by Ada Harper
The glider jolted on a wind gust. Bowen stared at her blankly. For a moment, Olivia thought he would refuse.
Then he dropped his eyes, head tilted. A sign of deference typically only given to a superior. Alais checked a surprised noise. Bowen nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good man.” Olivia grinned at the color that rose up Bowen’s face before turning back to the challenge at hand. The interconnected network of cranes and scaffolds drew her attention. They created a swaying web that spanned from the outer edges of the site to reach like bony fingers over building walls. It’d be an obstacle course, but no worse than roof-running in the Cauldron. Olivia pointed to one a distance from the governmental buildings. “There. Can you drop me on one of those without getting spotted?”
“The crane?” The pilot’s voice was dubious. “Sure, but there’s no easy way down from one of those things.”
Olivia reached for her bundled equipment and headed for the back.
“I don’t need easy. Just a clear shot.”
Bowen was an anxious cloud at her back as Olivia squirmed down the ladder to the launch door of the craft. The aether glider was not a large ship, barely holding the six people Sabine had optimistically dubbed a strike team. Olivia had to duck under a low-hanging gun rack before turning to face him. “You are going to be all right leading the rescue?”
Bowen wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead he focused on checking the straps of her equipment. “Yes.”
“You’re sure? I could tell Alais—”
“I’m an altus, too.”
Olivia’s brow inched up. “You think that has anything to do with anything?”
Bowen stilled, head bowing even farther as he realized the implications to his caricae team leader. “No, I meant—” He sighed, the stiff mantle of a sulk fading off him. “I promised Galen I would look after you.”
Olivia’s breath caught in her throat. “When?”
“Before he sent us back to Ameranthe. We didn’t just come back for reinforcements. I wasn’t supposed to say anything. He felt...wanted to be the one to come, but...” Bowen trailed off, finding a stubborn buckle that matched his conflict.
“But he had a duty.” Olivia’s words clipped with a swell of ache. She knew Galen. His duty to the Empire, and at one point, his duty to her. Before she’d flung that back in his face. She hoped she’d have the chance to fix that. Words were a cold lump in her throat.
Bowen tightened the belt on her equipment, tugging a little harder on each loop the more he expressed his anxiety. He kneeled to check the charge on the aetheric cloak. The stiff ruffle of fabric felt unfamiliar and bulky, a fluttering, erratic cloud at her back. As long as it didn’t interfere with her rifle, it would have to do. She straightened as Bowen stood to fuss with the clip at her shoulder.
“We’re technically family now, you know,” Bowen mumbled, a little shyly. “Galen’s my bond-brother.”
“I’ll make sure to get you something for Ancelmas.”
Bowen’s smile was short lived before dying into a frown. “I should go with you.”
“You have your job, I have mine. I...” Olivia took a breath, feeling the word around in her mouth. “He’s my mate. I can find him and I will.”
Olivia’s cheeks felt hot, but it was Bowen turning a ripe shade of red. Seemed unfair, really. She fluttered a hand to drive him away from her straps before he self-combusted. “Oh, pull yourself together.”
“That was fast.” Alais’s voice made them both jump and turn.
“How the hell do you sneak around a ship this small?” Olivia snapped.
“Come now. You got over me so fast? I should be the one upset,” Alais said, but she kept a soft smile half on her face. She stepped forward and clapped Olivia on the shoulders. “Am I so forgettable?”
“You dumped me, if I recall.” The undefinable something in Alais’s eyes made Olivia feel guilty. “Alais—”
“Stop apologizing and give me a chance for once.” Alais’s hand reached up and landed on Olivia’s hair heavily, ruffling her bangs. “I never got a chance to say it. I’m sorry for scruffing you earlier. It was unconscionable. And I’m—I went along with Sabine’s plan for my own gains, even though I knew she was all but forcing your hand. It was obvious, the bond between you and him. I’m sorry.”
Olivia opened her mouth. Closed it. “I never blamed you.”
“Good. But you’re going to miss my curry, eh? Now—” Alais turned her by the shoulders and smacked the red button near the door. The wall of the glider slowly levered open. The inward rush of night wind forced Alais to raise her voice. “Go save him.”
There was more to say, and there was nothing more to say. Olivia nodded once to the soldiers and turned. She picked out the skeletal lines of the crane beneath the struts of the glider and far, far below that, the inky spikes of crumbling buildings in the dark. Rain had started to fall. Good for masking the shuttle’s approach, bad for a jog across slippery metal a couple hundred feet above hard earth. Low tolerance of error, even lower chance for success, and no time to think it through. Same as always.
And Olivia leaped.
* * *
The rain was in his eyes, rapping against the pain in his head. Galen pulled himself together slowly. Recovering from a pulseblast was a bit like rifling through pockets for spare memories, but the first thing his eyes could focus on was the nebula of shattered stained glass overhead. The fading sunlight made the colors mute and bleed, or perhaps that was the effect of a concussion on his vision. Either way, it painted the crumbling rubble of Meteore’s senate ruins in puddles of violets and saffron. It would have almost been pretty if not for the rifle muzzle against his temple.
It was unimportant. He took his time to gather his mind.
“I know you’re awake.”
A clipped voice forced his eyes open again. A severe woman held the other end of the rifle steady. Rain plastered her scarlet hair, making her sharp features all the more skull-like as she studied him. He recognized the mask that hung abandoned around her neck, the same as Olivia’s. It was the face he’d glimpsed before. A Whisper mask. That she hadn’t cared to hide her identity was a bad sign.
The Whisper gave a sickle smile. “Good. Let’s continue.”
Continue. The woman exhibited no interest in asking questions, or even giving orders, for the last...gods, Galen didn’t even know how long he’d been here, dragged, hazy and unresponsive, out of his drug-induced sleep by a shockprod. The Whisper had quickly switched to her fists. The butt of her rifle. The edge of her boots.
His body screamed injury, but it could be ignored, for now. He’d had worse beatings. He tried to get his feet under him, only to be halted by a sear of heat and sizzle. A blaster bolt burned through the broken floor two inches from his knee. He looked up. The muzzle of the pistol filled his vision. The smell of heated pulse cartridge burned into his nose and he had a sudden flashback on the last time he faced down a killing shot, delivered by a wraith with green eyes. He allowed himself to conjure up the way Olivia had looked then. Beautiful and untouchable. She was in Ameranthe. Safe. It was a mantra in his head that dulled the pain.
“Sabine will never negotiate, even for me,” he rasped. It was the only worth he could think of that would justify keeping him alive like this.
“Of course not. But I think the one she sends will.” Her smile was a balance of disgust and mocking when he looked up. “If you weren’t my insurance out of here, I would kill you for that now. Ruining a perfectly good tool. Such a barbarian idea, a bond. What idiotic baggage to put on fucking. I knew Shaw’s usefulness was at an end when I assigned her, but I’d anticipated she’d end up dead, a clean result, not contaminated.”
“Olivia isn’t coming. Not for me.” Galen was certain of that. She was too clever, too determined to survive.
“That would simplify things.” She dug a toe int
o one of the raw cuts on Galen’s knee. She pressed and Galen saw stars again. “I didn’t want to drag myself to your filthy country but here we are. My petty little dukeling couldn’t even hold a room full of scared caricaes with an army at his back. Typical Imperial incompetence.”
That had to mean Ameranthe still stood. Relief rushed over him. “Then Olivia’s out of your reach.”
“Out? She never left it.” She narrowed her eyes, brusque and satisfied. “That surprises you? You’ve watched over her for a few weeks. I watched over her for three years. Shaw is my pawn, not yours. I’ve poured a lot of resources into her, kept her my own little secret, just for a situation like this.”
She spoke like you would of a pet—no, less than that: a tool. Rage ignited, deep and hot in Galen’s bones, replacing every pain with the ache for the chance to stop her tongue. The words fell into place, slow and sluggish. Three years. A Whisper. He heard the name said through broken sobs in a neon-lit alley, Olivia’s shoulders hunched, fist bloody against the brick. “You’re Wallis.”
Wallis smiled. “You’ve heard of me? Shaw never was good at maintaining ops secrecy.” She leaned in. “Is this where you swear to kill me before I touch her?”
“Liv never needed me to protect her.” Galen sat back on his haunches, suddenly tired.
Wallis’s eyes narrowed in disgust. “I have no time for pathetic, altus. You’re supposed to be warriors.”
The ignorance pulled a weak laugh from Galen. “You know the root word for altus, don’t you?”
“Of course. Feed. Altered to be mindless predators,” Wallis scoffed. “You couldn’t even get that right.”
“That might be the Syn interpretation.” Galen dryly realized how all of Olivia’s prejudices had formed. He shook his head. “The root could be feed, or it could be fodder, those to be thrown to a cause. Antiquated, perhaps, but the root word for caricae is treasure.” He closed his eyes, breathing through the shattered feeling in his chest. “My place was always meant to be between her and monsters like you.”
The barrel replaced her face again. This time, Galen closed his eyes.
A pulseshot sounded, deafening him. Heat seared his cheeks, but the pain stretched out in a way that said he was alive. He opened his eyes, heart stuttering in confusion. He could see Wallis’s face again. This time she had her rifle pointed up, snarling at the open sky. Noises came from far away, muddled, like under three feet of water. Galen shook his head and his ringing ears eased. He looked up.
And his heart climbed into his throat.
A crane pitched over the jagged opening of stained glass. A figure stood perched at the very tip of it, silhouetted by the floodlights that the shot had summoned. A cape shrouded and obscured, but Galen knew the stillness in that pose. Knew it like the pulse of terror roaring in his ears. Knew the suicidal point of the toes, like a wineglass teetering at the edge of a shelf. Ready to shatter out of spite.
Olivia.
Wallis was shouting something. The words were still lost. Blood thundered in his ears, joining the shell-shocked ring from the rifle shot. It didn’t matter. For the moment, Olivia had Wallis’s attention. Galen twisted, dragging the cuffs against the girder he was affixed to. They weren’t Imperial cuffs, Galen couldn’t pull the same trick he did before. But the weak point on any cuff was the link that ratcheted the flexisteel. Breaking the cord itself was impossible but if you applied a sharp pressure just at the edge of the housing near the wrist—
“—he’s dead. Let’s discuss like civilized women.” Wallis’s voice finally cut through the ringing. At the periphery of his vision, Wallis raised the rifle again, but his focus dimmed as the figure overhead surged forward.
Don’t jump. Whatever you do, don’t jump. If they truly had a bond, he prayed to the Lady and all her consorts that he could push Olivia back with will alone. Rain was in his eyes, soaked to the skin. The aethercloak was good for jumps up to six hundred feet, but not in inclement weather. Rain would weigh it down, make the repulsors sluggish and weak. Olivia would lose control and fall to her death and Galen wouldn’t survive seeing it. Don’t jump, Olivia.
She made a stuttering leap, throwing the cloak’s repulsors into the jump that sent her hurtling into the twilight.
The first time Olivia fell, Galen had pulled her back. The second time, she’d pulled him. The third, she’d learned to fly. But wings were no comfort as his mate stepped into open air. She plummeted and the breath stopped in Galen’s lungs. It was too high, too fast.
Out of nowhere, Olivia’s body twisted into a wide arc. She was in midair, so it couldn’t be the cloak’s repulsors or a trick of acrobatics. Then light flashed on a released cord and Olivia hurtled straight toward Wallis.
Didn’t Lyre ever think of a grappling hook for this nonsense?
Gods, he loved that woman.
The two Whispers collided in a roll of weapons and grappling fists. Wallis came out on top, sending Olivia flying with a vicious blow to her ribs that had Galen surging against his cuffs again.
Olivia landed, hard. Her back hit the brick stairs, sending her rifle skittering out of reach into the shadows, but she was up nearly as fast, sidearm pointed to meet Wallis’s. Their ragged breathing mirrored, until Olivia spoke with a raw snarl Galen’d never heard before.
“You fucking traitor.”
“Traitor? I’m not the fugitive fighting for an enemy country.” Wallis held her gun with an unruffled air. Olivia had landed nearer to Galen than not, but the hostile Whisper didn’t seem concerned when Olivia took a few steps to carefully place herself between them. “What I’m doing is entirely patriotic. Don’t you know that our targets get half their radical ideas from materials smuggled in from this backward country?”
Olivia snarled again before she stopped. A thought twitched through her shoulders. “I thought Virgil paid you for the help, but it’s the other way around, isn’t it?”
“You never have to pay small men, Shaw. You should know that. All you have to do is offer them what they haven’t earned. Little brother was easy. He’ll get a big boy throne, and we get a puppet.”
“And me?” Olivia asked. “You sent me there to die. What did killing me get you?”
“It’s not as if I was going to sacrifice a real Whisper.” Wallis’s clip never wavered. “But a broken caricae? There’s no room in the Syn for useless things.”
Olivia’s shoulders tensed. Her hand strayed to her pocket and stilled. It would have been easy to miss the infinitesimal flinch, just a slight tightening of her eyes, but Galen knew Olivia’s signs of distress. The next moment her head was up, cocksure. And then she did something that told Galen they were well and truly fucked: she lowered her gun.
Surprise, then wariness, rippled through Wallis’s expression like cracks in ice. “What’s your play, Shaw?”
“No play. Just admitting the presence of my betters, after all. Bend a neck, all that.” Olivia holstered her weapon. She turned on her heel and faced Galen. “Feel free to shoot me in the back if you like.”
Wallis’s eyes narrowed, full of suspicion, as Olivia walked toward Galen. Wallis still had a gun pointed at her head, and every protective instinct in Galen implored Olivia to duck, move, get out of the line of fire. She kept walking, and he knew when she got close enough to see his wounds by the way her face suddenly fell.
“Galen.” Her voice was soft. She took his face in her hands and Galen fought not to wince, even as gentle, trembling fingers found shattered bone, torn skin. She was here and he couldn’t even enjoy her touch, not with death hanging over her shoulder. Wallis held back. Likely too suspicious of a trap to press the advantage yet. It bought them moments.
He wouldn’t waste them. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Tried not to be.” Olivia lowered her voice, not precisely looking at him. “I keep trying to run away home, keep finding you. It’s incredibly annoying.” H
er fingertips drifted to the largest wound, an ugly gash across the meat of his shoulder, and she swallowed a gasp.
“Liv—”
“Bowen is on his way,” She spoke low and quick. Her hands were busy, sliding something into his cuffed hand as she pretended to check his injuries. A cool, round object filled his palm along with what felt like gritty shards. “Hold on to this for me. Do not lose it.”
She gripped his chin before he could instinctively open his hand to look at the object. A smile he’d never seen before broke on her face, sweet and sure and fierce and...sad. “Proof,” she said, and kissed him.
Her lips tasted like salt, just like the last time. But when Olivia pulled back, her eyes were clear. She spun to her feet. A thrumming sound had begun very faintly overhead, somewhere beyond the low rainclouds.
“A waste of time.” Wallis’s gun was leveled squarely at Olivia’s chest this time, at a range that couldn’t miss. Her other hand slipped into her pocket, rifling for something. “I suppose you’ll want to beg for his life now.”
“Why bother? You’ll bomb this place anyway.”
A bomb? Fresh fear, hot and acidic, welled up in his chest, willing Olivia to run.
But Olivia didn’t run. The smile had fallen off Wallis’s face. A strange one grew on Olivia’s lips instead. She reached into her pocket. “Drop something, ma’am?”
Olivia opened her fist, revealing one of the mercenaries’ small aetheric spheres. It glinted, winking in the rain. Wallis’s left hand searched her pocket. She hissed and took a step toward her as a low rumble shivered the broken tile at her feet. Olivia smiled. “I suppose you’ll want to beg for your life now.”
She glanced in Galen’s direction, too fast to read, and shot her free hand into the air. The silver line of her grapple shot for the ceiling, whipping Olivia past the broken teeth of stained glass to the roof.
Wallis made an inarticulate sound, pistol sight following the flight of Olivia’s path, but she seemed hesitant to shoot now. Galen caught the moment when the shock and anger on Wallis’s face withered darker. Her lip curled into something feral. For a moment, she looked at him and he was certain she’d kill him in spite. But the air groaned with that distant sound again. Wallis cursed and broke into a run for the crumbled stairwell behind her.