Three Graces
Page 1
Three Graces
Three Graces: The Mercenary and The Wanderer
Ghost
Witchcraft
Potions
Bump In The Night
Skeleton
Face Paint
Special Effect
A Body
Cobwebs
Torture
In The Shadows
Fearsome Creatures
Full Moon
Costumes
Trick or Treat
About This eBook
About The Author
Three Graces: The Mercenary and The Wanderer
by
Pax Asteriae
Copyright © 2011-2013
Smashwords Edition
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Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people (living or dead), places or events is wholly coincidental.
Ghost
“You’re sending me after a ghost.” It was said without emotion, but the expression on the big man’s face told another story.
“Whatever you may think,” he retaliated sharply, hoping his tone didn’t give away his relief that the sturdy desk lay between them, “this man is not a ghost.”
The long silence that followed was only interrupted by the gentle chink of metal on metal as the visitor shifted his weight from side to side.
Maybe ‘visitor’ wasn’t quite the right word. He stared intently at the standing man, who returned the look with a flat glare. Ademza Cas owned the space he was standing in. An insistent little voice at the back of his head began to question whether this was the right course of action; the cold sweat he was failing to suppress insisted it probably wasn’t. “We thought we had… disposed of him some years ago.” He finally broke the silence. “However, it would appear that we were mistaken.”
Cas’s expression never changed.
“And that’s why we need you.” He concluded lamely, shifting around papers on his desk and concentrating on them rather than the man in front of him. “Deor slipped through our fingers once. We don’t want it happening again.”
“You know where he is?” The voice grated from above him, nearer than he expected. He still didn’t look up. He wasn’t sure he dared.
“Yes. No.” He hesitated. “The desert.”
“Most this planet’s a fucking desert.”
“Yes, well…” His eyes finally tracked upwards; he felt the blood rush blindly from his head in panic as he came face to face with the gaping muzzle of a pistol. “We don’t often keep tabs on the location of dead people. They don’t usually move around much.” It came out more strongly than it felt.
“And you said he wasn’t a fucking ghost.” Cas said slowly. “Made up your mind yet?”
“I concede you might have a point.” Was that just the hint of a tremor in his voice? He hoped not, the last thing he needed was for Cas to think there was a weakness he might exploit. He swore mentally and took a deep breath that only shuddered slightly. “The last time he was seen—when it was brought to our attention—he was in the vicinity of Mellesur. That’s all we have. That,” he leaned forward in the vain hope of bluffing his way through his sudden bout of terror, “is why we hired you.”
To his vast relief the gun was slowly lowered, although the whiteness of the knuckles gripping it was a distinct cause for concern. “You didn’t say you couldn’t locate him. My fee will be higher.”
“That’s absolutely fine.” The words tumbled out in a less than dignified manner, but if that was all the mercenary was concerned about… “We’ll cover all your expenses, of course.”
The gun vanished behind Cas’s back, presumably into wherever he kept the holster. “’Course you will. I wouldn’t be doing it if you weren’t.” He took another step forward, reaching one square-fingered hand.
A file was hurriedly pressed into his palm. “This is everything you need to know, including old pictures and one blurry shot of what we think was him in Mellesur. If there’s anything else you need, you know where to call.” And then my secretary could deal with you instead, thank god, he added in his head while smiling up at Cas.
Cas did not return the smile. “If half the cash isn’t in my account by this afternoon, I’ll come for you instead. We clear?”
The smile froze; he nodded slowly, not trusting himself to speak or, indeed, not to hide under his desk instead in the face of those dead eyes. Since when was hiring hitmen in his job description anyway? If Accounts screwed up… He swallowed and nodded again, more sharply.
Apparently that was all Cas needed for confirmation. He shoved the file into his satchel with no care for its wellbeing and didn’t even bother with a goodbye before jerking the door open.
The air in the room seemed… clearer once he’d gone, the light streaming through the blinded windows behind him somehow stronger. He let his forehead drop to the desk and, without looking, slapped the intercom button. “Erica, cancel my two o’clock. I think I need a lie down…”
Witchcraft
He came across the caravan one windy day, tracking east as they headed north. He always tried to skirt them—safer that way—with his scarf pulled up to obscure his face. It was only ever a slim chance, but still. Safer. And usually no one paid him any attention: strange, antisocial travellers were hardly a rarity. No one wanted to look twice in case they were robbed.
But there were always stragglers, people either ready to move away from the caravan or not entirely welcomed by it. They hung around on the fringes, trailed after them like lost ducklings (he’d not seen any in years, hadn’t realised how much he missed them until then) and were easy pickings for any wandering thieves. Especially when they didn’t take good care of their—
“Mamaaaa!” The plaintive wail sliced through the wind-tossed sand like a shovel. “Mama, papa, where are yoooou?!”
He froze. The wind was picking up as it was; soon it’d be impossible to see through. Not such a problem for him on his own, but lethal to a child separated from its parents. But he didn’t plan on getting involved either, the chances—
“Fuck the chances,” he snapped at the air, which paid him absolutely no attention whatsoever and, pulling the cloth higher, did his best to head towards the cries that were starting to sound more like sobs.
* * *
He almost fell over the kid, some bizarre desert-grown sixth sense stopping him just before he reached it. It was sat on the sand, legs crossed and something clutched in its hands, the only clear part on it the tracks left by tears on its cheeks. “Are you lost?” Stupid question, he knew, but he had to announce his presence somehow. People—even children—didn’t really like it so much if you just picked them up and walked off.
The kid started, although how it’d failed to notice him at this distance he’d got no idea, and stared up at him with wide brown eyes before nodding slowly. “I want my papa…” Tears welled up.
He tugged loose his scarf and squatted down in front of it—her? it was hard to tell through the ever-present sand and tangled hair—and held out a hand. “Do you want me to help you find him?”
The child stared at him with something approaching suspicion behind the filth and he could have sworn that it was actively scrutinising him. No doubt warned against strangers—although clearly not warned strongly enough about the dangers of wandering away from the caravan too. Finally, it—she—nodded, as if he’d just passed some intense inspection, and accepte
d his hand with all the grace of a princess. It was all he could do to suppress a laugh. “They went that way,” she pointed in a direction that for all he knew could be completely random, but at least had the sense to add, dubiously, “least I think they did…”
He rose, noting even as he did that the girl’s grip on his hand got stronger, not weaker; he was the only thing around and it was clear she’d got no intention of letting him go. Even with his superior height though, all he could make out in the direction she’d pointed was a dust cloud that might’ve been vehicles, but might easily have been a particularly sandy set of hardy shrubs throwing clouds into places they’d no right to be. “How would you even know?” It was directed more at himself than her, but she looked up at him with an expression of loss that threatened to break his heart. Oh god… He wasn’t equipped to deal with this.
“Can… Can I sit on your shoulders?” She asked suddenly and, powerless to resist that expression again, he could only nod and lift her up. He could feel how pitifully thin she was beneath her layers of fabric, how light she was as she squealed in delight and promptly wrapped her arms and legs around his neck, whatever she was carrying still gripped tightly in one hand. “You’re tall!”
This time he grinned, unable to help it, then winced as she shrieked out, “it is them!” That ear would be ringing for days by the feel of it.
“You can see them?” He hoped he didn’t sound as pained as he felt; if he did, she was oblivious, clinging even more tightly to him. Whatever it was she was carrying, it was sharp and cold against the now bare skin of his cheek. Probably a metal toy; she was just a bit young to be a thief in her own right, he thought with another smile, although stranger things had happened.
“Yes!” She squealed, even more loudly than before, if that was possible, and began to fidget on his shoulders until he was forced to take a gentle grip of her shins in case she slid off. “Come on!”
* * *
It wasn’t a long distance, he reminded himself as he trudged across the sand with the excitable child precariously balanced, it just felt that way. She found every imaginable way to cling to him, hands in his sandy hair, around his neck, on his shoulders in front of her own legs and once even one on each cheek, which made her giggle at the feeling. “You’re fuzzy!”
He let go of one leg long enough to run a hand over the short whiskers and grinned. “Yeah, fuzzy.” He’d snatched the opportunity a few days ago to shave, a hurried, futile luxury.
“Papa isn’t fuzzy,” she asserted and he bit down the urge to respond, good for papa. “Papa’s always smooth.”
He just smiled and nodded gently so as not to dislodge her, and tried to pick up his pace a little. For a kid that seemed so light to start with, damn was she getting heavy now. And they couldn’t be that far away now, surely—
The scream that felt as though it was going to rupture his eardrum almost made him drop the child in a sudden fit of panic. Visibility had dropped appallingly already; it was a prime area for thieves and he couldn’t reach his knife…
“There you are!” A man’s voice cried out and for a moment he wondered if it was his own. It couldn’t be, he was sure he didn’t sound like that but he was the only one here. Or at least, he had been until a man came erupting through a thick cloud, his eyes on the girl on his shoulders. “I’ve been looking everywhere! Where did you go?”
The little girl’s squirms intensified. He dropped to his knees in the soft, churned sand to allow her a faster escape which she took with great alacrity and little care, catching him across the cheek with her toy as she scrambled down his arm.
“Meena!” Her father gasped, taking her quickly by the hand. “Look what you’ve done!” He gave the girl a stern glare, who in turn looked up at her saviour with those wide, helpless eyes he’d been so powerless to resist in the first place.
“It’s nothing, honestly,” he smiled weakly, trying to pull his scarf up again to cover the scratch that he could feel was welling up with blood the same way Meena’s eyes were with tears even now. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not,” the man said, reaching out one hand to carefully pull the cloth away from his cheek. “Please, you must allow me to help you. It’s the least I could do.”
“It’s fine, I swear it.” He jerked his head away. These people, he remembered how they felt about—
“…What is that?” The man asked slowly, leaning in to stare more intently at his wound; he felt his stomach plummet. “What…”
The skin was starting to sting, a nagging, narrow burning sensation. He could only watch as the man’s expression changed from curiosity to horror. Grabbing his daughter by the hand he backed away from the kneeling man, muttering under his breath. “Away from me, sorcerer.”
He sighed, rose to his feet and bowed slightly toward the man, who regarded him with fearful suspicion. “Please take care of your daughter, sir.” Before Meena’s father could add anything further about witchcraft or, worse, summon the rest of the caravan, he turned on his heel and sprinted blindly into the dust storm.
There was no point in trying to explain about subcutaneous nanites and their ability to repair small wounds. Their vanity factor in the city hold no sway here. He could only flee and hope that the girl’s father would take his rapid exit as a blessing; it was certainly starting to feel like a curse to David.
Potions
The photo was slapped onto the bar hard enough that the framework trembled and cloudy drinks shook in their glasses. The barman leapt too, although more likely through shock, and almost lost his grip on the glass he was polishing. A glass which, Cas observed without surprise, was filthier than when he’d started. “Seen this man?”
The man’s mouth opened and closed repeatedly without a single sound being emitted and for a moment it seemed he’d rather turn and bolt than answer the question. What kept him in place probably had more to do with the guns holstered across Cas’s back than any genuine wish to answer the question. “I—”
“Don’t say ‘no’ without even looking.”
Grudgingly the glass was placed, less than steadily, on the sopping bar and the man leaned forward to take a look. Eyes flicking from Cas to the picture and back again with a rapidity that made the big man wonder if he was actually seeing any detail, his head was in mid-shake before he paused. “Wait.”
“What?”
The barman picked up the photo in one hand, holding it up towards his face with an expression of concentration that Cas had no doubt meant he’d have a headache the next day. “How old’s this, anyway?”
“Five, six years.” The date was in the bottom corner for fuck’s sake; how he resisted the urge to shove the image into the man’s face he had no idea. “This one’s newer.” A second picture hit the bar with at least as much force as the first; some of the puddles slunk sideways.
The barman sneered at it, flicking the first with a grimy fingernail. “The most you can see in that one is his hair. Plenty of blond men pass through. This one,” he flicked it again, “this is the goods.”
“Why?” That picture, Cas decided, was going to need a bloody good clean when he was done here.
“Those weird-ass eyes.” He jabbed one finger at the smiling image, leaving a smudge. “That blue-green thing he’d got going on. Not normal round here, you know. Dark blue, yeah, or brown, or the poor sad freaks with the purple shit,” he smirked, “but that kinda colour? Not normal.”
“That,” Cas leaned one hand on the bar, ignoring its protesting creak, “is the biggest load of shit I’ve heard.”
The man’s expression closed, eyes becoming flat and emotionless. “Only people with eyes like that’re the freaks and the City types, and they ain’t stupid enough to come out here.”
Cas jerked the picture from the barman’s hand with a speed that he’d clearly not been expecting. “And yet here he was and you didn’t fucking care.” He threw the picture onto the counter with the first one. “I should break your fingers for wasting my time.” A
nd for the fingerprints he’d left on everything.
“You can’t call this a waste of time.” Not chancing it, the barman took two steps back, away from the glowering mercenary. “You know he was here.”
“And that’s good for what, exactly?”
The man smirked a tombstone smile. “It was only a week back. You still got a chance to catch up.” On seeing Cas’s carefully blank face and recognising that this probably wasn’t the expression—or lack thereof—that promised a reward he’d care to receive, added, “no one can survive for more’n a couple of weeks travelling on their own.”
“…And?”
“He’s either off east or south. South’s a rest-stop, pretty popular with the caravans, east’s an oasis. ’Least, it used to be.” He turned another of his camelesque smiles towards Cas. “No idea if it still is. Won’t be so good for your man if it isn’t, right?”