Steel's Edge te-4

by Ilona Andrews

  Helen leaned toward her, murmuring something. Malcolm bent over them.

  I need to move, flashed in Charlotte’s head. She needed to do something, say something, but she just couldn’t. She just stood there, locked into a painful haze.

  Malcolm Rooney walked across the lawn to her. She saw his lips move, but no sound came.

  The roof beams crashed down with a loud crack and tumbled in an explosion of sparks. Charlotte jerked. Her hearing returned, and she heard Malcolm’s deep voice: “. . . slavers.” He shook several pairs of shackles at her. “Found this on the bodies. Haven’t seen their kind in ten years. Must’ve hit quick. Looks like they popped Daisy in the head, shot Éléonore, took your fellow, and set the house on fire. Tulip hid in the woods and watched the whole thing, poor kid. The house was gone in minutes. It’s an old building. Went up like kindling. They’re on horses, looks like a dozen, maybe more, besides those.” Malcolm nodded at the bodies. “That’s Éléonore’s work. They call it the Broken Stick curse, because it locks them into weird shapes like that. The old lady had a lot of power in her.”

  Her mouth finally managed to make a word. “Why?”

  “That’s what slavers do. They raid towns like ours, steal kids and pretty women, and take them off to the Weird to sell as slaves there. This Richard fellow must’ve pissed them off somehow.”

  Richard . . . The slavers had taken him. Her mind started up slowly, as if rusted. She was too late for Éléonore and Daisy, but there was still a life they could save. “We have to go after them.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “Slavers are a nasty lot. They got what they wanted, and they’re gone. This Richard, he’s no kin to me. Hell, he didn’t even grow up around here. He stirred them slavers up like a hornets’ nest, and they chased him here, but now they’re gone, and this thing’s done with. Take a long, hard look at what he brought down on you. I say good riddance.”

  She stared at him, shocked. He would not do anything. He had already made up his mind—she saw the decision in his eyes. Malcolm Rooney, the big, strong bull of a man, was afraid. He would walk away.

  “Those bastards shattered four lives. Éléonore took me in. She made me welcome, she gave me a second chance at life, and they murdered her and burned her body and her house.” Her voice rose. “They killed Daisy, who was barely twenty, and her fifteen-year-old sister watched her die. And you’re just going to let it go?”

  Malcolm clamped his mouth shut.

  Charlotte looked past him at the Edgers. Guilt and sadness stamped their faces. Not a single one would meet her eyes.

  Dear gods. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on their ends. They agreed with Malcolm. They would all just walk away and pretend that this horror never happened. She had known that in the Edge every man was out for himself, but this? This seemed inhuman.

  “Éléonore lived here all her life.” She pointed to the charred corpse. “Her body is still smoldering over there. Don’t you understand? If we don’t stop them, they’ll do this again. Look at Tulip. Look at her!”

  People looked at their feet, at the grass, anywhere but at her or the child crying her heart out.

  “Chasing them will only get more people killed, and none of us have children or relatives to spare,” Malcolm said quietly. “We’ll find a place for Tulip. Hell, looks like Helen won’t let go of her, so I guess she’ll be coming home with us. You ought to come on down, too.”

  Charlotte looked at him because looking at Daisy’s and Éléonore’s bodies hurt. Grief filled her to the brim, bitter and overwhelming. She was choking on it. Oh gods, Rose and the boys would eventually need to know. What would she even tell them? I’m sorry I didn’t get there in time? I’m sorry I went on with my life as if it didn’t matter and let those bastards spread their misery?

  “We can fix a bedroom for you,” Malcolm said gently. “The more the merrier, they say. It will be okay, Charlotte. It will all work out. You’ve done helped many people here. We’ll find you a new place to live, don’t you worry about that. What do you say?”

  The pain, sadness, shock, and guilt churned inside her. She couldn’t contain it. She had to do something.

  The slavers thought they could stomp out people, and they would keep going, killing, burning, and hurting children. They would crush other lives just as they had crushed her little comfortable world. Even now they rode away, unpunished, carrying off the man she had healed, and she didn’t even know why any of this had happened. They would hurt him, torture him, and likely kill him.

  Somebody had to make a stand. If none of the Edgers would step up, she would have to be that somebody. There was nobody else.

  Charlotte reached deep inside herself, into the darkness, carefully hidden and locked away, and found a single crimson spark. She forged a tentative connection. Need flooded her, the magic so hungry, so desperate to break out, and feed, and kill. Fear shot through her. She almost recoiled. If she let it loose, there would be no turning back. She’d worked so hard to bind this part of herself. She had almost succeeded.

  Charlotte looked at Tulip’s face, at the wet streaks of tears stained with ash.

  “Tulip!”

  The girl looked up.

  Charlotte held on to the spark. “I can’t bring Daisy back to life, sweetheart. But I can make sure that they don’t hurt another girl the way they hurt you. I’ll make them pay. I promise you, they won’t take anyone else’s sister away.”

  Tulip’s face quivered, and she sobbed.

  “Charlotte?” Malcolm asked.

  Charlotte took a deep breath and blew on the spark.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  The crimson and darkness exploded inside her, twisting into a hungry, furious inferno.

  She looked at him, and her face must’ve been terrible, because Malcolm Rooney took a step back. Charlotte turned and strode across the grass to her truck.

  “If you go, you’re going alone!” Malcolm yelled.

  She kept walking, her magic raging inside her.

  “It won’t bring Éléonore back! They’ll just murder you. Charlotte? Charlotte!”

  She got into her truck and started the engine. The fire inside her burst out, winding about her in tendrils of deep, angry red.

  These bastards would never hurt anyone again. She would make sure of it.

  THREE

  WHEN a man found himself in difficult circumstances, it always paid to assess the situation. Especially if he woke up and found he couldn’t move.

  Richard opened his eyes.

  Let’s see. First, he was in a cage, a fact made painfully apparent by the pattern of steel bars imposed on the riders, silhouetted against an old forest. Second, his hands were tied behind his back. Third, a heavy chain shackled his legs to the steel ring in the bottom of the cage. Fourth, a thicker chain secured the cage to the cart, making several loops, as if the weight of the cage wedged into the cart’s hold wasn’t enough to hold it in place. Ergo, he was captured by the slavers, and they were afraid that he would sprout wings and take off with the three-hundred-pound cage around him.

  He couldn’t remember how he got into the cage. At some point he must’ve been beaten—his face ached and was likely bruised. He tasted mud on his lips, probably from someone’s boot. Also, judging from a less than pleasant odor, someone had taken the time to urinate on his chest. Slavers, a charming breed, always happy to treat their guests to their fabled hospitality.

  The wound in his side didn’t hurt at all, and despite all of his expectations, he was still alive.

  How in the world was he still breathing? He had taken enough wounds to recognize the stab to his liver was life-threatening even if he had been magically transported to a surgeon’s table the moment after he had received it. Instead, he’d made it fatal by running for hours.

  He recalled falling by some road. There was something in between that and the cage, something murky. For some reason, he had a feeling it involved Éléonore, Rose’s grandmother, whom he’
d met once. Another memory surfaced, a woman with gray eyes and blond hair. Her face was a blur, but he remembered her eyes under the sweep of dark blond eyebrows, intense and beautiful—his foggy memory made them luminescent—and the concern he read in their depth arrested him. Nobody had looked at him like that for years. It was such a beautiful memory that he was half-sure it was a product of his hallucinating brain yearning for something radiant in his grim, blood-drenched life.

  Except that someone had healed him because his injury was gone. Stab wounds didn’t just vanish on their own. It gave his muddy recollection of the woman with gray eyes some credence, but healing magic was exceedingly rare and highly prized. Finding someone in the Edge with it was extremely unlikely. The Edge was the hellish place you went when neither the Weird nor the Broken would have you. A healer with talent like that would’ve been treasured in the Weird.

  This was getting him nowhere. He had no plausible explanation why he was alive, so he’d have to set it aside for the time being. His more immediate problem was the cage and a crew of slavers guarding it.

  There was no way to tell how long he’d been unconscious, but it was unlikely he’d been out for too long. They were traveling through the Weird’s woods, and the magic flowed full force. The forest crowded them in, the massive tree trunks, fed by magic and nourished by rich Adrianglian soil, rose to improbable heights. Against that backdrop, the riders on the barely visible trail seemed insignificant and small. The horses moved at a slow walk, hampered by the wagon carrying him.

  Richard cataloged the familiar faces. A few were new, but he knew about half of them, prime examples of scum floating in the gutter of humanity. His memory served up their names, their brief biographies, and their weaknesses. He’d studied them the way others studied books. Some came from families, some were born psychotic, and others were just greedy and stupid. Most carried rifles and blades, their gear worn and none too clean. He didn’t see any wolf-dogs and didn’t hear any either. Where had all of the hounds gone?

  * * *

  CHARLOTTE stepped out of the truck. Ahead, the overgrown dirt road ended, turning into a forest path. The boundary loomed before her. She felt it in the very marrow of her bones, a strange disturbing pressure that threatened to squeeze the breath out of her.

  The slavers had passed through it. The brush still bowed, disturbed by the riders. She saw the traces of hoofprints on the ground and the twin grooves of wide wheels. They had a cart, and not magic-powered like the modern phaetons, but an old-fashioned, horse-drawn cart, the kind country people still used in the provinces. The trail led through the boundary, so she would have to pass this way, too. The last time she had crossed it, the feeling of her magic being peeled away nearly made her turn back.

  Charlotte took a deep breath and stepped into the boundary. The magic clutched her, squeezing at her organs as if trying to wring the lifeblood from them. The pressure pushed her, propelling her forward. Each step was a conscious effort. Sweat broke on her forehead. Another step. Another. The pressure crushed her. Charlotte hunched over. She would crawl if she had to.

  Another step.

  Suddenly, the grinding burden vanished. Magic flooded her, rejuvenating her body. It was an absurd sensation, but she felt herself opening up like a flower greeting the morning sun. If she’d had wings, they would’ve unfurled. She inhaled slowly. There it was, the familiar potent power she was so used to wielding. During her years in the Edge, living with half magic, she had forgotten how wonderful it felt.

  She had never understood why Éléonore didn’t move to the Weird . . .

  Éléonore.

  She had to keep moving. She was at least half an hour behind the slavers, probably more. The old Adrianglian forest stretched before her. The forest path forked ahead. Which way, right or left?

  Charlotte knelt to the ground, trying to follow the hoofprints. A carpet of old pine needles blanketed the floor of the woods and the path, obscuring the trail. She had learned some tracking when she was a girl from an old veteran scout living at Ganer College because she thought it was interesting. But those lessons were long ago, and she had never taken them very seriously.

  A high-pitched, labored whine came from under the brush on her left. She turned. Two brown canine eyes looked at her from a large black muzzle.

  Charlotte froze.

  The dog dipped its big head and let out another thin whine. She smelled blood. It lashed her healer instinct like a whip. The dark magic raging inside her vanished, as if snuffed out.

  “Easy now.” Charlotte crouched and moved toward the dog. “Easy.”

  It lay on its side, panting.

  She reached for it.

  The dog’s lips trembled, betraying a flash of fangs.

  Charlotte stopped moving, her hand outstretched. “If you bite me, I won’t help you.” The dog couldn’t understand her, but it could understand the tone of her voice.

  Slowly she reached forward. The dog opened its mouth. Jaws snapped but fell short of her fingers. It was too weak.

  “If you were healthy, you’d tear my hand off, huh?”

  Charlotte touched the fur, sending a current of golden sparks through the furry body. Male, low blood pressure. A bullet wound passing through the abdomen. Someone had shot the dog.

  “This world is full of terrible people,” she told him, and began to repair the damage. The bullet had entered the chest, cut through the left lung, and tore out of the dog’s side. Judging by the state of the wound and blood loss, it had happened about five to six hours ago.

  Charlotte knitted the injured tissues, rebuilding the lung.

  The dog leaned over and licked her hand, a quick, short lick, as if embarrassed by his own weakness.

  “Change your mind since it doesn’t hurt as much anymore?” She sealed the wound and petted his withers. Her hand slid against a spiked collar. “You wouldn’t be a slaver dog, would you?”

  The dog rose. He was a massive beast—if they both stood upright, he could put his paws on her shoulders.

  Charlotte got up. “Where are your owners?”

  The dog looked at her, sniffed the air, and turned to the right.

  She had nothing better to go on.

  “Right it is,” Charlotte said, and followed the dog down the path.

  * * *

  THE wagon rolled over a root, creaking.

  “That’s far enough,” a grating voice called out. Voshak Corwen, a seasoned slaver with over a dozen raids under his belt. Hardly a surprise, Richard reflected. This was the man Tuline had promised to betray. They must’ve agreed to set that little trap together, and when Richard had cut his way through Tuline’s crew, Voshak took his men and went after him.

  “We make camp here,” Voshak said.

  “We’re only two hours from the boundary,” a tall, redheaded man called out. Richard didn’t recognize him. Must be a new hire. The slavers needed to replenish their herd regularly—he kept thinning it out.

  Voshak rode into view. Of average height, he was built with a gristle-and-tendon kind of strength: lean, with high endurance. He wasn’t the fastest or the strongest, but he would go the distance. A network of scars sliced his face. No doubt he had some romantic story about how he got them instead of admitting that a stablehand had raked his face with a pitchfork during a failed slave raid.

  Voshak’s hair, a pale blond braid, which he bleached, was his trademark. It made him memorable. That’s how the slavers operated. They adopted costumes and personas, trying to make themselves larger-than-life and hoping to inspire fear. They counted on that fear. One could fight a man, but nobody could fight a nightmare.

  Voshak focused on the redhead. “Milhem, did I make you my second?”

  Milhem looked down.

  Ceyren, Voshak’s second, was likely dead; otherwise, he would be here pulling Milhem off his horse and beating him to a bloody pulp. Interesting.

  “Then don’t open your trap,” Voshak said. “If I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of y
ou.” He surveyed the riders. “If any of you morons are worried, nobody’s following us. These are Edgers. They look out for number one, and none of them want to catch a bullet. It’s been twenty hours since we last slept, and I’m tired. Now make the damn camp.” He turned to an older, one-eyed slaver. “Crow, you’re my second now. See they get it done.”

  Crow, a broad-shouldered, weather-beaten bastard, roared, “Get a move on!”

  Reasonable choice for a second, Richard reflected. Crow was older, had experience, and he worked hard to inspire fear. If his eye patch and height didn’t do it, the heavy black leather and ponytail of jet-black hair decorated with finger bones would.

  Voshak turned his horse. His gaze paused on Richard. “Awake, my gentle maid? You’ve got something right here.” The slaver touched the left corner of his mouth. “What is that? . . . Oh, that’s shit from the bottom of my boot.”

  Laughter rang out.

  Richard smiled, baring his teeth. “Always brightening the day with your humor, Leftie.”

  A muscle jerked in Voshak’s face. He clenched his reins. “You sit in your cage, Hunter. When we get where we’re going, you’ll sing like a bird when I start cutting through your joints.”

  “What was that? I didn’t quite hear.” Richard leaned forward, focusing on Voshak. A hint of fear shivered in the slaver’s eyes, and Richard drank it in. “Come closer to the cage, Voshak. Don’t cower like a little boy hiding from your daddy and his belt.”

  Voshak dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The animal jumped, and he rode off. Coward. Most of them were cowards, cruel and vicious. Brave men didn’t kidnap children in the middle of the night and sell them to perverts to earn their drinking money.

  The riders dismounted. Two secured the horses, keeping well away from his cage. Others began pulling tents from the saddlebags, olive and gray, with a red logo spelling out COLEMAN sewn on one side. The tents must’ve come from the Broken. A few slavers piled together some branches. A dark-haired man soaked them in fluid from a flask, struck a match, and dropped it on the fuel. Fire flared up like an orange mushroom. He shied back, rubbing his face.