting room, and a boy sat at a little desk.
“Hey, whoa!” the kid said. “You can’t come barging in here.”
“Sure we can, kid,” Colin said, and no one was going to argue much with him and five bruisers. “We’ve got a bit of business here.”
“Doc is with a patient, eh? You’ll have to wait.”
“Not right now,” Colin said, pushing through the next door.
The doctor might have been with a patient, but the only treatment he was giving involved them both being naked. They screamed and jumped off each other.
“What . . . what the blazes are you doing here?” the old man shouted.
“Sorry to interrupt your . . . session, Doc,” Colin said. He glanced at the bird’s clothes on the ground, and noticed the fur-lined coat. So she was a Rabbit. “We heard you had an infestation of Rabbits, and we thought we’d clear it out for you.”
“Now wait just a moment—” the doctor stammered.
The bird wasted no time grabbing one of his instruments off the table and leaping for Ment like she was about to plunge it into his eye. Ment didn’t even blink, grabbing the bird’s wrist and snapping it before she even touched the floor.
“Now you might have some real work,” Colin said, wrapping his arm around the naked old man. “Look, I don’t mean to mess things up for you. I can see the appeal of whatever deal you’ve cooked up here.” That said, this Rabbit bird was an older, scrawny thing that probably hadn’t been a real source of honey for the Rabbits in a while. “But it ain’t any good for my friends here. You can see that.”
The girl was shaking on the ground now, like she wanted to scream but couldn’t.
“Ment, cover her with something, hmm? A little respect.”
“Let me help the girl, please,” the doctor said.
“In a moment, all right,” Colin said. “This is how it’s going to go. First we’re going to clear out your infestation. Then we’ll keep some boys here to make sure it doesn’t return.”
“Just boys?” the doctor asked.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Colin said. “We don’t really deal in that sort of thing, or turn out our own.” He threw that at the girl on the ground, though she didn’t seem in the mood to listen to anything.
“I don’t see much point in arguing,” the doctor said.
“Capital,” Colin said. “Ment, stay with our new friends. The rest of us, let’s go clean out the warren.”
“Something is happening,” Delmin said as they approached the brewery. “Oh, saints, something is really going on.” He stopped walking in a straight line, spinning wildly.
Kaiana grabbed him by the shoulders. “Del! You’re drawing attention to yourself.”
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just . . . I don’t even know . . .” He grabbed onto his head, like he was trying to pry it open.
“What’s wrong with him?” the Prince asked Kaiana.
“He can sense magic,” she said. She grabbed Delmin by the front of his shirt and pulled him out of the walkway.
“What, really?”
“It’s there!” Delmin shouted, pointing simultaneously in two directions.
“Where?” Kaiana looked at both places he pointed. One was an old building. The other was a wagon rolling down the street. “Is that the brewery?”
“Yeah,” the Prince said. “But the two guys driving that wagon were Rabbits.”
“Damn it,” Kaiana said. “Del, is it Vee . . . is that what you sense?”
“Maybe. I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”
“What does that mean?” the Prince asked.
“You think he’s on the wagon?” she asked.
“Something is on the wagon. Something is in the brewery.” He covered his eyes. “Too much, too much.”
“Do you feel him?”
“They’re both him,” Delmin said.
The Prince looked back and forth. “Is that possible?” He shrugged. “I don’t know how this magic stuff works.”
Delmin’s hands crossed back and forth. “It’s all too . . . no . . . that is . . . that one . . .” He pointed to the wagon. “That’s just a hum. A very loud hum.”
“What does that mean?”
“The other is a scream. A living howl of numina. And it—it—”
Delmin fell back against the shop front, pressing his palms against his eyes.
“This don’t look good, bird,” the Prince said.
“No,” Kaiana said. She looked over to the brewery. “Watch him.”
“Whatdya mean watch him?”
She grabbed the Prince by the front of his coat. “Does he look like he can fend for himself? You. Watch. Him. I’m going in.”
Kaiana didn’t wait for the Prince to respond, going toward the brewery while shoving one hand in her coat pocket. She wrapped her fingers around the handle of her spade.
The main door was open, just a bit. So there was no need to force her way in.
As soon as she looked inside, she saw only two people—Red Rabbits by their coats. They were
n’t paying her any mind, and it was easy to see why.
They were far more focused on the fact that the building was vibrating.
Chapter 23
“CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG, Uni,” Jutie said to the skinny kid, “but something tells me that wagon is nothing but bad news. Rabbits and magic, right?”
The poor guy looked like he’d been hit by effitte and a swift kick to the head. “Yeah. Something—a lot of magic, but sitting, not focused. Not a person, you know?”
“I really don’t know, Uni,” Jutie said. “But there are people on it.”
“There are,” the Uni said, and he stood up in a jolt. “It isn’t Vee—err, the Thorn—it’s him.”
“Him who?” The kid was already striding after the wagon. “Blazes.”
“Him, and he’s doing something so big it hurts me from here,” the kid said. “The guy the Thorn went after.”
“You know what he’s going to do?” The Uni kid was a mage, who knew what they could do.
“Not what, but I can feel the power levels.” He stopped in the middle of the street, and then pulled Jutie to the corner walkway. Jutie didn’t make a thing of it, the kid was a mage, and a friend of the Thorn. “That’s the problem, see? Whatever is on that wagon, I’m too sensitive to it. I get close, it’s like a knife in my skull.”
“Got it,” Jutie said. He didn’t get magic, but the idea that some sort of big magic could mess up a mage’s head made a certain amount of sense. “So what do we do?”
“Wait for the Thorn?”
“Won’t he be all knife-to-the-skull over it?”
“No, he—we’re different kinds of mages, let’s leave it at that. But . . . blazes, if he—he might not be able to do anything about it.”
“And you can’t either.”
“No, but . . . I might know someone who can.” His face got very serious. “If I can get ahead of it, maybe I can warn them.”
This was something Jutie understood. Safewalk to the Uni gates. “All right. We’re going to take the fastest route I know to get ahead, and saints help whoever gets in our way. Can you run?”
The Uni kid nodded.
The Alchemy of Chaos: A Novel of Maradaine (Maradaine Novels) Page 29