They had to end this. Now.
The problem was, Derrick didn’t know much more about the Boyles than the rest of them. The family’s visits to the Scab had been few and far between, and he’d only just met Jonah Boyle, the head of the family and its business, for the first time at the emergency meeting after the Northrock fire. Derrick couldn’t tell them anything about where they might find the man, or who he kept company with, or when he might next be in the Scab—only that he was a self-proclaimed man of morals who had refused to drink or gamble with the others and would be difficult to catch off guard.
“At this rate you’re more likely to get help from the Harkers than me,” Derrick had admitted when Aster pressed him for more information.
And he’d been joking, but Aster took it to heart. The Harker brothers would know more about the Boyles than anyone.
She just had to get them to talk.
Violence—against evil men, yes, but still, men who couldn’t fight back. It was an unsavory prospect, and not one Aster was prepared to face alone. But neither was it something she felt comfortable asking of anyone else … except, perhaps, Violet. Which was why Aster found herself outside Violet’s cabin now, heat creeping up her neck as she worked up the courage to knock on the door.
Pull it together, Aster scolded herself. She was embarrassed that she had let herself be so honest with Raven last night. She had been drunk on her own grief, reckless with her feelings, and even now a soft haze of tender sentiment clung to her like a hangover. She tried, desperately, to clear her head. She wanted to see Violet because Violet was the only one with the stomach for the plan she had in mind. That was all this was.
She knocked on the door.
Tansy answered—she and Mallow shared the cabin with Violet and Raven. Her eyes were reddened, as if she’d been recently crying.
“Oh, Aster,” she said, her voice subdued. “We were just talking about the Lady Ghosts.”
“That’s actually why I’m here,” Aster admitted. “Or at least … part of the reason … is Violet around?”
“Where else would I be?” Violet asked with a heavy sigh from her bed. Aster looked past Tansy, to where Violet sat up on her top bunk. Raven sat below her on the bottom bunk, looking at Aster pointedly, as if she knew what Aster had just been thinking about. Aster glanced away, her cheeks heating.
“Tell me you two have a plan to avenge Priscilla,” Mallow pleaded.
“Maybe,” Aster said. “But I want to run it by Vi first. Do you—do you have a minute?”
“Always,” Violet said, jumping down. Tansy let her pass, looking between them curiously.
“Thanks,” Aster muttered, and she motioned for Violet to follow her.
“It’s funny,” Violet said quietly as they walked through the subdued camp. “It was me who convinced everyone to go chasing after Lady Ghost, and now I’ll be the only one of us who never met her.”
“Priscilla would be the first to tell you that Lady Ghost was bigger than her,” Aster replied. “It wasn’t born with her, and it wasn’t supposed to die with her, either. But…”
“… but?” Violet pressed when Aster didn’t finish.
“But we can’t let the landmasters hit us like that again. It’ll be the end of the whole fight. So we have to do whatever it takes to beat them now, before they ever get the chance.”
“Whatever it takes,” Violet echoed, her blue eyes meeting Aster’s, understanding slowly rising in them. They’d reached the kennels now, and Aster stopped outside the wide double doors, dismissing the Scorpion who was on guard.
“The Harkers will have information on Jonah Boyle, information it might take us weeks to gather on our own,” Aster went on once he’d left. “But if we could just … you know … pry it out of them…”
“With a pair of pliers?” Violet suggested, raising a brow.
Aster looked away, hot with shame. This wasn’t who she was. But it was who she had to be.
“If you don’t want any part of it—” Aster began.
Violet smirked. “Don’t be ridiculous. A man needs torturing, and you thought of me? I can’t remember when I last felt so flattered.”
“Vi, I’m serious.”
“So am I,” she said, the smirk fading. She stepped closer, lowering her voice so passersby wouldn’t hear them. “Look, I get it. Why you came to me for this. You don’t want to stain any of the others’ souls. You’re not even sure you want to stain your own. But mine is already black and dripping, so what’s one blot more? And I’ll have you know I agree—you ought to let me do this. We both know I’m bound for hell, Aster. I’d just as well have it be for you.”
“No, that’s not what I—” Aster’s words got lost in the swirling fog of her mind. She suddenly felt feverish, her heart jumping in her chest. “I don’t think you’re—I’d never use you like that, Violet,” she finally managed. “I just … trust you, that’s all. To help me do what needs to be done and not to judge me for it. But it will be me who does this, hear?”
“Together, then,” Violet insisted, stubborn as always. “I’ll play the black hat, and you the white. Now, give me your knife.”
Aster hesitated for a moment more, then surrendered the blade. Violet grinned as she took it.
“There, now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asked, and she pushed the doors open.
Aster followed her into the kennels, equally flustered and frustrated.
“Look, the way I see it, they’re soft men who’ve led soft lives,” Aster whispered, to reassure herself more than anything. “It won’t take long for them to break.”
“Better start with Anthony, then, if that’s your thinking. He’s the softer of the two.”
They fell into silence as they approached the kennels where the Harker brothers were kept. As Aster had instructed, they’d been given cots, pillows and blankets, a bucket of water for washing up, and a first-aid kit to tend to their cuts and bruises. The empty dishes on the ground were proof that they’d been eating their meals, too. Despite this, though, both men looked haggard and haunted, their hair limp and greasy, their faces grubby and beginning to scruff, their eyes bloodshot and bruised from exhaustion. Aster pushed back a wave of contempt. Less than twenty-four hours of living like most dustbloods did—better, even—and they seemed to have fallen apart completely.
“Well, if it isn’t the bitch who seduced Baby McClennon,” Colin said nastily when he saw Violet. “The boy’s weak. I’m not surprised he was led astray. But Jerrod should have known better than to trust you.”
“Jerrod McClennon is a bigger fool than most folks seem to realize,” Violet said smoothly. “He couldn’t see past the shadow at my feet. The man believes wholeheartedly that fairbloods represent the best of humanity, that we are inherently ‘decent’ and ‘honorable’ in a way dustbloods are not. But you know … and I know … that that’s never been true, has it? We can be more wicked by half, and we can get away with it, too.”
Violet drew the knife.
“What the hell is this?” Anthony asked slowly, backing away from the fence. He turned to Aster. “What the hell is this?”
“I’m going to make this simple, Harker,” Aster said. “We need to know where we can find Jonah Boyle, and you’re going to tell us.”
“Why? So you can drag him down here, too? I don’t think so.” But Anthony’s voice trembled as he spoke, his eyes shining with uncertainty, fixed on the knife. Perhaps he could sense how things had changed since Aster had spoken to them last.
Violet opened the door to his kennel. Its hinges groaned.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Aster continued as they approached. “I’ll let you and your brother both write down your answers, and if they match, we’ll take this no further.”
She heard a rattling crash as Colin threw himself against the fencing of his own cage. “This is madness. When I get out of here, I swear I’ll—”
“No,” Anthony cut him off. “They’re bluffing. They need us alive.�
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“Alive, but not unharmed,” Violet corrected.
Anthony paled, but he set his jaw. “Even so. I’m not telling you anything. You may have been able to make a traitor of McClennon’s boy, but you’ll never make one of me.”
“Because you have courage, right?” Violet asked. Anthony began to back himself into a corner, and Violet closed in on him, using the flat of the blade to sweep away the hair that had fallen in his frightened face. “Because you’re not a coward? But I’m willing to bet the only people you’ve ever laid hands on are the ones who couldn’t fight back. Men who called you boss. Women at the welcome house. And now, if you have your way, girls as young as thirteen. I don’t know, Harker … seems pretty cowardly to me.”
“I—I never laid hands on anyone—”
Violet curled her lip. “No? So you just paid raveners to do it for you, then. Even worse.” She nodded at Aster. “Hold him down.”
“But—”
Aster moved quickly, before she could second-guess herself. She buried a punch in the landmaster’s gut to knock the wind out of him, then seized him by the shoulders and threw him to the ground. She held his arms down while Violet knelt on his chest, her knee digging into his rib cage. He coughed and swore in protest.
“Shut up,” Violet hissed, pressing the point of the knife to Anthony’s forehead. “The only thing I want to hear you talking about is Jonah Boyle.”
“YOU STOP WHATEVER THE HELL YOU’RE DOING,” Colin bellowed from his cage. Aster looked up at Violet, her stomach rolling with doubt, but Violet’s focus remained unbroken, her blue eyes locked on Anthony’s with frightening intensity. She began to carve a C into his forehead, a jagged, shallow cut.
“Where is Boyle?” Violet demanded.
“I told you, I’m no traitor!”
She carved an O.
“When will he next be in the Scab?”
“Just tell us what you know, Harker,” Aster urged. But he only yelled incoherently, his eyes shut against the blood streaming down his face.
“YOU LET HIM GO! YOU LEAVE HIM ALONE!” Colin pleaded, pounding against the wall.
C-O-W-
“How many raveners does he employ?”
“Damn you,” Anthony spat, struggling mightily, chest heaving with panicked breaths. His arms flexed against Aster’s grip, and she resisted the revulsion that ran through her, the instinct to let him go. How many times had she been pinned down like this? Her conscience begged her to release him.
Violet started in on the letter A. Her lip curled to show her teeth, her delicate hands whitening as they tightened around the hilt of the knife.
“Violet—” Aster whispered.
“RECKONING DAY!” Colin cried suddenly from his kennel. Violet paused, looking up through the black curtain of her hair. “Boyle will be in the Scab for Reckoning Day!”
Anthony opened his bloodied eyes. “Colin, no—”
“The Landmasters’ Guild holds a gala every year in Crimson Glen to celebrate the holiday,” Colin continued. “That’s where you’ll find Boyle. That’s where you’ll find all of them.”
“All of them? Why wouldn’t Derrick mention something that important?” Aster asked skeptically.
“Because that little whelp probably doesn’t know it’s still happening—we canceled the event after the Northrock fire out of concern for our safety. But now McClennon’s putting it back on and insisting we all attend as a show of strength and solidarity to the public.”
Aster and Violet locked eyes. Reckoning Day. It was only a week and a half away. It would take them most of that time just to travel south to Crimson Glen, the Scab’s capital. But if they could make it in time for this gala, where all the remaining landmasters would be in one place …
Violet fixed her glare back on Anthony. “Is this true?”
He didn’t speak, his expression twisted with pain and hate. Aster gritted her teeth and shook him, hard. “Is this true?”
“Yes, it’s ripping true!” Colin bleated. “It’s at the capitol building, at eight o’clock in the evening. Derrick’s been every year since he was a baby. He can tell you whatever else you need to know. Now take your damned hands off my brother.”
Aster was all too happy to do just that. Violet removed her knee from his chest as well, but she still held the knife on him as they stood and backed out of the kennel. Anthony climbed to his feet, snarling like a cornered animal.
“What did you do to me?” he demanded.
“Nothing a low-brimmed hat won’t help to hide,” Violet said evenly, locking him back in. “I’ll make sure someone brings you one.”
“You’re a snake. A low-down, poisonous, yellow-bellied—”
“And you,” Violet cut him off, “are every bit the coward I thought you were. You just be grateful I didn’t get to finish writing it all over your face.”
A look of horror rose in his eyes as his hands went to his maimed forehead. Aster and Violet left him to his self-pity, striding in step out of the kennels and closing the doors behind them.
“You were right. That didn’t take long at all,” Violet muttered, handing the knife back to Aster. She took it uneasily, wiping the blood off on her denims before sliding the blade back into her belt. Derrick’s ring glinted on her hand, and his words echoed in her ears.
I am just so afraid of doing the wrong thing. Of being the wrong thing.
“I … need some air,” Aster said haltingly.
Violet raised an eyebrow in question—it was rare anyone risked a trip aboveground unless they had to–but she followed Aster up to the surface. There they climbed up to sit on the low roof of one of the abandoned cabins in the ghost town aboveground. For a long time they just soaked up the sun, Aster’s gaze straying from the decaying mining camp out to the impenetrable mountain forests beyond and back again. The remnants were out, as always, their translucent forms scarcely visible in the daylight, like the shimmer of the air on a scorching afternoon. After weeks of living here at Camp Red Claw, Aster had come to recognize the dead as well as any other landmark. The little girl drawing water from the well, the one-armed man smoking in front of his dilapidated house, the old woman asleep in her rocking chair. They were as familiar as the families in every tenant camp the Scorpions had freed. Generations without change.
“You don’t think we went too far, did we?” Aster asked at last, the splintered shingles hard under her tailbone, the taste of dust bitter on her tongue.
“You must be kidding, right?” Violet snorted. Her legs swung idly in the air. “We barely touched Anthony. We didn’t touch Colin at all. I swear you’re getting soft on me, Aster.”
“I’m getting tired,” she sighed, tucking the bloody memories away with all her others. “There’s a difference.”
“Hey,” Violet said. She turned towards Aster and cupped her cheek, the same hands that she had just moments ago used to cut Harker now infinitely gentle. Aster’s face warmed, and she could only hope Violet didn’t feel the heat under her palm. “We’re almost done, hear?” she promised. “With all of this. If what Harker told us is true, we can end the whole thing on Reckoning Day.”
“Yeah, but end it how? It’s going to get much bloodier than this before it’s over, Vi, especially if we’re going to be fighting all these bastards at once. It’s one thing to kill their raveners, most of them stopped being people a long time ago, but if we have to kill them…” Aster swallowed. “I’m still scared I don’t have it in me … or worse, that I do.”
Violet pulled away, her eyes downcast. She gripped the edge of the roof. “You don’t need me to tell you these men deserve whatever hell we bring down on them,” Violet murmured. “The dead know that you know better than most what they’re capable of. But after some of the things I’ve seen, living with McClennon … after some of the things he put me through … I’m not sure I wouldn’t feel worse about letting them live.”
Aster stilled. “What do you mean, ‘after some of the things he put me through’?”
she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.
Violet glanced up at her, then looked away again just as quickly. Her jaw clenched. It was the first time today she seemed uneasy.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“But now you have,” Aster pressed.
“And I’ll say no more. There’s no point in upsetting you. It’s over now.”
Aster was already upset, though, acid anger creeping up her throat.
“Those months, after we left you with McClennon but before Derrick convinced him to free you … he … hurt you?”
She felt like a fool as soon as she said the words. Of course he had. She had always known, deep, at the base of her skull, that Violet would have been made to suffer as McClennon’s prisoner. But she had hoped—had convinced herself—that it wasn’t true.
Because if it were, she could never forgive herself.
“I thought you said you were able to convince him you regretted your actions,” Aster went on. “That he treated you well because you were a fairblood.”
Violet let out a hollow laugh that echoed through the empty streets. “I have no doubt he treated me better than any of you might have expected to be treated. But I would never go so far as to say he treated me well.”
Aster’s hands tightened into fists in her lap. “We should never have abandoned you.”
The Sisters of Reckoning Page 29