by Nyna Queen
He actually sounded impressed. Alex made a point of committing this moment to her memory.
She flashed him a smile. “Professional secret.”
Truth to be told, she had simply been extremely lucky. Close to the Fisherman’s docks she more or less knew all the spots where the wards were thinning—the fruit of painful hours of probing—and even if it was too dangerous to mark them and they gradually changed over time, she’d committed enough of them to her memory that she wouldn’t have much trouble to find at least some of them in short time. Out here … well, Gomorrha was a city of more than sixty square miles. She could have walked for hours and not found any sizable hole. This little baby here made her look a lot more proficient than she was. Apparently, the Jester was tired of spitting her in the eye and for once decided to hand her a bounty.
While Darken still seemed to puzzle out the unthinkable mystery of her having come up with an idea he hadn’t thought of, she used a couple of more stones to measure the width of the hole. A little above four feet. Whoop-de-do! Four feet sounded big enough, but when one touch was potentially lethal, well, she’d have to be careful not to stray from her track or it would yet be crispy-spider after all.
Most holes broke the ward from top to bottom, but occasionally there would be what she thought of as “cheese-holes” that opened up somewhere in the middle or ended halfway up the wall. Her senses would detect the edges of such a hole, but only if she moved slowly enough to scan ahead while moving. This would be a slow ascent.
Well, better get going.
Alex moved her head from side to side and rolled her shoulders to get the stiffness out of them.
“Alright, I’ll climb over and be back with tools.”
That took him short. “You’re going to climb the wall? Just like that?”
He sounded honestly surprised and she remembered that he hadn’t really seen her engaging her shaper abilities, except for the moment she’d jumped him from that old house’s ceiling. Probably hadn’t paid much attention to her gravity change then.
“I’m a spider, sugar. My shaper kind doesn’t bear that name for nothing.” She gave him a sly wink.
The expression on his face told her he wasn’t quite sure if she was pulling his leg.
Well, sugar, better take a good look, then!
She balled up her hair into a knot on the top of her head and pulled it under the hood of the black hoodie she’d extracted from her pack earlier and traded against her leather jacket. From behind, she would be almost invisible in the dark now.
Showtime!
Taking a step back, she bent her knees and then jumped up against the wall, quickly vanishing in the darkness.
DARKEN stared after Alex as she gracefully leaped up the wall, blending with the black texture of the stone. She moved without almost any sound; a black cat climbing up a tree on velvet paws. Light. Supple. Weightless.
After a couple of yards her black outfit completely fused her with the night and no matter how much he strained his eyes, he couldn’t spot her. Elusive as a snowflake in the night, blown away by a frigid wind from the north.
After a moment he remembered to breathe.
Mother’s mercy and Jester’s grace! And the Blind Child’s cursed eyes in the dark! He’d seen a couple of mind-boggling things in his life—more than many wanted to see, his lifestyle warranted it—but this …
Absently he raked a hand through his thick hair, tousling the dark strands. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes he would have said it wasn’t possible. You didn’t just climb Gomorrha’s walls! But once again this shaper belied his beliefs, mocking all the rules of physics that bound them ordinary mortals to earth and reason. The ease. The lissomness. As if gravity didn’t even exist.
They said shapers were creatures born from the darkness, but really it should be born for the darkness. The night was her element. They called her spider, but only now he started to understand how much it fit her.
Sheathing his sword in the scabbard he’d strapped to his back, he strolled back to the cave, hands in his pockets. The air was fresh and cool, and he embraced its subtle bite, allowing it to soothe his troubled mind.
How many times had she done that before? This wasn’t something you just figured out and put into action. She had known exactly what to look for. Had known exactly how to look for it. What kind of psychic whip would compel a woman like her to seek such a life-endangering, forbidden way into one of the country’s most dangerous cities? What kind of desperation had to drive you to attempt such a suicidal thing?
A dark shadow hovered over Alex’s fair head, a shadow full of blizzards and thunderstorms and he wondered if they were about to get trapped in the middle of a violent discharge.
When he stepped back into the cool, tarry shadows of the cavern he found Max’s clear brown eyes blinking up at him, unexpectedly awake.
He rushed to his nephew’s side, careful not to wake Josepha and helped him into a sitting position.
“Hey buddy, how are you feeling?”
“Oookay,” Max said, making a so-so gesture, and Darken made a point of pretending not to hear the soft, exhausted quiver in his voice. If the boy wanted to keep his pride he wouldn’t make him any more self-conscious about his current weakness.
His nephew looked around the cave. “Where is Alex?”
It was hard to admit but Darken felt a little stab in the base of his stomach at this obvious fixation on the shaper. It took him a moment to sort it out. Not quite jealousy, but something bothered him about the fact that the first thing his nephew was concerned about was the absence of the spider.
Well, it wasn’t hard to see how much the boy worshiped her. He had to handle this very carefully.
Darken leaned against the stone, putting one leg over the other. “Do you like her?”
Max nodded his head. “Yes. She helped us, and she is pretty cool. And she likes knives! Can you believe that? She’s a girl and she likes knives! She has dozens of them. And her teeth …”
An almost wistful longing entered his voice.
Darken closed his eyes. Of course. Alex was beautiful and tough … and better with knives than most men he knew. It wasn’t hard to see how she could turn any males head. Especially of one who loved knives and pointed teeth. Still. The kiddo had fallen for her in quite a short time.
“And she isn’t cowed by you,” Max added.
“She certainly isn’t that,” Darken said dryly.
“That’s a hard thing to do. Most people act weird around you.” Max made a face and his expression made it clear that he didn’t quite understand this behavior.
A rush of relief rattled Darken, followed by an even sharper rush of fear. Relief, because so far, they still thought it strange how people acted around him. For them, or at least, he corrected himself, for Max, he was just Uncle Darken, the uncle who played with them, cradled them and kissed their sores, and who read them funny stories when they were already supposed to be asleep.
And yet he would always be the uncle people acted weird around. Would always be “that forfeit uncle” in the eyes of others, and at some point, when they grew older and understood better what he was—and what it implied, and just how much blood had been spilled by these hands—would they still be able to overlook it? Would they care? Or would they turn away from him?
Thinking that it might happen, knowing that it would most likely happen, felt like tearing his chest open with his own hands and ripping out his heart, just to find a bloody piece of nothing that had already turned to stone at its core. If he lost them … it would destroy whatever humanity was left in him.
Max studied his face and his eyes widened with fear. “She’s not hurt, is she?”
Darken reached out and gently touched the boy’s hair, needing the comfort from the simple physical connection more than he liked to admit. “No, she isn’t hurt.”
He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and sighed, putting a bit of a theatrical edge into his voice. “
She just went into the city to get tools.” His hand dropped to his side. “Climbed the wall as if it was a simple garden fence.”
A weak grin lit up his nephew’s face. “Pretty bad-ass, huh?”
Darken waited for a few heartbeats before he replied, just to make completely sure the spider really was out of earshot and then nodded with another sigh.
“Yeah, kiddo. It was totally bad-ass.”
COLD mist was crawling in from the river, white billows drifting over the mossy ground, playfully peeking into the mouth of the cave, as if driven by a bigger conscience.
Darken leaned back his head and watched the city wall stretching into the darkness while listening to the muted concert of the frogs.
He checked his horanium iactari. Sighed. Almost midnight. More than three hours had passed and no sign of the spider.
“She isn’t coming back, is she?”
He turned to find Josepha awake. She cowered on Max’s left, rocking her knees, looking exhausted and wary.
“Of course, she is, darling,” he said, leaning over and giving her cold, slim hands a gentle squeeze.
He’d make her life hell is she wasn’t. And he’d find her. It might take a while, but the Great Mother help him, he would find her.
“Such things take time.”
His niece didn’t look too convinced, all the strength and bravery from earlier spend. Without them, she suddenly seemed very young again. Young and so very, very vulnerable.
“How is your brother doing?” he asked, more to keep her from brooding than anything else. Appealing to her healer’s nature was the safest way to distract her from her own worries.
Josepha leaned over and touched her brother’s cheek, adopting a look of concentration. Not real magic, just a healer listening to the little signs in the body of her patient.
Max stirred a little under her touch but didn’t wake. After being reassured that Alex wasn’t hurt and hadn’t abandoned them, his nephew had quickly fallen asleep again.
Josy sniffed. “It’s difficult to say without a magic scan, but I think he might be over the worst. He doesn’t have a fever, and if none has developed so far, this is usually a good sign.” Her fine brows tugged together. “I would still feel a lot better if I could do a complete healing on him.”
Darken didn’t miss the notion of plea in her voice, the raw need in her honey-brown eyes. He knew the urge. Knew how it felt when your core demanded, pulled, compelled you to do what it was meant to do.
There were talents, and then there were talents. Some magic skills like teleportation or portalism or magical craftsmanship were just that: skills. Gifts that could be developed to a certain extent or even be ignored and left unexploited.
And then there were the talents that were as much nature as they were an ability. As a healer-sister Josepha would never be comfortable around the sick and wounded and depressed, would never be able to stand their presence without the imminent need to heal, to nourish and to nurture.
Just like his nature would always drive him to destroy and kill.
A nature. A fate. No matter what, you couldn’t escape the basic needs of that nature, couldn’t ignore the urges within you without going physically and mentally insane.
They were the opposites of the same coin: a healer and a killer. The white sister and the black brother. Among all the talents he could have gotten instead of the forfeits’ curse, he envied hers the most, since she represented everything that he could never be. She was pure and innocent, and it was her soul he had the strongest desire to protect. And which he was most afraid to corrupt with his constant presence.
Darken held out his arm and she snuggled into it, settling her head on his shoulder. He pressed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. “She’ll come, darling. Try to sleep a little more.”
He stroked her hair and watched her fall asleep curled up in the crook of his arm, hoping he was right about his words.
Seconds stretched into minutes, turning like the swirls in his horanium.
When he thought that Alex had in fact decided to abandon them and make a run for it all by her lonesome, there was the softest sound, a whooshing of air, like a gust of wind stirring a feather.
Darken stiffened and a second later she landed in the mouth of the cave in a crouch, moonlight reflecting back from her ebony eyes. Her hood was down, and her silver-blond hair spilled over her shoulders. The mist shrouded her, illuminating her skin, making her ghostlike, ethereal. For the length of a breath, she didn’t seem real, like a spirit born from mist and magic—like the land itself, beautiful and dangerous and feral.
Something inside him tightened. He blinked his eyes.
When she straightened, she was all human again—as human as she could be—her eyes two blue pools fed by icy springs.
“How’s Max?” she asked without ceremony.
The question startled him, all the more so because he sensed that it wasn’t just feigned concern. Yet why would her concern about his nephew disturb him?
Not the concern itself, he decided as he watched her sink down beside the boy with feline grace. But the fact that it was coming from her and that he had misjudged her in this regard.
Could it possibly be that his nephew had managed to wind his way into her heart, just like the other way around? If so, he could hardly blame her. The children had a way of getting to you, he just wouldn’t have expected a shaper to fall under their sweet, innocent spell. But this shaper wouldn’t fit any rules, keen on messing with his perception of the world.
“Actually, he asked for you.”
Surprise … and pleasure.
“He was worried by your long absence.” And so was I, just by the way.
“Yeah, I was held up a little on my way back,” she said, hooking a blond strand behind her ear. “Drug raid in the vicinity.” She wrinkled her nose. “There’s this area close to the wall with all these empty, derelict buildings and the gangs have declared it their territory. Yet sometimes things escalate between the different leaders and the city guard sees it fit to attempt some pro forma intervention. I figured I’d wait until they were gone again—better not take the risk, right?”
It was hard to see a fault in that reasoning.
“Is everything prepared, then?” he asked, gently shaking Josepha to wake her up.
Alex made a mocking bow. “Ready whenever you are, your Truebornness.”
He stifled a pithy retort and got up to rouse Maxwell.
Less than five minutes later they left the cave. He was still carrying Max despite his nephew’s grumbling about not being a baby and being able to walk by himself and that it was just a scratch after all. Only when Darken confidentially told the boy that Josy would fry his hide if he let him strain his bandaged leg, the muttering stopped. Being afraid of his sister’s wrath, that he could understand. When she was in her “healer mode” she could be really scary, and he wouldn’t tell Darken’s secret to anyone. Seeing the faint grin on Alex’s face, he suspected his “secret” had already leaked.
It didn’t take them long to reach the unwarded spot on the wall and—
“Seriously?” Darken stared at Alex. “A rope? That is your brilliant plan? That we—that they”—he flickered his chin at Maxwell and Josepha—“climb this monstrosity of a wall with nothing but a flimsy rope?”
The nerve of that woman.
When she’d talked about tools he had expected … well, he didn’t know what he had expected but certainly not this.
“Did you even think about Max’s leg?”
Irritation turned Alex’s eyes as dark as the night sky. “This city isn’t a self-service outlet! No magic while crossing the wall, remember? This is the best I could come up with.”
Yeah, well, he definitely could see that.
She gave him a long look. “This rope is attached to a building on the inside. I used a double rope pulley with snap hooks so that we can simply rappel on the other side.”
At least she’d thought that far.
Apparently, she’d robbed a sports shop. He considered asking, but then, did he really want to know?
Alex pulled another pair of spikes from a bag tied around her middle. “You can take Max piggyback and I will assist Josy in climbing”
Now it was for him to give her a long look.
Her eyes narrowed. “Ah, don’t be fooled by the tits, sugar. You should have realized by now, that I’m stronger than I look. Probably stronger than you are if you don’t cheat with your magic.”
Cheat? Where were they, high school?
He muttered something under his breath which could have been anything from “you wish” to “kiss my ass”—he wasn’t quite sure himself.
There was a dangerous sparkle in her eyes. “Look, I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to charter your own personal aircraft, your Highness”—she made the worst and most insolent curtsy he had ever been forced to witness—“but this is the only way we’ll get into the city.”
She tossed a pair of spikes at Josy who promptly managed to drop them to the ground.
“Take it or leave it! Your choice!”
THE car was nothing more than a burned-out husk. The informant stared at the charred carcass, a black skeleton, ghostly in the moonlight, and tried to expel the shivers that wanted to grind into his bones.
The call had come around dusk, sending the docile hive of the investigation unit in Bhellidor into a fit of buzzing action: within twenty minutes all equipment was packed up, the guardaí’s teleportation force was summoned, and a team, including his own operatives and a couple of intimidated halfborn Peace Officers, was transferred to an official journey point just north of Gomorrha. From there a local squad picked them up and brought them to the questionable site, just to find … just to find …
His breath hitched, and he pressed his eyes closed, but the image of the smoldering remains had irrevocably burned itself into the back of his eyelids.
No bodies. That’s what the fire brigade had said after their troops had finally managed to quench the spreading fire and cool the area enough for their men to approach the wreck of the car.