Poison Tree dos-8

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Christian’s.

  Kevin inched, explaining quickly, “Kral sent me for them. He gave me a message to repeat, in their language. They came with me.”

  “Divai, ona,” Jeht said, his voice questioning but his words formal.

  “Gen’maen’gah’la,” Sarik replied. Literally, it meant “You are within my sight,” spoken as a leader to a lesser tiger in the clan. To Kevin, she added, “My father has no right to bring them here.”

  “You can tell him that,” Kevin replied. “I’m just—”

  He broke off as the door to Kral’s office opened and the leader of Onyx emerged.

  “Mik’ra,” Sahara greeted him, not by title but simply as Father. “Why have you summoned my—”

  “Your … what?” he replied, using the informal pronoun instead of the formal one she had used for him. The exchange was short, but she could see Jeht contemplate it and guess what it meant: she had backed down and failed to declare herself independent from her father.

  And this wasn’t a time or place where she could reengage that ght. Christian was watching her, waiting for her to speak up, but she knew that challenging her father at that moment, in his own territory, would only get the boys killed.

  Jeht prodded his brother, and Quean knelt before Kral in a Mistari’s submissive pose, both knees on the oor, head bowed, and wrists crossed with palms up. Symbolically, the posture said that they were ready to receive with open hands anything their leader was willing to give—even if that was a knife across the bared wrists.

  Jeht, on the other hand, met Kral’s gaze squarely, then bowed his head and o ered his hands as his brother had without sinking to the same level. The choice was intentional, and telling. He was aware that he was not in charge here, but he may as well have said aloud

  I’m not certain that you are, either.

  Kral and Jeht regarded each other stoically, the three-hundred-year-old guild leader and the nine-year-old princeling. Somewhere down the line, if Kral couldn’t tame him, Jeht would be a threat. Sarik tensed, wondering whether her father would feel forced to strike

  Jeht down and whether she would be able to do anything if he tried.

  Aware that speaking out of place and saying the wrong thing might earn her a beating, Sahara chose her words with care. “If he’s too much of a risk, no one will fault you for refusing him. His other king did.”

  Kral responded exactly as she had hoped he would, with pride and showmanship. He turned his back and said as he returned to his o ce, “They may stay. Sahara, show them around.”

  The instant Kral was gone, Jeht crossed his arms, and Sarik realized he was trembling.

  He knew how to play the game, but that didn’t mean it didn’t frighten him. He had fully expected Kral to kill him for his defiance.

  Maybe he would have been glad it was over.

  What Jeht didn’t know was that, unlike in a Mistari tribe, the challenge he posed wouldn’t necessarily be dealt with directly. A child in Onyx lived a dangerous life. Sahara and Christian knew that.

  Cori had known that, too, Sarik thought as Jeht pulled his brother close and leaned his chin on the four-year-old’s head, hiding his fear from Quean but unable to hide it from the rest of the world.

  CHAPTER 21

  MAYBE IT WAS childish, but the moment Christian had answered Sahara’s private phone, Alysia had lost all desire to speak to him. She would wait until they were standing face to face, so she could see his expression and try to understand anything going through his crazy brain.

  From the moment they had met, they had clicked. Despite completely di erent backgrounds and goals, they had always worked well together. Together they had decided to do what no one else had done: join all three guilds and say “screw you” to the rules. It was all about the challenge—it was always about the challenge.

  It had been for Alysia, anyway, until the day she had joined SingleEarth, and for the rst time, the challenge had been paired with something else: expectations. Responsibility, not just for one moment and one contract, but for people, day after day, who knew her name and smiled at her in the hallway and relied on her to do her job. Her rst two-weeks’ paycheck was worth less than she would have charged for two hours’ work in Bruja, but something about that stupid check, and the way it said her last name on the top—her real last name, the one she’d gotten from her father, which not even Christian knew—

  convinced her to stay not just two weeks, but two years.

  Fish gotta swim, birds gotta y, but what about someone who is a little bit of both?

  Where did she want to go now? Back to the Crimson safe house, which was apparently the only place she could stay unless she wanted to crash like a fth wheel with Christian and

  Sahara and the kids? Back to SingleEarth, so she could explain why they had been shot at and where Sarik had gone?

  A temporary solution was suggested to her as her phone chirped, alerting her to a text message: The contract against you was just dropped at Frost.

  That was vaguely unsettling, as the only person who should have had that cell number was Ravyn, but Ravyn wouldn’t have known anything about what contracts were or were not up in Frost. Alysia would have suspected that the information came from Christian if she hadn’t had recent evidence that he had been sleeping at Onyx just before the message arrived.

  Trap? she wondered.

  Possibly, but she had to risk it.

  Besides, Frost called to her. It had been hers before she had met Christian.

  Each of the Bruja halls had its own style. Onyx had its converted theater, Crimson had its farm, and the Bruja guild hall, which was mostly only used for events like the competition for guild leadership, was a redbrick house with white shutters. The Frost guild hall was in the middle of a quaint suburban neighborhood; it consisted of four middle-class homes connected by underground tunnels. Frost had been known to call the local police on guild members who were stupid enough to look out of place as they approached.

  The key to the front door was still hidden in a planter, but the elaborate computer setup that had occupied the “o ce” on the rst oor had been replaced by a home theater that would surely have been the envy of the neighborhood even if the screen hadn’t been an interactive whiteboard—a touch-sensitive computer screen, like a giant tablet. When Alysia touched the screen, it flickered to life and showed all of Frost’s current job listings.

  Nice upgrade, she thought as she quickly con rmed that the contract against her was gone. Nearby, she spotted a digital pen. On the o chance that the operator was currently logged on, she wrote on the screen, Did current leader instal the new tech? If Christian had done this, she would have to reassess his competency as Frost’s leader.

  She waited, wondering if the board operator would reply.

  The individual responsible for controlling the board was an utter enigma. No one knew who he or she was. The system itself probably wasn’t actual y hacker-proof—nothing really was—but no one ever discouraged members from blatantly trying to mess with it, and yet to Alysia’s knowledge no one had ever broken in. She was one of many who had tried with no success.

  Alysia had almost decided the operator wasn’t attending the board when a picture spun into place: a kitten, tangled in computer wires, with a caption saying WHICH ONE

  CONTROLS THE INTERTUBES? Beneath it, words began to appear as they were swiftly typed elsewhere. fearless leader bolted the door for three hrs so he could figure how to use the new system.

  Alysia snickered. That was sad. Predictable, but sad. you looking for a job? the operator asked.

  Yeah. Something nØØb-level.

  She needed to start small, because she was out of shape and out of practice, and it would take her a while to catch up enough electronically that she could take on one of the more exciting jobs in that realm. Two years was a very long time in the computer world; she had kept up with reading and research while at SingleEarth, but that wasn’t the same as knowing all the ins and outs and back
doors of modern technology. She would also have to make new contacts for obtaining documents, since she didn’t have access to SingleEarth’s specialists, who for altruistic reasons made identi cation papers, passports, and the like for needy individuals. this one looks relevant to your interests.

  A new listing rose to the top.

  Retrieval: Heirloom painting and frame with ritual and sentimental value. Reward o ered higher than assessed value of materials. 5,000, method of payment negotiable.

  “Ritual value” implied that the work was in some way imbued with magic. Including information about the assessment value was the client’s way of ensuring that the mercenary who picked the painting up didn’t try to sell it for parts, which for magic items could include anything from enchanted charcoal bits to diamonds and platinum. The reward was ridiculously low for a ritual item, which meant Alysia would de nitely have a third party assess it before she turned it in, but its value could be more on the sentimental side. A low reward like that normally suggested an easy job, too, which she hoped would be within her current abilities.

  Intrigued, she kept reading.

  Last seen in possession of Maya. Previous owner Kral kuloka Kral. Painting lost in a bet six years ago.

  That could explain why the board’s operator had thought Alysia would be interested.

  Accepting the job might be suicidal, though, unless the painting was somewhere Maya wasn’t guarding.

  Alysia reached to tap the Client button but found little in the way of useful information.

  Client: Anonymous, paid escrow. That meant he or she probably wasn’t well known by the guild but had already put five thousand cash into an account as a deposit.

  Mostly for curiosity’s sake, she tapped the button for more information, including a description of the piece:

  10 × 10 inches, abstract painting, with detail in silver and gold thread. Frame is dark wood with silver details and black and red stones. Difficult for most individuals to look at directly.

  Well, that was interesting.

  Has guild leader seen this? she wrote, using the digital pen. It was doubtful that Christian had bothered to read such a low-level post, but if he had, he might have noticed the same thing Alysia had: this painting wasn’t with Maya. In fact, Alysia had seen it, recently, in

  Kral’s little torture chamber. has not returned to frost hal since posting, the operator replied.

  Alysia was a third-level member of Onyx; she had every right to enter the Hall itself, and unless Kral currently had someone in there, the interrogation room was probably unguarded.

  One phrase from the posting particularly intrigued her, that bit about how the painting had been “lost in a bet six years ago.”

  Apparently, a lot of important things had happened six years earlier.

  With a shrug, Alysia wrote, Looking into it. It wasn’t a guarantee she would take the job, but it would let the client know that someone was considering the possibility. For the moderator, she added, Thanks. you were good before you disappeared don’t disappoint now, the operator replied, before erasing both that reply and Alysia’s thank-you.

  There were a few questions Alysia needed answered before she went after the prize.

  For one, she wanted to know why Kral had been making bets with Maya in the rst place. He didn’t seem like the gambling type, and if he was going to start, it probably wouldn’t be with a mercenary of Maya’s caliber, or with stakes as low as a 5K ritual-item painting that neither he nor Maya was likely to have any use for.

  A second issue with the scenario was that Maya had been hired to kidnap Kral’s youngest daughter, Cori, right around the time the painting had supposedly entered Maya’s possession. It was reasonable that she might have returned it to him along with other items of value as part of an attempt to gain forgiveness and curry his favor after Cori’s death, but to someone like Kral, five thousand dollars was more of an insult than a gift.

  There is one more thing, Alysia thought as she started to turn away from the board and then turned back. Once again using the pen, she wrote, Ben?

  Was it possible? Ben had seemed about twenty years old, at most. Granted, Alysia had joined Frost when she was fourteen, but Sarta had assigned the Frost operator eight years ago, and as far as Alysia could tell, the individual running the boards hadn’t changed since.

  Ben wouldn’t even have been in his teens yet.

  She didn’t completely discount the possibility. There were plenty of reasons why a member of Bruja might look younger than he was, and the operator’s lack of respect for

  Christian made it easy to believe he had never bothered to introduce himself to the guild’s new leader.

  Alysia waited by the board until it turned itself o due to lack of activity. Either the operator had wandered off, or he just wasn’t inclined to confirm or deny his identity.

  It was a mystery that had to wait for another day. She had other work to do, starting with a phone call she really didn’t want to make.

  She stepped into one of the upstairs bedrooms and closed the door behind her before she took out her cell phone and dialed a number she had recently memorized. Like most of the rooms in the house, this one was soundproof, so she had no fear that other members might overhear her.

  A wary voice answered. “Hello?”

  “Jason? This is Alysia. I—”

  He interrupted her with a rush of questions. “Alysia! Are you okay? Is Sarik—Sahara—

  okay? Do you need anything?”

  Relief and guilt washed over her, freeing an inappropriate giggle from her throat. “I’m more or less okay, and as far as I know, Sahara is, too,” she answered. “She’s back at

  Onyx.” With Christian. Jason didn’t need to know that part. “I had no idea who she was, but her father apparently decided I did. He’s the one who put out the contract to kidnap me, to try to nd her. Now that we’re both gone, he shouldn’t have any more reason to harass

  SingleEarth.”

  Jason let out a slow breath, an odd self-calming habit for a vampire. “I know we all kept saying we didn’t want to force a direct confrontation between SingleEarth and Bruja. None of us realized we were saying we wouldn’t protect you. If you want to come back—”

  “I don’t know what I want right now,” Alysia interrupted. “And I don’t know what

  Sahara wants,” she added, since she suspected that was really what Jason wanted to know.

  “I actually have a question for you. An awkward one, but it’s eating at me.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You used to work for Maya, right?”

  Silence. Alysia remembered what Jason had said when she had rst asked if anyone at

  Haven #4 knew of Onyx. She remembered his tone when he referred to the woman he

  “worked for.”

  Eventually, he replied, “Yes.”

  “Do you know anything about a painting she received? Small, magical, metal and stone accents. If I’m right about my time lines, it would have been around the time you and Saha

  —Sarik hooked up, but I’m not sure if it was before or after.”

  They both kept tripping over that name. Who was the tiger these days? If she had gone back to Onyx just to protect SingleEarth, then did she need rescuing? Or did she have her own plan? Was Christian in on it? What the hell was going on?

  “I remember it,” Jason replied, his voice sounding very quiet and far away. “The magic has something to do with how the body feels pain, how it processes it and responds to it.”

  That explained why Kral kept the thing in his torture chamber. Jason added, “Maya received it as payment for the last job I was ever involved in.”

  “What was the job?”

  And if it went to Maya, why does Kral have it now?

  CHAPTER 22

  CHRISTIAN GRABBED KEVIN’S arm before the human could sneak away, and hissed, “If you ever go to my home again, I will end you. Do you believe me?”

  Kevin nodded, but protested
, “But Kral—”

  “I don’t care who your boss is,” Christian snarled. “You crossed a line. Cross it again and

  I can do worse to you than Kral ever could.”

  Sarik listened to the threats and felt a pit open in her stomach. She was back in a world where one’s threat meant everything. If Kevin believed Christian, then the balance of power would shift a little. If he didn’t, if he thought Christian’s threat didn’t have teeth, then he would see the words as an idle bluff.

  “Do you know,” she said to Christian, though he was too busy watching Kevin slink o into the darkness to care, “I sat at the mediator’s table at SingleEarth Haven Number Four for almost a year. I counseled a survivor of foster-care child abuse who killed her parents the rst time she shapeshifted.” She shuddered, recalling that poor child’s guilt, anger, terror, and grief. “I worked with a twenty-year-old human-born Pakana who had been institutionalized since he was eleven, who had blinded himself in his madness four years before, and when he changed shape for the rst time, it healed his sight. I have talked people down from bridges and back from windows, found appropriate guardians for orphaned shapeshifter children, negotiated with lawyers and police and the royal houses of every remaining shapeshifter kingdom except the Mistari Disa herself.”

  She hadn’t thought Christian was listening, until he said, “And then you shot your boyfriend and ran away.”

  “I didn’t …”

  Christian shrugged. “I’m Bruja, darling. I’m the last person to criticize you for looking out for yourself rst and screw the rest of the world. Just tell me: if you were so happy being that person, then what the hell are you doing here?” He looked at the two cubs, who were watching the discussion with deferential curiosity, probably trying to make sense of the power dynamics. “And why did you bring them?”

  “You know what my father would do if I went back and SingleEarth tried to protect me,” she replied.

  “Personally, I wouldn’t want to cross SingleEarth,” Christian replied. “They don’t have a lot of force on their side, but their political power either already does or will soon rival