by Taven Moore
She paused for breath, then noticed the look on the man’s face. He wasn’t angry, or frightened, or even irritated.
If anything, he looked . . . pleased. She felt the urge to step back and quashed it. She was a Price. She would not bow before this insignificant slug.
The man smiled and turned to Notch. “You, cat.” Notch straightened. “Get me a collar.”
Notch disappeared briefly, then reappeared almost immediately with a thick, bronzed metal band. A cube about the size of her hand was on one end. If it truly was a collar, as he had said, then that would be the lock.
The man took the thing from Notch and advanced on her. She stared up at him with all the disgust she could muster. When he was less than a foot away, she brought her knee up sharply to his groin, but he was too quick.
“Tsk, tsk,” he clucked, hand gripping her slender knee firmly. “Very naughty. Do not take liberties, girl. You may be worth more undamaged, but I don’t need to sell you. I could just as easily kill you now and be done with the whole mess. Remember, with the dresl in custody, you are no longer necessary.”
He pushed her leg back until her stockinged foot once again touched the floor, then released her. She considered trying again, but gave up when she caught the gleaming eyes of Notch. He clearly wanted her to keep fighting.
The reminder of his presence deflated her enthusiasm. Even if she managed to somehow incapacitate this human, she would never get past Notch.
Eyes burning, she clenched her teeth and stood still as the man clasped the ring around her neck. Immediately, she felt a low vibration from the collar.
“Ah,” he said, stepping back and smiling at her as though she’d done something amusing. “Much better. You, young lady, are entirely too loud. If I had the time, I’d be tempted to keep you myself, just to teach you some manners.”
Her nostrils flared and she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind. “Manners? From you? Laughable!”
At least, that’s what she’d intended to say. Her lips moved, but no sound escaped her mouth. She felt like she was talking, but she might as well have been pantomiming. Startled, she stepped back. What should have been a sharp clatter from her one remaining boot was also quieted.
She’d been silenced. Utterly silenced. The realization caused her eyes to widen.
“Ah, you understand. That is good.”
He turned to leave, then paused, one hand on the door frame as he looked back. “My family name, by the way, is Craft. Mack Craft, to be precise. I would hate for you to waste such a passionate curse without knowing who to bestow it upon.”
With that, he was gone.
Silently, Remora fumed. She paced up and down the tiny room. If there had been any justice on this world, Notch would have been severely injured by the murderous glances she tossed in his direction.
When the new guard replaced him, Notch actually had the audacity to return her boot to her. She snatched it from his paws and he gave that odd coughing laugh before taking his leave. The new guard closed the door and stood outside. The sound of the lock catching hold stilled her pacing and wiped the scowl from her face.
Hesitantly, she lifted a hand to finger the coppery collar around her neck, paying special attention to the little cogsmithing box that powered it.
Alone at last, or nearly so, she allowed herself the smile of hope she’d been suppressing ever since Mack Craft latched the equipment around her neck.
The white leopard cocked her head at Remora, clearly puzzled. The shonfra chittered quizzically at her. She ignored them all, laughing as her fingernail found the catch on the bottom of the box—the bottom of the cogsmithing device.
Her throat expanded and contracted, but not a single sound of her joy escaped to warn her guards. Delighted, she hugged herself tight and spun a happy little circle there, in the middle of the cell.
Now, at last, she had something she could work with.
She set about unlacing her dress so that she could get at the cogsmithing tools hidden in her corset. She would not wait for Jinn to rescue her. If she had any say in it, she would rescue him.
17. Chase
Jinn ducked into a side alley and pressed himself into the shadow of an overhang. Leaning against the sun-warmed wall, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
Sweat dampened his black wrappings and exhaustion slowed his footsteps.
He sucked in a deep breath and began the control exercises that he’d been taught from the moment his skin began to darken and the Mark became clear—from the moment he’d been identified as Shinra’ere.
Counting backward, he visualized each inhalation of breath filling his muscles like white smoke into a glass jar. Every exhalation emptied and relaxed the muscles, washing away the debris of exhaustion and leaving a clean, empty vessel behind.
He was accustomed to fasts from his time in the agoge. His teachers monitored his ability to withstand the pangs of hunger. Weak children, those unable to control their reactions, were mercilessly culled.
The stress of this situation with Remora and the dresl, the lack of sleep, his worry for his brother—these weighed on him more heavily than anticipated. He would have to be more careful.
The familiar exercises relaxed his body and weakened his hunger pangs.
Jinn opened his eyes only to find a pair of green eyes laughing at him no more than a finger’s distance from his own.
Jinn gasped. The cat dresl leapt back, the single motion landing him in the mouth of the alley. The sun glanced off the two decorative notches in one of his ears, and his black rosettes gleamed.
The cat was unmistakable; this was the dresl who had knifed and poisoned him!
Jinn darted after the dresl, but he was too slow. The dresl leapt upward, finding purchase on a jutting gargoyle and swinging himself to the roof of the building.
Safely at his perch, he grinned down at Jinn and showed a single hand, middle finger raised in a universal gesture.
Jinn gave chase.
Jinn found his way to the roof by way of a striped awning and the cat leaped to the ground and darted across the street. Street to alley, roof to roadway, they danced. Jinn’s thighs burned and his calves wound into twin knots of stone.
He was a fighter, not a runner. This sort of high speed chase, he was not prepared for even in the best of times. Against an average cat dresl, he might have stood a chance. This cat dresl had clearly been trained. It took all Jinn’s skill simply to keep the target in sight.
The notch-eared cat finally ran to ground, entering a low building at the end of a street. More slowly, Jinn followed.
The building was unlit. Stepping through the door, from hot sunlight into the midnight cold of the building shocked as if he’d fallen into a cold pool. Jinn stopped in the darkness, listening. His own breath sounded loud in the silence, deep and labored. The sound of the cat’s own heavy breathing hissed somewhere nearby. He’d only just located the sound—it came from above?—when the heavy clang of metal behind him sounded, followed by the unmistakable sound of a key in a lock.
Jinn whirled and tested the door. Locked! A trap!
Jinn’s breath hissed through his teeth. How stupid could he have been? The cat had clearly been leading him a merry chase, and he’d taken the bait with barely a second thought. His chest heaved from the run, and his mind felt fogged. He wasn’t drugged, he was just exhausted. Exhausted and hungry, his body reminded him, rumbling dangerously.
Jinn looked up, eyes and ears searching for some sign that the cat dresl was nearby, or perhaps had found some other exit he could follow. The harsh whisper of a match sounded from above, followed by the hiss of flame. As the tiny flame bent itself to the glass chamber of an oil lantern, a feeble circle of light revealed his companion. No. Not one figure, but two. The cat and one other—a white-wrapped Shinra’ere he had never met before.
The Shinra warrior crouched on a thin lattice of crossed metal overhead, peering at him.
“So,” he said, “this is
the infamous Jinn, he of no clan. I must admit to being unimpressed; you were absurdly easy to trap. I am Ebin, of the Clan of Mogue. You and I, we have many things to discuss.”
18. Trade
Jinn looked from Shinra to dresl, eyes narrowing. “So the stray cat does have an owner.”
The cat in question pinned his ears back. The white-wrapped warrior lifted a hand, stilling the dresl. “He does.”
Jinn put one shoulder against the wall, giving the appearance of being at ease while still granting easy access to the tasseled hilt of his arcblade.
“You’ve certainly gone to a great deal of trouble to get me here,” said Jinn, conversationally.
“I have,” agreed Ebin, setting his back to the wall and making his own weapon inaccessible. Jinn’s eyes narrowed at the insult. Such a stance indicated that Ebin felt Jinn was no threat at all.
He wasn’t wrong, not with those bars between them. Jinn tried to keep the frown from his face, but an amused whisker twitch from the notch-eared cat indicated that he hadn’t quite succeeded.
The two Shinra’ere stood like that, silently staring at each other, for a few painfully long moments. Jinn felt each minute drag past, ticking ever closer to the noon hour required by the ransom note. He did not have the dresl, nor did he have any idea of where she or Remora might be. Much as he might want to impatiently demand answers from Ebin, he might have more to gain by waiting.
“I propose a trade,” said Ebin finally, breaking the tense silence.
Jinn smiled. He was the one in the cage, but Ebin was the one at a disadvantage. By speaking first, Ebin told Jinn two very important things: One, that he had more to lose or gain than Jinn and two, that he was unlikely to kill Jinn before getting what he wanted.
He needed Jinn alive. And that meant, bars or no bars, Jinn was the one in control of this situation.
“What is it you have that I might be interested in?” Jinn asked.
Ebin smiled, teeth gleaming white against his dark lips. “Information.”
Jinn nodded, unsurprised. If the cat dresl was involved in the kidnapping, the Shinra’ere certainly was as well. An easy assumption that they could tell him what he needed in order to rescue Remora. “And what is it I have that you might be interested in for this trade?”
Ebin’s smile widened. “Information,” he repeated.
Jinn looked at the thin lattice of metal bars that separated him from the other Shinra’ere and wished them gone. A fair fight, that was all he wanted. Blade against blade, winner take all. These clever word games were not his strong suit. Not for the first time, Jinn wished his brother stood by his side. There was no political mind game created that Maza did not excel at.
The cat-dresl’s lips pulled back in a cat-like smile and Jinn realized that his thoughts had led his fingers to trace the unfamiliar knot of the tassel dangling from his hilt. The yellow color proclaimed his skill level, but the knotting design indicated clanship. As Jinn of No Clan, his clansman knot had been severed and replaced with the simple braid of an Outcast.
Jinn moved his hand away. No amount of wishing would dispel those bars. He needed to focus on the tools he had available, even if he were less skilled in them.
“Here is what I propose,” Ebin said, brushing an invisible speck of sand from the white folds of his wrappings. “We each ask a question. If we consider the truthful answer to our opponent’s question to be worth the trade, we shall trade. The answer must be truth, and must fully answer the stated question. Additionally, if the answer is unknown, that must be stated at the outset.”
Clearly, Ebin had played this particular game before.
“And if we do not wish to answer?” Jinn asked.
“Then the asker may sweeten the deal by allowing a second question to pay for the information.”
Jinn paused. If Ebin wanted information, he could simply take it. “Why the game?”
He shrugged. “I find torture to be less effective.”
A truth, but only a half-truth. Torture, especially of a trained Shinra’ere, was messy and time consuming. The real reason for the game was obvious. Like the cat beside him, the man liked to play with his prey. He enjoyed the battle of wits the way Jinn enjoyed swordplay.
The choice was no choice at all. Jinn nodded acceptance.
Ebin clapped his hands together. “Excellent! Let us begin. We will start out small. I will ask first, as a gesture of trust.” He leaned forward. “Tell me, is it true that an outcast Shinra’ere loses his Mark?”
The question seemed innocuous, but Jinn knew it was not. Agoge campfire tales of the horrors of becoming Outcast had been encouraged by the elders and all of them revolved around losing the Mark. Without the Mark, they would no longer be Shinra’ere: a horror worse than death.
It seemed unlikely that Ebin was considering becoming Outcast himself, so the question was morbid curiosity alone.
Still, Ebin’s first question was easy enough to answer, distasteful as he found the subject matter. Now, Jinn had only to decide what question he would ask in return.
Given the opportunity, a parade of questions thundered through his mind. Which to ask? He had so many. It had not been long since he left his Clan, but such news traveled swiftly. Part of him ached to know what had become of his own dresl team, abandoned when he severed his knot. What had become of his students? His brothers in arms?
Those questions would be foolish, though. He had left that life behind him, and could not go back now. Asking would be akin to pouring salt on an open wound, and would waste valuable information.
Regretfully, he set them aside. His current situation was what mattered most. Remora and the white leopard. He needed to keep them in mind. Furthermore, he needed to know who to hunt down if things went badly.
“What is your chain of command, as far up as you know it?” Jinn asked.
Ebin paused, his brows lifting. “Well, you certainly get to the heart of the matter.” He thought for a moment. “Very well, I agree to the trade.”
Jinn nodded. As Ebin had asked first, it was only fair that he give first answer.
Jinn unfastened the knot binding his forehead wrapping. Slowly, he wound the black fabric around his hand, exposing his forehead.
Ebin’s eyes traced Jinn’s Mark, feverish with curiosity. Jinn did not need to ask what he saw. He checked it in the mirror every morning, half-afraid that the old agoge tales of Outcasts losing their Mark and their abilities might come true. They had yet to take effect, if ever they were going to. The Mark still stood on his forehead, the inset design of bone sharply white against the dusky near-black of his skin.
After a moment, Ebin nodded his satisfaction. Jinn replaced the black wrap.
“And now it is my turn,” he said. “I have temporary assignment to follow the orders of a Shinra’dor by the name of Rjon.”
Jinn’s lips tightened at the name. “Ah, you know him then! I find his familiarity somewhat off-putting, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Is that another question?” Jinn asked, guarding his expression more carefully.
Ebin laughed. “Ah, no. You pick up the rules too quickly. No, that is not my second question. Let me finish the first answer. I currently take orders from Rjon, but I do not normally work in this city. My true master is a human sometimes called The Knife, and sometimes known as Mack.”
Startled, Jinn spoke without thinking, “You work for a human?”
“Is that another question?” he parroted.
Jinn scowled and Ebin continued.
“I do not know the name of Mack’s master, but I know it to be a Seraph in the skycity of Bespin.”
A Seraph? Jinn didn’t bother concealing his amazement. A Shinra’ere working for a human was strange enough—anything involving the powerful and elusive Seraph was bad business. Very bad business, indeed.
19. Games
Ebin smiled at Jinn’s discomfort. “You begin to see, then, why I have invited you to play my game.”
Jinn nodded. If Eb
in worked for a Bespin Seraph, there could only be one reason: the dresl. Ebin’s next question confirmed his suspicions.
“Did the leopard dresl join you willingly, or did you and your brother kidnap her?” He turned his head to the side. “We would ask your brother, but his throat was regrettably crushed, and we would prefer not to wait for him to heal.”
The mention of his brother was intended to throw Jinn off balance. It did. Jinn had expected Maza’s imprisonment to be that of a political subversive: detained but comfortable.
“Where is he being held?” Jinn demanded, then immediately bit his tongue. Foolish! He was wasting a question on information he could not act on.
Ebin clapped his hands together. “I agree to this trade,” he said.
The deal was done. Jinn could not back out now, or change his question. Part of him didn’t care. He wanted news of his brother, foolish though that desire may be.
“The dresl joined us freely,” Jinn answered. Truth, though as minimal a truth as he could manage. He and Maza had done their best to make her disappearance seem to be a kidnapping, but in reality, it had been more of a liberation.
The dresl were not slaves, but when the concubine of a powerful Seraph learned information she was not supposed to know, she had very few options for leaving her post which did not involve a casket.
Ebin clucked his tongue. “Ah, that is disappointing to hear. The Seraph held out hope that she might return to service with him. He will decide her fate, not I, but I would not lay odds favoring her continued good health.”
“The answer to your question is simple enough. Maza is currently a guest of honor at Ursa Luna.”
Jinn froze. Ursa Luna was the maximum security prison used only by Seraph. Guests of honor served a life sentence. A very short life sentence.
He had not expected that at all. At worst, he’d thought they might have him in Salusa, or maybe Hubble Bay. Ursa Luna was very bad news.
“Ah! I see I have given you food for thought. Surprising, surely you didn’t expect to act . . . ah, but you did! You planned a heroic rescue? How quaint!” Ebin’s eyes gleamed.