by Wren Weston
The purple feather in Samantha’s hat bowed as Lila entered, and the scent of grease and oil filled Lila’s nose. The shop functioned as a mechanic’s business during the day. As a consequence, a tangle of cars and trucks and motorcycles filled the back, parked so close that only a professional could pull them out again.
“The trucks all look nice, Shirley,” Lila said, pitching her voice a bit lower than natural. She jutted her chin toward the row of blue Cruz trucks, recently painted.
“Thanks, Hood.” The old woman sat on a stool under a sign that read Clean up or Suffer. Part of her ear and a few fingers had been severed, not that she seemed bothered by it. Shirley was more than capable of fixing a motorcycle engine and holding a knife with what fingers she had left. And according to Sam, she could hear a mouse fart across the room with her one good ear.
“Maria, come here,” Shirley said, tugging at the neck of her coveralls.
The fifteen-year-old had been earnestly sweeping the garage when Lila came in, keeping her head down as she ducked between the trucks to catch every speck of dust and dirt. Likely before she’d come in as well, for the floor looked cleaner than Lila had ever seen it.
Maria immediately raced to Shirley. Her eyes never rose from the floor, and her loose gray dress twirled around her legs when she stopped. A healing gash peeked from her collar, for Doc had cut out her slave’s chip, the ID and homing beacon that bound slaves to their masters.
The girl sniffled and gripped the broom like a shield, her shoulders tense, her eyes raw and red. As Peter Kruger’s daughter, she should have been a princess of the Holy Roman Empire, but had instead lived with her twin brother as a slave under the spiteful hand of Chairwoman Wilson.
Shirley shook her head at the girl’s speed. “Maria, I didn’t mean you had to run. You can walk when you feel like it, remember?”
“Yes, madam. Sorry, madam.”
“Maria, this is a friend of Tristan’s. Her name’s Hood. She’s one of people who helped your daddy get to Germany.”
Maria bowed low. “Thank you, madam.”
“We’re going to get your brother back,” Lila vowed. “We won’t fail again. I promise.”
“Thank you, madam.” Maria’s shoulders rose as she gripped the broom.
Lila and Shirley sighed simultaneously. It was difficult talking to Maria. She only said a few phrases, never failing to attach a madam or sir to the end. Worse than that, her shoulders rose higher and higher the longer you spoke to her. It was a bit like conversing with a human hourglass. When her shoulders reached her ears, you had to let her go. If you didn’t, the shaking would begin.
“Your hair is different,” Lila said. “I like the red.”
“Thank you, madam.”
“It does look good, doesn’t it, Hood?” Shirley said. “She wouldn’t choose a new hair color, so Zoe recommended this. Maria let him do it. I nearly had a heart attack, thinking it wouldn’t look natural, but it looks quite good. You made a good choice, didn’t you, Maria?”
The girl stared at the ground. Her shoulders had reached her ears. They’d run out of time.
“Okay, go on, then,” Shirley said. “Go on back to your sweeping if that’s taken your fancy.”
Maria scooted away and swept faster.
Lila studied her face, her body. Most slaves eavesdropped continuously, whether from curiosity or because they spied for another family.
Maria didn’t seem interested, though. She didn’t seem interested in anything.
“Hood, if they don’t kill that bitch Wilson soon, I’m going to break into Bullstow and do it for them. I can’t stop the girl from cleaning. We tried to explain that she doesn’t have to do slave’s work anymore, but she doesn’t seem to understand what that means.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know what normal girls do.”
“Maybe. I can’t even get her to tell me what she wants for dinner, much less what she wants to wear or do for the day. She won’t speak unless she’s spoken to, and she doesn’t say much beyond yes, no, thank you, and I’m sorry. It’s breaking my heart.”
“You’re good with her.”
Shirley shifted at the unexpected compliment.
“Perhaps it would be best to limit her options. Ease her into decision making. Have her choose among three things to eat, have her pick what to wear from three options, have her decide what to do each hour or so from a few choices.”
“Like a toddler?”
Lila shrugged.
“Seems patronizing, but you have a point.”
“Get her a tutor, too. I imagine she’s woefully behind.”
“Hard to find a tutor we can trust. Although, to be fair, no one seems to care that she’s gone missing. They only care about Oskar.” Shirley scratched at what was left of her ear. “Perhaps I could work with her a little and drag Dixon into it. Tongueless fool can’t spook her if he can’t speak. He’s got a whole lot of book-learning in him.”
She picked up a wrench and pointed a half-knuckle at the door in the back. “The boss man’s upstairs. He’s not in a good mood. Telling Maria he’d failed…it damn near killed him.”
Lila dodged the tangle of cars and trucks to get to the shop’s back door. She climbed the staircase, marveling at how nice the building had become in the last week. Tristan had repaired everything from baseboards to doorknobs to windows, painting every wall and trim. With Maria around, the place sparkled and shined.
Lila opened the door to Tristan and Dixon’s apartment on the top floor and tossed her mesh hood upon the kitchen counter. It had been made from a thick slab of wood, which balanced on a pair of old wine barrels. The wood had been polished with a dark stain. Every other table had been made in the same way, leaving the room smelling of wine. Comfortable black couches swallowed the room.
Lila squinted at the dark purple paint on the walls, a project Tristan had finished only a few days before. Through an open door in the back, she saw Dixon’s room, painted in stripes of varying lengths and colors: green, blue, purple, the occasional swatch of orange and yellow and gold. Tristan had called the job tacky, but he had painted them anyway. It was a gift for his brother, an I’m-sorry-I-chose-to-rescue-Lila-instead-of-you present.
As a result, things were definitely weird and forced between her and Dixon. His normal good mood and banter had been replaced by thoughtful, brooding silences whenever she entered the room. Worse was when he tried to joke like he used to.
Things were just so horribly forced.
Hot, too. Dixon had cranked up the heat again, and Tristan hadn’t said a word against it. Neither would Lila. She took off her jacket and t-shirt, already prepared with a black tank underneath.
She then plopped between the pair, each sitting on either end of the couch. Tristan wore nothing but black cotton pajama pants, his dark hair mussed, his dark eyes heavy, his arms crossed tight around his chest like a pouting child. Dixon lounged in purple, rubbing his closely shaved head, his blue eyes exhausted.
The bright light caught the silver scars on their necks.
Dixon inclined his head, uncurling from his perch to study her face.
“Tired?” she asked.
Dixon nodded.
“Me too.” She dropped her head onto the back of the couch.
He pointed at the bruise on her jaw.
“It’s nothing a glass of wine won’t fix.”
Tristan took the hint and fetched a bottle of La Sangre de las Flores from a locker in the corner. Then he ventured into the kitchen. The freezer opened and closed with a sticky pop. “Did you see Maria?” he asked, handing her a bag of frozen peas as he sat back down.
“I see that she’s still here. It’s not safe for her. It’s not safe for you and your people either if you keep her.” Lila held the bag to her jaw, welcoming the burst of cold.
“She stays until I find her brothe
r.” He uncorked the bottle of wine with a hollow thump and filled a Jolly Roger mug. Another sat on the coffee table in front his place, filled with whiskey, by the smell of Tristan’s breath. “She’s been crying off and on all evening.”
“I imagine so. She thought her brother would be free tonight.”
Tristan handed her the mug of wine. “You should have let us break him out of your family’s holding cells.”
Lila frowned, the sweet taste of the blackberry wine soured by his mood. Tonight, Tristan was the old Tristan. She’d been waiting for their truce to expire, for him to begin arguing with her once more. She had hoped things wouldn’t go back to how they’d been before, that they’d move to a new place instead, that they’d reach some new understanding.
Apparently, Tristan had other plans.
“No, I shouldn’t have let you break in.”
“Why? Because you couldn’t bear a hit to your perfect record, even to save a child?”
“No, because my entire family would be investigated. I’m far too good at my job for someone like you to break into my compound. It would have raised suspicions, and you know it.”
“Oracle’s light, you’re arrogant.”
“I’m not arrogant. I’m correct.”
“That’s not the real reason,” Tristan said, hopping up to pace. “I heard you speaking to your mother over the mic. You told her the robbery would force LeBeau’s to close its doors. Had a good laugh about it, even planned to open a new auction house in its—”
“I had to say something so my mother didn’t realize I was feeding you information, you nitwit. Don’t blame me for your mistakes. I told you a hundred times that you only had enough time to break out Oskar, even with Fry’s help. Somehow in your mind that translated into—”
“I couldn’t leave him there. He’s just a kid.”
“A kid who has the opportunity to work off his mark. A kid who isn’t in danger of being murdered.” An image came to Lila’s mind. The gunman’s face as he’d raised the gun to kill Oskar, his eyes fading as he died.
An image of Reaper after he’d been shot.
An image of Dixon when they couldn’t wake him.
“Yeah, I heard about what happened after we left. They keep showing it on the news. They say you saved Oskar’s life.”
Lila sat up, eyes wide. “Showing it? Showing what?”
“Showing nothing. They must have had a whole team pixilating you out in time for the evening news. It makes you even more obvious.”
Dixon scribbled on his notepad. You leapt like a flailing housecat but classier. The joke belied his face, which hadn’t twisted into his usual playful smile.
“So they have footage of it?”
Dixon nodded.
“Let me see.”
“Great. You want to revel in your newfound fame.” Tristan rolled his eyes and took another swig of his whiskey.
“No, I want to see what else was going on in the room, nitwit. I was a bit preoccupied.”
“Stop calling me nitwit.”
“Okay, jackass. Is that better?”
Tristan turned away and peered out the window.
Dixon passed Lila his palm, and she studied the shaky footage. It had likely come from a highborn’s palm or from one of the servants. Unfortunately, she saw nothing except a pixelated ghost leaping atop the gunman.
Dixon was right. Her blobby form did look like a flailing housecat, hurling itself toward the gunman, not that she’d admit it.
Gods, she hoped the Randolph militia hadn’t gotten hold of the unedited footage.
Lila scrolled the video back to the beginning and watched it through again, focusing on the would-be assassin. She saw the same look in the gunman’s eyes as before. Conviction. He truly believed that killing the boy was a necessary evil, that it was the best thing for everyone.
“He’s a loyalist for the crown,” Lila guessed, scrolling back through the footage to watch it again. “He’s not conflicted about what he’s doing. He believes.”
Dixon gave thumbs-up, and Tristan nodded. “That was our guess as well.”
Lila watched it a few more times, peering at the crowd. Only Chairwoman Holguín looked the least bit odd. Her mouth had widened in alarm after the assassin had lifted his gun, her eyes on fire, as though someone held a lighter to ten million credits on stage.
Her ten million.
Lila sent the footage to her palm and returned Dixon’s device. Then she brought up the footage of their heist, scanning it frame by frame.
“What’s that?” Tristan asked, peeking over her shoulder.
“Security footage from tonight. He didn’t appear out of nowhere.”
Tristan grabbed a cable and connected her palm to the screen in the front of the room. They sat in a row on the couch, watching the basement footage.
It was Tristan who saw it. The gunman peeked around the door, spied the heist-in-progress and the impotent cameras, then scowled and left.
The LeBeaus discovered the loop a moment later.
“Oracle’s wrath! He tipped them off. He’s why the plan went to shit,” Lila said. “You saved Oskar’s life, you know. The gunman had to find another way to carry out his plan.”
“By creating a distraction so he could kill some innocent lowborn instead.” Tristan kicked up his legs on the coffee table. “If I’d seen him, I could have—”
“That man’s death is not your fault. It’s the fault of the man who pulled the trigger.”
“I’m getting Oskar out of there. I’m not leaving him with those people.”
Lila glanced at Tristan’s face and saw the darkness that passed over it. “What did the Holguíns do to you? To both of you.”
Tristan’s eyes traveled to Dixon. His brother stood up and walked to the window, brooding once more, the crisscross of scars marring his back like raised, writhing serpents. Dixon had never hidden them from her, but he’d never explained them, either.
Tristan had kept his brother’s secrets.
“What I don’t get is why the loyalists tried to kill Oskar now,” Lila said, changing the subject. “He’s been a slave in the Wilson compound for years without attention.”
“Yes, but the German masses have been a bit too interested in their long-lost king lately. That makes all sorts of important people nervous. It provides hope to the traditionalists, too. After all, Oskar is young enough to be molded.”
“My mother said the same thing.”
“Also, King Lucas got caught with his mistress a few days ago. Photos of the kissing couple are all over the news in the empire.”
“Romans are bizarre. My father has seeded children for eight different women over the years, and my mother has had children with three different men. That’s not even counting all the lovers they—”
“Sometimes I don’t understand how you can be so smart and yet not understand the very simplest of things.”
“What’s to understand? The empire labors under some misguided pretense of monogamy. Whatever happened is an issue between him and his wife, if she cares at all. Not his country.”
“It’s not like the wife knew,” Tristan said. “It’s cheating, and Romans consider it a personal failing. So do the workborn. If a man cheats in one part of his life, he probably cheats in others.”
“How do they know the king and queen don’t have an arrangement? If the queen is smart, she has lovers of her own. She lives in a palace full of young, virile bodyguards. You can’t seriously expect me to believe she doesn’t dabble with one or two.”
“Why not seven, if we’re throwing out numbers? Perhaps a different lover for every night of the week?”
“Seven? I admire her stamina.” Lila grinned. At Tristan’s narrowed eyes, she took a sip of her Sangre and cleared her throat. “So how badly do they consider cheating in the empire?”
>
“It’s a public disgrace. Someone likely had the photos ready, waiting for the right time to embarrass the emperor.” Tristan rubbed at his evening stubble. “Have you eaten?”
Lila shook her head.
“You should eat.” He picked up his palm from the coffee table and typed in an ID, most likely for the Plum Luck Dragon next door.
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to eat all of it. I’ll get you some pork lo mein. You like lo mein. You order it all the time.”
“Really, I don’t want anything. I just want to sit.”
Dixon shook his head too, and Tristan tossed his palm back on the coffee table with a dull thump. “Are you okay? That asshole didn’t—”
“I’m fine.”
His eyes snaked to her jaw, but he didn’t say another word. “Fine, we’ll start planning how we’ll get into the Holguín estate. The news vans followed Oskar. He’s in there.”
“Doesn’t mean he’ll stay. The boy is a security nightmare, and Chief Holguín will certainly want him moved as quickly as possible. They just won’t do it tonight. One leak and the press will follow them down the interstate. My father has stationed Bullstow militia around the compound. They’ll keep an eye on him for us. I put a few spies on it too. They’re monitoring the news vans and ferreting out his location on the compound.”
“I’ll get my spies on it as well.” Tristan grabbed his palm and typed out a few messages.
Lila did not say a word against his rare note of caution. She was surprised he hadn’t suggested infiltrating the compound that very night. Then again, he’d become more conservative over the last week even though he’d been rash in trying to save Phillip. Peering at Dixon, she couldn’t help but think she knew the reason why.