Steel's Edge te-4 Read online

  “I’m just resting,” Jack told him through clenched teeth.

  “You’re done,” George said.

  They were at an impasse. Jack wouldn’t admit defeat, and George, despite all his anger, wouldn’t dislocate his brother’s arm. He took a step forward to break them up, but Charlotte beat him to it.

  She walked across the gym and crouched by the two teens. “That’s enough, George.” She gently put one hand on his fingers, gripping his brother’s arm. “I have something very important to tell both of you, and it won’t wait.”

  “Is it good news?” Jack ground out.

  Profound sadness reflected on Charlotte’s face. “No. It isn’t.”

  George released Jack’s arm. The boys rolled to their feet.

  “Come,” she said, linking one arm with George, the other with Jack, and led them both back into the room.

  SIX

  “MY name is Charlotte.” Dear Goddess, there were no right words. Charlotte took a deep breath. “Your grandmother might have mentioned me.”

  “You rent our house,” Jack said.

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  George leaned forward. “Something happened to Grandmother.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” she answered anyway. “I’m a healer. Richard was injured and running away from slavers. He’d reached East Laporte and lost consciousness. Someone found him and brought him to me so I could mend his wounds.” She swallowed. “Your grandmother and I were very close. She was always kind to me. She was my friend.”

  The words stuck in her throat. She forced them out, each sound cutting her from the inside. “She was with me when Kenny brought Richard to us. There was also another young woman and her sister with us at the time.”

  Her chest felt heavy. An ache set in, rolling around her heart like a ball of lead. Both George and Jack were looking at her, and she couldn’t look away. Her voice sounded strange to her.

  “I healed Richard. He had lost a lot of blood, so I left to buy some. While I was gone . . .”

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

  “The slavers burned the house and murdered one of the young women and your grandmother,” Richard said. “Éléonore is dead.”

  She saw the precise moment when the meaning of the words sank into George. He took a small step back. His face jerked, and his shoulders slumped forward, as if he had been stabbed and wanted to curl into a ball to protect the wound.

  “No,” Jack said. “There are ward stones around the house. There are fucking rocks around the house! Nobody can get in.”

  George’s eyes blazed with white. The glow built, spilling like tears of lightning onto his cheeks. He chanted something savage under his breath. She felt the magic swell around him. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose. So much power. So much power. It built on itself, like an avalanche.

  “Stop!” she called. “George, no . . .”

  The magic crested and broke. White light shot out of his eyes and mouth, shining from within him out of his every pore, setting his skin aglow. Éléonore had told her the boy was a necromancer. She’d said nothing about this.

  His feet left the ground. He hung suspended a foot in the empty air. His magic smashed into Charlotte like a blast wave. She gasped and saw him through the lens of her own power. He glowed like a radiant beacon of light, his magic focused into a beam, searching the darkness.

  His ghostly voice echoed through her mind.

  “Mémère. Mémère, it’s me. Answer me. Please answer. Please, Mémère.”

  The desperation in his words flooded her. The tears heated her eyes. He was reaching far, past the edge of the Weird, past the boundary. It was impossible, but he was doing it.

  “Please, Mémère. I love you so much. Please answer.”

  That voice, suffused with so much love and hope, pulled tears out of her. Hot moisture wet her cheeks. Someone put his arms around her, and she realized it was Richard. He steadied her. She knew she had to pull away, but she needed the warmth of his arms, the link to another human being, because she was adrift in the sea of George’s anguish, and it was tearing her apart.

  “Mémère . . .” George’s ghostly voice pleaded.

  The darkness didn’t answer.

  “Please don’t leave me.

  “Please . . .”

  His glow dimmed. The magic let go, and George fell, dropping into a crouch. His legs gave way, and he sat clumsily on the boards.

  “She’s gone,” he said, his voice so young.

  She slipped away from Richard, onto the floor, and hugged him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Jack’s skin tore open. A wild tumble of muscle and skin spilled out, and a huge lynx landed on the floor. The big cat snarled and ran out the door.

  Richard jumped to his feet. “I’ll watch over him.” He took off after the lynx.

  George stared at the floor, his gaze dull. No words would fix it. Nothing she said would make any difference, so she sat next to him and held him. It was all she could do.

  * * *

  RICHARD ran out the door. The boardwalk was empty. He’d paused for a precious second to grab a set of spare clothes from Barlo, and now Jack was gone. Changelings like Jack weren’t exactly welcome in society. Their minds worked differently from normal people’s. They had trouble understanding human relationships and rules of behavior, but they felt every slight deeply, and it often drove them to violence. The Dukedom of Louisiana murdered them at birth, while Adrianglia treated them as its dirty secret, turning them into soldiers in its prisonlike military schools.

  Jack hadn’t been given up to the realm at birth, like most of his kind. He grew up in a loving family, which made allowances for his nature. Kelena wouldn’t be so kind. If he was spotted and identified, someone would try to kill him.

  Richard turned, scanning the buildings. The boy was fast, especially on four legs, and wasn’t thinking clearly. Lynxes were tree cats; they pounced on their prey from the branches above. He would want to be someplace high, where he could be alone.

  The warehouse across the canal was too low. The distant high-rises of the Business District were too far away and too populated. Where could he have gone?

  To the right, the tall, pale tower of the nearest Kelena’s Tooth scraped the sky. Tall and isolated. A perfect hiding spot.

  Richard jogged through the tangled labyrinth of the Cauldron, along the boardwalks to the edge of the water, then continued past it along the docks stretching into the ocean. The day was overcast, and the water mirrored the gray sky.

  He had experienced plenty of loss in his life. His mother was the first to go, dead at twenty-eight of an aneurysm. He remembered the way she had looked in the coffin, a pale, bloodless imitation of herself. He’d wondered for an absurd moment if someone had replaced her with a doll. His father was next. Marissa. Then Aunt Murid and Erian . . .

  He wished he could’ve spared George and Jack the same fate. Once again he was watching children suffer and unable to do anything about it.

  The last dock ended. In the distance, waves broke against Kelena’s Teeth, splashing against the stone bases of the towers. The tide was low, and crests of sand surfaced here and there. Richard took a chance and jumped. The water came to his knees.

  He waded through to the nearest stretch of sand, heading toward the closest tower. A trail of paw prints pockmarked the sand. Cat footsteps, no claws. The trail led to the tower.

  Kelena’s Teeth had keepers, who monitored the weather and activated magical defenses when storms came. They stood watch in shifts inside the towers. Richard broke into a run, moving at full speed, devouring the sand in long strides.

  Ahead, a stone block slid aside in the tower wall, about twenty feet above the water. More stones slid from the walls, winding in a spiral around the tower, leading down. A man ran out, his eyes wild, and sprinted down the newly formed stairs.

  Richard reached the tower. Finally.

  The
keeper splashed through the water toward him. “There’s a changeling in the tower!”

  Richard reached into his pants and pulled out a half doubloon. “There is no changeling.”

  “I saw him!” The older man waved his arms. “A huge cat as big as a horse!”

  A horse was pushing it. A pony at best. Richard took the man’s hand, put the coin into it, and looked into his eyes. “There is no changeling,” he repeated slowly.

  Understanding dawned in the man’s eyes. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “That’s right. I’ll need to borrow your tower for a few minutes, then I’ll leave, and it will be safe for you to go in.”

  Richard started up the stairs.

  “If he breaks anything, you’ll pay for it!” the keeper yelled. “And don’t touch anything either!”

  Richard clambered up the stones that formed the stairs and ducked into the entrance. It was amazing how quickly fear subsided when gold became involved.

  A spiral staircase wound about the stone inner core of the tower, illuminated by the light from many windows. He climbed the steps, higher and higher, until he saw a gaping door at the end of the stairway.

  A raw, pain-filled sound came from upstairs. It wasn’t a feline snarl or any other sound one would expect a lynx to make. Halfway between a howl and a cry, gut-wrenching and brutal, it vibrated through the air. If Richard had hackles, they would’ve risen in response.

  Richard sat down. There was no need to go in. The boy required privacy.

  Another cry followed, wordless and filled with grief and guilt.

  Richard leaned his back against the wall. Jack and he, they were both men, and men had unspoken rules.

  Many years had passed since his father died, and for many of these years his aunt Murid had taken care of him and Kaldar. He was almost an adult when she took him in, but he remembered how much it hurt. He felt abandoned, terrified, guilty for not being there, but the only emotion the rules allowed him to display was anger, and so he raged like a lunatic. Aunt Murid handled his pointless fury with the same expertise she’d handled Kaldar’s obsessive stealing. Both of them had gone out of their way to do dumb shit just to remind themselves they were alive. But even in their darkest moments, both of them knew they were loved. They had a home. It wasn’t the same as the one before, but they were grateful for it.

  When he was thirty-two, the Hand had attacked the family. In the final battle with Louisiana’s spies, Murid fell. He hadn’t seen her die, but Kaldar had. Richard vividly remembered looking at her savaged body. He remembered his chest hurting and the look on Kaldar’s face, the glassy-eyed gaze of a man whose every emotion had drowned in profound grief. They didn’t talk about it. They stood next to each other at the funeral, stone-faced, because that was the thing to do. After the funeral, they drank together as was proper for a Mire family and went their separate ways within the Mar house.

  He’d come up to his room, thinking he would read a book. Instead, he sat in his chair, catatonic, staring into space, until he realized he was crying. Kaldar must’ve mourned, too. Neither of them would ever admit to his grief. They’d never spoken about it.

  The woman who had taken care of them, sheltered them, and guided them, filling the shoes of both parents at once, had died. But he couldn’t bring himself to comfort his brother even though he knew both of them desperately needed that comfort.

  Now Jack and George had lost a woman who loved them and sheltered them, and they followed the same pattern. Jack’s running out was probably for the best. If George wanted to grieve freely, he could, because Charlotte was a woman, and her presence wouldn’t be a deterrent. And Jack . . .

  Another forlorn howl rolled through the tower.

  He would talk to Jack when the boy was done. There were things he had to say, things he wished someone had said to him or Kaldar years ago.

  Whatever differences he and Kaldar had, they were brothers, Richard reflected. They had dealt with their guilt and pain in the same way. Kaldar channeled it into an insane obsession with destroying the Hand. Even marriage to the woman he clearly loved beyond all reason did nothing to knock his brother off his path. Richard, on the other hand, had chosen to go after slavers. There probably was a hint of insanity in what he did. No, perhaps not insanity. Fanaticism.

  “Fanatic.” It was an old word originally meaning “inspired by god,” and its first meaning was to describe a person possessed by a god or a demon. It was a very accurate description, he reflected. He was possessed, not by a demon, but by the need to correct a wrong. He was a true believer, his cause was just, and he had given all of himself to it without regret. But at the core, it was about helplessness. When Sophie had stopped showering, then stopped talking, then ran away when he tried to ask her why, he could do nothing. He had never felt more helpless in his life, not even when his wife, Marissa, walked out on him.

  He’d loved Marissa completely, with absolute devotion, and when she’d left him after two years of marriage, his whole world shattered. He had decided it was a good lesson, eventually, once he had crawled out of the deep, dark hole where he’d existed for months. He thought the experience had cured him of the longing for female company just as he’d thought that the road he was on had burned all capacity for emotion out of him. But here was Charlotte, and she stirred something inside him that compelled him to respond. He couldn’t help himself.

  If he’d met Charlotte before this started . . . It was an intriguing but fundamentally stupid thought. If he had met her, she wouldn’t have given him a second look. She was a blueblood and a healer, probably highly respected, while he was a Mire rat with no name, no status, no rank, and very modest means of support.

  And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. That’s how it started, Richard reflected grimly. Thinking about a woman, wondering what it would be like, picturing it. A purely physical attraction he could handle, but he’d seen her in a moment of vulnerability. He knew exactly what it cost her to follow him. She was courageous, in the true sense of the word. Experience and training had given him an edge, and he rarely experienced acute fear when facing an opponent. Most of the time, he didn’t even feel anxiety, as if his soul had developed calluses. Perhaps he simply didn’t have anything to lose.

  Charlotte had no combat experience. She hid her fear well, but he was learning to read her. When she raised her chin and squared her shoulders, Charlotte was afraid. She had been alarmed when they met Jason Parris, scared when they faced the thugs, and frightened when the mob chased them. Yet she kept going, overcoming her fear every time. That strength of will was worthy of both his admiration and his respect. Her very humanity made her fascinating and drew him to her. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted to spare her that fear. He wanted to remove whatever was causing her discomfort. Yet there was no way to do it without cutting short her involvement, and he had made a promise to respect her mission.

  Jack emerged from the room. He was nude, and his eyes were red.

  Richard offered him the clothes. The boy dressed.

  Richard rose. “There is no shame in grief. It’s human. You didn’t do anything wrong. It doesn’t make you weak, and you don’t have to hide it.”

  Jack looked away.

  “You couldn’t have prevented your grandmother’s death. Don’t take any of the guilt or blame on yourself. Blame those who are actually responsible.”

  “What happened to the slavers?” Jack asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Your grandmother killed some of them. Charlotte killed the rest.”

  They went down the stairs side by side.

  “I want in,” the boy said.

  “In on what?”

  “You’re the Hunter. You’re hunting the slavers. I want in.”

  “And how would you know that?” If someone had opened their mouth, he would be really put out.

  Jack gave a one-shouldered shrug. “We overhead you and Declan talking.”

  “Declan’s study is soundproof.”

&n
bsp; “Not to reanimated mice,” Jack said. “George wants to be a spy. He listens in on everything, then he tells me.”

  Fantastic. Declan and he had taken extra measures, like activating soundproof sigils and meeting during late hours, and two teenage boys could still undermine all of their careful security precautions. How comforting. And he wasn’t feeling like a complete moron, not at all. He was sure Declan wouldn’t feel like a moron either.

  “I’m coming with you,” Jack said.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Jack bared his teeth in a feral grief.

  “No,” Richard said. “This isn’t a fun adventure.”

  “Kaldar let us—”

  “No.” He sank enough finality into his voice to end all arguments.

  Jack clamped his mouth shut and walked sullenly next to him. They left the tower and headed toward the city.

  This battle wasn’t won, Richard reflected, looking at the stubborn set of the boy’s jaw. And once they got back, George and Jack would tag team him. If worse came to worse, he’d talk Barlo into keeping them under lock and key while he and Charlotte dealt with the ship.

  * * *

  “GEORGE,” Charlotte murmured.

  George remained slumped in her arms, catatonic. She scanned him again. No physical injury. Too much magic, expended too quickly. She had no idea if he was slipping into a permanent coma or just resting, exhausted.

  I shouldn’t have told you. She realized she’d spoken the words aloud.

  “She was our grandmother,” George said. “We have a right to know.”

  Charlotte exhaled. Conscious. Finally.

  The boy pushed away from her very gently, got up, and offered her his hand. She took it and stood up.

  “Richard values family above all else,” George said. “He would’ve told us if you didn’t.”

  “Do you know what he does?” she asked.

  George nodded.

  “Then you know he will do all he can to get justice for your grandmother, and so will I.”

  “She liked you,” George said. “She told us a lot about you. We saw your picture.”