Shoot the Messenger

by Pippa Dacosta

  The apartment door flung open and Hulia burst in. “You have to go. Now!”

  I was on my feet, my hand on my whip, all dregs of sleep vanished. They’ve found me. I flung a glance at her window.

  “Not out the window, they’ll be watching it.” She scooped up my coat and shoved it into my arms. “Do the illusion thing you do with the coat and go out the front. It’s the only way.”

  “Who’s here?”

  “The law.” Her eyes saddened. “Merry’s dead.”

  “Merry?” How had they found my source? Merry was careful. But surveillance watched her like it watched everyone. And now Larsen knew me. Nobody was safe.

  Hulia frowned and worry pulled at her mouth. “Someone… someone wanted to send a message, Kesh. It wasn’t pretty.”

  A crashing noise erupted outside the door. I threw on my coat and searched the inventory for a disguise while Hulia lingered by the doorway. “Quickly, Kesh.”

  A disguise they wouldn’t look twice at. Something they would expect to see in The Boot. I jabbed at the scantily clad version of something one of Hulia’s ladies might wear and let my coat spill the illusion over me.

  “Marshals…” Hulia drawled. Her door sprung open, and in stomped four heavily armed marshals. Three men, one woman.

  I leaned against Hulia’s counter, fighting down panic, and arched an eyebrow. “Looking for something?” They ignored me and set about opening storage units, hoping to find the elusive messenger stuffed in a cupboard. The search didn’t take long. Hulia’s place wasn’t much bigger than mine.

  The marshals filed past me, heading for Hulia.

  “Like I told yah, she’s not here.” Hulia rolled her eyes. “Probably halfway to Nyron by now.”

  “You left downstairs in a hurry. Why?” The lead marshal drew up face to face with Hulia. He was taller, broader and likely felt he had every right to be here.

  Hulia shrugged. “Needed to pee.”

  The backhand came out of nowhere and hit Hulia’s cheek with a vicious crack. She stumbled against the wall.

  I’d crossed the floor in three strides before realizing that getting involved would risk my illusion failing.

  The female marshal stepped in front of me. “Are you going to make this difficult?” she asked, eyes cold.

  Another crack sounded. Rage fizzed in my veins and warmed my chest. My heart thudded hard. I glared back at the woman, knowing exactly what she saw looking back at me. Hulia and I were two nobodies living in the unmonitored sinks where nobody gave a damn what happened, and the law would do whatever they wanted, claiming the reprobates had attacked them first.

  My disguise would hold so long as I didn’t touch anyone and didn’t charge the whip with magic. The second I did, the illusion would fall away just like it had in Larsen’s suite.

  “We know she came in here,” the marshal beating on Hulia growled.

  I couldn’t see past the woman sizing me up for a fight, but the smell of rich, coppery blood told me all I needed to know. The two remaining marshals stood somewhere close behind me. I was outnumbered. Outgunned.

  “You’re going to tell us exactly where she went.” The bully hoisted Hulia off the floor by her hair. Her right eye had already swollen shut, and blood marked her chin.

  “Don’t,” Hulia muttered, but it wasn’t meant for the marshal. And the dream was so close that I heard myself say the same word to someone else, so very long ago. Don’t. But he had anyway, and no good had come from it. But that wasn’t me.

  I punched Miss Marshal in the face, snapping her head back, and whirled, freeing my whip in a blur of movement. The illusion collapsed. Magic tingled up my arm, burning hot and free. I flicked the whip, charging it up, and cracked it across the face of one marshal. He screamed as his skin unzipped and magic cauterized the wound. The other marshal fumbled for his pistol. I kicked him in the chest, lassoed the whip around his neck and yanked. Spluttering, he fell to his knees and clawed at the whip’s coils.

  An arm hooked around my neck and pulled me backward against an armored chest. “There you are,” the bully purred in my ear. “I knew if I rattled the cage you’d fall out.”

  I slammed my head back, hitting something hard with enough force for his grip to weaken. I’d lost my stiletto trying to blind Larsen, but I wasn’t without other weapons. Reaching into one of my coat’s many pockets, I pulled out a handful of silver balls and threw them into the air. The balls hung suspended there, frozen in a blink—reading the scene, assessing for threats—and then turning into tiny airborne razors, they struck, zipping past my face to sink into the marshal’s. He howled, shoved free from me and waved at the air, trying to shoo off the metal menaces.

  I grabbed Hulia’s arm and pulled her out the door. “Is there another way out?”

  She nodded, wiped the blood from her lips and darted down the hallway ahead of me. We jumped down the steps and ran around narrow corners until Hulia stopped at a hatch. She flung it open and a waft of dry, metal-tasting air billowed upward.

  The chute would take me beneath the sinks’ streets, where all the waste from the gulley went.

  I touched her face. “I’m sorry.”

  Her smile was fragile and wet with blood, but it held. “What are friends for if not beating up lawmen every now and then?”

  Friends. I hadn’t had one in so long. And now I was leaving her in a whole heap of trouble. “Tell them I forced you to hide me.”

  She nodded. “Make it worth it.”

  Shouts rattled down the hallway.

  I stepped into the hole and fell.

  Chapter 6

  Shuttles came and went from Calicto at regular intervals, ferrying mineworkers to and from the planet’s nine moons, rich in silica and tungsten. I boarded a cramped and noisy shuttle that looked as though it had been bouncing between planets for a few hundred years. Stains dirtied the seats, and a fine layer of machine dust came away on my hands as I grabbed the rails and made my way to the back.

  All I had to do was hitch a ride on a freighter heading for outer Halow. Away from Calicto, the fae probably wouldn’t follow and I’d have space to breathe, heal and figure out how to get Sota back.

  Sinking into a tiny window seat, I rested my forehead against the dirty glass and watched as the shuttle pulled away from its dock and maneuvered through Calicto’s environmental locks. Twenty minutes later, the little shuttle was accelerating into Calicto’s abrasive atmosphere. The walls and floor rumbled, rattling every loose bolt and its passengers. I gritted my teeth until the shuttle eventually leveled out. Calicto’s vast environmental domes glittered below like a collection of bubbles on rocks. From the outer atmosphere, those domes sparkled and shone, looking idyllic. I remembered thinking the same thing when I’d first arrived five years ago. The fae painted all humans as animals. I’d been expecting hideous living conditions and a brutal existence. What I’d gotten was something between the two.

  “Is this seat taken?” The marshal gripped the pole and swung himself into the seat beside mine, filling the cramped space with his coat, his wry smile and all his pretty manliness. Shimmying past his knees was out of the question; there was nowhere to go. The shuttle wouldn’t dock for another few hours. I was stuck with the lawman, and his lopsided grin told me he knew it.

  “What are the chances of me meeting you here, huh?” His dark green eyes sparkled at some secret joke only he knew.

  I ignored him, or tried to. Clearly, he was going to be a problem.

  He still wore his long coat. It didn’t appear to have any enhancing abilities but as an expert at deception, I knew there were other ways to hide the truth. He would be armed. And I knew he was a killer. “You just happened to be traveling to the colonies, Marshal?” I asked, making small talk.

  “Something like that.”

  He’d been tailing me. There was little point in avoiding the obvious. “How did you find me?”

  “You’re not as invisible as you think you are.”

  I shot him
a pinched, tight smile. I had gone to great lengths to whisper my way across Calicto and onto the shuttle, so the marshal was either full of karushit or he was very, very good at hunting people down. “Do enlighten me.”

  He leaned back in the seat, getting comfortable, and why not, neither of us was getting out of this conversation anytime soon. “Once I had a feel for what you are, I looked for surveillance black spots. Dead space. Tek glitches. Followed you right here.” He let that sink in for a few moments, appearing to absently watch the people around us, and then added, “You were at the Crater assassination.”

  My smile vanished. I checked the faces of those nearby. Burly men, haggard women. Some might be Crater’s people. Most were lost in their personal entertainment devices, but if any heard the marshal and suspected me, it wouldn’t take much to fire off a message and organize the kind of welcoming party I wouldn’t wake up from.

  I narrowed my eyes at the marshal. He was dangerously close to getting in my way.

  “You going to arrest me, Marshal?”

  He twisted in his seat and looked me square in the eye, issuing a challenge. “You keep asking me that. Do you want me to?”

  The shift in his position had bumped his knee against mine. He didn’t appear to notice, but I did. He had hemmed me in. “Isn’t arresting people what you do?”

  “Guilty people,” he corrected. “It’s an important distinction.”

  Important distinction. Damn, his tight accent slew me. It wasn’t a Calicto dialect. Maybe he originally came from one of the farming colonies where dynasties dealt in crops. Focus. It doesn’t matter where he comes from. “Ah, so you’re an honorable marshal. Well, aren’t you cute.”

  His lips twitched. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

  I touched my chest and gasped, eyes wide. “Really?! I can’t imagine why.” Turning my face away, I pretended to stare out of the window at the star-speckled blackness but instead studied the marshal’s reflection. His smile faded before vanishing completely, leaving his expression somewhere between concerned and curious. I might have imagined the pointed teeth I’d seen when he killed the intruders. They weren’t there now. Perhaps those lethal weapons only came out to play when things got rough. As an expert at illusion myself, I wondered if the marshal’s pretty was camouflage and beneath all that alluring male plumage lurked a shrewd and dangerous lawman who had me firmly locked in his sights. He had followed me this far, but now that I knew I had a tail, I would ditch him at the next port. All I had to do was survive the next few hours without giving anything away. And if I was right about the marshal, he was about to try everything in his little black book of charm to get me to talk.

  “If you’re not here to arrest me, why are you here? What do you want?”

  “Call me curious.”

  I’d call him something, all right.

  The shuttle’s engines whined, signaling it was slowing down, but out of the window, we weren’t anywhere near atmosphere.

  The marshal leaned out to peer around the standing passengers and narrowed his eyes. He caught me watching him closely and pressed his lips together, apparently annoyed. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t good.

  The shuttle jolted, and the pilot announced over the comms, “Please stand by for inspection by the port authority.”

  “Just when I think it’s safe to talk, someone tries to kill you.” The marshal slipped a hand inside his coat.

  Wait. What? I reached for my whip.

  He removed his hand and dangled wrist-cuffs between his fingers.

  I jolted away, pressing my back against the window to force some space between us, but there was no room to swing the whip.

  He snatched my wrist and ratcheted the cuffs on with a click. He gripped his cuff with his fingers, not latching it on. “Hold still.”

  “Hold still?” I hissed and yanked on the cuffs. “You said you weren’t arresting me!”

  Nearby passengers glanced our way.

  The marshal yanked me forward and leaned in, bringing me nose to nose with him. There was no laughter in his eyes now. His glare captured mine and held me still. “I’m not arresting you. I’m helping you. Like I’ve been trying to since the beginning. Now sit still and shut the hell up.”

  Who in Halow did he think he was? I balled up my fist and swung, anticipating the satisfying crunch when I broke his pretty nose. He caught my knuckles in his palm, close enough to his face to ruffle his messy bangs. Green eyes glared, their startling intensity another reminder of how the marshal wasn’t entirely human. His gaze warned that, should I try anything, he would retaliate, screw our audience, screw the authority about to board. He would throw down right here, and only one of us would walk away. I’d seen what he was capable of. A cramped interplanetary shuttle was not the place to test him, but once we got outside, all bets would be off.

  “Marshal,” an authority official nodded down at us. “Who do you have there?” Beady-eyed and pointy-chinned, he looked like he hadn’t laughed once in the last decade. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “Cattle rustler.”

  Seriously? He was going with that lie? I looked about as likely to be a cattle rustler as he looked like a miner. I rolled my eyes. At least he was terrible at something.

  “I’m taking her in for processing.”

  “Destination?”

  “Catacoon.”

  The authority man raised an eyebrow, probably because we were heading completely the wrong way to be docking anywhere near Catacoon. As ruthless as my marshal was, his lies needed work.

  “Name?” the authority guy asked.

  “Marshal Kellee.”

  Authority man jerked a thumb at me. “Her name.”

  The marshal sighed. “Yah know,” he said to me, “this isn’t working.” He pulled a pistol from his coat and—swish, click, boom—shot the man in the chest. The authority guy sprawled backward, spilling into onlookers. Screams rang out and the crowd surged.

  I froze. Did he just kill that man?

  “It’s set to stun,” Marshal Kellee explained, dragging me off the seat by the cuffs and into the heaving crowd. He shoved and elbowed his way through, pulling me behind him. At the door, where the other marshals fought to keep the masses back, Marshal Kellee lifted his gun into the air and fired off an energy round. Sparks exploded overhead. The crowd dropped, and the authority men went for their weapons.

  “I’ll be needing your shuttle,” the marshal told them.

  “W-what?” one stammered. His gaze fell to the star on the marshal’s chest.

  “Your shuttle is now mine,” Kellee said without a shred of doubt. “Step aside.”

  Nobody moved.

  Kellee wet his lips. “I have a very dangerous criminal in custody, and I am commandeering your ship so I can safely escort her to the processing facility on Calicto.” Blinks all round. “See this.” He tapped the star pinned to his coat. “This means what’s yours is mine.” He pointed the pistol at the nearest guard’s face. “Do I have to get personal?”

  Violence. The universal language. The authority cops stepped aside, and Kellee pulled me through the airlock doors, swiftly locking them behind us. Pressurized air hissed. He let go of my cuffs and dropped himself into the pilot’s seat. The shuttle was tiny compared to the ferry we’d spent the last hour in. Big enough for a two-man crew, but little else.

  “You’d better sit down.” He flicked a bunch of switches on the control panel. “I don’t plan on hanging around while they realize I just bluffed my way into stealing their ride.”

  I eased into the co-pilot’s chair and watched his hands sweep across the controls with efficient ease. “You don’t have the jurisdiction to commandeer this ship?”

  He snorted and nodded at the front-facing screen curved around us. “You see that?”

  I saw a whole lot of black nothingness outside.

  “Out here, Messenger, jurisdiction is just a word like any other. It all comes down to the delivery.” He strapped himself in and hit a b
utton that disconnected our shuttle. A mechanical jolt trembled through the floor. “And who’s holding the biggest gun.”

  I strapped into the co-pilot’s seat.

  The marshal entered what I assumed were coordinates back to Calicto. I watched his hands closely, committing each button push and entry to memory.

  “You’re some hot property, Kesh Lasota.”

  I side-eyed him. I didn’t recall telling him my name.

  “Those weren’t real port authority officials.” He pushed a button, and the shuttle bolted into the black, rattling the cabin. “My guess is they were Crater’s men and your shuttle ride was doomed from the beginning. Like I said, you’re not as invisible as you think.” He glanced over. “Have I done enough to prove I’m not out to get you?”

  “That depends on where we’re going.” And what you want from me.

  “To a rock in the middle of nowhere.” He flicked his screen and sent our destination onto my screen. He was right. We were heading out into deep space. Not much out there but rocks, criminals and pirates. Which one was he?

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

  I shifted in the chair, sinking deeper into its embrace, and eyed the cuffs still locked around one wrist. If only I could, Marshal…

  Chapter 7

  Marshal Kellee removed the cuffs as soon as the shuttle was locked on course. We traveled the rest of the way in silence, until a tiny shining mass took shape beyond the shuttle’s screen, growing like snowflakes on the glass.

  I peered closer. “What is that?”

  The marshal glanced sideways and must have seen the anxiety I was working hard to hide. “You don’t travel much, huh?”

  “No, not much,” I admitted, trying not to let on how this was only the second time I’d been space-bound in my entire life. I gripped the seat’s arms, digging in my fingernails. During my first space-faring trip, the ship had been huge. So vast, in fact, that it had felt as though the planets moved around it. This little shuttle felt more like a ration can.