Making Peace Page 5

  The clicking finally stopped. The Hegemon let five more heartbeats go by before he spoke. When he did, it was in a deep, slow voice. He had the kind of voice I imagine executioners must have by the end of their lives.

  “I require only one thing of you, First Captain.” One bony finger rose into the air, its fingernail like a talon sharp enough to pluck out an eye. “Satisfaction. My satisfaction will ensure your wellbeing, and that of your band.” He lowered his hand back to the arm of his throne. “My satisfaction can bring many benefits, First Captain. We have worked together many years, you and I, and you have done well for it. Continue to satisfy me, and this relationship will also continue.”

  Captain bowed low from the waist, and all of us scrambled to follow suit. After three heartbeats he straightened back up and met the Hegemon’s gaze. “How may I satisfy you, Your Excellency?”

  The Hegemon seemed to like this reply. His face didn’t change but I could tell he was pleased because we were still alive. The tension was killing me, and he wasn’t even speaking to me yet. I resolved to treat the captain to several pints when this was over.

  The Hegemon leaned forward in his chair. The first expression I had seen since we’d met flickered across his face, and it was not an improvement. His whole face contorted, skin stretching, thin lips drawing back in a snarl over sharp teeth. He looked like a monster out of my childhood picture books, stretching to devour us. His voice, cold and hard before, now carried an added edge of malice. “Hunt them, Captain, the ones who did this. Hunt them, and bring them to me.” His face relaxed back into blankness, and he turned to gaze out the archway over the city. “People are most motivated when placed upon a hook, Captain. Bring me the ones responsible. Then you and your band will be off the hook, the ones you bring me will take your place on the hook, and I will turn my attention to them for my satisfaction.”

  Please oh Lady, I prayed silently, let us make it off this hook alive.

  Captain was bowing again, and we were all ready to follow him this time. He waited, then straightened as before. “I swear, Your Excellency, it will be done.” The Hegemon raised one hand and made a single sweeping gesture, letting us know he was done with us. We backed away ten steps as befitted his rank, then turned. I stepped aside to let Captain take the lead on the way out of the room. As the doors were closing behind us, I glanced back in time to see the green-eyed advisor bend low beside the throne, whispering to his master.

  CHAPTER 7

  OUTSIDE IN THE street, we walked about a half mile without speaking. Captain stepped into an alleyway and we all followed. The Keepers took up places: Captain and Vapor in the center, Ugly leaning against the opening of the alley and watching the street, one ear cocked to listen to the conversation.

  “That was the mage,” Captain said, looking at Vapor. “What’s your assessment?”

  Vapor looked uncomfortable, crossing her arms below her breasts. “He’s strong. Really strong.” Captain waited, and she sighed. “Yeah, stronger than me. By a lot, I think.”

  Captain leaned back against the alley wall, still watching her face. “And?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “And… He knows it. Either he was born with naturally strong Gift genes and the nano-machines didn’t have as much work to do augmenting them, or he’s worked day and night to stretch his power. He’s confident. I’d say overconfident, except he can probably back most of it up. And he’s a typical dominant personality, too, of course. If Bel hadn’t distracted me and shaken us apart, he might have followed us out into the street to start something.”

  Captain grunted and turned his head to look down the alley. Rainwater had collected in puddles that smelled like rotting filth, and this was still the nobles’ district. A whole slew of footprints crisscrossed the mud, marking this as a high-traffic area. I spotted one mud puddle that looked remarkably like blood and decided to give my already fluttering stomach a break and quit inspecting our surroundings.

  After a while, Vapor spoke again, hesitantly. “I can tell you one thing, though.”

  Captain turned back, eyebrow raised in a question.

  Vapor continued. “He was trained. I mean very structured schooling. The way he raised his energies, moved them, it was right out of one of the manuals they teach from in the big schools. I don’t mean his technique was just refined from practice. The starts and stops, the beginning of finding the energy-thread, the swirl patterns, all of it, right down to the finest detail.”

  “…And?”

  “And, well… My master used to say schooling was well and good, but it boxes in the mind. ‘The most important lesson for a Gifted,’ he would say, ‘is to learn how to think.’ With nothing but official schooling you learn certain patterns other people have thought of, but you fail to find patterns for yourself. You don’t learn to improvise or make do with what you’ve got if conditions aren’t exactly as described. So… I mean, if he was off guard, somehow, or… maybe…” She bit her lip, trailing off.

  Captain’s other eyebrow went up, and he got a real thoughtful look on his face.

  I glanced back and forth between them. “Wait a minute. The plan is to find the killer, right? Why does it sound like you’re making plans to fight this guy?”

  Without turning, Ugly answered me. “Always have a plan to kill someone tougher than you, scribbler. If you’re afraid of them, find their weakness and plan on how to exploit it. A person you’re ready to kill is a person who can’t rattle you.”

  I shifted, my boots squelching in the mud. “Doesn’t he have magic? How do you even fight something like that?”

  Vapor looked at me with exasperation. “It isn’t magic, Bel. Everyone calls it that because they don’t know how it works, but that’s not right. It’s just science, understanding how things work, and the right genes augmented with nano-machines.”

  I shifted again. “Well, I can’t do it.”

  “Few can,” she sighed. “Those who do have the rare genes are usually pretty weak even with augmentation. Shield can only heal, and it’s taken her years to learn that, and she has to sing or pray to focus.”

  “Well, I’m still going to call it magic.” I coughed into my fist as she rolled her eyes. “And I don’t like the idea of having to kill some kind of super nightmare guy.”

  Captain waved our conversation away. “We aren’t planning to kill anyone. However, our business is to know how to overcome anyone at any time. We aren’t loyal to any House. We’re loyal to order itself. If any House starts a war, our job is to extinguish that House before real damage can be done. Sometimes that means taking out just the corrupted leader and installing a new head of the House. Sometimes it means wiping the entire House and leaving a vacancy the others rush in to fill.” He pushed off from the wall and stood up. “This was Vapor’s first time meeting the Hegemon’s pet nano-mage. I hadn’t been able to assess on my own how big a piece the Hegemon has been moving around the board. Now I know.”

  He turned and walked past Ugly out into the street. Vapor went to join Captain. On her way past Ugly, he put his hand on her shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Ugly smiled and said, “Well done,” and Vapor lit up like the sun itself, beaming right back at him.

  The four of us were wrapped in our own thoughts on the walk home, a silent trudge through the streets. At some point, it started to rain. Starting from the rich district and heading into the poorer, we began on clean stones and gradually drifted into muck. By the time we got home, our boots were caked from the sucking mud, and it had served to foul our moods.

  We parted without a word or a glance (excepting me, who must insatiably glance at everything), each of us heading to his own work. Captain stalked toward his office, and I saw him gesture for Ugly to join him. Tavel kept an eye out and saw us come in. He got up from his table and headed for the sparring yard where I assumed he would work off his outrage in a productive manner.

  I scraped the mud off my boots as best I could, spent a few minutes enjoying a warm drink in the mess hall, and then headed for the room I had been assigned. It was on the third floor of the barracks, which was itself an old monastery converted sometime in the distant past. This meant there were plenty of small bedrooms, more accurately called cells. Captain liked to fill them from front to back. I had been assigned the one on the far end.

  You would think no one would want to spend their time cooped up in a tiny room, but, as I learned quickly during my first few days with the Keepers, people who endure lives steeped in violence require regular intervals of solitude. The old floorboards of the hallway creaked and groaned in protest at my heavy boots. I passed doorways, some of them closed but a few of them open. Naturally, I had to look in.

  The first open door was on the right side, and this one belonged to Shield. Interested in what I might find, I took the liberty of walking past rather slowly.

  Shield’s room was sparse. A bed with a quilt, a desk, a simple wooden chair, a second larger chair. Yet small touches still lent it a feminine air. A small tea set with two delicate cups on saucers, decorated with bright green birds. A hand mirror on the low dresser, beside a wooden paddle hairbrush. A bowl of drying rose petals giving off a faint bouquet.

  Amidst this, Shield presented quite the contradiction. The lady herself was upside down with her back and feet against the wall, braced up on her hands. She was dressed in heavy and extremely conservative clothing, well belted and pinned in place. As I watched, she lowered herself with a gasping intake of breath, held it, then slowly straightened her arms again, pushing herself up the wall. Sweat dripped from her nose, her eyelashes, the tips of her ears. Her long brown hair was done up in a thick, hanging braid which now looked frayed and soaked with sweat. She didn’t notice me as I passed, or else didn’t have the energy to indicate it. br />
  I moved to the next open doorway, which belonged to Vapor. The smell of her fruity perfume was strongest here. So, too, was the faint smell of mechanical oil. I glanced in and had to stop, so unexpected was the sight of her quarters.

  She was seated on her bed, painting the nails on her flesh foot. She’d left her muddy boots downstairs to dry. She was dressed as before: robes covered with buckles and belts. Her purple bedspread and the heavy red curtains hanging to either side of her small cell window did not match, but they were both of thick and expensive looking material. I had the impression she had collected them at different times without actually seeing them together first, rather than out of a unified decor theme. She kept a small desk beside her bed, as did we all, but she had painted swirls and hearts in various colors all over the thing. A small oval of plush green carpet sat in the center of the room.

  What amazed me more than the odd color scheme of the room were the dozens of windchimes hanging everywhere. The ceiling was covered in windchimes hanging from pushpins and nails and hooks. The curtain rods were bookended with chimes, and the underside of the desk dripped with them. They hung high enough that you didn’t need to stoop but low enough that you’d want to watch your head.

  She caught me gawking with my mouth hanging open, and she waved uncertainly with a confused look on her face. I blinked, waved back, and decided to take the gesture as an invitation. I stepped to the center of her room and stood, taking it all in. She smiled at me, looking pleased to have someone take an interest in her collection.

  “They’re all really pretty, aren’t they?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Where did you get them all?”

  She shrugged her slender shoulders and went back to painting her nails. “All over. The vendors sell them sometimes during festivals. There’s one vendor down on Tier Six who stocks them all the time.”

  “You have quite a few. Some of these, the ladies back on Garden would be envious of.” Big smile at that, though not as big as she gave Ugly when he praised her. “Do they… have a special meaning for you?”

  Her hair fell down into her eyes as she nodded. She blew it out of the way, eyes still on her painting. “They remind me of my childhood.”

  Here was something I was really interested in: getting to know the secretive Keepers. I tried not to be too obvious. “Oh? Did you have a lot of wind chimes in…wherever?”

  She laughed. “Not really, no. I’m from Tiers, as far back as I can remember. But I had a friend in the camps who used to love them.”

  “In the… Oh.” The camps. The lowest part of Low Town. The area of the slums reserved for slaves. I didn’t know how to respond right away, so I went back to studying wind chimes. My mind raced for a way to recover the conversation without getting kicked out of the room for prying on her painful memories.

  She must have picked up on my discomfort, or else she was used to it from people. “Yeah. It’s fine, though. I’m not there anymore.” I turned back to find she had stopped painting, looking instead at her walls where she had hung dozens of tiny pictures. The subjects of these pictures seemed to be mostly snowy landscapes, ice formations, and waterfalls. I sat down in the wooden chair at her desk, an exact copy of the one in my room, though my own was currently drowning in documents and half-finished journal entries.

  I searched my mind for something to ask. I needed to know more, but I was afraid of pressing too hard. We didn’t speak for a little bit, letting a comfortable silence rest between us. She kept on painting her toes. Her face was scrunched up in concentration and her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth.

  “What, umm. What sent you to the camps?” Damn, shouldn’t have asked that. Talk about insensitive. “Sorry.”

  She shook her head and made a small negating sound to let me know it was fine. “No one really asks. People here, they assume you don’t want to talk. Mostly because no one does, I guess.” She drew up her knees and rested her elbows on them, chin on her folded arms, hiding the lower half of her face. Then something seemed to occur to her, and she looked up at me. “Wait, am I gonna be in your book?”

  I shifted in my chair, not sure how to answer that. “Well… I would remove anything personal. I want to keep people comfortable so private details will be entirely confidential. But,” I tried to gauge her thoughts but her blank, attentive look wasn’t giving me much, “yes, I suppose you will be in it, if that’s okay.”

  She blinked a couple of times. “So I’d be, sort of, famous?”

  “Well, again, only if you want to be. I’ll try to keep it as private as you like.”

  She seemed to consider this, hiding her lower face behind her arms again. Her eyes flickered around at the windchimes and she made an upward stirring motion with one finger. The lightest breeze sprung up, setting some of the chimes to tinkling. It seemed to calm her, her muscles visibly relaxing. She looked back at me, then off to the side, blushing slightly. “What… what would you like to know?”

  I drew a breath, considering. I’m past the defenses, but I shouldn’t dig too hard. “Maybe let’s start with a more positive story first. What happened that you got your freedom?”

  She considered, then nodded. “I was bought from the camps by a lady from one of the lower Houses. The twenty-third House. She bought my friend, too. We thought it would be good to get out of the camps. No more starving, no more sleeping in muddy grass, no more fleas.” Vapor sank down into herself. Her shoulders pulled in tight and she hid her face behind her arms so I couldn’t see her expression. “But it wasn’t better, not really. The lady was mean. She liked to hit us, like she’d wait for us to make a mistake. We tried to sew like she showed us with the needle and thread, but it was never good enough. Things got… really bad. Worse every day. After six months, we decided to run away.”

  I cleared my suddenly dry throat. “How old were you?”

  “Eleven. Both of us.”

  I tried to imagine it and couldn’t. But I was learning this sort of story was normal for Tiers.

  She drew a breath and went on. “They caught us, of course. Two little kids like us, we barely made it three blocks before we got lost. They found us and brought us back. My friend, they took her in another room, and I never saw her again. Maybe she got the same treatment I did.” She ran one hand down her scaled metal leg.

  “They… did that?”

  She nodded. “The lady, my mistress, said I wasn’t good for anything. Not anything she needed, anyway. She told her servants to cut off my leg and put me back up on the block.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand. A servant with only one leg isn’t gonna get bought. She wanted you to starve?”

  Vapor was quiet for a few moments, looking at the wall behind me instead of meeting my eyes. “A slave girl who can’t cook or sew and with a missing leg is good for one job, Bel.”

  “What jo—“ I stopped. Maiden Lane. Of course that was it. Her mistress had amputated the leg of an eleven-year old girl and tried to sell her to the brothels.

  She spoke up, her voice louder than before. “But she didn’t get what she wanted.” I looked back at her to find her grinning bitterly, a strange expression to see on her childlike face. “My master found me on the block and bought me.”

  “Right, you mentioned your master before. What does that mean?”

  She perked up, uncovering her face. She slid her legs down to sit cross-legged on the bed, hands in her lap. “He’s my teacher. He taught me everything about my Gift! He saved me and made me someone important.” She did her stirring trick again and her chimes sounded, a little louder than before. She smiled at me, and I wondered at how such a small person held so much power that she could conjure magic simply to comfort herself.

  She was excited now that we were on a topic she enjoyed. “My master, he’s so wise. He knew all the special things I could do, the things other people thought were weird or unnatural. He didn’t laugh when I told him haunted houses smell funny, or that people think too loudly sometimes. He used his Gift and he gave me a new face, so no one would recognize me. And he never hurt me or said anything cruel. He made me feel like I had a real family for the first time ever.” Her face clouded briefly at that, but she went on quickly enough. “He knows everything. He’s really wonderful. Like Ugly.”