“What now?” Mr. Ymel asked.
“We search through the doctor’s things. Find addresses, directions, anything to lead us to her. We trace everyone who was at Silvia’s last show. She left after that damn show. Whatever inspired her to leave happened then. We try the locator spells again. We keep our eyes and ears open. Anything else?” Henton asked.
“Check the local papers and rumors for anything about unusual infestations of spiders. They are said to be drawn to Halis’ kind,” Mr. Ymel said.
“Monitor the doctors. Especially ones who work in Dr. Trarsius’ sector. She may call another when he doesn’t show up,” Mr. Henton added.
“And then we wait,” Ymel said.
“As long as Halis doesn’t die before we find her. There isn’t another to replace him,” Mr. Henton said. He lowered his head into his hands.
“And if we don’t find them soon? What then?” Mr. Ymel asked. “They must be found. She can’t be running loose. With or without Halis, she’s a major threat, and it’s possible that she could be traced back to us. And him…”
“If we don’t find them soon, we call in outside help. We call in trackers,” Henton said. He looked toward the window out at the girls. They danced in the crowded room. One girl was walking to one of the side doors. A man followed her through the curtain.
“I can think of few girls I’d dislike losing as much as Silvia. But if we must, we’ll call in assassins. She mustn’t be allowed to roam free.”
Chapter 10
Escape
All day, Berrick rested, staring out the window, wondering at life’s cruel humor. When the last glimmer disappeared from the sky, and only the lamps kept the darkness at bay, Silvia burst through the door. Her hair was tousled, as if she’d been slowly worrying it free from its braided confines, and her breathing was audible. Halis looked up from his chair, and when he saw her, he stood.
“Silvia,” Halis said as he crossed the carpeted floor toward her.
“He didn’t make his appointment, Halis!”
Berrick smiled and rested his head against the wall. It was possible that the disappearance of the doctor implied he’d contacted a hospital or other reasonable authorities. Poor crazy bitch, her evil game is going awry.
“The doctor?”
“He didn’t come. They got him. We aren’t safe here!” Silvia flushed, and her hands flew to her hair.
“There was always the chance they’d find us. When was the doctor supposed to be here?” Halis asked. He took her in his arms, but she broke free and moved across the room. Her hands shook visibly. In contrast, Halis didn’t seem upset in the least.
“At dusk,” she said.
Berrick estimated that meant the doctor was an hour and a half late.
“He’s late then,” Halis said. “If he did meet with them, we have no way of identifying when. Whatever the case, they’ll already know where we are or if the doctor kept his peace, they don’t.”
“No, you put too much faith in my beauty, Halis. That man hated me.”
“What a surprise,” Berrick said.
Silvia turned to him and barred her teeth. Halis grabbed her again. Berrick grinned. Now they were being hunted—a pleasant turn of events. If he could just sit pretty, everything might yet come out the right way.
“There’s no action we can take now to prevent the doctor from speaking,” Halis said. “If they know where we are, they’ll bring us in. Panicking has no effect on the outcome.”
“I won’t go back.” Silvia screamed now. “I won’t stay here. I want off this damn planet. Out of Ymel’s reach. I won’t go back. I’ll kill them first!”
“And die in the process?” Halis asked with his usual smile.
Is she going to hit him? Berrick leaned forward, ignoring the pain in his thigh as he moved.
“Yes, goddamn you! I’ll rip my heart from my chest before I’ll step foot in that place!” Her hand had flown to her stomach and settled there.
“Calm yourself. This is our warning. We flee this city tonight. If the doctor didn’t tell them, we still have time to get away,” Halis said.
“Where will we go?” Silvia asked.
“Where it’s safe. We’ll go home with Berrick.” Halis turned with his smile to Berrick.
The expression sent slivers of ice through Berrick’s veins; his own smile died under the cruel glint of Halis’.
“And you really shouldn’t find this amusing, Berrick. If they locate us, they’ll kill you, title or no.”
“They—the Yahal Brothel,” Berrick said. He should have known it before; they were sitting in the shadow of one of the most evil places in the galaxy—a place that bred women like Silvia. Her beauty was unmatched by any he’d seen and her evil unquestionable. She was exactly the sort of shadowy creature he’d always thought haunted those wicked halls.
The only reason the link hadn’t occurred to him was the whores were not allowed out of The Brothel without an escort. All of The Brothel’s shows were kept secret. Even from his side of the planet, Berrick had heard of some of the horrid fates associated with speaking about what you’d seen at The Brothel.
“What do we do now?” Silvia stumbled back against the wall, her face white.
“We take all traces of ourselves and join Berrick in his homecoming. We take Henri with us. He has gone on a business trip or something. His house will be pristine and utterly empty. Then, my queen, we’ll pray.”
Berrick watched the two of them. A whisper of pity filtered its way into his thoughts and then a remembrance of Marim’s smile crushed it. They were scum.
“Gather your things, Silvia. Go tidy your room and then bring the car around back. You’ll need to bring Henri down and put him in the trunk. I’ll clean out this mess and escort Berrick down to the car,” Halis said. After the list of instructions, he took a few steps to her side and touched her cheek. “Whatever happens, we’re together. Now go.”
Silvia fled the room. Berrick looked away. Dying wouldn’t be so bad if his death served to protect Marim.
∆∆∆
Only one task remained until they could flee. Silvia looked fondly at the wolf spider crawling over her knuckle. After a moment, she flicked it to the floor. “Goodbye, little friend.”
The song was ancient, and she took a moment to gather its pieces together inside her before parting her lips. Barely a sound came from her throat, and yet her voice carried. Deep inside her, the strands of the web vibrated. She reached into the inky abyss, feeling the lives of the spiders that had come before her, and pulled in a breath.
The presence at the center of the pulsing web added its voice to her notes, and millions of voices churned together in a sad, keening dance from her lips.
The song spun its way into the cracks of the house and down into the basement and the attic. Throughout the house, each eight-legged lurker heard and obeyed. Time to move on. Even after her voice itself had faded into nothing, the song traveled, echoing on the invisible web, flowing from Silvia and Halis, reaching across Yahal and linking her to Marim and Darith. The cracks in the house emptied. Where there had been little glittering eyes, there was only emptiness.
She stood in the night with her breath white against the blackness. The wildness in her faded, but her essence remained stretched over the intricate woven strands. It was then that she felt The Brothel’s sorcerers in her mind—searching. She smiled. If Ymel had them searching, The Brothel hadn’t located them. The Brothel’s sorcerers used puny Yahal magic. It ran off her. She said a word softly, and it darted to Halis and hovered around him. Ymel would not find them that way.
“Try harder,” she whispered into the wind, “You won’t find me. But someday, I’ll find you…”
When Halis and Berrick arrived at the car, both limping along, but Halis holding a gun pressed to Berrick’s side, she leaned on the hood, tapping her toe.
“They don’t know where we are yet,” she said.
“I thought I felt you hovering about me, like the
scent of blood and incense.”
“Yes, they ‘searched’ and they failed. Before they even finished their efforts to conjure the spell, I stopped them.” She touched Halis’ shoulder. Halis gave her a kiss. Her hands slid over his cheeks. Everything was finally going right. She opened the back door of the car.
“You might look into speeding our papers along,” Halis said, shoving Berrick into the cool interior. “For your own safety and that of your daughter, we must be gone without a trace before they come for us. If they suspect that you aided us, there’s no telling what they’ll do.”
Chapter 11
Innocent Girls
Darith rested against a sea of silk pillows in the unlit room and watched the wind ruffle the petals of the daisies Marim brought him earlier. The night was cloudy, so his open window provided nearly no light. The estate was off in the country, and no streetlights intruded on the dark. In the dim moonlight, the web of energy spread out. Silvia tugged at the strands, her fear stroking at him. The connection was more intimate than their night among the flowers. He tasted the spiders floating in the air. Their red intruded on the black, and he waited. Tonight, fear danced in the air. Darith smiled in his blanket of darkness.
Driven to understand, Darith had no choice but to search for answers. What were they? Not monsters from some fairy book to frighten children. They were something real, and real things could be defeated.
A frustrated cry tore from his lips and deep within the spider’s web the sound danced. His power glittered in there, tangled with the strands. His fingertips sizzled as he reached into the web. His mind stretched, and he moved along the glittering strands.
“This way,” the voice whispered.
The hand he stretched out in his mind was as black as the nighttime void, but it gripped the ripples of magic beneath the web and a strange vitality surged through him. His fingers drank, guzzling the power until Darith closed his fist.
The surrounding room was lit brighter than day by the glow around his hands, traveling up to his elbows. I don’t even know how to command this much.
“Destroy the walls, the cage. Walk free, all you must do is accept us.” the voice hissed in his mind. “This human cage cannot hold us.”
Darith lifted his arms, letting the light wash over him. His resentment burned, demanding release, agreeing with the whispers from the web. He thrust his arms forward, the motion like swinging a gavel. The glass of his window shattered and the trees out past the cobblestones bent and snapped. He pulled back as the first of the flowers ripped from the earth.
An image of Marim outside picking flowers to bring to him, smiling as she looked up from her task, defeated the rush of destruction. Not those. I will not destroy her joy. Not even for my own. Not when she has so little left.
He moved his fingers. In control of the seething inside, he swept his fingers to the side, brushing the glass out of sight. Marim would come soon and he was not ready to discuss this with her. The darkness hid the mangled mess of trees now that his hands contained his fire.
Darith smiled. His spells that had once been so weak and so limited were fed by the night now. All his study and practice suddenly had meaning. He could kill with the strength in him if he chose. Someday, he would.
With her red hair down, Marim came as she did every night. The wind from the window blew her nightdress against her legs, defining something painfully akin to a woman’s form. Darith watched as she crossed the room.
“Darith? Your window is gone.”
“I broke it.”
“Oh,” Marim said as she crawled into the bed beside him. Her hands closed around his.
He tucked the magic back, afraid it would burn her.
“The spiders are crawling in.” Marim’s voice shook.
“There are no spiders here, Marim.”
“Who else broke your window?”
Her warmth caressed him, but Darith paid it no attention. He was listening to the voice of the night. He struggled to hear past the spiders into the true voice behind. He’d touched something there in the darkness that was more powerful than they would ever be. Something he could destroy them with. When he concentrated, he saw the web inside him unwinding and reaching out.
What had they meant that he could walk if he accepted them? And how many deaths would such an acceptance entail?
“You think of death. That shouldn’t bring you joy,” Marim whispered.
He didn’t look at her. She might bring him back with her. She might call him back to where she was, and he wasn’t ready to go.
“Please, Darith. I need you.”
Shut up, he wanted to say, shut up! Instead, he turned to her, and her eyes clawed their way into his mind. “It’s not the night that makes me want to see them dead.”
“The night makes you dream of murder and see the whole world bathed in red,” Marim said. “I see it too, hear the voice, but I don’t smile. It terrifies me. It wants to eat me and if you go to it, there will be nothing to stop the web from trapping and draining me.”
She still didn’t understand. In her eyes, the same child lived, faltering and afraid, who had clung to him at her mother’s death. He laughed, and she flinched back.
“Why do you come here, Marim? Why me? You could still escape it. You are not pinned down as I am.”
“Because you would have done the same for me.” Marim lowered her eyes. “I come because I think you need someone who doesn’t see you as a cripple, someone who doesn’t see a legacy ending.”
“Shut up.”
“You asked, Darith.” She looked up at him again. “That’s not what you are, you know. You aren’t the end of a family line. You aren’t that any more than before you were the bringer of heirs. No one saw you as just that then, and soon they won’t see you as they do now.”
“You’re a child,” he said.
“Yes. But I’ll never doubt you.”
“I’m cruel to you,” he said.
“Yes. But I’ll be here with you no matter. You can be cruel to me if you please. I’d rather you not.” She shrugged and laid her head against his shoulder.
They lay there, and Darith no longer heard the night. Exhaustion weighted his eyelids, and Marim’s warmth and softness beside him drove away the rage. She kissed his chin, and he closed his eyes. The wind flew in through the open window and spoke into their ears, but they weren’t listening anymore. It tapped against the hidden shards of glass in the garden. They drew closer together even as they slept, her body fitting itself against his. The rain drenched the carpet by the window as it jetted inside. They huddled together against the storm.
∆∆∆
Empty windows mocked Mr. Ymel as he walked around the ostentatious mansion. The garden had gone to seed, and remnants of spiderwebs trailed from bushes. A solitary spider scuttled across the cobbled path and Ymel squashed it with the shiny toe of his shoe.
Agents of The Brothel had found the house. There had indeed been reports of spiders. The extermination teams had a time of it. Right in the center of the affected zone was the house of one Mr. Trehar, who had been at Silvia’s next-to-last show. On finding the house unoccupied, Mr. Ymel was disappointed but not surprised.
When he rounded to the front of the house again, the muscle accompanying him had the front doors open. Ymel slipped his gloves on and entered. Silvia’s musk hung in the air.
He walked through the house, occasionally glancing rather disparagingly around him. “What are you doing, my Silvia? What in the world do you think you are doing?”
Ymel scanned the walls and ceiling with his arms folded in front of him. This was the house. He didn’t need to search. The small team he had assembled looked around. If something lingered to be found, they would find it. He could feel Silvia and Halis whispering in the surrounding air. He couldn’t have been more certain if he had found he was walking through spiderwebs every other step.
They can’t get off-world. Containment is key. Mr. Ymel struck a vase, sending it crashing t
o the ground. How had no one seen the possibility of their escape coming?
“I don’t want to destroy you,” he whispered. He was one of The Brothel members who had made the decision to keep the pair of children and raise them for a show. Against galactic orders. Exterminate. That was the only proper response, and he hadn’t.
Ymel stared at his reflection in a mirror. Gazing into his own dark eyes, he recalled the moment this mess began.
The two women careened to the floor in front of him. The blonde lay, semi-conscious, stones and glass embedded in her cheek. The other woman, however, even kneeling stared up at him with the unmistakable pride and arrogance of her people. The billowing black smoke of her hair and snow-white skin seemed to shake off the muck covering her.
“We came to you,” she said. Her voice was like the music of the night.
“Kill her,” Ymel said.
A shot rang out, and the woman slumped to the ground. As her body fell, a window opened to the two children behind her, clinging to each other. The two most beautiful children who had ever crossed his path. The girl couldn’t be more than five, soft peach-colored skin, huge eyes. Her hair was a golden blonde barely tinged with the Drambish red. It would darken in time. The boy was a delicious black all over but for a shock of red hair. They were why the women hadn’t been killed the instant they’d entered the camp.
Ymel’s mission on Revia was to retrieve a few objects of great value for The Brothel and The Council of Five had signed off on his visit for that purpose. But if something worth more came along, he was open to smuggling some illicit cargo off the doomed world.
The blonde woman on the ground stirred, struggling to prop herself up on her hands. A pair of sapphire blue eyes looked imploringly at him. Her bone structure was amazing. “Please. They are babies.”
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