Guilt nipped at her. Except when my father goads me into it. Well, she would set it right.
“So if I were to take something other than the cross . . .”
“I will set your hair on fire, Kaldar. You’ll be bald.”
Kaldar got up. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
They walked back to the clearing. “Friends again?” Kaldar asked.
“Partners,” she said.
“You don’t want to be friends with me, Audrey?” A seductive note crept into his voice. He said “Audrey” the way a man might say the name of a woman he had just made love to.
“I prefer partners.” She raised her chin and winked at him. “Let’s keep it professional.”
“Isn’t it too late for that?”
“Don’t we have a heist to plan?”
Kaldar sighed in mock surrender. “Yes, love.”
Audrey let the “love” go that time. He had to have some small consolation after being knocked out.
She was in too deep. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself waking up next to him, then she would be in for a hell of a heartbreak.
At their approach, Gaston hoisted himself up into the wyvern’s cabin and stuck his head out. “Is it safe to come out?”
“It’s safe,” Kaldar told him. “Audrey just explained to me that taking her things without permission is not allowed. Since I’ve never had anything taken away from me, I apologized.”
Gaston hopped back onto the ground.
“They’ll be taking us in a bus,” Kaldar said. Yonker had told them as much when they agreed to the camp visit. “Then they will walk us across one by one. Audrey is right—if things go sour, I’ll need you close. I’ll plant the tracker on the bus. Don’t take any chances, and don’t follow too closely. I don’t want one of Yonker’s goons shooting you.”
“Can do,” Gaston said.
A faint buzz spread through the air. Kaldar and Gaston looked up. A metal insect plunged down from the sky and landed on the ground between them. Gaston picked it up, extracted a narrow sliver of crystal, and pulled a gadget from one of the trunks. Shaped like a bronze flower bud, thrusting from a stack encrusted with tiny specks of crystal, the flower terminated in four delicate metal roots bent outward to provide a sturdy base.
“News from the Mirror,” Kaldar said.
Gaston pushed the crystals in a complex sequence. The flower bud opened, revealing pale petals in its center made of some strange material, paper-thin, but with a metallic sheen. Gaston set the crystal in the middle of the flower.
Magic ignited inside the crystal and shot out in four streams to the ends of the petals. An image appeared above the crystal, floating in thin air. An average-looking man in nondescript clothes from the Weird looked at them.
“Erwin.” Gaston’s thick eyebrows crept up.
“The woman in the shot is not a member of the Hand,” Erwin said. “Her name is Helena d’Amry, Marquise of Amry and Tuanin. She is a Hound of the Golden Throne. Spider is her uncle. Full file to follow. Be careful, Kaldar.”
“Shit,” Gaston said.
“What does that mean?” Audrey looked to Kaldar.
“The Hand protects the Dukedom of Louisiana, which is a colony of the Empire of Gaul. The Hounds protect the throne of the Empire. They answer directly to the Emperor,” Kaldar said.
“Who is Spider?”
“He’s the man I want to kill,” Kaldar said.
A piece of paper replaced Erwin’s image, covered with weird characters.
“What does it say?” Audrey tugged on Kaldar’s arm.
“It says that Helena likes skinning people alive,” Gaston answered. “Also says that the guy who threw that head at you is named Sebastian. He is her right-hand man. His kill count is at forty.”
“Fourteen?”
“No. Forty.”
Oh God.
“This changes nothing.” Kaldar swiped the buckets. “We stick to the plan. Right now, we’ll concentrate on getting the invitation and feeding the wyvern. We may have to take off in a hurry.” He headed down the path to the stream as if he couldn’t get away from the two of them fast enough.
“IT isn’t really true,” Gaston said quietly.
Audrey looked at him.
“What Kaldar said about nothing being taken away from him. It isn’t true.” Gaston sat down on the crate and checked the disks with the chain attached. “Kaldar has two brothers. Well, he had two brothers, Richard and Erian, but Erian was a lot younger than them and had a different mother, so they were never close. Their father was the head of our family. Their mother left. The family likes to pretend she died, but she didn’t. She left all of them, ran off into the Broken. The Mire is a tough place to live. People try to get out any way they can.”
Being left by your own parent as a child . . . Her mother had checked out on her emotionally more than once, but at least she didn’t leave.
“Then a rival family killed their father. Richard was sixteen, and Kaldar was fourteen. Erian was nine, I think. Aunt Murid, their father’s sister, took them in. She was tough. She’d escaped into the Weird when she was young and fought in the Dukedom of Louisiana’s army for years, until they found her out, and she had to escape again and come home. Murid was hard. I used to be really scared of her when I was little. Anyway, she raised Richard and Kaldar as her own. Richard was kind of already an adult, I guess. He’s very serious. Smartest man I know. Kaldar was always like he is now, funny, hehe-haha, oh look, I stole your money out from under your nose. The family didn’t starve because he and Cerise, his cousin, they hustled and sold things in the Broken. Don’t ever haggle with him. It’s a bad idea. Anyway, so Cerise and Kaldar did whatever they could to keep all of us fed. Kaldar always tried to impress Aunt Murid. He barely remembers his real mom, so she was as close to one as he ever had. Then Spider brought the Hand to the Mire, kidnapped Cerise’s parents, and it all went to shit.”
This Spider got around. “What did he want?”
“Everything,” Gaston said. “Most of all, he wanted the Box. It’s complicated. Just think of it as a really powerful weapon. We couldn’t use it, but we couldn’t let the Louisianans have it, either. The Hand declared war on us. Spider tracked my family down. My dad is a half thoas—that’s why I look the way I look—and we always lived apart from the main house. I was supposed to stand watch. I left because of a stupid errand. Spider got into our house and cut off my mother’s leg. Chopped it off at the knee with a meat cleaver.”
“Oh, my God!” The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose. “That’s horrific.”
“The Hand plays for keeps,” Gaston said. “Anyway, we fought them and won, but in the final battle, Aunt Murid died. Kaldar watched it happen and didn’t get to her in time. He killed the Hand freak that murdered her. Ask him sometime, he’ll show you the scars on his arms. But it was too late.”
Oh, Kaldar.
Gaston bit his lower lip. “He’s not right. Watching Murid die broke something inside him. He still pretends that everything is cool. You can’t tell by looking at him because he acts normal, but the rudder on his boat is stuck. He enlisted in the Mirror, supposedly because he wants to make sure what’s left of the family is well taken care of, but that’s not the reason. He wants revenge on the Hand, and he doesn’t care what happens to him or how he gets it. He will kill them any chance he gets.”
“Gaston,” she said gently, “I know that you care for your uncle, but Kaldar, he’s a grifter. He isn’t a killer.”
Gaston blinked. “We hold to the Old Ways in our family.”
“What does that mean?”
“Kaldar’s uncle, the head of our family, has a nickname.”
“Aha.”
“It’s Death.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They call him Death,” Gaston said. “Because when his sword comes out, people die. We train as swordsmen as soon as we can hold a sword and not fall over. We learn to stretch our flash out o
nto our swords and use it in fights. Kaldar isn’t as good as Grampa Ramiar. He isn’t as good as Cerise. Technically, he isn’t as good as Richard, his older brother, because Richard flashes white and Kaldar flashes blue. But aside from them, Kaldar has never met anyone he couldn’t beat.”
“Aha.” Tall tales must’ve run in the family.
“He’s killed dozens of people,” Gaston insisted. “Probably over a hundred.”
“I’m sure he did, Gaston.” Sure as the night is light. She couldn’t picture Kaldar with a sword. A crowbar, maybe. A gun. But not a sword. “And you are supposed to keep him from killing more?”
“I wasn’t even supposed to come. I’m not officially an agent yet, but Cerise talked her husband, William—he’s my guardian—into it. I’m supposed to keep an eye on Kaldar, in case he snaps. So he knows all about things being taken away from him. He just won’t admit it.”
“Gaston, if Kaldar doesn’t care if he lives or dies, how are you supposed to keep him safe?”
He shook his head. His face gained a lost expression. Suddenly, he seemed so young, just a kid really, about Jack’s age. “I don’t know. But I have to try. Most of my family acts like I don’t exist anymore. My dad banished me because of what happened to my mom. Kaldar always talks to me. He comes to all of my annual trials. He’s my favorite uncle. I don’t have many left anymore.”
“I will help you,” Audrey said. It came out as a complete surprise, but she didn’t regret it. “If he loses his head, I will help you hold him back.”
Gaston raised his huge hand, stained with the Mirror’s clay. “Deal?”
She grasped his fingers and shook. “Deal.”
KARMASH pondered the woman. She had small brown eyes and hair of an odd shade, unnatural bright red. Given that she hung upside down, her feet caught by a rope at the ankles, her hair dripped down from her head like a mop. For mid-thirties, she wasn’t roughly used, he reflected.
They’d grabbed her off the street, as she left Magdalene Moonflower’s building in the Broken, and brought her here, to the abandoned building in the Edge that Karmash had designated as their temporary base. Only he and Mura had managed to cross the boundary into the magicless world. Soma and Cotier had been too altered.
Karmash winced at the memory. Entering the Broken was always painful for him. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have even contemplated it, but times changed.
The woman made a tiny noise, like a frightened cat.
Karmash pulled up a filthy chair and sat on it, so their faces were level. “You work for Magdalene Moonflower.”
“Please let me down. I didn’t do anything. Please let me down . . .”
“Shhh.” Karmash put his finger on her lips.
She closed her mouth.
“Let me explain a few things,” he said. “I’m a member of the Hand. I’m a spy for the Dukedom of Louisiana in the Weird. That tells you that I don’t care about your life. That also tells you that I’m magically enhanced enough to crush your skull with a squeeze of my fingers. Make a note of that; we’ll come back to that point later.”
She stared at him in terrified silence.
“I was very successful as a spy. I made a nice name for myself. Then, twenty months ago, my officer became a cripple. Some Edgers severed his spine, you see. The Hand chose to view my performance in that affair as less than satisfactory. I lost my assignment, my prestige, and my paycheck. I have expensive tastes, and I hate to compromise on luxury. Now I have a new assignment, a very prestigious assignment with a famous officer. But I’m very new in this crew. You understand how that is, right?”
The woman nodded frantically. Nodding looked odd when performed upside down.
“What I really need to be is her second-in-command. That’s the position I’m trained for, and I’m best at it. Unfortunately, this officer already has a second, and he doesn’t want to step down. Now my new officer gave me this assignment. This is my chance to prove myself. If I do well, my place in the crew will be assured. If I fail, my career is finished. I tell you all of this so you will understand how important it is for me to succeed. Do you understand?”
The woman nodded again.
“Good. Let’s go back to that point I asked you to remember. I don’t care about your life. It has no value to me. I don’t really want to torture you—it’s a bother—but I will. I can cut you, I can burn you, I can pull out your nails, I can slice open your stomach and pour salt on the wound. I can yank out your teeth, I can sodomize you with jagged glass . . .”
The woman began to whimper.
“Shh.” Karmash held up his hand. “Let me finish. My point is, I don’t really feel like doing any of it. If you tell me what I want to know, I’m perfectly fine with letting you go, provided you disappear for a week or two, until my business is concluded. So now we know where we stand. Let’s try this again. Do you work for Magdalene Moonflower?”
“Yes.” The woman said.
“Did a dark-haired man and a red-haired woman come to see her in the last five days?”
“Yes.”
Karmash smiled. He would deliver Kaldar Mar to Helena on a silver platter. It would cement his position and shake Sebastian from his comfortable perch.
“Where are these people now?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said.
Karmash frowned.
The woman’s words came in a rush. “All I know is that Magdalene made some sort of deal with them. Something that has to do with Ed Yonker.”
“Who is this Ed Yonker?”
“He is a preacher.”
“A priest?”
“Yes, like that. He has a place in the Edge, a big wooden church in a camp. That’s where he does his magic. That’s where your man must be. I can show you where it is. It’s not far. It’s north of here.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jennifer.”
“You did very well, Jennifer. I will cut you down now, and you will show us this church.”
“And then I can go?” she asked, her eyes full of tears.
Funny how, in desperate times, people will believe anything. “Yes. And then you can go.”
TWELVE
THE Wooden Cathedral was large and full to the brim. The mass of people should have made Audrey feel safer. The best place for a thief to hide was in a crowd, especially a crowd like this: well dressed, nicely groomed, seemingly law-abiding, and above reproach. Except that the gathering put out a strained, odd vibe. From the moment the Church of the Blessed people had ushered them into the bus, which had taken them to the Edge, the congregation was unsettled. Now, as they took their seats on the uncomfortable benches of the Wooden Cathedral, their agitation had reached the boiling point.
The church had only one center aisle, and Audrey had an aisle seat. People passed her, walking to their own seats, and their anxiety rolled off them like sweat. They spoke to each other, but no lasting conversations sprung up. Their faces were haggard, their eyes haunted. They fidgeted impatiently in their expensive suits and pricey dresses, grasping at their seats, searching with their stares the front of the church, where a lonely pulpit sprouted from a raised stage. Like a crowd of starving beggars who’d heard a rumor that someone was about to give out bread, the congregation waited, gripped by nervous tension.
She glanced at Kaldar, sitting on her left. His face seemed carefree, but his eyes, cold and alert, searched the crowd, evaluating it.
Armed guards waited by the door and near the pulpit. Nobody seemed to pay them any mind, as if being in the presence of men with rifles was the most natural thing in the world. Seth, their handler, explained to them that the guards are there because they had been seeing mountain lions in the area. The explanation seemed half-baked, but the guards made an effort to be cordial. They smiled, opened doors, waved at people. Most of the congregation, probably Yonker’s regulars, didn’t care, and if the few newcomers had any second thoughts, they kept their doubts to themselves.
Hell, if what George
’s book said was true, the people probably didn’t see the rifles, as if the guards weren’t even there. According to what they’d read, the gadget was designed by the Cult of Karuman specifically to convince its followers that Karuman’s priests were avatars of their god. Followers of Karuman willingly sacrificed themselves to their deity; sometimes entire families burned themselves alive. The cult was now outlawed. How Ed Yonker had gotten ahold of a hundred-year-old relic was anyone’s guess, but nothing good had come from it.
With each passing minute, the tension in the church grew thicker and thicker, electrified with anticipation and hysteria.
Audrey kept scanning the crowd, looking for the boys. They’d both heard a slight thud when the bus took off—Gaston landing on the roof—so he was here somewhere, but neither George nor Jack were anywhere to be seen.
She glanced back to the stage. Ed had spared no expense. The pulpit was rich mahogany. A heavy purple fabric embroidered with a golden cross draped the edge of the stage. Above it, pictures hung suspended from the ceiling in frames, all showing Yonker with various world leaders. She seriously doubted that there was a single un-Photoshopped image in the bunch.
“Is this your first time?” In the row in front of her, a young girl with bleached blond hair had turned halfway to her.
“Yes, it is!” Audrey tried to sound excited.
“I come here all the time. I’m a Blessed Maiden.”
“What’s that?”
“I help Preacher Ed connect with God.” The girl nodded sagely. “He uses my body as a vessel.”
Oh, Ed, you swine. “Are there many Blessed Maidens, or are you the only one?”
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