“No, but it’s mine. I want it back, but only after it’s used on his throat. I want him to be found, too, not thrown in the river for the tuskers and barbs to eat. Is that clear?” She asked in a growl, her voice drifting lower with the sizzle of anger.
“Perfectly,” they answered.
“What kind of blade? It is a blade, is it not? He’s like us—a worker who prefers to be out of the light?” Whisper asked.
“He was, until this moment,” the client announced. Neither Whisper nor Keen doubted her, not even a bit. “As to the blade, it’s from the lands of Western Silence. Plain, four-sided. Twice the length of a hand and thin enough for you to bend, if you’ve a mind to do so. I recommend you do not, because it was cold-forged in the waterfalls that tumble from the Clockstones near the edge of the world. If you are cut, you won’t stop bleeding until there isn’t any blood left to give, such is the nature of Thirst. Is this clear?”
The killers exhaled as a pair, considering the unseen blade, which now had a name and thus, a reputation. Named weapons were things to be avoided, if one wished to enjoy a long career.
Or another day, in some cases.
There were rumors of such weapons, but nothing they believed. The eastern deserts were rife with giant cacti, searing heat, and precious little water that wasn’t guarded by tribes who viciously defended their liquid source of life. Somewhere, near the shadowed slopes of the extreme east flowed a river that began in an unseen place, tumbling down from dizzying heights to spread out under the punishing sun. The legendary metalworkers of Silence plied their trade under heavy guard, with little contact outside the kingdom. For a blade to be found outside the eastern tribes was unusual.
For it to be in the hands of a second-rate assassin was inexplicable.
“I gave it to him freely because his target was worth losing the weapon, if need be,” their patron said.
“Did he—what is his name?” Keen asked.
“Gessin.”
“Ah. Smart lad, if a bit of a social climber. Always holds his nose too high for someone in our line of work,” Whisper said.
“I thought so too, but time was of the essence, and you hadn’t responded to my earlier message.”
“We were occupied elsewhere,” Keen said, pointedly not mentioning what elsewhere meant.
The veiled woman gave a nod of approval at his vagueness. “No matter. You’re here now, and so is the boy. He’ll be spending his earnings—”
“At the Gentleman’s Cuff. A man named Kan-tu runs it. We know,” Keen finished for her.
Gessin was known to love clothes more than anything else, except himself. The elite tailor would, no doubt, already be cutting fabric for a fine surcoat of something subtle, like silver dragons and naked maidens. Gessin was far too fond of his status, and now it would be his undoing.
“I see. Then my money is well spent.” She rose and left the two scrambling to stand. “Sit, drink. Begin your task when I leave and bring the blade to me when you’re done. He must die, and you must witness his last breath.”
Whisper studied the veiled woman’s face. She could see nothing but shadows and teeth under the fabric protrusion that hid her face from direct light, and as a nearby lamp gave a heroic flicker, Whisper saw she was smiling, though it was feral, even monstrous, playing about a full set of lips.
“Where will you be?” Whisper asked.
“Around.” With that, the woman slipped through the crowd, leaving the pair of killers to stare after the space she left behind.
Nolan, Starway
West
“Well, this is unexpected.”
He’d spoken softly because his mouth was hanging open at the expanse of roadway stretching away into the distance.
“Impressive, isn’t it? I’ve stayed away because it was just me, but with you and the Loop? Different story,” Avina said. “Welcome to the Starway.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, and I haven’t seen evidence of the builders. It’s more than just a road. Look,” Avina said walking to the edge of the road. She stepped on it and something happened. Nolan’s eyes snapped to the surface, and he watched with febrile intensity.
“It glows—subtly, but still,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Yeah. Do that again,” he said.
She stepped on the road and began to walk west in small, hard steps. There was a distinct flash, and it ran ahead of her feet.
“I’ll be damned. It lights up for nighttime travel. What’s the power source?” Nolan asked.
“No idea. Don’t know who built it, who fixes it, or how it got here. I don’t know a lot of large-scale engineering, but this feels a lot more—”
“Permanent. No one builds a road if they aren’t’ going to stay, and no one brings that kind of heavy equipment to a planet without a plan,” Nolan said. “The Starway, you said?”
“That’s what I heard it called by more than one person,” Avina said.
“If it’s a road and it goes to the stars, then how?” he asked, looking up and down along the lonely length of dark, even roadway. To the east, there was a curve north, and to the west, the path went incrementally south. “Cherry, did you see this on our descent?”
Cherry flashed a grid over his sight, marking part of the Starway. “Got most of it on the way down from the ship, but it’s spotty. I can tell you it goes the entire length of the northern continent. Ends at a secondary western mountain range, and in the east, it ends forty klicks before that beast of a river. Whoever built this was funded and equipped at a governmental level. This is no pirate operation,” Cherry said.
He relayed that to Avina, who took Cherry’s presence in stride. “Where are we in reference to the western end?” Avina asked.
“Good question, but the short answer is a heluva lot closer than the east. Something else is bothering me,” Nolan said.
“A huge roadway and no traffic?” Avina asked.
“Exactly. Why aren’t people using this? I don’t see drones, or even tracks,” Nolan said, pushing his fingers against the hard road surface. It was unyielding, like ceramic.
“You know, I was watching one of the small lakes just to the south of here. There was only one time that it wasn’t swarmed with animals drinking,” Avina said, her voice trailing slowly away in thought.
“When something bigger—”
“And hungrier”—Avina added.
“Was nearby,” he said. “We need to get off this road. Right now.” Without a sound they both darted off into the underbrush, through the moss, and back toward the Loop, which was parked against the trunk of a twisting tree. Seconds later, Nolan heard the distinct jingle of metal, like tiny bells ringing in the clear air.
“How did you know?” Avina asked.
“Same way you did. This highway isn’t deserted. It’s under someone’s control, at least in this area.” He drew his pistol smoothly, eyes cut east as the noise began to grow. There was a hissing, tinkling metal, and then the distinct sounds of people—coughing, walking, even a muffled sob.
Then he saw them.
“Crowe,” Nolan whispered. “And Tilde. And the kids,” he said, teeth coming together in frustration.
“Who’s leading them?” Avina asked.
Nolan stared at the column and the people leading it. There were five of them—three at the front, two in back, all armed and riding on low sleds with fat tires that hissed over the paved road. Crowe and his people were tied together with a thin cable, hands bound and blindfolded. One of the kids fell, then was pulled mewling to her feet by Tilde, and both of them received a blow across the back from one of the overseers who wielded a long, thin stick with savage expertise.
The overseers wore something like uniforms, a mute blue and green patterned vest and pants, technical boots, and wide-brimmed hats that hid their faces in shadow. They were lean and alert, their eyes sweeping the horizon in a restless dance. All wore short swords and pistols, and the leader had a large-bore
rifle at the ready.
Nolan’s breath caught as his fists balled up hard enough to crack knuckles in a series of violent snaps.
Avina placed a soft hand on his shoulder, eyes round at his violent aura. “Wait.”
Her whisper tickled his ear as the lead vehicle slowed some twenty meters away but facing ahead.
“The fuck you doing?” one of the guards barked in a high, female voice from the back cart.
The guy with the rifle turned, smiled, and grabbed his crotch, leering at her as he began walking directly toward Nolan, his eyes on the prisoners as one hand moved casually to grasp the zipper on his pants. He looked down and began to whistle tunelessly, and piss began spattering on a rock not three meters away, earning a wincing look from Avina. He was behind a mossy tree, and thus, out of sight from the column.
Nolan looked at Avina, shrugged, and slid his knife from its sheath, then took a quick step forward and buried the blade in the guard’s throat. He slashed sideways to open half his neck in a hot jet of lifeblood. With his left hand, Nolan caught his shoulder and eased him to the ground, urine dribbling weakly across his leg as he spasmed, gasped once, and then fell still. His eyes—dark, flat, dead—glared skyward, mild surprise on his face.
He had a name badge that read Asmir, and whether it was his name or the ship he’d been on no longer mattered. Asmir was already a memory.
Nolan mouthed left, back to Avina, who pointed her pistol and began moving with a purpose. Nolan burst from behind the tree, pistol cracking with authority as the head of a front guard blossomed into a shower of gray and red spume. Avina’s first bullet tore through the neck of the man with the stick, sending him spinning like a broken doll as looping arterial blood sprayed across the prisoners, causing instant chaos.
Screams of fright clashed with the hammer blows of gunfire as two guards quickly drew their own weapons and began firing wildly. One round went high, slashing through a limb above Nolan, but then he was close enough to see the remaining guard slide down from the front cart, every move filled with a graceful lethality that he recognized from the streets of Brightline. A knife appeared in the guard’s hand as he darted forward with a silvery quickness that would have killed most men. The blade scraped over Nolan’s ribs, but he whirled, elbow spinning to graze the guard’s forehead and send them tumbling apart in spitting fury.
“Go fuck yourself, fish,” the guard said, then sent an open hand chop toward Nolan’s neck in a blur. He was fast—fast enough to land blows, and strong enough to kill.
Nolan was faster.
Nolan bulled inside his guard until their faces were nearly touching, pistol gone and left with that most personal of fights—hand to hand. One of them would die, and badly. Nolan’s fingers locked around the guard’s collarbone and squeezed until it shattered, earning a bellow of pain. When the guard’s mouth opened, Nolan reached inside with a free hand and dug his fingers into his soft palate. The guard gagged and bucked, but Nolan’s other hand wrapped around his neck with hideous power, making the skin go dead white where each finger touched. The guard began to struggle, spitting and foaming at the mouth, but Nolan took that opportunity to rip off the guard’s ear in a shower of bloody droplets. The guard shrieked, high and desperate, then Nolan began digging into the wound with his thumb, not letting up one bit.
There were no honorable fights. There were only fights, and as on the streets of Brightline, winning was the only thing that mattered.
Gagging in great, shuddering jerks, the guard tried to knee Nolan in the balls, still trying to fight despite a thin line of red drool hanging from his wagging tongue. Nolan released him, spun, then stepped forward. The guard brought his hands up for defense, but Nolan had no interest in breaking hand bones on a thick skull.
With a bellow, Nolan fell forward and down on the inside of the guard’s knee, tearing every tendon with a merciless series of snapping sounds. They went down together in a heap, grasping for any advantage with a torrent of curses filling the air around them.
“Get fu—” the guard tried to say, which was stupid, because he had bigger concerns—like Nolan’s thumb under his jaw. Pushing hard against the soft tissue, Nolan drove his thumb into flesh like a knife as the guard lashed out with punches that grew weaker, spasmodic, and then stopped entirely.
The guard’s air left in a final sigh, and he was done. Nolan withdrew his thumb, chest heaving as he grubbed on the road for his pistol. His fingers closed around it, and he whirled to see Avina standing over a corpse and a cowering guard.
It was the woman. The angry officer, and she was bleeding from her mouth while glaring at Avina with a radioactive hatred.
“I see you two have gotten to know each other,” Nolan said, wheezing and staggering. “Crowe, it’s Nolan. Settle your people and tell them to shut the fuck up. I can’t hear myself think.”
Crowe was shocked, then relieved, and then in a moment, in command, harsh whispers went around as he assured his people they were in less danger, if not free.
“What’s your name?” Nolan asked the guard who Avina clearly wanted to kill.
“Does it matter?” she asked, her voice flat with anger.
“It does to me. And to these people, and to Avina—that’s her, by the way, the woman who wants very badly to put a bullet in your head,” Nolan said.
The woman shook her head slowly in a kind of stunned disbelief. “You don’t understand what you’re doing, fish.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that. Well, two and a half, but I killed that asshole before he could finish saying it again.” Nolan regarded his thumb, slick with blood and a bit of hair. “What does fish mean?”
The guard spat bloody phlegm on the road, then shrugged. “A new arrival. Fresh out of the pond up there, stupid, don’t know shit. You come down on your wrecks and think this is some colony run by the rules you’re used to, but it isn’t. It’s nothing like that.” She tilted her head and shrugged again, earning another hard stare from Avina. “Loftus is my name. Was a deck chief on a carrier that broke up over the southern islands. Six of us out of four thousand made it on rafts, drinking our own piss and hallucinating before we hit shore. So if you think that sidearm scares me, you can shove it up your ass. It doesn’t.”
“Loftus, it’s a pleasure, and I’m sorry you lost your crew; I really am. Before I take your lungs out with a shovel, why don’t you tell me what inspired you to become a seller of humans?” Nolan asked her.
“I didn’t.” Loftus sighed, settling into the idea she was going to die. She was hard. “I was just—”
“Following orders?” Nolan asked, then shot her in the leg.
She wailed, everyone jumped, and Avina began edging away, concern on her features. Nolan leaned down next to Loftus, his face a mask of unalloyed rage. He turned to stare at a skinny girl of no more than twelve, her body bruised, face streaked with tears, and lips split from a heavy blow. If anything, he got angrier.
“Steady, dear,” Cherry said. Nolan shook his head, ignoring her.
“Up until this very minute, I wondered why I’d come down like a fucking meteorite, barely survived, and then found myself wandering around on this planet. Granted, my company is—well, you can see her. She’s beautiful, and what guy wouldn’t want to be marooned on a planet with her?” Nolan smiled at Loftus, and she recoiled in horror despite clutching the meat of her calf muscle where the bullet struck.
“F-f-f-” Loftus said, spit streaming from her mouth.
Nolan smiled wider.
“Fuck me. I know. I know.” Nolan pointed his gun at her thigh and waved the barrel in small circles. “I figure—and I’m no anatomist, but still—I can put nine or ten rounds in you before you die.” Then he holstered his weapon, and Loftus cringed, before looking up with something like hope. “But I’m not going to do that,” Nolan said.
He drew a knife and let the sun gleam on the mono-bonded edge. It glimmered like a star, casting a bar of light across Loftus’s eyes, and she winced
in pain and fear.
“Avina?”
“Yes?”
“Cut them loose and take them off the road. Walk them to the Loop and start medical care, hydration, whatever they need. I’ll be there in a moment,” Nolan said, voice frigid with a lack of emotion.
Loftus gathered some of her will while Crowe and his people were taken to safety, and when Nolan turned back to her, he saw a career soldier, not the sniveling wreck from a moment earlier.
“Make it quick,” she said.
“Not a fucking chance.”
“Make it quick and I’ll tell you what you need to know,” Loftus said, then hawked and spat again. “Just what I needed. A fucking crusader coming down from the clouds.”
“That’s the nature of luck. Sometimes it’s stacked against you. Like now. What do I need to know?” Nolan asked.
“You’re going to die, for one thing. We’ll be missed, and they’re going to come for you.”
“Who will?” Nolan’s question dripped contempt.
“Everyone. You don’t fuck with the patterns. You”—she laughed, a raw, gritty sound of resignation and anger—“this system has been around since way before you. Those people are meant to work and serve, not run free like Filus, breeding and dying without adding anything.”
“Adding anything to what?”
She eyed me, then shook her head. “Fucking fish. That’s the problem with you. Didn’t you look around on the way down? You think this planet is wild? It is, but only parts of it. There is power here, and it ends at the top, near the temple. They take whatever they want, and it all flows to the temple.”
“West or east?”
“What?”
“The temple. Is it west . . . or east?” Nolan asked.
Loftus grimaced, adjusted her leg, and pointed east. “East, but you’ll never get there.”
“Fine. Let’s start small. Where were you taking them? Crowe and his people?”
“To the Falls. They’d be processed there and sent away according to skill. They’re ferals, so most likely they would end up digging ditches or serving as whores or drivers. Or worse.”
Lost Kingdom: Book 1 in the Lost Kingdom Series Page 9
