Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  “Bring a couple of gallons of gasoline,” Joey said.

  “On it,” Danny replied. They met on the corner outside one of Julianne’s smaller factories.

  “I don’t think this dinky place is going to bring her down,” Danny said, folding his arms.

  “That’s the point,” Joey said. “Give me a boost.”

  Danny hauled him up in through a high window on the first floor.

  He wasn’t a summoner, but he knew enough about it to fake a circle that would hold up under casual scrutiny, and he scratched it into the wall. It was the place he’d have tried to hide the evidence if he were stupid. Or if he were wealthy enough that he didn’t know any better.

  Danny’s boots hit the ground behind him.

  “Do I get soaking?” he asked.

  “All on the wood and things that will go up easily,” Joey said. “Let the stones scorch themselves, the insurance fraud people will know what to look for.”

  Danny scooted the other gallon of gas to Joey. They worked on the entire basement and Joey double checked his circle on the brickwork. He and Danny were outside before Joey snapped his fingers and sent a plume of flame into the basement.

  They were two turns away before they heard the explosion.

  “This reminds me of that time we burned that boat in the harbor,” Danny said, hands in his pockets.

  “Weren’t depending on the guns,” Joey said. “Bullets went everywhere. Remember how Meadows got shot? This was different. We were trying to take something from them.”

  “You’re taking something from her now,” Danny said, giving Joey a sidelong look.

  “Consider it a bit of on the nose karma,” Joey said. “She wants to drop a bunch of money to make a new factory in my part of the city, she’s going to need to get the money from somewhere.”

  “No, I get it,” Danny said.

  “Throwing people out in the cold in the dead of winter kills them just as dead as bullets do,” Joey said. “At least no one on our side got shot this time.”

  Danny laughed.

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  The body was a rotting mess by the time she finally got to cut it open. The internal organs were beginning to gel and the sheer scent of it was foul. Alas for that. Still, she thought, the organs would be able to give her some idea of what the interior of a human body looked like.

  She brought out a pinned and vivisected rat as she worked for comparison; it was dead now, of course, but it hadn’t been when she started. Still, she’d cut into enough of them to have an idea of which organs had what function and the human body couldn’t have been much different. After all, they were both chordata, mammalian.

  “Do you have to right now?” Martin asked. He eyed the body and couldn’t entirely hide his judgment.

  “If I wait any longer there won’t be anything to garner from the body,” Ely said. “The winter chill kept him slightly preserved, but as you can see here, and here…”

  She reached out and circled a few areas in the air above the body with her scalpel.

  “The rot is beginning to set in.”

  “I can get you surgical texts from the library,” Martin said.

  “Do that,” Ely said. “It’s not the same as hands on experience.”

  “You’re going to cut into him anyway,” Martin said. It wasn’t a question.

  “It’s not like he’s going to feel it,” Ely said. “If the scent is bothering you I have surgical masks in the bottom drawer and some herbal sachets you can use. Believe it or not rats start to get pungent after a while as well.”

  “That isn’t it,” he said. She knew that. He cut into flesh to discern things about their deaths. She was doing it for discovery and it would do no help for the man.

  The pair of them were standing in a basement room of the Nostra Estate, on the second level under and at the very back of a much larger storage area that Ely had claimed for herself when she was ten. The entire back wall was dominated by a massive sectioned cage of rats that she’d been working on for years. There were at least a dozen miniature sections inside of it, each with their own door that she’d created with a pair of wire cutters and pliers to shape the doors as she went.

  The largest section, at the bottom, contained a still growing litter of rats and the adults were each cordoned off into their own rooms. Many of them had surgical scars. She hadn’t gotten emotionally attached to any of them at first; in the beginning they had all been for research only, and had lived and died at her whim. These, though…

  These, she knew how to keep alive. When their kidneys started failing, she would catch a wild rat and replace them. When they had an unusual growth, she removed it with surgical precision. The rats she had now were fourth generation and they were her special pets.

  Woe be it to anyone who laid a hand on them.

  “To what end?” Martin asked. She could hear him rummaging around in the bottom drawer and smell the faint scent of lavender and rose hips. Those had been a gift from her father when he realized what she had been doing with the rats.

  “Like I said,” Ely said. “To learn. I’ve never looked at the inside of a human body before.”

  Both of them fell silent at the sound of footsteps outside the door.

  “The tarp, please,” Ely said. She sounded calm but there was a hint of urgency in her command. Martin did just as she said, but the door was open before she could hide it completely and Sam stood there staring at her.

  “What the hells are you doing?” he asked, blinking.

  “A dissection,” Ely said, simply.

  “Is that a human body?” Sam asked, raising both eyebrows and taking a step back.

  “It is,” Ely said, drawing the tarp back and continuing to work now that the corpse was out of the bag so to speak. “And you’re not going to say a word about it because if you do, I’ll tell Mom and Dad that you know Callum is alive.”

  “You know Callum is alive?” Sam asked, a hard note creeping into his voice. She was tempted to say ‘now I do’ just to mess with him, but after the night she’d had she just didn’t have the energy.

  More importantly, she caught the shadow of an expression on Martin’s face. She could see all the way around his irises. His eyebrows lifted. Ely didn’t shift her gaze to him; let him think she hadn’t seen.

  “He’s not as subtle as you are. You had to know I was going to figure it out eventually,” Ely said.

  Martin dropped his eyes to the ground. In her peripheral vision, she could see him suck his lip into his mouth and chew. His posture was closed, arms drawn across his chest.

  Interesting.

  Samael, however, clearly hadn’t noticed. His eyes were on the body.

  She prodded the liver with the back end of her scalpel and it sunk in uncomfortably far. She wasn’t sure how much of that was because of the rot setting in and how much was because the man had overworked it with liquor and melicath root.

  “Ely,” Sam said. “Please, talk to me when you’re talking to me, this is ridiculous.”

  “Sam,” she replied, evenly. “Don’t worry about it, he was assaulting my friend here and I stopped it. His life was forfeit the second he started waving a gun around. I wasn’t caught, and it isn’t like we don’t dump plenty of them in the ocean to begin with. Relax. I’m not doing anything I won’t be doing in a couple of years once I get accepted into Surgical.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sam go through several emotions. Lifted brows gave in to drawing his face in. His lips curled. A vein stood out in the side of his neck.

  Finally, his expression fell into cool acceptance.

  “Fine,” Sam said. “You’re going to be doing it anyway, fine, but you might want to put all of this away now because Mom is going to be back from her meeting with the aristocracy soon and she’s going to have things she wants to talk to us about.”

  “How far out is she?” Ely asked.

  “Why would I know?” Sam asked, raising a brow. She removed
one of his kidneys with a sick plopping sound and let it settle against her gloved hand. There was a decent weight to it.

  Martin was still quiet. He was studying the floor. Now that they weren’t talking about Callum, his face was far more relaxed.

  “When did she leave?” Ely asked.

  “Around four,” Sam said.

  “I have twenty minutes, probably. I’ll clean up in ten and that should leave me five to go upstairs and not get walked in on. Go on ahead, I’ll be there,” she said.

  “It might be a good idea to send your little friend home,” Sam said.

  “He’s your age,” Ely said. Pity. She was hoping to ask him questions, he clearly knew something he hadn’t shared with her. Soon. “Martin, you can go home if you want, we’ll meet up tomorrow.”

  His eyes said he very much wanted to leave. His feet were pointed toward the door. Sam had been his guardian angel in that moment, Ely knew. But she was going to have to ask. He was going to have to tell her eventually.

  Martin couldn’t get out of there fast enough. By the time the door shut behind him, Ely sighed and found herself putting everything away anyway. She no longer had the focus for this.

  “Do you know what she was going to speak with them about?” Ely asked.

  “She’s been doing little things to smooth it along for a while here,” Sam said. “I think what she really wants is to find a summoner that will be willing to work with us. Easier to find one working unlicensed.”

  “You can take the woman out of the hellwatch, but you can’t take years of working in the kennel out of the woman,” Elysia said. She tucked her sheet down and rolled her work table into a corner where the draft came in strong from the outside. This set back would still cost her. The body wouldn’t be in the same condition as it was right now when she got back to it.

  She was starting to consider ways to bid for a walk-in freezer down here without rousing her father’s suspicion when she felt Sam’s hand on her shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Of course I am,” she said, looking back and up at him. “Are you? I know he went to you first. I know this kind of thing can be kind of over your head at times.”

  “Ely,” Sam said, smirking slightly, “I’m not fond of the killing or the bloodshed, but I’m over the age of twenty and if you think I’m going to put any of my feelings on my teenage little sister you have another thing coming. Whatever is going on up here.”

  He paused to tap his temple with his index finger.

  “It’s not your problem.”

  She watched him for a moment, running over the situation in her mind. A part of her was offended that he didn’t think she could handle it, but on the other hand, she really didn’t want to have to deal with his emotions right now. She finally nodded.

  “I can respect that,” she said.

  “You sure you’re really okay?” he asked.

  “I’m keeping busy,” she said, “and if that changes I’ll come find you. I just can’t confront it head on right now.”

  Sam nodded back to her and offered her an arm.

  “Well,” he said, “to the upstairs and the waking world I suppose.”

  Elysia slipped an arm through his elbow and started to walk. Something about the chaos that had been kicked up lately made her appreciate the mundane moment all the more.

  It had been a long time since Ophelia last attended court. Most of her own clothes from that era of her life were from when she’d been a girl and there wasn’t a seamstress in Mistriev that could have fixed them to fit.

  They were also at least ten years out of date, and if Ophelia were going to be as audacious as all that, she was going to go all the way.

  She came in her sigil-scribed Hellwatch armor. It still fit her perfectly. Her body had been honed as a weapon during her time hunting demons, and she still moved dangerously.

  Court was held at the Mayor’s manor. It had been known for years as the Cassander Estate, since one of them had held the office for the past five generations and that didn’t seem likely to change any time soon. Several men and women stood around the front yard with their summoned imps clinging to their shoulders, each one in an outfit more ostentatious than the last. The younger ones had collars and leashes on the imps. Many of the collars were jeweled and embroidered to show off wealth. But a few aristocrats who were either very confident in their abilities and control or who wanted to show off, went without them entirely.

  Eyes took her in as she passed. There was judgment on their faces, yes, but also hesitation. She didn’t spare them a second glance beyond her initial nod of greeting. Whether they were staring at her because it had been so long since any of them had seen her, or because she was dressed more for the battlefield than for a night of diplomacy, she couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter. She was here now, and she had business. She was a Nostra by blood. She held the family estate.

  She had every right to be here.

  Helena Duvret—no. It was Cassander now, she’d married Elric over twenty years ago—looked at the door as it opened and her eyes widened when she saw Ophelia enter.

  “Excuse me,” she heard the woman say, giving a shallow bow the the man she’d been speaking to and beelining immediately for Ophelia. “Ophelia Nostra, as I live and breathe.”

  “It’s Trezza now,” she said, with a smile. “Hel. How are you?”

  “Do you know how long it’s been since someone has called me that?” Helena asked. She raised an immaculately sculpted brow in a mockery of offense, and if Ophelia hadn’t known her better, it would have worked. After a beat of a pause they both dissolved into laughter, suddenly young girls again. “What’s brought you to court? I thought you’d come to consider yourself above all the pageantry.”

  Ophelia gave an open handed gesture to her attire.

  “I think I’ve made a pretty clear statement that I still am,” she said, with a little smirk. “Still, I have business. I’m going to need to speak, today, with your permission.”

  “Mine, you have,” Helena said. “I’m not sure I can promise that they’ll listen to you once you do it, but you may speak and ask for what you need. Can I get you to tell me in advance?”

  “I’m going to need a summoner,” Ophelia said. “Preferably several.”

  “Not an easy favor to win, particularly since your family has their fingers in a lot of unsavory pies,” Helena said.

  “I can’t say I know what you mean,” Ophelia said, coolly. After a beat both of them smiled. She knew what Helena meant, yes, but she certainly couldn’t say it.

  “That’s alright,” Helena said, a note of amusement in her voice, “everyone else already does. I assume you must have a plan for that?”

  “The alternative will be worse,” Ophelia said. But Helena still had a point.

  “That doesn’t mean any of them are going to understand that,” Helena said. “For what it’s worth, I’m listening.”

  There was a brief silence between them.

  “I already know you’re going to tell me I’m making this too personal,” Ophelia said, “but the Gate Street Players are escalating things. They need to be taken care of, driven from the streets, and we have a good plan to do that.”

  “You’re right,” Helena said, “I do think you’re making this too personal.”

  “They attacked a bakery on the border of our territory and my brother-in-law tells me he found one of them trying to set a fisherman’s hovel on fire,” Ophelia said. “This has gone beyond violence against the Torchlighters and spread to the innocent people in our district. It’s tantamount to an open declaration of war.”

  “And the aristocracy can’t get involved in every gang dispute in the city,” Helena said, dubiously. “As I said, you can speak. But I make no promises.”

  Ophelia gave a nod and looped her arm through Helena’s as the pair of them walked. As hostess, it was expected that Helena would lead but before they’d entered the front doors, it was Helena’s hand on Op
helia’s armored arm, not the other way around.

  “Tell me about the state of things,” Ophelia said. “It’s been a while since I’ve come.”

  “You know you sound more like you’re doing a watch interview than having casual conversation?” Helena asked with a slight pout.

  “It’s a hard habit to shake,” Ophelia said, trying a smile. She didn’t sound like she was doing an interview for the Hellwatch. The tone would have been completely different and she would have chosen her words more carefully. Helena mentioned it though and now she felt like she was being entirely too stiff.

  “Well,” Helena said, “right now everyone is on edge a little bit because of a visiting ambassador from Charon. I don’t know what you’ve heard about the Asteri family, but they’ve absolutely streamlined summoning there and made the aristocracy all but obsolete. Given they were a working class family to start with there was a lot in it for them but people in Charon are furious. If you want the rest of us to work with you, you’re going to have to shun the boy that came to represent them.”

  “Noted,” Ophelia said. She’d already made the decision that she would not be doing that. Where House Asteri had found no purchase with the aristocracy they would turn to the city’s shoeshiners. That was dangerous in a lot of ways, not the least of which was the potential for their rivals to get their hands on easy summoning. No, she would not alienate the boy.

  “The Revel girl that married Uric Dunspire a few summers ago is divorcing him,” Helena said, dropping her voice to indicate the scandal.

  “Bijou?” Ophelia asked. This was news to her.

  “There’s bad blood between them and House Revel is humiliated,” Helena said. “It’s left them in a relatively vulnerable position, but sympathizing with them too much will make things difficult for you regarding House Dunspire.”

  Ophelia wanted to know what the boy had done to make Bijou want to leave. She’d known the girl for a long time; she’d been a few classes ahead of Samael at the Academy when he went. She was kind and had a good head on her shoulders.