Steel's Edge te-4 Page 20

  The Sud fell back and rolled to his feet like a cat. His face was a furious mask. He screamed and charged. Richard sidestepped his barrage of strikes, dodging, parrying, knocking the blade aside when he could. He knew the wall was behind him, but there was no place to go.

  His foot touched the stone of the wall. The Sud whirled like his joints were liquid and thrust, aiming at the heart, so fast he blurred. Richard parried on pure instinct, sliding his blade under the strike. Their magic ground against each other, blue against white. The man’s entire weight pressed onto Richard’s blade, tearing a ragged snarl from him.

  The swordsman’s blade slid up, gaining an inch.

  Richard pushed back, his arms shaking from the strain. Holding the younger man’s deadweight was squeezing the last drops of strength from his tired body.

  Another inch. The Sud’s narrow blade slid along Richard’s sword. He saw it move but was powerless to stop it.

  The sword cut his left biceps, slicing through the muscle in an agonizing slow burn.

  Sonovabitch. There was no way out of this position that didn’t end with his being hurt. Even if he could summon enough strength to shove the younger man back, the effort would leave him exposed for a counterstrike, and with his back to the wall, he had no way to maneuver.

  The Sud grinned.

  If he lost, Charlotte would die. He would fail, and Sophie would be left alone with her demons. He had to kill the other man.

  He would endure pain if it meant he would win.

  Richard dropped his blade. The Sud’s sword, abruptly free from resistance, slid forward and cut deeper across his arm, biting into the bone in a flash of pain. Thrown off-balance, the Sud pitched forward, and Richard hammered his fist into the man’s throat. The swordsman rocked back from the blow. Richard tore the sword from his opponent’s hand, flashed, coating it in his magic, and thrust it upward, under the rib cage. The blade carved through the lungs and heart like a knife through a soft pear. The bloody end emerged from the Sud’s breast and sliced into the underside of his chin.

  The man opened his mouth, surprise making his face look young . . . Blood poured out from between his teeth, drenching them in red. Richard pushed him back, and the Sud fell, his unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling.

  Richard slumped forward, trying to catch his breath. His left arm hung useless, the gash in his muscle burning as if someone had poured molten lead into wound. He stared at the man by his feet. What was he, twenty-five? Twenty-eight? His whole life ahead of him, good looks, talent, and now he was dead. Such a waste.

  Richard gritted his teeth and looked at the cut. Blood drenched his skin and dripped on the floor. He didn’t have much of it to spare as it was.

  Gods, it hurt like hell. He breathed in deeply through his nose, trying to separate himself from the pain, forced his face into a calm mask, and turned to Charlotte.

  She sagged on the overturned chest, her shoulders slumped, her spine bent. “Let me see it.”

  “No.” If she saw it, she would try to heal him, and he couldn’t let her do that.

  “My lord—”

  “I said no.”

  “—don’t be a baby.”

  A baby? He ripped a sleeve off the Sud’s shirt and wrapped it around his arm. “There. It’s fixed.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He picked up his sword. His left arm felt like it was on fire, and it hurt to move.

  “Richard, don’t ignore me. You just wrapped a filthy rag over an open wound, which is surely infected now.”

  He walked over to her. “I’m fine. You’re spent.”

  “At least let me look at it!”

  “Are you well enough to go upstairs?”

  She pushed herself up from the chest, that familiar ice flashing in her eyes. “Without my magic and with my eyes closed, I’m a better field medic than you are. You will let me look at your wound and dress it properly instead of wrapping some soiled sleeve around it. It will take two minutes, then we can go upstairs and hunt down the bookkeeper. Or we can do it your way, and you can faint from blood loss, in which case we’re both dead because I can’t carry you or protect you. Your arm, my lord. Now.”

  He turned, presenting her with his left arm. It was easier than arguing. She pulled a bag from under her cloak, opened it, and a took out a plastic first-aid kit, complete with the Broken’s familiar red cross on it. Charlotte opened the kit, took out a small vial, and handed it to him. “Drink this.”

  He pulled the cork out with his teeth and gulped the bitter liquid. Cold rushed through him, down the injured muscle, right to the source of pain. A welcome numbness came. It felt heavenly.

  Charlotte splashed something on the cut and began wrapping his arm. “He cut the bone.”

  “Mhm.”

  “This stone-faced routine isn’t necessary. I know the pain is excruciating.”

  “If my rolling around on the ground and crying would make things easier for you, by all means I will oblige.” It finally sank in. He had won and lived, and so did she.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “We’re lucky his sword was so sharp. The cut is very clean. If you give me an hour or two to recover, I will heal this. Was it necessary to let him slash you?”

  Argh. “Yes, it was. He was very good, and I didn’t have a choice about it. Since when are you a connoisseur of martial arts?” He was actually arguing that he was a lesser swordsman. How did it even make sense?

  “Since my life started depending on them.”

  “The next time I’m in a fight for my life, I’ll be sure to ask your advice, my lady.”

  “If you do, I’ll advise you to not throw away your sword.”

  He almost growled, but it would’ve frightened her, and he held himself in check. An infuriating, impossible woman.

  She tied the final knot and wrapped white tape around the bandage. “What’s next?”

  “We go upstairs.”

  “Very well.” She leaned toward him to tie a sling around his shoulder. Her hair brushed against his cheek. Desire stabbed him, sudden and overwhelming. His irritation only made him want her more.

  Charlotte slid his arm into the sling and put the kit back into the bag. “If you promise not to get yourself cut or skewered with anyone else’s sword, I promise not to faint.”

  Delightful. “I’d be a fool not to take that generous offer.”

  They started up the stairs, agonizingly slow.

  “Did you really think I would win?” he asked.

  She turned to look at him, gray eyes so beautiful on her lovely face. “Of course.”

  Richard imagined stepping forward, pulling her to him with his uninjured hand, and kissing her right there on the stairs. In his mind, her lips were warm and inviting. In his mind, she loved it and kissed him back.

  His mind was a place of many dreams, most of them dead and abandoned. She’s walking next to you, he told himself. She saw the true you, and she’s still willing to care for you. Enjoy what little you have while you have it.

  They made it into the hallway. A faint light painted the floor under the door on their right. Richard pointed at the wall by the door. Charlotte pressed her back against it.

  He kicked in the door, spinning to the side. Bullets peppered the opposite wall, biting chunks out of the plaster. He’d seen the inside of the room for a fraction of a second, but it was enough: a red-haired woman sat behind a desk and a tall man stood next to her, armed with one of the Broken’s guns. Richard yanked a throwing knife out of the sheath on his belt, thrust himself into the doorway, and hurled the blade. The knife bit into the gunman’s throat. The man stumbled back and fell.

  The woman stared at him with cold, clear eyes. She had a heart-shaped face, with the high, contoured cheekbones bluebloods often found desirable. Her flame red hair coiled around her head in a complex braid. Her tunic was silk, cut in what was assuredly the latest style. An oval pendant hung from her neck on a thin gold chain: a pale, aquamarine stone the size of his thumb
nail. She looked to be near Charlotte’s age.

  Behind her were two large windows. Rows of shelves supported an assortment of books on the right wall while a large white limestone fireplace occupied the left. An arithmetika, a magic-powered calculator, sat on her desk, next to stacks of paper. No weapons appeared to be in the vicinity.

  “We found the bookkeeper,” Richard said. “Come inside, Charlotte.”

  She walked into the room. She saw the dead gunman. Her eyebrows rose briefly, then Charlotte sank into the nearest chair.

  “If you had a knife, why didn’t you throw it at the swordsman downstairs?”

  “It would’ve been a waste. He would’ve knocked it aside.” Richard nodded at the woman. “Place both hands on the desk.”

  She did so. Delicate fingers, adorned with thin gold rings studded with stones. Wealth and taste were sometimes unlikely bedfellows, but in this case, they were clearly bosom buddies. A familiar anger flared in him.

  “You’re wealthy, probably well educated,” he said. “Juliana Academy, perhaps.” Juliana’s was considered the best place for blueblood girls with money to receive their education. He’d became very familiar with Adrianglian school selection for Lark’s sake. He shouldn’t have bothered. His niece shot down all of his careful choices.

  “Winters College,” Charlotte said. “Her tunic perfectly matches the shade of her eyes. Juliana’s encourages more creativity.”

  The woman arched an eyebrow and looked Charlotte over, pausing on her dirty, bloodstained clothes. His urge to injure her shot into overdrive.

  “And where did you study, if I may ask?”

  “I had personal tutorship from one of the first ten,” Charlotte said, her voice glacially cold and cutting with scorn like a knife. “Don’t try to belittle me; you’re hopelessly outclassed. I see shortcomings in your every single aspect, from your lack of taste to your rotten morality. You’ve involved yourself in the basest of crimes. You facilitated murder, rape, and the torture of children. Your conduct is unbecoming a peer of realm.”

  He almost winced.

  The woman drew back, her cheeks turning red. “Please, spare me the rhetoric. We’re a higher breed. You know this as well as I do. You simply put on blinders and call it altruism. I call it willful ignorance. Those of us who are blueblood became so because our ancestors rose from the ranks of unwashed mobs. They were the thanes, the chiefs, the leaders of their people. The betters of the rest by virtue of their abilities and will. We’re their descendants. They climbed to power, and we maintain it. It’s that simple. These people you’re accusing me of crimes against live like animals. In many cases, being stripped of their freedom is the best thing that ever happened to them.”

  Charlotte stared at her. “The function of a noble title is to serve the people. Seven blocks from here, there’s a body of a boy whose eyes have been gouged out with his mouth sewn shut. He was still alive when they did it. What is wrong with you? Are you human at all?”

  “A regrettable but necessary casualty.” The bookkeeper crossed her thin arms on her chest. “But you are right, perhaps we should’ve left him with his lovely family to live in squalor while his parents drank themselves senseless in an effort to forget their own laziness and beat him when his existence reminded them of their baseness. Those who are capable act. They amount to something in life. They don’t live in filth, gorging themselves on cheap food, drowning in addictions, and rutting to produce yet more of their ilk. We rescue children from that. We provide a valuable service.”

  Unbelievable.

  Charlotte made a choking noise.

  “Your condemnation means nothing,” the bookkeeper said. “This enterprise was conceived by a mind far superior to yours or mine. Think about it, when a blueblood buys a pretty young girl, she has a shot at a better life. If she’s smart, she will elevate herself by having his child. Just the other day, we fulfilled a special order for a childless couple. They wanted a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, between the ages of two and four, resembling both of them. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to find suitable children? Yet we’ve managed. Slavery is an opportunity. It’s regrettable you can’t understand that.”

  Nothing either Charlotte or Richard could say would ever make this woman see reason.

  “Kill her,” Charlotte said. “If you don’t kill her now, I’ll do it myself.”

  “We need her testimony and information.” He approached the table. He had no idea how they would make it down the hill and to the port with a captive, but by gods, he would try.

  “Killing me won’t be necessary.” The woman raised her chin. “Unlike you, I know my duty to the spear.”

  She grasped her pendant.

  Richard lunged to stop her.

  The stone crunched under the pressure of her fingers. A blinding spike of light shot out into her chin, through her head, and out of her skull.

  Charlotte gasped.

  The bookkeeper sagged in her chair, dead, her head drooping to the side. The whole thing took less than a second. She had been wearing an Owner’s Gift necklace. He should have seen it, gods damn it.

  The world screeched to a halt. He felt like he was falling.

  All this time, all this work, and the arrogant scum killed herself. Was there no justice in the world?

  Maybe Charlotte . . . He pivoted to her.

  “Very dead,” she said, her face disgusted. “Irreversibly dead.”

  “Damn it.”

  His mind whirred, trying to reassess the situation. Wallowing in defeat never served any purpose. No, he was kidding himself. Even if they had managed to take her alive, neither of them could have gotten her to the ship in their present condition, and if they did, by some miracle, manage it, she would never testify. But it wasn’t over, he reminded himself. Not yet. They might not have the bookkeeper alive, but they still had her office and everything within it.

  Duty to the spear. Only one spear came to mind. “Gaesum,” he thought out loud. The symbol of the Adrianglian royal family.

  “That would explain her devotion,” Charlotte said. “If she thought she was serving the crown in some capacity, she couldn’t permit herself to acknowledge that they could do something base, or her entire worldview would come crashing down.”

  They looked at each other. In Adrianglia, the crown was revered. The power of the royal bloodline had its limitations, but the monarch still held the presiding position over the Council, wielding much of the power within the executive branch. The royal family was looked upon as the epitome of behavior and personal honor. The idea that the crown could be involved in the slave trade was unthinkable.

  “There has to be a trail somewhere. She was a bookkeeper; she had to have kept financial records.” Richard strode to the shelves and pulled a stack of books out. He handed them to Charlotte. She leafed through them while he rummaged through the desk. His search of the drawers turned up a wooden box, unlocked. Inside, necklaces lay in a row, each with a simple large gemstone in a variety of colors. Unlike the bookkeeper’s pendant, their chains were short. Once fastened around the neck, they couldn’t be removed by slipping them over the head.

  “Is that what she used to kill herself?” Charlotte asked, her voice dry.

  He nodded. “They’re called Owner’s Gifts.” He picked one up, dangling the false ruby pendant. “They’re given to young attractive slaves who are used for sexual gratification. They have a one-time lock: once fastened, they’re impossible to take off without cutting through the chain. Each contains a small magic charge designed to kill the wearer. The necklace detonates if the chain is cut or the stone is damaged. A pointed reminder that if you disobey or displease, your life can end in an instant. They work much better than shackles and are a lot less obvious.”

  She clenched her teeth, and he read a mix of horror and disgust in her face. “Every time I think I’ve reached the limit, this place shocks me.”

  And that was true, Richard realized. He thought she’d grow callous or numb
, but every new evidence of cruelty cut a new wound into her. Again, he wished he hadn’t brought her here. There were only so many wounds one could take.

  “What do you make of this?” Charlotte showed him a hollowed-out book.

  Hope stirred in him. “Was there anything inside?”

  “No.”

  And the newborn hope plummeted to its death. “We have to keep looking.”

  Twenty minutes later, they looked at each other across the table. The office was a wreck. They had left nothing untouched. The ledgers, if they existed, eluded them.

  Richard braced himself on the table. He felt another bout of dizziness coming on. He’d gotten through the first one a few minutes ago, but now the vertigo was back. Taking wounds came with a price.

  “Richard,” Charlotte said.

  He turned.

  A bloody figure stood in the doorway, his hair and clothes stained with gore and soot. His eyes were tired, and he was carrying a bloody crowbar. A huge black dog panted by his side.

  “Jack?” Richard said.

  “Hi.” Jack dropped the crowbar. It clanged on the floor.

  “How are you?” Charlotte asked.

  “Good,” he said, his voice dull. “I’m all funned out. I think we should go to the ship now. The city is burning, the fire’s coming this way, and the smoke is making my throat itch.”

  “We can’t leave yet.” Charlotte sighed. “We’ve looked everywhere, but we haven’t found the ledgers. We have to find them, or all this was for nothing.”

  “Did you look in the safe?” Jack asked.

  “What safe?” The room had no safe, only a table and the shelves, and he had knocked on all the clear walls looking for a hollow spot.

  “In the fireplace.”

  Richard turned to the fireplace. It was a typical Weird limestone fireplace without a mantel. No fire was laid out and the fire pit was perfectly clean. No soot marks. It definitely hadn’t been used, but this far south it might have been conceived as decorative. Richard moved to it, probing the stones with his hand. “What makes you think there is a safe in it?”