Making Peace, page 24
Ugly stopped in front of a building, which shook me out of my thoughts. He checked the address against a small scrap of paper and nodded, then smacked me lightly across the chest with the back of his hand. I made eye contact and he shot me some of the signals they’d taught me: one finger across the lips, two fingers pointing at his eyes, then one finger pointing over his shoulder. I got the message: Shut up, be observant, watch my back. I nodded, then followed him into the brothel.
A couple of girls greeted us just inside the front door. Having braved the Red Cathedral just a short while ago, I managed to hold in my blush and followed Ugly’s orders. One maiden seemed to be the hostess. Red fox ears blended with her straight red hair, and a matching fox tail hung out of her short skirt. The other girl was human, a brunette. Both were thin and attractive and looked like they were in their early twenties. The two girls made some flirtatious small talk at Ugly, but I tuned them out and kept my eyes open.
Sen’s and Ugly’s lessons from training took turns playing in my head. First task: threat assessment. Five women in the room, two greeting and three lounging, one of them eying us and estimating our worth.
No one seemed armed, and none were within range to strike us with any hidden weapons. On to the second task: layout assessment. One closed door to our right, an open archway to our left leading to what looks like a sitting room. A staircase straight ahead of us, curving to the left and leading to the second floor. Hallway to the left of the staircase leading straight back into the rest of the brothel.
I checked over my shoulder and saw two floor-to-ceiling windows flanking the front door, but not many other windows in the place. Brothels were designed for privacy, so that made sense. I posted myself with my back against the wall to Ugly’s left, watching his back as ordered.
I tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear the fox girl say, “Sorry, I don’t know any girl by that name.”
“Of course not. Any girl working here with olive skin and curly blonde hair?” Ugly asked.
The fox girl laughed, tossing her long red braid over her shoulder. “Only half the girls here. If that’s your type, you’ve come to the right place.”
She was pretending not to notice the Keeper’s emblem on his right shoulder pauldron. We come in armed and wearing our emblems but she’s acting like we’re prospective customers, I thought. She’s hiding something. My interviewer’s suspicion was instantly piqued.
Ugly glanced over and gave me a look. I watched him raise his right hand to scratch at his left shoulder with two fingers. Target nearby, he was telling me.
I scratched my right cheekbone: Understood.
The maiden was still talking, telling Ugly she had two or three girls with olive skin and blonde hair available right now in any combination, and would he like to see them?
I noticed the fox maiden talked with her hands, making gestures which mostly matched what she was saying, though some didn’t seem to fit at all. One of the three girls further back in the room – the one who had been watching us – got up and headed down the hallway to the left of the staircase. I watched her like a hawk from my peripheral vision, my heart pounding in my chest. She entered a doorway on the left. Eight seconds later, a slim figure in a hooded cloak followed her out of the room and down the hallway toward the back of the house.
I hissed to get Ugly’s attention and ran my left index finger down the left side of my eye: Eyes on target. I moved toward the back hallway at a quick pace, not running but not wanting to lose sight of the person in the hood. I heard Ugly drop the conversation with the fox hostess, which only made her increase her volume. She followed us down the hallway, me in the lead with Ugly behind, and the hostess now loudly demanding to know what we thought we were doing. The hooded figure ahead of us broke into a run, hurrying toward a door in the back wall behind the staircase. I hurried after, my feet pounding the boards. The maiden who had gone to warn our target made a grab for me with both hands but I spun on one foot and dodged her without breaking my stride. I heard a thud behind me as Ugly simply knocked her aside.
Our target hit the back door at full speed, knocking it open and launching out into the street. The wind grabbed the hood of the cloak and pulled it aside, revealing curly blonde hair.
I called out to her, “Wait, Ina!” but she wasn’t having it. She darted down an alleyway to the left. I ran out into the street after her with Ugly pounding the ground behind me.
Ina led us on a hard chase, leaping over crates, dodging carriages, and using every back alley in the neighborhood. Whenever we’d start to catch up a maiden would jump in our path to offer her company rather insistently, or a vendor would roll a barrel slowly into the street.
The neighborhood seemed to be against us… and then I realized, it really was. We were hunting Ina on her home turf. Ugly’s training echoed in my head. “Do you want to be a nice guy, or use tactics that will work?” If people intended to get in my way, I had to let them know there would be consequences. I drew the large combat knife from my belt and ran with the hilt clenched in my fist. No one else blocked our path. Casual class loyalty went as far as threats to one’s own life, it seemed.
With the obstacles removed we gained on Ina quickly. We were within ten feet when she veered sharply and slammed through another door, entering a building. The door swung shut behind her. I made to follow, but a huge force yanked on the back of my collar, pulling me up short so fast I gagged as the front of the shirt slammed into my throat. I shot Ugly a nasty look, but he was already scanning the front of the building.
Ugly twirled one finger, then pointed at the building. Circle around.
I nodded and sheathed my knife. I headed around the side, looking back just in time to see him breach the front door with a kick.
I turned the corner and stopped, a bit surprised. The building seemed to go on for quite a ways, much longer than brothels around here usually did. Instead of balconies or small privacy windows, there were no windows at all on this side. The building resembled one of the warehouses one or two Tiers down from Maiden Lane. Had we followed her down one of the ramps? I cursed myself for not paying attention and continued toward the back of the building.
There was one back door. It was locked when I tried it, so I did one of Sen’s tricks he’d taught me and clumsily popped the handle latch with the point of my knife. The hinges squealed as the door opened, and I winced at the sound. I entered the dark warehouse, softening my footsteps to stay quiet.
The inside of the building was dusty, and piles of garbage lay everywhere. I walked down a series of twisting hallways barely wide enough for my shoulders. The wind outside sang through cracks in the wooden walls, and I could barely make out the wooden boxes forming this maze. I turned left, then right, then left, and left again. I lost track after the first four turns and was just about to turn around and head back to double check some turns I’d missed, when I heard muffled thumping up ahead. Metal screeched, and I heard wood splintering. Suddenly there was a loud crash, and then silence. Sweating, I hurried ahead, breaking into a jog.
Too late, I remembered Ugly’s training about traps. My foot came down, the floor clicked, and I felt something clobber me at chest height. Ribs cracked and breath failed me, but I managed to catch myself and stay upright. That turned out to be bad luck, because another something smashed into the back of my head, knocking me forward to sprawl out on the dusty floor. Coughing brought the taste of blood, and I wasn’t sure if it came from a cut lip or internal injuries.
I started to crawl back the way I’d come, pulling myself along with numb hands. Booted feet appeared in front of my face, and I looked up with blurry eyes to see a woman’s face framed with curly hair looking down at me. She raised one boot. I tried to beg her to stop, but I couldn’t breathe. Her boot came down. My world went red, and then black.
CHAPTER 33
I REMEMBER LEATHER rubbing on a stone floor, metal scraping, and heavy groaning. Grunting and gasping: the sounds of someone dragging an object too heavy for them. Darkness swirling behind my eyes, vision cloudy and miserable, and everything hurting. Being dragged into a more or less upright sitting position, coils of rough material draping around me. A woman cursing, I remember that, as I tried to raise one hand. Another explosion against my head, and then falling back into oblivion.
CHAPTER 34
I WOKE UP to bright morning sunlight coming in through my bedroom window. The breeze carried a hint of flowers, as it always did in my uncle’s neighborhood.
“Come on, sleepyhead,” my sister Katie said.
I turned to see her standing at the side of my bed, all five-foot-four of her, tall for her twelve years. She was tugging at my hand, which she’d pulled from under the covers. I groaned and tried to drag the blanket back over my head, which was hurting me for some reason. Another one of my migraines. Unusual for a boy of 7 years but not unheard of, the doctor assured us.
Katie gave me no quarter, swinging our clasped hands like a jump-rope and laughing. “Bel, get up. It’s time to play soldiers.”
“Soldiers are stupid, Katie,” I grumbled. “Remember what Dad said: ‘It’s never okay to hurt someone.’”
Invoking our late father momentarily sobered her up, but she was determined. She’s always determined, I groaned to myself inside my aching head. My sister gave me no slack, especially not when it came to her favorite game.
Realizing she’d have to escalate things to achieve her objective, she hurled herself on top of me and began tickling me. I wiggled my tiny body, desperate to escape into the blankets, but my sister outweighed me and knew it. Soon we were both laughing, my headache mostly forgotten.
“Okay, okay, let me up. We can play soldiers. I said okay!”
With a laugh, she disentangled herself from me and leapt back to her feet, coming down gracefully. “One hell of a fighter in the making,” my uncle always said.
I crawled from the covers and slid to the floor, where she had set up our game pieces. She had laid out the cast plastic figurines of soldiers holding a variety of weapons, plus vehicles, a tactical measuring stick, and terrain pieces. Katie was particularly fond of the beautiful Valkyrie army, inspiring women in cloaks who specialized in close-quarters defensive combat, which now lined her side. She’d assigned me the Hunter force: an army of people morphed into beasts to accommodate the harsh environments of their colony worlds. Two of the groups in my army hated each other in real life, but they’d been lumped together for the purposes of this game. I tried to clear my head and focus.
“You go first,” Katie said. She always said that. Her army was defensive and built on reacting. Uncle had explained her strategy to me last month when he saw how often she beat me at this game. Since he had taught me a few things about tactics, I had started to win once in a while.
We made a few moves, back and forth, neither of us drawing blood. Finally, Katie got bored as she always did and fed me an opening into her lines, deliberately leaving one flank exposed. I knew she’d done it on purpose, but I liked the idea of taking one of her pieces too much to resist the urge, which she probably knew. I slid one of my slavering, hairy beast men across the floor and touched the pieces together. They began a countdown, then displayed their numbers above their heads. My beast man grew brighter and flashed with an internal light while her Valkyrie glaive master dimmed, indicating it was lost.
“Ha!” I reached forward and snatched up the piece and was just about to really launch into my gloating routine when I felt a sharp prick in my hand. I opened my fingers to see the Valkyrie writhing in pain against my palm. Her plastic weapon had sliced open my hand, and my blood was washing over her. Her body rocked back and forth as her lips opened in desperate gasps, arrow shafts suddenly poking out of her torso.
The beast man on the floor flashed again and I looked at him, only it wasn’t a beast man anymore. It was me standing there holding a bloody longsword. The monstrous look of savage delight on those familiar features sent chills down my spine.
I shrieked, cradling the Valkyrie’s broken form in both hands, and as I turned my eyes back to her I saw Maren, the serving girl who’d died the night of the fire. She was trying to cry again, but the pain was too much, and her body was wracked with silent screams. She breathed her last and went limp in my hands, covered in her blood and mine.
I knelt on the floor, a boy of seven, cradling a dead woman in my hands. Katie walked around the game pieces and knelt next to me, wrapping my tiny body in the long, lanky arms of a young woman who would never see adulthood. She rested her forehead against my temple, her lips against my ear.
“It’s real now, Bel,” my sister whispered. “Be careful of your choices.”
CHAPTER 35
I CAME BACK to consciousness with my head throbbing. One of my eyes wouldn’t open, which was fine because it was too dark to see anything. My hands were tied behind me, and I was seated in a wooden chair with my feet bound to the chair legs and cross supports. Blood, now mostly dried, had pooled in the folds all down the front of my mangled shirt. My neck muscles screamed at me as I dragged my head upright to scan the room.
It actually wasn’t too dark to see, it was just taking my one good eye a while to decide if it wanted to show me the world. It made up its mind and cleared enough to make out Ugly’s huge bulk tied to a chair on my left a few feet away. Wooden crates surrounded us, making a small room inside a larger room. I guessed we might still be in the same warehouse where we got ambushed, which made some sense considering the difficulty our captor had in dragging us.
Ugly looked like he was in worse shape than I was. At least, I hoped I didn’t look that bad. He sagged in his restraints, blood trickling from cuts everywhere on his body.
My vision started to swim, and I had to close my good eye. I did my best to ride out the wave of nausea that came with the spins. I don’t know how long I sat like that trying to collect myself, but just when the spinning finally started to subside, I heard a click from somewhere beyond the boxes and soft footsteps approaching.
Should I pretend to be unconscious? I don’t know. Better to greet them awake, maybe; see what’s going to happen to me. I tried to swallow that last thought but decided the reasoning was sound.
A bouncing light approached us, and a slim woman came into view around a corner between two of the crates. She was dressed in a brown leather outfit, stretched tight across her athletic body. Her beautiful young face looked like the glamorous models companies hired for advertisements back home. She had creamy olive skin a shade lighter than most natives. Her blonde curly hair was the same as the woman we chased last night, which meant…
Which meant this was probably Ina. Ina was the only person we had discovered was out of place at the crime scene. When we’d chased her, she had fled to a prepared hideout, ambushed us, and had tied Ugly and me to chairs. My stomach churned as I realized we were in the clutches of the only suspect in a serial killer case. We were bound and helpless somewhere deep inside her lair.
And none of our fellow Keepers knew where we were.
Ina approached Ugly and me slowly, the candlelight spilling from the holder in her hand and across both of us. She considered me with something like uncertainty in her eyes, which was more confusing to me than any other part of our situation.
Ina set the candle down on the corner of one crate in the middle of our little room and leaned back against the wooden crate, watching the two of us. As if remembering something, she came forward and checked Ugly’s bonds, stretching to look behind him. She approached me, and I instinctively flinched away from her, but she only stretched her neck to check on my bonds as well, then backed away and retreated to her crate in the middle of the room. I tried not to look at the various knives she had tucked into her belt and strapped to her limbs.
By the Valkyrie, she has a lot of knives. No, Bel, don’t look. Look at anything else. Wait, why did she retreat to her crate? Why is she acting so skittish around us? Kinda weird, don’t you think? I agreed with myself that, yes, it was very odd, and decided to keep my eyes off the knives I wasn’t supposed to be looking at so I could get a better look at her facial expression.
Ina regarded me with wary eyes and crossed arms. Her closed body language screamed “insecurity”. Why would she be insecure here? I glanced at Ugly out of the corner of my eye and saw his face was twitching in his sleep, but he was hardly in any position to threaten her. Certainly I was not. Curious.
I looked back at her and decided to try my luck. “What—“
“So—“
We interrupted each other, and we each stopped to let the other continue. Then we stared at each other, the silence growing longer.
What is up with this girl? I thought. And she is only a girl, I realized. Probably barely out of her teenage years, if that.
She gathered her unruly hair into a low ponytail and she started to flick the end of it back and forth with one finger, waiting for me to speak. She struck me as so wholly unsuited to the role of a killer that I started to doubt my earlier suspicions. I would have laughed aloud had she not been currently in possession of numerous lethal looking blades, our bound bodies, and several suspected kills.
Or were they her kills? I was starting to think I had judged her unfairly.
As if realizing she had the upper hand and had better say something, she stopped nervously flicking her hair and stood up straighter. “So, who are you? Why were you chasing me?”
I tried to keep my face blank and ran some calculations in my head. Was it possible she had no idea? Was this just an act? I decided I’d better keep her talking until Ugly came around. Our voices were disturbing his hyper-vigilant nature, and his head jerked as he tried to claw his way back to consciousness.
