The Crimes of Orphans

by Obie Williams

  “I lived in the Old World, and it wasn’t any better than this one,” Rain said. “Did you find anything else in his study?”

  “Nothing that made a great deal of sense to me. Drawings of a strange building. It looked old, maybe religious. Also a calendar diagramming the moon in—” Rain suddenly held up a hand to halt her and his face took on a thoughtful composure for a brief moment.

  “There’s a lunar eclipse at dawn day after tomorrow,” he said at last.

  “Oh,” Amelie said, “Does that mean something?”

  “I don’t know yet. Continue.”

  “Well, there wasn’t much else. Some very old papers covered in odd runes was about the last of it.”

  “What sort of runes?” Rain asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t recognize them.”

  “Could you draw them?”

  “I…I think so. Maybe a couple of them.”

  Rain looked at Alex and nodded towards the coat rack. Alex hopped off the couch and went to Rain’s coat to fish a small notepad and pencil from one of its pockets. He flipped the pad to a blank page and brought it over to Amelie. She smiled a thank you and he returned to his seat.

  Amelie chewed on the corner of her lip nervously. “What if I draw them wrong?”

  “It’s alright,” Rain said. He put out his cigarette and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and interlacing his fingers. “Just close your eyes and try to visualize the pages. Draw what you see.” Amelie nodded, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. Everyone fell silent.

  A couple of moments passed, and then Amelie opened her eyes and leaned forward, carefully drawing six different symbols on the paper. They weren’t exceptionally complex, which helped her to draw them from memory, but she still thought it was a longshot that any might be correct. With a nervous sigh, she handed the notepad to Rain, who sat back and began studying it carefully.

  “Do you recognize them?” Lita asked. She had leaned over at one point to look for herself, but didn’t see anything more than a few haphazard scribbles. Foreign languages weren’t her forte.

  “Maybe,” Rain said quietly. “It looks like Piyasu.” Everyone stared at him blankly.

  “Rain, how about filling in those of us who don’t have almost five centuries of photographic memory in our heads?” Alex said, waving a hand to get his attention.

  Rain blinked. “Sorry. The Piyasu were a small religious sect that existed in the Ottoman Empire around the fourteenth century. They were very noble, like knights or monks. They believed themselves destined to banish evil from the world.”

  “So what do the symbols mean?” Amelie asked.

  “I’m not definitely sure,” Rain said, rubbing his temple. “I only read one book about them, and it was a long time ago. Their writings weren’t exactly an established language, more of a conglomeration of symbols from multiple cultures. This one here…” he tapped the paper, “…I believe it equates to ‘the striking hand’ or, more commonly, ‘weapon’. But this one…” he leaned forward, pointing at it to show Amelie. “Are you sure you have that one right?”

  She nodded adamantly. “That one, definitely. It was repeated at least a dozen times on the page I looked at. It’s the only one I’m completely sure of.”

  Rain sat back, clenching his jaw tightly. His eyes were storm clouds of concern.

  “What is it, Rain?” Alex asked. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s a verb. It means ‘to cleanse’,” he said gravely.

  “And that’s bad?” Amelie asked.

  Rain stood and began pacing behind his chair. “Not if you’re referring to a toilet bowl, but it is if you’re talking about a group of people. Have any of you ever heard the name Adolf Hitler?” He paused long enough to regard them, but got only blank looks. “He led an army that killed over ten million people trying to create a pure human race.” Rain glanced at Amelie. “Your brother sounds charming.”

  “Step,” she corrected. “Do you see now why I need help? If he plans to hurt the Gifted of Chicane or anywhere else, he must be stopped. People with those special abilities are blessed by God, and a great many of them use their powers to help the community around them. We cannot allow them to be harmed by some insane vendetta!” She took a shuddering breath, fighting back tears.

  Alex and Lita looked away, but Rain stared her down, his gaze narrowing. “What’s your ability?”

  She looked up and blinked. “What? I…I don’t have…”

  “Stop,” Rain said flatly. “You clearly have far too much vested interest in the Gifted not to have your own stock in the matter. No human is that selfless or understanding.”

  “Rain!” Alex said sharply, “Stop it, she’s just—”

  “Shut up, Alex,” Rain said, not looking at him. He took a step forward, towering over Amelie now. “What is it? What can you do?”

  “N-Nothing,” Amelie stammered. “I can’t do anything, I s-swear.”

  Rain reached down and pulled her to her feet by her arm. “To God? Do you swear to God?”

  “You’re hurting me,” Amelie whimpered.

  “Rain, let her go!” Alex demanded, standing.

  Lita kept her seat, sipping her drink and watching the whole scene coolly.

  Rain kept his eyes locked on Amelie’s and when she still said nothing, he shoved her away, sending her stumbling into Alex’s arms. “If you can’t trust us, you’re on your own. Get out of my house.”

  Alex was fuming. “Rain, you—” but Amelie put a hand to his lips.

  “Shhh,” she said, sniffling as she lifted his bandaged hand. Alex blinked, but didn’t pull away as she carefully unwrapped the dressing to reveal the deep, reddened cut in his palm. She then touched the center of the wound with her fingertip. Just as Alex took in a hissing breath to indicate pain, a soothing, warm white glow began flowing from Amelie’s finger and into the cut. Right before everyone’s eyes, the jagged edges of sliced skin began to smooth and return to their normal color. They pulled together, closed up, and sealed, leaving not a trace or scar behind.

  Amelie took a step back, leaving Alex to open and close his fist, marveling at the complete regeneration of his palm. Lita let out a low whistle, then finished off her drink and set the glass on the coffee table before looking to Rain for his reaction. Amelie wiped her eyes and looked to him as well. He gave her a nod.

  “It’s a useful gift,” he said gently. “Why do you hide it?”

  She gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. It’s just never come up, I guess.”

  Lita scoffed. “Because it’s never had to. Pretty easy to avoid the broken and bleeding when you live in a palace.”

  “Is that helpful?” Rain asked, giving Lita a look.

  “I’m just saying that she might want to get to know the darker parts of Chicane before she tries to run it,” Lita said, then sank back into the couch.

  “It’s okay,” Amelie said, “she’s not wrong. The ability’s not as useful as it seems anyway. I can only mend small wounds. Nothing severe, and not sickness. Were that the case I could have helped my father.” Her voice trembled with this last sentence, and Alex placed a comforting hand on her shoulder from behind.

  “With practice, it could grow stronger,” Rain said. “Most gifts do.”

  Amelie sniffled and nodded. She then looked to Rain and stepped towards him, raising a hand. “I can heal scars though.” She motioned towards his eye.

  Rain took a step back, holding up his own hand. “Mine are fine where they are, thank you.” He sat back down in his chair.

  Amelie looked to Lita then, hesitantly, but the woman waved her off. “I’ve earned all of mine.” Amelie nodded, then sighed and slipped back down to her position on the floor.

  Clearing his throat, Alex said, “Well, now that it’s cold, does anyone else want some tea?”

  “I don’t mind cold tea,” Amelie said, smiling at him wearily. It had been a long night, and the strain was finally starting to set in.

 
“I need another drink,” Lita said, pushing herself off the couch and returning to the bar.

  “Make me one too,” Rain said. Then, after a beat, “No mixer this time.”

  Lita chuckled.

  “So what now?” Alex asked as he poured himself and Amelie each a cup of tea. He added honey to hers and a little sugar to his own.

  “We are to meet with Christopher, the palace head guard, tomorrow at noon so he can inform us of what to do next,” Amelie explained.

  Rain quirked a brow at Lita as she handed him his drink. “So while devising a plan to bring Amelie here for safety, you scheduled a rendezvous for the middle of the day?”

  Lita pulled her mouth to the side sheepishly as she reclaimed her seat on the couch. “I guess I didn’t really think that one through. We were a bit preoccupied with getting out of there alive.”

  “We’ll work around it. But how can we be sure this Christopher can be trusted?” Rain asked.

  Amelie bristled. “I have nothing but the utmost faith that he would do anything to protect me. I’ve known him for four years, and he’s never shown anything but complete loyalty. Besides, why would he have helped us escape if he was conspiring with Michael?”

  “He did seem pretty gung-ho about it,” Lita added.

  “And that’s reason enough for you to trust him?” Rain asked, staring at Lita.

  She considered this briefly. “No. And even if he is loyal, but someone else finds out about the meeting, we’d be walking into a trap. Either way, we’ll want to come prepared.”

  Rain nodded. “Then we should start discussing strategy.” Looking back to Amelie, however, he only then realized how exhausted she appeared. “But Lita and I can handle that. Alex, why don’t you go get Amelie set up in a bedroom upstairs. Lita’s in the one next to you, so put her on the end.”

  Alex looked taken aback. “Don’t you want me here to help with the strategizing?”

  “I know where to find you if I need you. You should go get some rest yourself.”

  Alex stared at his brother in disbelief, but Rain was unmoved. “Fine,” he said finally, rising. “Come on, Amelie. I’ll get you all settled in.”

  She stood and followed him. As she passed Rain’s chair, however, she suddenly leaned over, threw her arms around his shoulders, and squeezed him tightly.

  “Hrm!” Rain said, tensing.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, then released him and quickly followed Alex.

  “You’re a brave soul,” Alex said as he led her up the stairs. Rain watched them go, obviously disturbed by the interaction. When he looked to Lita after they’d gone, she had a smirk on her face.

  “Hey, they say you catch more flies with sugar,” she said.

  “I’m going to kill you in your sleep,” Rain said flatly, then lit a cigarette.

  “It’d probably be best if you did,” Lita replied. She suddenly leaned forward, snatched the cigarette out of his hand, and took one deep drag before handing it back. She blew the smoke up towards the ceiling and returned her gaze to him. “Jonas was just playing middleman when he contracted me. If the person calling the shots is who I think it is, we’re stepping into messy territory. He’s no fuckaround.”

  “Tell me more about him,” Rain said, then took his own drag off the cigarette. He could taste her lips on it.

  “Name’s Cleric. He’s led a group of assassins for at least twenty years, so he knows his shit. No real way of telling how many he’s got on his roster—he always made sure we didn’t know much of anything about each other. When I was still with him I figured it to be a dozen, fifteen at the most. Could be more now.”

  “Did he raise them all from children?”

  “Nah, the ones I did know anything about were all mercs or ex-military types. Jonas and I were his pet project. Wanted to see what kind of hitters he could make if he got us while we were young. Didn’t help keep me loyal, apparently.”

  “Which begs the question why he would re-contract you for a hit you’d already failed to follow through on.”

  Lita shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Makes about as little sense as having Jonas play middleman. Cleric always set up jobs personally.”

  “Then how can you be sure he’s involved?”

  “I just am. Gut feeling, you know? The same one that told me I shouldn’t be taking this job in the first place. But goddamn, the money sounded good.”

  “Desperation makes us do funny things,” Rain said. He rose to his feet and headed across the room to his coat, but kept speaking. “So I imagine Cleric’s unlikely to give up on Amelie just because you made off with her?”

  “Not likely at all. He’d go to the ends of the Earth to finish a job.” Lita watched him go to his coat, retrieve his keys, and then come back and cross over to the armoire next to the fireplace.

  “Then why didn’t he get someone to finish the job on Amelie five years ago? And why didn’t he kill you, for that matter?” Rain asked as he unlocked the top cabinet of the armoire.

  “Well, either she wasn’t the primary target in the first place or the client called off the rest of the job. As for me, who knows? He could be surprisingly sentimental about me and Jonas, so maybe that had something to do with it. Whatcha got in there?”

  “Weapons,” Rain replied.

  “Oooh,” Lita said with childlike glee, “I love weapons!” She hopped to her feet and went to Rain’s side, but when he opened the armoire doors, the excitement dropped from her face. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  The cabinet was filled with edged weapons. A wide array of daggers, knives, throwing axes, short swords, and sais hung from hooks that lined the inside. “I don’t like guns,” Rain said.

  “Yeah, and I’m sure your enemies will thank you for that when they’re laughing over your corpsy dust pile.”

  “I’ve made it this long without them,” Rain retorted. “I can fight far better with this than I could with any gun.” He pulled out the one item that seemed to stand out most among the others: a silvery metal rod about eighteen inches long and an inch and a half in diameter. Taking a step back, he held it up to show Lita.

  “It’s a stick,” she said doubtfully.

  Rain took hold of the device with both hands and gave it a twist near the middle. With a click and a metallic sliding sound, the rod telescoped out, expanding to nearly four feet long.

  Lita quirked a brow. “It’s a longer stick.”

  Rain smirked, then moved in a flash. Turning, he slipped one end of the staff behind her and hooked it into the trigger guard of her handgun before bringing the staff around full circle, pulling the gun from her pants and whipping it across the room, where it hit the backrest of the couch and landed on the seat cushion with a dull thud. Completing the circle of the staff as he sidestepped back in front of her, he gave it one last twist and a six-inch, double-sided blade popped out of the end, its tip coming within inches of Lita’s throat.

  She glanced down at it, then back to him. “So…it’s a sharp stick.”

  Rain couldn’t suppress a soft chuckle as he stepped back and went about the task of manually collapsing the staff back down. “Alex designed it. It took him a few months to get the springs just right, but it’s rather brilliant.”

  Lita shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll stick with my gut-shredding pieces of flying metal, if it’s all the same to you.” She went to the couch to retrieve her handgun, checked the chamber to make sure the round in it was still seated properly, and shoved it back in her belt. “Anyway, it’s a very shiny collection. But unless you’ve got something in there that can stop the rotation of the Earth, you’re gonna be sitting at home playing with your knives all by yourself during the rendezvous.”

  Rain knelt down and opened the bottom drawer of the armoire, then looked to Lita. She came back over and, seeing what was inside, threw her head back and laughed hysterically. It was such hearty, genuine laughter that even Rain was smiling broadly by the time it had finally subsided.

 
; Wiping tears from her eyes, Lita said, “Good Christ, I must be tired. I’m delirious.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Rain said. He closed up the armoire and pocketed his keys. “You should go get some sleep. We can sort out the rest of the plan in the morning.”

  “We should set up some sort of watch, just in case,” she said.

  “Got it covered,” Rain replied. “I’ll take the whole night. I don’t have to sleep.”

  “Huh. I’m not sure if that’s a curse or a blessing.”

  “Little of both.”

  “Alright, well if there’s trouble, give a shout. Or rattle your knives maybe,” she suppressed another round of giggles as she headed for the stairs.

  “Hey,” he called.

  She paused at the banister. “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to walk the property outside, make sure everything is quiet. You okay to keep an eye on things in here?”

  “I think I can keep from burning the place down, sure.”

  “I mean you’re not going to climb down my tree and take off, right?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “Nah, sounds like too much work.”

  He chuckled and gave her a nod. “Goodnight then, Lita.”

  “Night, Rain.”

  THIRTEEN

  Christopher’s senses returned to him one at a time, and though it all happened in less than ten seconds, it seemed a great deal slower to him.

  Smell was the first thing that pierced the dense fog surrounding his mind, and it made itself forcibly known. There were several intertwining odors in this place, but one in particular snaked its way into his nose so thickly that he could practically feel it dripping down the back of his throat: mustiness. Heavy and smothering like a wet wool blanket, it threatened to take hold of him in his dizzied state and rip out the contents of his stomach.