By a Thread

by Nyna Queen

  No bodies. But the fire had burned exceptionally hot and while bone didn’t easily melt even in high temperatures they would have to wait for the light of the coming day to evaluate the full extent of the destruction.

  No bodies, he told himself. No sign that anybody had been in that car when it exploded, and yet …

  Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to open his eyes and look at the mangled piece of metal crushed against the soot-blackened rocks. A tiny band of smoke rose from the heck, a wispy reminder of the blazing inferno that had raged here just a short while ago.

  His hands grew stiff on the desk in front of him. From his current angle of view, he couldn’t see the scarp that rose up to the highway, could only hear the distant monotonous hum of car engines and the occasional squeal of tires. But he remembered it. Yes, he remembered it. Just to think that anybody could have survived a crash like that …

  Except for the faint trace of magic residue they had detected in the area, almost burned away and so overlaid with radiating heat that their delicate instruments had barely been able to record it. Could be nothing. Just a faint flicker of hope.

  But hope was the only straw he had left, and he couldn’t let go of it. Not yet. Because if they had died …

  No, he chided himself. Don’t even dare to think that.

  No bodies.

  Right. No bodies. But no sign of life, either. If they had somehow survived—and he would believe that, had to believe it—then where had they gone?

  The combined forces of Bhellidor’s and Gomorrha’s law enforcement were combing the woods, searching up and down the riverside, and—not so much as a hair! Even without those blasted sniffle-hounds, which were incapacitated by the burned stench, they should have found something by now. Even shapers couldn’t fly, now could they?

  With one last, queasy glance at the car wreck, the informant squared his shoulders.

  “To the river,” he ordered, his rough voice harsher than necessary, but, damn it, he needed to vent some of his frustration.

  The view on the screen in front of him shifted as his operator obediently turned around and trudged toward the channel, while his oculus translatia, the transmission glasses he wore, allowed the informant to see on his screen what his man was seeing on the spot.

  A sheen of ashes covered the ground like a layer of dirty snow, conveying a false sense of peace upon the scarred land. The fire had burned a swath through the trees all the way down to the river, almost as if steered by a rogue hand, which was, of course, ridiculous. They followed the path already dotted with mushy footsteps, past the gaggle of halfborn POs, where the young fledgling cop, who had examined the questionable car, was still unable to understand the world, babbling and stammering on about the man in the front of the car and rock-solid identification papers.

  Yes, yes, they had long checked the technical documentation, but what appeared rock solid at the surface, had turned into a puff of smoke at a closer examination. Whoever this other player was, they had no more lead on him than on the shaper woman. A first-class forgery, he’d heard one of the guardaí say. Highly proficient. Almost uncannily so.

  The informant grimaced. Now, who would have thought those primitive mongrel brutes were capable of such skilled counterfeit?

  Broken smithereens of conversation fluttered over to them through the night air. Children? Yes, there had been two children in the backseat … But those children? Hard to tell … To his defense, they had seemed alright …

  Alright, my eye!

  Such an inept fool! Well, his colleague had been confident enough to open the fire, which, in turn, had resulted in his untimely demise. The informant pressed his lips together. The moron. Should have raised a silent alarm, instead of barging in like a maniac and routing them out. They could have been intercepted at the gate, quick and easy, no race, no fall, no …

  Clenching the desk, he suppressed the urge to turn his head to look back at the wreck, when all that was behind him was the cinnamon-colored wall of his apartment. Well, the moron had gotten the payback for his deplorable lack of restraint.

  The feeble justifications evaporated behind them as they reached the waterfront. A little way down the river small boats equipped with huge spotlights gently wobbled on the tarry surface, while firemen scoured the bottom with long poles.

  A waste of time. He was no marine specialist but even he could see that if a body had fallen into the river up here, it most likely would have been dragged off by now. But he understood. They didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. They wanted to show action. Nobody liked to admit that they were out of their depths.

  Another team had crossed the river a while ago and was searching the other side, although the shared opinion painted slim hopes: the spur of land sandwiched between river and wall held no escape and would only act as a giant mousetrap. If they tried to go to ground there, they would be flushed out eventually. And if they had tried to run … well, the whole area was heavily cordoned off large-scale.

  So why had none of the alarm markers reported any suspicious movement yet?

  A commotion broke out on the other side. The informant waited impatiently for his operator to hurry over until he was close enough to listen to the relayed information.

  “They found something a little down the river,” one of the halfborn POs said, lowering a walkie-talkie. “Some markings in the mud. Maybe blood. They are quick-testing it right now and will then send the probes over for your people to do their testing on them.”

  The informant suppressed a hearty curse. To think that they were dependent on halfborn tinkery! He made a disgusted grimace and was glad that nobody could see him. Of course, the guardaí would run their own tests, but they couldn’t do it over there. Like they couldn’t use any of their magical means to simplify the search for traces or at least provide decent night-view. The same magic that was keeping people out of Gomorrha was now effectively barring them from using their advantages. But Gomorrha’s Chief Commissioner had made it painfully clear that deactivating those stupid guard spells around Gomorrha was out of the question.

  The PO gave his operator an uncertain glance. “Most likely just a wounded animal that has crawled onto the river bench to die there,” he said. “Wouldn’t make much sense for them to hole up on this side of the river. Not with that at their backs.” He waved at the wall.

  His words made perfect sense, yet the informant still resented the man for sounding so hesitant.

  His operator glared past the too placid-looking waters at Gomorrha’s wall, a stark stretch of black in the distance, rising forbiddingly behind a scrubby belt of trees, now and then flashing with tiny explosions, like the night sky during a meteorite shower. Only that these meteorites didn’t leave stars and wonders but dead bodies as their legacy.

  The screen glided along the wall, as his man slowly moved his head from left to right.

  That other player disturbed him. Another shaper, perhaps? Most likely. It wasn’t so much the fact that there was an accomplice itself. No, it was something about that PO-fledgling’s description that twisted his stomach. Not the physical description which could fit every second man in the street—although when he’d said he would have sworn they were trueborns the informant had wanted to laugh into his face. Halfborns! Couldn’t tell the difference between a trueborn and a shaper-mongrel.

  No, it was the way he’d cringed, that haunted, almost panicky look in his eyes when forced to repeat the encounter. It was the look of a man who’d glimpsed his own grave and barely managed to keep from falling inside.

  Despite the merrily blazing fire in the oven behind him, the informant suddenly shivered. There was something unsettlingly familiar about his description. Too familiar. Almost like—

  “Stop!” He snapped rigid in his chair and cursed when he smacked his forehead at the low-hanging shelf above the table. “Back! Back-back-back!”

  Grinding his teeth, he waited for his guide to bring the visual focus back to—

  �
�Yes! Right there!” Bracing his hands on either side of the console, he leaned forward, preening at the screen. A long minute passed. Another. And another.

  He felt the operative’s restlessness, the tiny movements of his head while he tried to stand still and follow the unchanged command. Could almost hear the unspoken words: “What is he looking at? There is nothing there.”

  Yes, exactly. Nothing there. And that was precisely what was calling his attention.

  When you watched Gomorrha’s wall it was a place of constant flickering motion. There was no specific order to it, but the impacts were like raindrops made of silver light; if you waited long enough, eventually the whole floor would be glistening wet. But here, right across from where his man stood, was this one patch, a stretch of maybe twenty feet, that stayed conspicuously blank. Like a black hole in the night sky. Or a hole in—

  A memory rushed at him, clear as a spring river, as if it had happened just yesterday: He, a wispy little boy, hiding behind the shrieking maid, while the stable lad beat at the red horned viper with the stick of a broom. Just about an arm’s length, the vipers were highly venomous, and one bite could kill a grown horse, let alone a human child.

  “I don’t understand!” the young maid wailed, wringing her hands in front of her apron. “Aren’t the wards supposed to keep these beasts out?”

  “Aye,” the Master of the royal stables, who’d come rushing, vigorously nodded his head, squinting at the dead, sinuous body as if it would jump up any moment. “Supposed, yes, yes. But Charley Groundkeeper thinks himself so clever. Thinks he can impress his Lordship by saving him a bit o’ money—as if his lordship needed a dirty penny. Been stretching the four-week ward-feeding cycle assignment, that’s what he’s been doing. By a coupla days here an’ a coupla days there, tryin’ ter level down the annual rate.”

  His mouth crinkled with disapproval. “Well, he ain’t gonna get no respect when one of his Lordship’s prime stallions dies of viper poison, now will he?”

  He looked like he was about to spit but then thought better with the child present.

  The maid made big eyes, taken aback. “But—the wards are up. I feel them every day when I pass through the gates.”

  “Aye,” the Stable Master said again, a thoughtful expression on his weathered face. “Charge keeps ‘em just fit enough to prevent them big predators from feeding on the horses’ necks, but they do get cracks n’ fissures. And you know those vermin: find their way through the tiniest holes, they do. And then we have to deal with ‘em.”

  He shook his head. “Put Charley Groundkeeper on the spot a coupla times now. What if one of the children …” His eyes uneasily graced the boy still half-hidden behind the maid. “Dreadful. Jus’ dreadful. This time I’ll tell his Lordship. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. This time I’ll tell him …”

  The memory dissipated like an unraveling curtain, leaving the informant staring at the distant black patch in the wall. Excitement spiked through him.

  Was it possible? Gomorrha’s wards were old. At least one or two centuries and deeper rooted and way more powerful than a commercial stable fence, but … would it be so surprising if the Royal Warding Association had decided not to waste their precious energy on this sinkhole of a city? As far as he was concerned they could just burn down the whole place, preferably with all the scum still inside.

  He glanced at the wall rising and rising up toward the sky. That was a high wall. Yet from what he’d heard of shapers, and if only half of it was true … well, then unsurmountable walls turned into less and less challenging obstacles. No need to fly, after all.

  The words of the Stable Master rang in his mind: You know those vermin: find their way through the tiniest holes. And that’s what those shapers were at the end of the day, right? Nothing but overgrown vermin. Snakes and spiders and stuff like that. There was a reason why people called them that.

  There still were the children to take into account. They would have trouble. But weren’t those shapers supposed to be bestially strong? Two strong adult shapers and two children. And pain had always been a most convincing incentive.

  The thought made him wince, but at the same time, he considered the facts. If they had made an escape, as everybody was so sure they had, there should have been something by now. So, what if there weren’t any tracks leading away because they had never left? What if they had crawled into the hole-in-the-wall like the rats they were?

  His trembling fingers groped for the speaker. Found the button and pressed it. “Contact the backup. Send our men into the city.”

  Audible confusion. “Into—? But Sir, there is no way—”

  “Just do it!” he shrieked, pounding the board with his fist. Always these questions. Always these qualms.

  He rubbed his temples. “Do as you are told, Operative, or I’ll make sure that you won’t be hired in the future again, except as a dishwasher!”

  Come to think of it, he might do that anyway, for the man’s temerity. He certainly had it coming, right?

  Stiff obedience leaked through the speaker. “At your command, Sir.”

  Wall and river vanished in a blur, as the operative hastened up the slope to do his bidding.

  Deactivating the sound of the transmitter, the informant got up and poured himself a generous fill of brandy. Then he leaned back in his chair and watched the hustle while sipping his drink.

  Little rats. Trying to get away by sneaking into their dirty little hidey-hole.

  There still was this mysterious other player, but he intended to deal with this when the time came.

  When his team had gathered he gave some more instructions, making it absolutely clear what would happen if they were not followed to the point.

  Then he drained the rest of the brandy in one gulp and left the apartment.

  We shall just see who laughs last!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE sub jolted to a screeching halt at Pandeimon Station and the sliding doors zipped open, spitting them onto a dirty, dimly lit platform.

  “That was fun!” Max beamed. “Can we go again?”

  He bounced up and down in front of them and then winced a little when he remembered his injured leg.

  Alex inwardly shook her head. Wanna give a trueborn boy a treat? Just let him ride a halfborn subway and he’ll be happy like a dog with two tails.

  “Can we, Uncle Darken?” Max tugged at his uncle’s sleeve. “Can we?”

  “Maybe later,” Darken said diplomatically, as he led them up a narrow flight of concrete stairs.

  “I voluntarily refuse.” Josy gave a pointed sniff and wrinkled her nose. “It stinks.”

  “You stink too,” Max muttered and sulkily pulled the lid of his ghost-hunter baseball cap deeper into his forehead.

  They’d bought the cap along with a woolen beanie for Josy at a little shop at the sub-station, after Josy had finally healed Max’s leg.

  The moment they’d touched the ground inside Gomorrha, the girl had set her mind to do a proper healing on her brother and Darken and Alex had to almost forcefully restrain her until they’d reached the nearest subway station, where they could lock themselves inside a small, grimy facility room for the procedure. Twenty minutes later, Max’s leg looked almost as good as new, even though Josy made a point of stressing multiple times that “healing craft wasn’t a miracle work” and that the leg would still be tender for at least a day or two—although he might pass up on that scar after all.

  Alex threw the girl a cursory glance. She was shuffling up the stairs, moving at an awkward pace as if she was sore, lips pressed together into a rigid line.

  The climb must have been torturous for her, Alex reflected. Even with the spikes and straps and Alex’s support, she had slipped several times, scraping her knees and elbows and there were blisters all over her soft lady-hands.

  Alex had suggested that she go ahead and heal them too and had been doused in another spray of icky trueborn-derision. Obviously, every child knew that a healer could
n’t heal herself. There came an ejaculation of scientific gibberish laced with technical terms that had more letters than the entire alphabet.

  As far as her limited half-breed brains were able to gather from the bafflegab, a healer used her magic to connect her body to her patient and create a channel between the two to provide the victim with the necessary energy for the healing process while also tapping the victim’s resources to mend whatever was wrong with them. The healer thereby kept control over the flow of energy and magic and could, if necessary, cut the connection before she put herself in the danger of overspending herself. However, if she used her healing magic on herself, there would be no such control; her own body would suck itself dry without any restraint and die as the result of it.

  It didn’t seem fair to Alex that their talent only befitted others, but then, Rachel would say that the greatest satisfaction in life was derived from helping those who were in need of it.

  Ah, Rachel. Fierce, tough, benevolent Rachel.

  Yet now, when she looked at Josy, she thought she finally grasped a hint of the truth behind those words. The kid must be in a lot of pain, but no sound of complaint had come over her lips ever since her brother had been wounded. Maybe she had judged the girl too early. There was some backbone in her when she was riled.

  Alex reached over and pushed a stray lock back beneath Josy’s beanie, making sure that most of the silky cloud of hair was hidden underneath the woolen hat. They still failed to look like real lower-class kids, but they certainly didn’t look like trueborn token children either.

  A minute later, they reached the exit and stepped out of the station, right into the bouncing nightlife of Gomorrha’s undercity.

  Bright neon lights and animated promotional signs reflected on shifty eyes, trash cans and shinies and turned everything into a blur of colors and movement around them.

  Alex paused for a second, inhaling with feinted relish. Ahhh Gomorrha. The dingy smell of vices mixing with dozens of other scents: cheap street food, different notes of sweet, heavy perfumes, the smoke of cigs and drugs, unwashed bodies, and garbage. It was a most repulsive blend that had burned deep into the stones of the streets and buildings, tainting the whole site with its obtrusiveness.