By a Thread

by Nyna Queen

  The look Josy gave her was one of pure scorn. “It’s a special prep school for children of scholarshipped families.” Translation: rich and probably highly influential. “On Saturdays, we have a complementary talent development program as pre-college preparation.” Her tone made it absolutely clear that anybody who was anybody would know this.

  Alex bit the inside of her cheek. The girl’s words scratched at an old, scabbed wound. She knew her education was poor. She had never in her life gone to a public school. All she knew had been either taught to her by her sire, picked up by chance, or she’d painstakingly taught herself over the years. And still, her education was lacking in every aspect, and not only in the magical department. It hurt. Getting rubbed into it by a snotty little trueborn aristo girl who’d been fed knowledge from a golden spoon since she could suckle hurt even more.

  “Right,” she cut in, glossing over the pain with tartness, “got it. Fancy school. Privileged kids. Go on.”

  That earned her a sniff. “As I was saying, we were on the way home. We were a bit late since I had to talk to Miss Denyara about the homework-essay in arcane basic theory and Captain Gavary, our guard captain, was throwing a mild fit because we wanted to go to the family country estate for the weekend and were already a bit off schedule.”

  Guards, huh? So, they really were nobility. That finally settled it. Not that she’d doubted it for a second. Could this possibly get any worse?

  “We had left the city a while ago and were driving through a little grove when the coach suddenly slowed down.” Josy’s hands tightened visibly around the bottleneck. “I was curious because usually, we don’t stop there, so I looked out of the window and there were several men blocking the road ahead. It was them.” A shiver went through her. No need to ask who they were.

  “I thought they were guardaí,” she whispered, her voice caught. “They were w-wearing the dragán and the b-badge.” She wrung her hands around the bottle so tightly Alex winced in sympathy for the delicate bones. “Captain Gavary said for the chauffeur to stop and so he did, and then he got out and walked over to them. He was with his back to us, so I couldn’t see very much, but he didn’t seem … worried or anything. They were talking—I could actually hear them laughing—and then … and then …” her voice hitched, “everything h-happened so fast. There was some m-movement and t-t-then there was a loud b-bang and s-s-suddenly the whole window was r-red.”

  Her brown eyes were huge and bottomless in her ashen face, the memory vividly displayed in them. “There was so much blood.”

  “There was brain too,” Max added softly.

  Josy focused on Alex, pain and shock and outrage mixing on her features. “They just killed him. They shot him in the head. Just like that. They talked and laughed and then they s-shot him. What kind of people do that?”

  Oh, more than you think, sugar. A lot more people than you think.

  Josy hugged herself. “I-I think I screamed and then we climbed out the other side of the coach and ran, b-but they were right behind us—I could hear them shouting. T-they were closing in on us and t-they had g-guns, and then Max grabbed my hand and—”

  She broke off. Locked her lips and glanced at the floor again.

  Well, not that hard to count two and two together. Alex glanced at Max. “You’re a teleporter, aren’t you?”

  It explained worlds. A teleporter, and probably an absolute beginner, too. Not that she had a lot of experience with teleportation, but the few times she witnessed a phasing the teleporter didn’t exactly wrack havoc on the place he phased to.

  Max bit his lip and nodded.

  It made sense. They were chased, and he got scared, so he phased them away. Which left the big question …

  “Why here?” Alex asked. “Why did you teleport the two of you into the Trash Bin of all places?”

  Max looked at his feet. “I-I didn’t mean to,” he said in a small voice.

  “He has no control over it,” Josy snapped from the side.

  Max recoiled as if he’d been slapped.

  “He’s only a level-one apprentice.” Josy’s eyes were blazing. “His training just started a few months ago. He isn’t even allowed to phase in an unsupervised environment yet! He just did it without thinking about the consequences.”

  “Hey!” Max burst up. “At least I did something. Those men … they could have killed us!”

  “You could have killed us!” the girl snarled, her curly hair standing out in her fury, like an angry kitten puffing her fur.

  “But I didn’t!”

  “But you could have!”

  “But—”

  “Hey! Enough!” Alex sharply interrupted their bickering. “No use crying over spilled milk.” It did sound a lot better when telling it to someone else. “You’re here now. And he didn’t kill you.”

  “But—he—he can’t even navigate!” Josy protested shrilly. “We could have ended up anywhere. In the middle of an ocean. Inside a mountain. Impaled on a mast!”

  Impaled on a mast? Of all ways to die …

  Well, at least it explained why Max hadn’t teleported them out of here again. He simply couldn’t. And if he really had no control over it … well, they were lucky they were still in one piece.

  “I’m s-sorry,” Max whined. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I don’t even know w-w-what I did. It j-just happened.” He looked miserable. “I just w-wanted to get away. I was s-s-so s-scared.”

  He hung his head and Alex smelled shame on him. She had a feeling he was about to burst into tears. No, please no. That was certainly more than she could handle right now.

  She slid off the counter and knelt in front of him.

  “Look,” she said as gently as possible, “you can’t fight an enemy, you run. It’s as simple as that. There’s no shame in admitting defeat against superior numbers.”

  He sniffled a bit, looking only half convinced.

  “And just by the way, your ‘reaction’ probably saved yours and your sister’s lives.”

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve in a distinctly non-aristo gesture and looked up at her from under his full lashes. “You—you think?”

  “Sure.”

  That earned her a watery smile.

  “That’s a pretty handy talent you have there,” Alex told him. Teleporters weren’t unheard of, but you couldn’t find one around every corner. Which was why they had to be licensed and were highly paid, because depending on their magic level, practice, and distance, some could only do one major teleportation per day.

  “Yeaaaah, isn’t it?” Max grinned. “I’m just level one at the moment, but they say I’m rather talented. I might even reach level three if I practice my craft.”

  Level three was the master level in every talent craft. Even a noob in magic like Alex knew that much. The kid was boasting now, too, but it was kind of cute. At least he wasn’t on the verge of tears anymore. Josy, on the contrary, didn’t look happy at all. Probably in a huff over being left out in the coolness department.

  “What’s your talent, sugar?” Alex asked, intending to give her a chance at the race herself.

  Instead, Josy locked her jaw and glared at her hands. Oh no, she couldn’t be one of those cases, could she? Magic ran in the blood. Usually when one child had a strong magic talent, the other most likely had one too. Still, strays happened here and there. Was she such a stray, or worse, a fail, a trueborn born without any magic talent at all? It certainly would explain her bitchiness.

  “Josy is a healer-sister,” Max volunteered in her place, clearing that up. “Its not as cool as teleportation, but, you know, nothing is, really.”

  A healer! Now that was a rare thing. Almost only possessed by females, it often skipped several generations before it bred through again. Needless to say, there weren’t many healers in each generation and they were widely sought after. Alex had heard that when a healing talent was discovered in a child, the big medical schools and companies quickly put out their feelers and called dibs on them.
If you did it the right way, you could make a fortune with a strong healing talent. And she was talking big fortune here.

  A healer and a teleporter. They were quite a pair!

  Josy wrapped her arms around herself, looking accusingly at Max.

  “You shouldn’t have told her,” she said quietly. “Now she knows how valuable we are.”

  Okay, that did it! Enough was enough!

  “For heaven’s sake, sugar, get your head out of your ass!” The anger that had built up in Alex boiled, pushing at the seams of her skin. “I don’t give a shit on how important you are in your glorious trueborn society. I may be a shaper and I may not have much money, but that doesn’t make me an amoral monster! I won’t kill you or sell you or whatever atrocities that screwed up little mind of yours comes up with next.” Although she might change her mind if they kept straining her patience like that.

  “So far, I saved you and by that risked my cover, my job, and my life. I don’t recall giving you any reason to mistrust me. You want to leave? Fine! There is the door.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “Suppose you’ll be able to see yourselves out.”

  Stunned silence followed her words. Neither of them moved.

  Alex crossed her arms. “Well? What are you waiting for? Just go!” One less problem on my long list of problems!

  They still didn’t move. On the contrary, Josy took a step back and grabbed the radiator, eyes bulging and her lips trembling.

  “You—you’re sending us out?” Her voice almost cracked. “Out THERE?”

  Now that was rich! Just thirty seconds ago, she couldn’t wait to get out of her biting range and now she was turning her into the big bad shaper throwing them out into the dangerous street. Sweet.

  Alex rubbed her temples. Be reasonable. Just be reasonable. “Look, sugar. I’m not sending you anywhere. But you cannot stay here. In fact, none of us can.”

  The truth of her own words hit her with unexpected force like a punch in the gut. She’d known it from the moment she’d shed her skin in the bar but saying it out loud made it real. She’d screwed up. One way or another, the life she’d built here was over. The only question was if she would make it out of the crumbling ruins of her house of cards without being squashed.

  “Why?” Josy demanded.

  “What?”

  “I asked ‘Why?’” Josy repeated, “Why can’t you stay here?”

  “Because I just killed those trueborn would-be-guardaí in the bar, and they tend to take these kinds of things seriously.” Alex tried to sound light when really a crushing weight was settling on her soul. “There will be an investigation and sooner or later they’ll knock on my door.”

  She didn’t harbor any illusions. They’d get on her track eventually. Not that she was planning on waiting around for them to come for her.

  Josy frowned, puzzled. “But … you did it to help us. That was self-defense!”

  Oh, so that hadn’t gone beyond notice after all.

  “Doesn’t matter, sugar. I’m a shaper. They’ll find some way to convict me.” If not for those murders than for something else. She’d seen the game. A shaper as the good guy? That didn’t fit well with the public opinion. They’d dig for dirt—and in her case, they wouldn’t even have to dig too deep to find some. Nothing she needed to mention in front of these kids, though.

  Max looked confused, but Josy put her hands to hips. “That hardly seems fair!”

  Ah, that innocence! Hadn’t she herself been ready to condemn Alex for the worst atrocities possible only a moment ago?

  “That’s how it is, sugar. That’s how it is.”

  The silence that followed those words was somehow even heavier than before. Something shattered in the apartment above them. There were a few muffled screams and then metal hit a wall in a telltale rhythm. Alex closed her eyes. Great timing up there!

  The kids didn’t seem to connect the dots, though. Josy let go of the radiator, a slightly forlorn expression on her face. “And what are we supposed to do now?”

  Not really my problem, is it?

  “Suppose I could drop you off at the nearest PO-Station.” Drop off, as in “bring you close and then run to a fare thee well.”

  “They’ll help you.” Or, at least, find someone who could. Since they were trueborns, most likely they would contact the real guardaí and let them take it from there. Well, good enough for her.

  “NO!” Josy shook her head so hard, her curls slapped her cheeks. “You heard what the men at the bridge said. They are still looking for us. The halfborns won’t be able to protect us!”

  Alex hesitated. The girl was right, of course. Wasn’t that the reason why Alex had taken them away from the bar in the first place? If the halfborn PO locked horns with trueborn mercs … well, the difference between “peace officer” and “piece officer” was but one letter.

  Still. Not her problem. Not her fucking problem!

  But the truth was, by jumping to their aid, she had effectively made it her problem.

  “I want my Mom,” Max whimpered into the stretching silence.

  Now there was finally a good idea. Let their parents take the trouble of retrieving them from somewhere. Did they even know that their sweet little kids had gone missing yet? If so, they were probably worried sick. No matter. They had sired them, they could figure this out!

  “Max is right,” Alex agreed. “We really should call your parents.”

  “And how?” Josy asked testily. “We’re not allowed to bring communication devices to school. So, unless you’ve got a vis-a emitter here somewhere …” Her eyes doubtfully wandered through the little hall.

  Alex groaned. Of course. They’d need magical communication. But this was fucking Bhellidor, a purely halfborn populated county. The chances of getting her hands upon a functioning vis-a or something comparable around here were close to zero. Well, except perhaps for the PO station and that …

  Damn. Damn. Double damn!

  “Can’t you just bring us home?” Max asked in a small voice, looking at her from his big brown puppy eyes.

  Alex blinked. What? Now that was all she needed; being on the run with these two trouble magnets at her heels. They wouldn’t just slow her down, they’d turn her into a walking target with an illuminated arrow above. No thanks! She really had enough on her plate, like saving her own skin. Both preferably.

  She raised her frutinade bottle to her lips. “And where exactly is home?” No harm in asking.

  Max threw a glance at Josy, Alex couldn’t quite decipher. The girl hesitated, then said: “Third Avenue Oak-Lane Road.”

  Say no more! “And that would be … where?” Did she look like she knew every fucking street in the whole county?

  Josy gave her a puzzled look. “Ciradell, of course.”

  Alex choked on her frutinade, almost spitting it over her pants. Ciradell! No wonder that she’d never heard of the street. Ciradell was the stronghold of the royal elite in the Province of Lancaester. This kept getting better and better. They weren’t just noble, they were way up the A-List. No wonder someone went to all the trouble to get their hands on them. Their parents were either active in politics or close to the Prime’s family. One way or another, they were probably filthily rich. Damn it, morals hither or tither she should have considered a ransom demand! And where Ciradell was concerned … well, there was also another problem.

  Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Alex carefully cleared her throat, aiming for a neutral expression.

  “You do reckon you teleported yourself about five hundred miles away from home?” In fact, Max had teleported them nearly halfway across the country, just without leaving the Southern Provinces.

  Josy made a strangled sound and Max mouth dropped open, his lips forming a wordless “oh.”

  Yeah, “oh” indeed!

  Josy glowered at him and he shrunk together and then threw Alex a help-seeking glance. “But … you can still get us there, right?” If he’d been a puppy his tail would hav
e wagged once.

  Alex closed her eyes and rubbed the spot between her eyebrows. “Look, someone like me can’t simply walk into trueborn territory and knock at a random door and ask for help.”

  And certainly not into a place like Ciradell. If was any other place, but—Ciradell? As far as she knew the place was a damn fortress. Just thinking about the wards and arms and border posts gave her a headache. She’d be dead before she’d taken three steps inside.

  “Please.”

  Alex paused, surprised by the desperation in Josy’s voice. The girl swallowed and wrung her hands in front of her chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “For what I said before. It was rude and uncalled for. You’re right—you didn’t give us any reason to mistrust you.”

  No, I haven’t, Alex thought. But what I am is enough reason, isn’t it?

  Josy bit her lip. “Please, help us.” With all the bitchiness gone, she suddenly seemed very young and vulnerable.

  Alex sighed. It certainly was one of the more elaborate excuses she’d ever gotten, if probably not the most truthful. Nonetheless, it was an apology.

  Still, this was a bad idea. What was she thinking? This was a horrible idea! If she was smart she’d dump them in the street and take to her heels. Her spider instincts were screaming at her to make a run for it. But then … They are just children, a tiny voice whispered in the back of her head. Without her, they didn’t really stand a chance out there. If they survived an hour in the Bin it would be a plain miracle. Either they’d get caught by their pursuers or they’d get their throats slit by some back alley bandits or some comparable trash. The Bin housed all kinds of human scum and, if encountered in some shady alley, most of them wouldn’t hesitate to kill them just because they were kids. And now that blood would be on her hands, too. Great. Amazing. Really, would it hurt her to think once before acting?

  “Please?” Josy repeated.

  “Please,” Max echoed.

  Alex closed her eyes. This would end in a disaster. She just knew it. But if she abandoned them to their fate now, why jump to their help in the first place?

  She raked a hand through her face. You’ve shouldered this burden, now you have to carry it.