by S. G. Night
But the little rat was still some distance away, and so the panther waited, pacing the length of her rooftop, nearly invisible in the thickening darkness.
One minute passed.
Two minutes.
The thrum of Rachel’s heart quickened with each passing second, growing heavier with each step she took. The ragged sound of her own breathing filled her skull like a hurricane, drowning the distant hum of the evening city. The muscles in her arms and legs burned with building energy, growing stronger every minute. Unconsciously, she drew one of her ebony stilettos from the loop on her forearm and began to spin it between her fingers — a nervous habit she’d acquired many years before.
But this was not nerves. Not anxiety. This was power churning in her chest. This was the slow burn of the anger that sparked within her heart when she was alone. This was the familiar sear of vigor in her veins, scorching her muscles with the urge — the need — to break, to damage, to hurt.
She was always like that — it’s what I remember most about her. There was always something…wrong with Rachel. She was always permeated with some terrible resentment, like a cloak she wore around herself. In a way, it was fascinating. Beautiful…but terrifying. Make no mistake: I have seen greater power than hers, before and since. But hers…hers was different. And I feel no shame in admitting that I was always afraid of Rachel Vaveran.
Another minute more. Another minute as the rage built itself up inside her.
And then the rodent arrived. Rachel spotted him as he stepped onto Lifter’s Street. Hammon passed beneath the circle of a streetlamp, and Rachel could see that disgusting yellow robe of his fluttering gracelessly in his wake.
As the merchant drew nearer, the assassin got her first decent look at him. Hammon was short. Balding. The buttons on his front strained visibly against the bulge of his round belly. There was something oily about the Human that left a sour taste in the back of Rachel’s mouth. Like thick grease dripped from every waddling step he took. Like he was a giant slug.
A sound reached Rachel’s ears. Faint at first, but growing as Hammon walked closer. She listened, trying to identify it….
Whistling. The Human was whistling to himself, off-key and wretched. Whistling! Like he hadn’t a care or a clue about the poverty and decay around him. Like he was above it all. Like nothing was wrong with the world.
The sound of it made the hair on the back of Rachel’s neck bristle. Her muscles drew taut, like a loaded crossbow. The energy in her limbs was joined by a potent, boiling hatred. Hatred that ran deep, so deep she could feel it in her ears, in her teeth, in her liver. In the moment she heard him whistling, her entire body had learned to despise him. To loath everything about him, from his smug, slippery smirk to the ugly hat squatting on his head.
He was a monument to everything Rachel hated. Everything about him was a mockery. A mockery of Io’s suffering. A mockery of Majiski sacrifice. A mockery of her.
The sound of shattering clay split the air — the shingle beneath Rachel’s hand had exploded under the pressure of her clenching grip. Rachel let out a caustic curse, but Hammon did not seem to hear the noise. Oblivious, the merchant strolled beneath Rachel’s roof, his vile whistle pricking at Rachel’s fraying self-restraint.
Seething, Rachel checked both ends of Lifter’s Street. Empty. She and Hammon were alone. It was time. Lithe, graceful, and silent, she dropped down into the alley below, hidden in the shadows cast by the nearby streetlamps. As Hammon trundled past the mouth of the alley, the Kinetomancer extended her hand and channeled a stream of energy down her markara; her silver eyes glinted wickedly.
Hammon’s whistle became a strangled yelp of surprise. Rachel’s telekinetic magic seized him by the nape of his robe and lifted him off the street, like a giant invisible hand had latched onto his neck. Eyes budging, Hammon flailed fruitlessly against the unseen force that held him, his stubby legs kicking wildly in the air. He made a gasp that sounded like he were trying to form a word, and then managed to blurt: “What—?!”
Rachel yanked her arm inward, and Hammon made another startled sound as her force-magic dragged him into the darkness of the alley. Fuming, she caught him in her hand and pinned him by the throat against the alley wall. Hammon thrashed and struggled, flailing about in a panic.
Rachel snarled and hoisted the fat man off his feet, holding him aloft against the wall, her grip just loose enough for him to breathe. He tried to claw at her, but gravity was pulling his plump neck down against Rachel’s hand, constricting his windpipe, which forced him to occupy his hands with the task of keeping himself from choking.
“W-what — what do you want!?” Hammon spluttered. A sheen of slimy sweat coated his fat face, pasting his thin hair to his forehead. “My purse? Is that what this is?! I have a few obul on me, take it and—”
“I’m not here to rob you, you sycophantic faul,” Rachel spat, putting the tip of her black stiletto to his throat.
Suddenly, Hammon relaxed. He seemed quite calm, collected, particularly for a man assaulted in a dark alley. When he spoke, he sounded disgustingly businesslike, like he was convinced that she wouldn’t dare hurt him. Like it was all just for show, just part of a game.
“One of my competitors hired you, then?” he asked. “Which one? Wait, don’t tell me. Was it Aiken? No, Paden, has to be Paden. How much is he paying you to shut me down, huh? I can double it. The Westward Trade Company will make it more worth your while, I assure you. We can make a deal.”
“I’m not a bruiser, either,” Rachel hissed. “I’m a debt collector.”
Hammon’s brow knitted in puzzlement, and then he laughed an indulgent, repulsive laugh. “Well then, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you have the wrong man! I have no debts. In fact, I’m closer to the collection side of the loaning business.”
The more Hammon talked — the more he rationalized his predicament in terms that he understood — the less terrified he became. He understood the rules of a back-alley shakedown. Business was business, and Hammon was clearly unafraid of games like that. After all, he had wealth. And so, naturally, he thought he had control, too.
It made Rachel angry. “This isn’t about your money.”
The Human’s commercial confidence faltered slightly. His eyes narrowed. “What do you—”
Keeping the point of her stiletto at his neck, Rachel released her grip on Hammon. The merchant began to fall back toward the cobbles, but before his feet could hit the alley floor, Rachel held up her free hand, fingers hooked. A soft thrum of energy filled the alley, emanating from her gauntleted arm and the markara beneath. Hammon released a small gasp as the invisible magic seized him by the shoulders, holding him so that he floated above the ground. It looked like a cloying yellow bathrobe dangling on an invisible coat rack.
“Who…” Hammon peeped. The self-assurance he’d worn a moment ago was dead and gone. “What are you?”
Rachel shrugged off her hood and leaned dangerously close to Hammon’s face.
“Look again.”
From the light bleeding off the streetlamp outside the alley, Hammon could see Rachel’s face for the first time. Hammon’s watery eyes twitched about, taking in every detail. He looked at the hand that Rachel held aloft, then the haze of power that rippled the air around her arm. The dark tip of the stiletto that pricked his throat. Rachel’s Shadow. The double-tapered-teardrop shape of her silver eyes.
The very not-Human shape of her silver eyes.
All the blood drained from Hammon’s face. “No…”
“Yes.”
“But…that’s not possible….” Hammon’s voice was weak, and he sounded like he was talking more to himself than to Rachel. “It can’t be…I thought they were all—”
“Dead?” Rachel’s eyes flashed with ire so cold it could have frozen the ocean. “Do I look dead to you?”
A word choked in Hammon’s throat for a moment. And then he suddenly found his tongue; he screamed. Thrashed. Clamored. Wailed. “Help! Help! Gua
rds! Someone! Majiski—!”
Hammon’s mouth suddenly snapped shut as Rachel extended her magic to hold his jaw closed.
“The Arkûl don’t come down this road, Human,” she jeered. “No one does. There’s no one to hear you scream.”
Stepping forward, she smashed her forehead into Hammon’s face. The fat man’s nose broke like a bloody pimple. He cried out, his hands flying to his face as his feet flailed madly in the air.
Rachel turned and whipped her magic-wielding hand toward the other side of the alley. The magic followed her hand, and Hammon was thrown like an unsightly ragdoll into the opposite wall. The merchant crumpled to the alley floor, blood and street-filth sullying his decadent robe. His hat tumbled off his head and splashed into a shallow, muddy puddle.
“No one,” Rachel whispered as he curled into a quaking fetal ball. “Except for me.”
The merchant hid his face behind his bloodied hands, as if he could make Rachel disappear that way. “Good gods, what do you want from me?!”
“Repayment,” she said. “I told you. I’m here to collect.”
“Collect what!?” Hammon bawled. “I owe nothing to anyone, I swear it! Who hired you? I can pay, just tell me who hired—”
“God hired me!” Rachel’s rebuke was like the crack of a toxic whip. Like poisoned thunder. “Humanity owes my kind a debt of flesh for every drop of blood we shed for you. For every one of us that died to save you.”
“Why me then?!” Hammon cried. “Why not anyone else?!”
Rachel gestured toward the city beyond the alley. “The people out there? Humans who spend every day under the Demons’ heels? They’ve given their share. They’ve made up for the blood of my kin with their sweat and their agony. Their debt is paid.
“But you,” she pointed a damning finger down at him. “You have given nothing. You’ve shed no blood, and you’ve suffered no pain. Your debt is unpaid, Hammon. I am here for compensation.”
Wheezing sobs racked Hammon’s frame; he rocked back in forth on the muddy cobbles. “P-please…I beg you, don’t do this…you c-can’t, you can’t do this to me…”
“Yes, I can.”
Rachel clamped her hand down on the nape of Hammon’s neck and slammed him into the wall again. The merchant’s face screwed into a red knot of pain and catatonic fear. He looked like a sick, bloodstained sheep, caught in the teeth of a wolf.
“I am owed a debt of Human blood,” she repeated, the words caustic enough to kill. “Your share is overdue. God made me your creditor, Hammon. You are mine to do with as I please. Tonight, I am judge. I am jury. I am executioner.”
“Please, no!”
Rachel spun the weapon in her hand, gripped it in her cocked fist, and rammed it into Hammon’s neck. The prong punctured skin, blubber, tendons, viscera, and windpipe. Blood flowed free.
Hammon gargled, his hands flying to his neck. He folded, limp, like wet paper, ripped and stained on the alley floor.
Scowling, Rachel let the fat man fall. “There isn’t enough blood in this entire country to pay your share,” she spat at the dying man. “But this will have to suffice.”
She bent and stripped him of every valuable item she could find; when she was done, he could have easily passed for a victim of a common robbery.
Spasming, Hammon writhed in his final throws, a wordless, wheezing splutter of frothing from his mouth. He burbled pathetically, his hands grasping feebly at Rachel’s ankles, as though begging her to stay.
“Please don’t touch me,” Rachel said calmly, kicking him in the face. “Needy. I hope you’ll forgive me for leaving before the show’s over.”
She slipped her stiletto back into the loop on her arm, lifted her hood, and turned to exit the alley. “If you’ll excuse me, I have better things to do than watch you die.”
***
NINE
West of the River
The Human named Elias sat in the corner of the tiny cell, counting the ragged stones in the walls. Debtors’ prison was not what quite as awful as he’d expected. He had imagined a cramped, pitch-black place where the only food would be the fungus growing in the walls, and the only company would be maggots waiting for him to die.
To his surprise, his cell turned out to be one of many a small rooms in a torch-lit hallway, not a hole dug into the bedrock. He’d yet to spot any maggots at all, although he did receive occasional visits from the local rodent population. The food wasn’t too awful, either. He wouldn’t starve. Not to death, anyway.
The manacles around his wrists chafed, though. The metal bit at his skin, sinking rusty teeth into his arms. It almost felt like the iron was dripping into his veins, slowly poisoning his blood. That, he had to say, was probably the worst of it.
Sighing, Elias gazed out the bars of the cell door. Outside was a blank wall on the other side of the narrow hallway. Not much to look at. He blew out another sigh and returned to fiddling with his chains.
“Good morning, Elias.”
Startled, Elias looked back at the cell door. Outside, a tall man in a long, hooded cloak-coat leaned against the wall, arms crossed casually over his chest. The hood cast his face in shadow, hiding the eyes that looked down at Elias through the iron bars. The man had come out of nowhere — no footsteps to announce his arrival, no distant sound of conversation from the guards. Just…poof.
Elias snorted. “Come to gawk at deadbeats, stranger? I’m not interested in being a spectacle. If I was, I’d have found myself a nice pillory to stick myself in. Go faul yourself.”
“You don’t recognize me, Elias?” the stranger asked. “I’m almost offended. Trust me, friend — we do have business, and it’s the kind you definitely want to hear about.”
Elias suddenly recognized the voice. “Thanjel?”
The light shifted, illuminating Racath’s smirk under his hood. “That’s better. I thought you’d actually forgotten me.”
“I’ve done my best to forget you, Thanjel,” Elias snapped. “It’s your peoples’ fault that I’m in this place. It would have been nice if the Genshwin had at least given me a heads-up before they cut off my allowance.”
Racath shrugged. “That wasn’t my call. My master decided your information wasn’t proving quite up to scratch. He didn’t see keeping you on retainer as…profitable, I’m sorry to say. But, really, it could be worse, couldn’t it?”
“Says you,” Elias retorted. “I thought I’d have my yearly lump-sum from you lot to pay off my debts, but you cut me off right before my loan expired! So now I’m rotting in here, leaving my family without a father, my business without an owner, and my workers without an employer! My whole world is crumbling out there, and you want to tell me it could be worse?”
Racath made a few condescending tsking sounds. “Watch your tone with me, Elias. I’m the only reason you’re still alive. My master saw you as a risk, a potential hazard to our security. He wanted to send the Liquidators after you, but I convinced him otherwise on your behalf.”
Elias swallowed. He’d met a Genshwin Liquidator once: assassins trained specifically to tie off loose ends. They weren’t nearly as skilled as a Genshwin of Talon rank, like Thanjel, but they were unanimously and unvaryingly ruthless. Brutal, even.
“Not to mention that I didn’t tell him you had ended up in prison,” Racath continued. “If I had, he would have gone crazy about how we couldn’t trust you to keep quiet, or that you’d sell us out to buy your freedom. And then nothing could have convinced him not to have you…well, liquidated.”
The Human frowned. “And why would you do that for me, Thanjel?”
“Because I like you,” Racath answered offhandedly, examining his fingernails. “You were my first contact during my time as a lowly Handler. And despite what Mrak says, I always found your information useful back then.” He smiled a cunning smile. “And I think you can be useful to me now, too. So I’m here to offer you a deal.”
Elias perked up, crawling over quickly as his chains allowed to press his face a
gainst the bars. “You can get me out of here?”
The hooded Majiski nodded. “For a price, yes.”
“Name it.”
“Information,” Racath said smoothly. “Just like before. If you can help, and your info checks out, I could get you out of here as early as tomorrow.”
“What kind of information?” Elias asked warily.
“I’m in Milonok to plug a leak,” Racath replied. “Dominion Intelligence is getting nosy. I’ve to a lot of work ahead of me, but all that I have to start with is a name. Felsted. Do you know him?”
Elias shook his head. “Hold up, Thanjel. I’m no idiot. Before I tell you anything, I need proof you can free me.”
Racath shrugged and nonchalantly took a pouch from his belt and dropped it at his feet, just out of Elias’ reach. The tethers on the purse loosened just enough for the Human to see the mound of glittering coins within.
Elias felt desperate water in his mouth. You must understand, it wasn’t greed that he felt when he looked at it. To him, that purse wasn’t a bag full of wealth and riches — it was the key to his freedom, to getting home to his family.
“Proof enough?” Racath asked.
Elias swallowed and nodded.
“Then talk to me.”
Elias spoke quickly. “I’ve never heard of any Felsted—”
Racath’s eyes hardened; his fist clenched. “Wrong answer, Elias.”
“No, wait, wait!” Elias pled. “I-I don’t know anything about this guy, but I know someone who does!”
Racath’s fists unclenched slowly. “Go on.”
“The Burrows,” Elias explained, the words tumbling out of him. “Know what that is?”