Star-bright pain exploded in her side – a fist connecting – the pain a rising tide but not life threatening. She lurched sideways to compensate. The arcing blade bit back down, notching her shoulder. She grunted and slashed out – wild and desperate. A lucky swipe spilt the man’s guts upon the floor, the hot stink wafting to her panic-widened nostrils. He collapsed over his wound with a whimper.
Sparing a moment to kick the fallen man’s blade away, she freed another dagger and launched it at the wounded man lurching toward her over the body of his fallen comrade. It stuck in the hollow of his throat, buried deep, and he gurgled red spittle as he crumpled to the ground. Pelkaia leapt over the fallen men and swung around the corner of the shelves toward Galtro and the crossbowman. She had Galtro’s sword out and ready, but the crossbowman was already dead.
Gasping for breath, she threw the blade aside and bent to rest her palms against her knees. Bile threatened to rise in her throat, but she choked it back. You trained for this, you stupid woman. She slapped herself across the face and shook her head. Forcing her chin up, she surveyed what she’d done.
Four bodies. She’d always been prepared to take more lives, she’d told herself over and over again that it might be impossible to avoid. But there were those three young men, bright eyes drained to empty shells, open mouths drip-dripping and fingers freezing in rictus claws. Whatever she had told herself, it didn’t take them away. Didn’t fill them with life and set them on safer paths.
Anger gripped her, cold as death. How dare Thratia send these young men into this place for what – the death of one man? She had to have realized the danger. Had to have known they would not all make it back alive. Thratia could not be so stone-headedly confident as to assume those three boys, boys her Kel’s age, would be able to infiltrate this place with its watcher guards – Galtro himself a trained soldier – and make it out alive. How dare she put these young men in Pelkaia’s path?
She sucked deep of the offal-and-iron air, forcing herself to straighten. To ignore the panging complaints of her shoulder, her hip joint. To ignore the creaking of the withered bones kept straight by her braces. What was one more name on the list?
She would show the commodore the depth of this cost.
With a clenched jaw she moved amongst them, closing wide eyes with trembling fingers. Her time was running out. Though the fight had been quick, it had been noisy. How long until someone came looking? How long until the dead blue coats were found by other eyes?
One more thing. One more thread to pull taut.
She plunged back into the jostled shelves, scanning the carved faces of the boxes. Years ago, when she’d been taken off the line for her faked injury, they’d kept her working down here. Hoping that she’d get well enough to return to the real work. She’d lingered, learning her way through the maze of paper and wood until they’d lost faith in her recovery and kicked her to the retired quarter.
In that time, she had learned well. Fingers still smeared with blood, she tugged out the box of reports from the month in which her Kel had died. She paged through, eyes darting, until she came across the week of the accident. She yanked the relevant cluster free, spilt its temporal neighbors to the floor, and opened the folded packet.
There it was. The official accident report. The details were brief, a break from their usual precision. She knew only what she’d been told – what Warden Faud had told her, when he’d knocked on her door with his hat in his hands. A landslide. No chance of survival. Terrible accident. Word for word the story she was looking at on the report, now.
Accident reports were messy things, scrawled over and over again with bits crossed out and rewritten as the details of the event became clear. There was no evidence of revision on this slip. It was pristine. Perfect. They hadn’t even bothered trying to hide that it was a forgery.
A familiar signature scrawled across the bottom, a so-called witness. Thratia Ganal.
And Pelkaia’s revenge had cleared the way for her. Made it easier to take power.
Trembling, she shoved the folded papers into the waistband of her son’s pants and laid her forehead against the support timber of the shelves. The sel covering her face shimmered with the contact, but no one nearby was alive to see it.
Galtro and Faud weren’t negligent then, just cowards. Had they still deserved to die?
She wanted nothing more than to dive back into those files, to spend the night digging up any hint of a name who’d had a hand in what’d been done to Kel. But she couldn’t be caught here, surrounded by so much death. Couldn’t let innocent mine workers find her, witnesses that would have to be wiped out.
She shook herself. There was little she could do now, save escape. Take this knowledge with her. Strike back, and this time – this time – at the arachnidan hand that deserved it.
Just one more name.
Chapter 21
Banch loomed at Ripka’s side, his breath coming in irritating snort-gasps through the handkerchief he kept shoved up against his nose. As much as she wanted to scold him for it, she really couldn’t blame him. The four corpses had been left sitting no more than a half-day, but even in the cool interior of the Hub the desert heat had set them to festering.
Corpses. She had to keep thinking of them all as corpses.
“Those are Thratia’s men.” He heaved out between cut-short breaths, and she wished he hadn’t bothered. Whatever had happened here, she had no idea how to deal with it. She was numb to the core, her mind stilled by the chilling of her heart. Galtro was dead. That three of the four corpses were Thratia’s people brought her no comfort.
She had hoped the watchers found dead in the hallways of the Hub would be the worst of it. A sad little hope. A cruel hope.
Two watchers hovered nearby, awaiting direction, the shock of finding their fellows dead still fresh on their young faces. Their presence pressed against her, spurred her to say something. Anything. She was their watch captain. She was supposed to be in control.
“Check the bodies of Thratia’s men for any weapons which may have inflicted the wounds we have thus far discovered,” she ordered.
The two watchers snapped to it, their eyes bright and eager. She was jealous, in a way. To have something specific to do – to have an order given to you – seemed like such a luxury now. Try as she might, she could not shake the feeling that Galtro would rise at any moment from his cold, sticky pool and tell her it was all a stupid joke, or a terrible mistake. Her stomach felt hollow, her voice without command. She kept her hands clasped behind her back to hide their tremble.
“You think Thratia had a fourth man here, one who got away?” Banch asked.
She shrugged, mind feeling sticky-slow, unable to catch up with reality, let alone speculate upon the past. “Could be. But why leave the bodies of his fellows behind?”
“Maybe he couldn’t get rid of them quick enough.”
“Maybe.” Couldn’t he stop asking her stupid questions? She had no answers. He knew that.
“You’re not buying that, though,” Banch persisted.
“No,” she grated.
“Well?”
His prompting jolted her. Ripka forced herself to survey the wreckage of the room for the fifth time since she’d set foot in it. It was her job. She was good at it. She would find the answers.
For Galtro, and her fallen watchers.
She had no real way of knowing who died first, but the way Galtro sat with his back against the wall marked him as different than the rest. The three were all looking away from him, their bodies angled around a point within the record shelves. It didn’t make sense to her that Galtro would deal all three of them killing blows and then slink over to bleed his last against the wall.
And then there were the footprints.
There weren’t many, and most were smudged beyond recognition, but a single set stood out amongst the uniformity of Thratia’s people. A pair of work boots – quality, sturdy construction by the tread of them – had left a set of pr
ints behind that didn’t match up with any of the feet still in the room.
“I think they were all surprised. Every last one of them,” she murmured, drawing a raised eyebrow from Banch.
“Captain!” Watcher Taellen poked his head around a shelf, face bright with the rush of new-found information. “Looks like there’s some files missing back here.”
“Good work, Taellen. Take note of all the files near it and the nameplate on the box.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Thratia’s voice threatened to cut away what remained of Ripka’s sense of calm.
The would-be warden strode into the room, her lips curled to one side and her arms crossed low over her stomach. Thratia surveyed the remains of her men and got her gaze stuck on Galtro just long enough to make Ripka’s gut twist. Ripka fought down an urge to rip Thratia’s eyes from her sockets and leave them staring up at Galtro’s corpse for good.
“Pardon, Thratia, but we are in the middle of an investigation here. I understand you may have known some of the men involved, but it is our prerogative to get to the bottom of this mess,” Ripka said, feeling her own hands curl into fists at the small of her back.
“May have known? Watch captain, these three fine souls were some of my best. I sent them along to keep an eye on Galtro after I heard those terrible rumors of a doppel, and look what that got them. You back there!” She jerked a finger toward Watcher Taellen and his partner. “Leave what you’re doing and get out here.”
Skies bless them, her two rookies lingered, hands hovering near the handles of their cudgels, just at the edge of the shelf. They’d stopped what they were doing all right, but not out of any desire to obey Thratia. They were wary, knees tensed and shoulders squared, waiting for direction.
“I am sorry that you lost good men, but the situation is such that I must ask you to leave.”
“Ask me to leave?” she snorted. “You got it backwards, watch captain. Seeing as there’s no longer any competition for the wardenship, I’m within my rights to assume control of all warden duties until such a time as the election can be properly held. Isn’t that right, Callia?”
Ripka startled as she caught sight of the Valathean noble standing two short paces behind Thratia. Callia was a willow-thin woman of impressive height, her overstretched limbs swathed in a flowing, silken material that Ripka suspected was far too unbreathable for the desert clime.
A girl approaching her blossom years hovered in the imperial’s wake, wrapped in the same sky-blue silks her mistress wore, a folded parasol tucked under one small arm. The girl’s complexion was lighter than her mistress, betraying deeper Catari intermingling than either Thratia or Callia. Ripka assessed her as the imperial’s pet sensitive, and gave the girl a tight nod. The girl didn’t even blink.
Callia broadcast an air of authority that made Ripka’s skin prickle. She kept her hands folded before her, calm and ready, her face impassive. A small pang of jealousy reared in Ripka’s chest as she noted the smoothness of the Valathean’s shadow-dark cheeks, unworn by the desert sun, but her jealousy faded as Ripka took in the woman’s profession.
Over Callia’s fine silks she wore a long white coat, the hem of it just grazing the tops of her knees. Ripka swallowed and resisted an urge to step back. Whitecoats were the empire’s special investigators, though Ripka knew they preferred to call themselves researchers. What in the sweet skies was Thratia doing with a whitecoat on her arm? Had the doppel been telling the truth – did Thratia seek a purge for Aransa? It made no sense.
The imperial smiled, no doubt catching the startled recognition in Ripka’s eyes.
“I am from the Scorched diplomatic delegation, and it is within my authority as an instrument of the empire to assure you, watch captain, that Thratia is within her rights to claim the wardenship. Although we would prefer she call it a regency, at least until such a time as the elections can be held.”
Under the milky eye of the empire, her own masters, all Ripka could do was tuck tail and bow. No matter how much she wanted to tell them all to get fucked, this was her crime scene, she knew, clear as the skies were blue, that being abrasive now would only get her thrown out on her backside.
“As you wish, I obey, diplomat. But regarding this incident, my team are equipped and experienced for just this sort of puzzle. If you’ll allow me until tomorrow morning, I believe we can uncover the cause of this mess.”
The whitecoat shook her head. “It is within Thratia’s authority to seize control of this investigation, and not within mine to limit her. I recommend consultation between both divisions, but that is not a Valathean order.” Callia bowed, Valathean-style, with her hands held before her head, palms facing the blue skies.
“Nothing personal, Leshe, but I want a crack at this tick of a doppel.” Thratia’s voice was laced with the quiet waver of tightly reined anger. Ripka blinked, she’d never heard Thratia come close to losing her calm before.
“Do you have reason to believe the doppel did this?” Ripka asked, smoothing her voice with professional curiosity.
“Look around you, captain, it’s a mess. The doppel is clearly targeting important figures of Aransa, and when I take the wardenship it will be my head that has a target on it, if it doesn’t already.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You may take your people and go. My own investigators will arrive with the next ferry. See that everything is left as you found it. I will call upon you if I need you.”
“Warden, I must insist that the Watch be allowed to do its job here.” Ripka was annoyed to hear a pleading note enter her voice. Banch’s hand settled on her shoulder. She hadn’t realized she’d taken a step forward, that her fists had slipped from behind her back and come up low and ready.
Thratia eyed her from tip to toe, and waved a dismissive hand. “I have heard you. Now go.”
Banch tugged her sleeve, urging her back. With a clenched jaw she snapped a salute to Thratia and turned on her heel, knowing her blues would follow. None of them would want to be left alone in the same room as that woman.
They marched in silence to the ferry dock, Ripka keeping her eyes averted from the corpses of the men and women she’d sent to keep watch over Galtro. Five good watchers, and none of them dead by the same weapon as Thratia’s people. One still had a crossbow bolt sticking from her throat, black and insectile. Her name had been Setta. Ripka burned the names of each into her memory as she passed.
At the ferry they watched Thratia’s so-called investigators unload. Debt collectors, mudleaf smugglers, fire-protection men. Cutthroats, all of them, and every last one avoided so much as acknowledging the existence of the watchers arranged before them. They marched across the dock and toward the Hub like they owned the place, and with a sour taste in her mouth Ripka decided their mistress did, and that was close enough.
Across the gap, with the city’s bedrock firm under her feet, she dispersed her people back to their homes and stood thinking, arms crossed snug over her chest. It was a moment before she realized Banch was still at her side, watching.
“What?” She sighed.
“You’re planning something.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Of course I am. Galtro’s dead and something needs to be done about it, dammit.”
“Thratia said…”
“Thratia wants the city and the doppel, she doesn’t care about what’s right. Pits below, Banch, did you see our people? Opened with swords and crossbows, not daggers like Thratia’s and Galtro.”
“You think her people did for ours?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’d better keep your nose clean of it.”
She sighed and dragged her fingers through her hair, thinking of the single wine bottle at home in her pantry. Knowing Banch had so much more waiting for him. A wife. A child. A warm meal.
“Go home, Banch.”
“I’m your sergeant, captain. I stay.”
“You got a family, don’t you?”
“Yes, but–”
“Go. Home
. That’s an order. And on your way there, stop by the station. Tell everyone to go home and lock down.” She waved an arm to encompass the city before her. “Thratia’s taken the reins, and there’s no telling what she might do. Aransa is not safe for the Watch. Not tonight.”
He gave her a long, anxious look, sweat sticky on his brow, then snapped a salute with a hundred times better form than she’d shown Thratia.
“Stay safe, captain.”
“I’m working on it.”
He turned crisp on his heel and strode off towards home and shelter.
Chapter 22
Ripka went home before she went to the station, and changed into the Brown Wash clothes of mourning. She would not do what she was about to do while wearing her blues.
The black cotton was pounded smooth by stones, and the supple fabric covered her from throat to foot. It was a variation on an old Catari tradition, or so her mother had told her, though the original rites were long since lost. In the Brown Wash, one donned their blacks and stole an item of personal significance from the house of the deceased on their pyre night.
Galtro would have no pyre night. Ripka suspected Thratia would chuck him into an unmarked grave, or garbage burn, to keep from establishing a site that might turn into a symbol for martyrdom. That was all right by Ripka, she’d never been much of a traditionalist. She’d find her own way to mourn. A way that involved punching Thratia right in her smug little mouth.
The black cloth made slipping through the city unnoticed easy, and she found herself walking through the station house’s door before she had a plan firmly in mind. The station was quiet, the lamps snuffed and the halls emptied. Papers were left in haphazard stacks on desks, half-drunk tea cups gone cold beside them. At least someone had remembered to lock the door on their way out. Ripka’s lips quirked in a smile adverse to her mood. Probably Banch.
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