To Rule The Zones, 15/?. NC-17.
Title: To Rule The Zones (Edge of Dawn Sequel)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz belongs to Frank Baum and all of the modifications belong to SciFi.
Rating: NC-17 for language and lovingly rendered sex.
Pairing: DG/Cain, Azkadellia/OMCx2
Warnings: This takes place after the SciFi movie and after my story "The Edge of Dawn." This does refer to events occurring within that story, so you need to read that one first.
Summary: DG wanted to start a war with Lurlaine in the Mirror Zone. Little did she realize that it would lead to a war in the OZ as well...
Prior chapters can be found here.
White had been a thief since he could understand what it was to steal. He had been a thin and wiry child, underfed and hungry more often than not. He could disappear sideways into the wind, his mother's pimp had said, and his fingers were as quick as the wind as well. Pockets weren't that far away from his face, and no one thought a slip of a boy like him could possibly be responsible for all the wallets and coins and jewels stolen. He had an angel's face, though he didn't know where that came from. His mother wasn't particularly pretty, especially not now, not when times were hard and there was little enough work to keep the pimp's hands from knocking her about. White did what he could to help meet their room's rents, and some days his earnings were all they had.
War was bad on the Sin District, that was for certain. White hated it.
There was work to be had by the gates, though that was tricky business. Most of the castle guards didn't like boys hanging about, didn't like the shifty eyes and the sharp tongues of the older ones or the way that some of the dark clad people always assumed that enough coin could get their way in through the gates.
But there were also the dishonest guards, the ones that let them slip. Everyone knew that.
White crept close to the West Gate, where Old Haddigan had said that the dishonest guards tended to keep rotation light and easy. This was where the dark clad folk crept in, carrying coins as bright as the suns. This was where a little work could likely be had for a boy with sharp eyes and a disappearing body.
The dishonest guards let themselves be known by a square of color peeking out from behind the patch of the palace guard staff. Old Haddigan had said that it should be light blue or yellow, something easy to see and remember against the purple and white and green of the royal insignia, something easy to pass on by whispers. But White couldn't see any peep of color behind the royal insignia on the uniform of the guard at the West Gate, so maybe Old Haddigan was wrong about that little detail. The guards were thinned out and few wandered around in the dark any longer. The whispers in the Sin District was that evil magic was afoot, that the Gales brought in wicked magic to keep the traitors in line. It might be true, it might not. White didn't follow politics; no one cared what happened in the Sin District but the blackguards left there. Still, he had to admit, the shadows seemed thicker around the gates, and the dark seemed to have a heavier weight than they used to.
But White also knew that there weren't as many dead rats in alleys, or the homeless that slept amongst the garbage. Something was scaring them off. Or eating them.
"Benton," White heard someone hiss in the darkness. "Damn your ancestors, Benton! Where are you?" the voice called out. White pressed himself backward into the darkness, rubbing more dirt into his sallow cheeks. The joke went that he was called White because he had been that color when he was born, but all the dirt and soot since then stained his skin almost black in some places. White didn't care; it let him blend in better.
A figure in a dark cloak, the hood pulled down low over his features, came into White's view. He was looking around, clearly trying to find someone who should have been at the West Gate. He wasn't very happy by the absence of any figure there, and White kept his mouth shut and his breathing even. He narrowed his eyes a fraction to keep the whites from shining in the dark, just to be sure. There had been a single guard at the West Gate, but he had walked north some time ago. There hadn't been any color behind his insignia. This hooded figure was holding a yellow handkerchief in his hand, and it looked to be stained with blood from where White stood.
Perhaps Old Haddigan hadn't been completely wrong.
The guard was returning from his northerly patrol, and the hooded figure ducked behind a pile of crates that held garbage from the merchant's district. It would be hauled away in the morning. It reeked of a thousand different kinds of stink. The figure coughed, not used to the reek, and alerted the guard to his position. White just pressed farther back in his own pile; it didn't matter about the smell, it mattered about not getting caught and not having any creature dive down out of the muck to try to eat him.
The guard held his hand over his service weapon as he approached the crates, peering into the darkness. White knew he wouldn't find anything unless the hooded figure was stupid; there was only starlight above, and that made it harder to track light in the crooked alleyways between the Old Town and the City gates. The guard slipped on a wet cobble, and apparently it was just enough for him to see the flash of the hooded figure's handkerchief, still clutched tightly within his fist. "Oi, you!" the guard called out, rushing forward.
"Where's Benton?" the hooded figure complained, diving sideways and losing hold of his yellow handkerchief. "Benton was supposed to be here tonight!"
The guard got a shot off, but it went harmlessly through the hooded figure's cloak. The figure whirled around, and White could see the flash of weak starlight over the metal of a wicked looking blade. He'd seen those kinds of daggers before, belonging to the Thieves' Guild's rejects; they tried to band together to make their own guild, but they lacked to focus of the Thieves' Guild. White was too young for it; they took boys over twelve only. White was cunning, but he wasn't quite old enough for their minds.
The hooded figure was fairly inept at hiding in the dark, but he could wield that blade effortlessly enough that White knew he had some kind of training. White thought perhaps he came from outside of Central City; there was something off about his accent, something that the desperation brought out of him. He was no Central City slum kid, and not likely from the outlying city areas either. He was new, some kind of recent transplant, and White winced when he slit the guard's throat in a single move. Hot blood gushed from the guard's throat, falling down over his uniform like rain. The hooded figure grunted and kicked at the guard before spitting on his body. "Damn it, Benton," the figure hissed. "I need the way back out."
White kept his mouth shut, his breathing even and his eyes closed tight as the hooded figure passed. Most folk didn't check the garbage piles, didn't think to look down into the corners of things. They trusted their eyes too much, and trusted what they thought they saw far too much to be safe. White knew that he wouldn't be found.
But now he wondered what he had found, and how much it might be worth.
***
DG knew there were problems the moment the sirens started within the palace to alert the guards. Considering that everyone knew Cain stayed with her, the sirens meant to wake him had been placed in her suite as well. He was instantly awake and alert, a trait she still hadn't developed yet, and was pulling on his uniform. "Wyatt?"
"Stay here inside the wards until I know what we're dealing with, Deeg," he said, voice tense and his shoulders hunched. "With everything going on right now..."
"That's why I've been getting lessons..."
DG stopped at the drawn expression on Wyatt's face and the haunted look in his eyes. "Please, Deeg. I don't want to worry about you, too."
She tamped down on the urge to tell him that she could handle herself, thank you very much, and she had magic now to boot. She merely reached out and grasped his face in her hands. "Whatever it is, I will find you and kill you if you die on me. Got it?"
His lips quirked into a smile and he wound his arms around her shoulders. She could feel every button and cold bit of braiding that told his rank through the thin nightgown. "I wouldn't expect anything less from you."
Wyatt Cain strode into the central office for the palace guard in the south wing of the palace. All of the heads of security were present by the time he arrived. "What happened?"
"One of the Shadow Brigade rang the bell," one the lieutenants remarked. "Novae, I think."
Cain wasn't familiar with the name, but that didn't mean anything. "What do we know about the situation that led to the ringing?"
"Mannon's dead," another lieutenant said heavily. "We found his body by the West Gate."
They had known that Mannon was unfailingly loyal to the Gale line. Every man and woman in the central office was. The questionable ones had been sent elsewhere, to more observable locations in the palace and city. The questionable guards at the West Gate had been Benton, Lisdel, Tolono and Kittredge. Mannon was dead now, and there was no way to tell which guard should have been there in his stead.
"Novae thinks there's a witness," the lieutenant continued, her face earnest as she spoke. "We couldn't find any particular clues, but the garbage in the area..." She looked at Cain, almost apologetic. "It's the Sin District, so it's about as easy to find information as if we had gone to the Realm of the Unwanted."
"We'll need to move fast, before anyone that we suspect knows about this."
"But what do you-"
The third lieutenant in the room was cut off as a messenger raced into the central office. "The... Justicar... About ten minutes ago... A boy was found..."
"Catch your breath," Cain told the panting messenger, who looked ready to collapse. "You ran all the way from the Gate?" The messenger nodded, and Cain indicated for one of the lieutenants to give the messenger a seat and some water. "Drink, rest a moment, then start again."
The messenger looked at Cain gratefully and struggled to get his breath under control. "One of the Justicars for the West Gate area thinks she found sign of a boy that might have seen what happened. It's a known pickpocket in the area, some half starved thing. He was crawling in the garbage holds near the Gate."
Cain nodded at the messenger. "Let the man get settled with some food in the kitchens," he told one of the lieutenants. He looked to the other two. "With me."
Not running as fast as the messenger, it took twice as long to reach the West Gate area. The surrounding area in the Old Town was known as the Sin District. Whores openly sold themselves for pimps, the Sorceress' vapors were still sold and powders of dubious purpose regularly exchanged hands. There was no official Thieves' Guild, though there were several rival gangs that each purported to be an official guild. The black market was thriving here, and the underhanded dealings were rivaled only by what went on in the Realm of the Unwanted. The activities in Central City were contained in only the Sin District, at least.
Cain strode directly up to the Justicar for the Brickwall part of Old Town. Cain didn't know everyone in Central City, and Justicars tended to change every few years. Few people wanted to bear the brunt of an entire district's rage for very long, and Justicars were supposed to impartially mete justice to those that Tin Men brought in for breaking the law. It was strange that a Tin Man wasn't present when the Justicar was, and that the Justicar for Brickwall was instantly nervous once he saw Cain headed in his direction.
"Justicar," Cain intoned, nodding at the thin woman in the Justicar's uniform. "You're the one that found Defender Mannon?"
"I am," the woman said. "I am Justicar Carin, newly assigned to Brickwall, sir."
Cain smiled thinly. "Taking a tour of the Sin District, then?" he asked. The Justicar paled slightly at his sardonic tone. "Let me see the body."
The Justicar moved sharply, and Cain could see the stab wounds and the slit throat clearly. They were deep, even cuts with clean edges that didn't pucker. Straight edge and no poison, then, so not one of the larger Thieves' Guilds, Cain decided. He looked up at the Justicar. "You haven't moved the body, I hope?" The Justicar shook her head. Cain pulled on a pair of gloves and began to examine the way Mannon had fallen. "I heard something about a boy that was found a short time ago, a possible witness."
"He claims he has information," Justicar Carin said, though her tone was clear that she didn't believe him at all.
"I'll want to speak with the boy, of course," Cain said, moving to stand up. The Justicar bristled and opened her mouth to speak. "There's no Tin Man assigned to this," Cain interrupted sharply, "and that's a break in protocol for investigative procedure. I have experience, so I'll be taking on the investigation for this personally. That is all."
Effectively dismissed, Justicar Carin could only gape at Cain in shock until another palace guard suggested that she return home. Implicit in that request was that Justicar Carin refrained from discussing what had happened by the West Gate, and they would refrain from asking what she had been doing out in the Sin District in the middle of the night.
Two palace guards that had investigated the Justicar's call were physically holding the skinny wraith of a boy in place. He was spitting and kicking at them, shouting vile things about their heritage and sexual habits as the two guards stoically continued to hold him. Cain suppressed a grin at the sight of the boy and was glad that DG wasn't with him. She'd take a shine to the lost little thing immediately, and he knew very well what that would mean. She would want to stuff him full of food and add him to her little menagerie of stray people and creatures. The boy clearly could take care of himself, but DG would still want to coddle him.
But then, DG got the results she did for a reason.
Cain hunkered down until he was at the boy's eye level. He was careful to stay back far enough to be out of range of the boy's legs. "When was the last time you ate something?" he began, not even bothering to get the boy's name or blustering about how the boy would have to do what he was told.
The boy quieted, staring at Cain with deep mistrust. "Depends on what you're talkin' 'bout."
Sin District accent, so he was a home grown miscreant. Cain could work with this. "Actual food, and not garbage scrounged out of a bin somewhere."
The boy's jaw tightened. "I had a slice of bread two days ago."
Cain nodded and rose to his full height again. "Let's escort our young friend to the kitchens," he told the guards holding onto the boy. He could feel the boy's eyes on him like daggers, but could ignore it. That was a familiar feeling, like sliding into his Tin Man's skin. This was doing something, this was going to get results. He'd find something useful, something of interest to start getting to who killed Mannon. Mannon had been a good man, loyal and hardworking, with an ailing sister to inform.
"I'm sure we can start this all again once our young friend is properly fed," Cain continued easily. He ignored the sputtered curses from the boy and gestured for them to head to the palace by way of the kitchens. The Shadow Brigade had pointed out the boy, so he had been in the area when Mannon died. That didn't mean he would simply cooperate, and Cain knew what needed to be done. Breakfast was in a few hours yet, but the kitchens were always busy around the clock. People were always about in a place as large and heavily staffed as the palace, so there was always something warm to eat in the kitchens. Food would help the investigation better than threats and vague intimations; hunger always made tempers sharper and memories dulled.
The boy put away soup first, then sandwiches and fruit and tea and milk, all things he hadn't been sure about at first but he finally touched with Cain's urging. When he was full and a little more comfortable around Cain, he stopped looking at the guards with quite an angry gaze. He was still resentful, but just as Cain had hoped, he was less tense. "What's your name, kid?" The boy just stared blankly, jutting his jaw out slightly. "Unless you want me calling you kid while we talk? Most folk would rather be called by their names."
"White," the boy said grudgingly after a moment. He stared at Cain, wondering if he was going to laugh or demand a proper name from him.
But Cain merely nodded. "Fair enough. I have a friend named Ghost."
White visibly relaxed when he wasn't laughed at. "Old Haddigan knows a Ghost."
Cain laughed. "Is Haddigan still alive, then? Wobbly leg, missing three fingers on his right hand and has a glass eye?" The boy goggled at him, nodding. "I wasn't always part of the castle guard, kid," Cain said, and let the boy draw his own conclusions.
"So Old Haddigan really does know everyone and everything, then," the boy mused.
"Some things. I'm sure you know plenty he doesn't."
White looked at Cain shrewdly. "How much is it worth?"
"What do you want?"
White narrowed his eyes at Cain. He didn't want to overprice himself out of a sale, and he didn't want to underprice himself either. Old Haddigan often said the palace folk were stingier than they could afford to be, but they weren't stupid either. And if this fellow in the guard's uniform knew Haddigan, he had once known how the Sin District worked. "We can start with food, a favor to call in and ten guilders," White said as an opening salvo.
"If you need a favor, that tells me maybe you have someone to protect," Cain said slowly. He understood the kid's reticence if that was true.
White thrust his jaw out belligerently again. "What's it to you?"
"You might need more than one favor to call in, depending on the trouble that person is in."
"I could lie," White said, "I could tell you shit and you won't know it."
Cain leveled a gaze at White. "Do you really think I wouldn't know it?"
The boy gulped at the sight of Cain's tight expression. It had been worth a shot, but he was back to square one again. "No one comes to the Sin District no more. Rent's gotta be paid, an' I don't get enough to cover rent an' food." White stared at Cain. "There's shit to tell and truth to tell, if you want both."
"Tell me what happened." Depending on how observant the kid was, Cain could probably use another set of eyes in the dark. The Shadow Brigade was good at that, but they didn't live in the slums of the city and didn't know its underbelly. Even Cain didn't know all the major players anymore, though it was nice to know a few of them were still around.
White slowly began to stammer about the color codes at the gates, the name the hooded assailant had called for. He described the knife used, how quickly the guard had gone down since he had been there at the West Gate alone. He told the truth, every last bit of it, and watched Cain's face turn ashen in all the appropriate bits.
"I have a job for you," Cain said when White had fallen silent. "You are going to report to myself or to those two lieutenants back there," he said, nodding at the two that had helped to corral the boy in the West Gate debris. "Your job will involve keeping an eye on that Gate for us. If you see that man, anyone like him, with that knife, anything, I need you to come for us and ask for only the three of us."
There was more to this, White could tell. "What's this, then?"
"You might just help us find a traitor," Cain told the boy. "And if he's as high up as I think he is, it might be enough to end this war that much faster."
Win and win, as far as White was concerned. "Ten guilders up front, then," he said. The man in front of him had a lot of decorated braid on his uniform, so that was likely nothing to him.
Cain smiled and dug into his pocket. "Here's fifteen. Pay off that rent and feed whoever it is you need to feed."
White bit each coin to be sure they were real, even though he had the feeling they were. "Well, that's an easy enough job, then."
"Don't get yourself killed, kid," Cain intoned, standing. He nodded at the lieutenants. "They'll get you back where you were. Don't even tell Old Haddigan about this, all right?"
White sniffed disdainfully. "And give him a cut? Never."
Cain suppressed his laughter until after the boy left. Maybe DG's befriending technique wasn't all that bad. His old routine to threaten or browbeat the boy certainly wouldn't have worked in this situation at all.
And they were likely closer to closing in on the spies within the palace guard.
***
DG stopped in her tracks as she walked through the halls of the palace. "Glitch?" she called out in disbelief. "Is that you?" The figure up ahead stopped and half turned. She grinned and hurried ahead to catch up. "But you were with Raw and Ronsard and..."
The face was different. She couldn't quite place it, since it did look like Glitch. But there was something to the tilt of his mouth, the flash of the zipper at his head and the way his hair was twisted in on itself. Everything was just subtly off somehow, just enough that the hackles were rising on the back of her neck. It grew worse when he smiled at her.
"I was looking for you. Why don't we go talk somewhere? The room with the maps, perhaps. I like maps," he said cheerily. The voice was just off by a little as well.
DG froze. "I think we should find Raw."
"Well, he's still where we were..." Glitch's voice trailed off but DG didn't supply the area. Her teeth were on edge, and she was trying to back away without it being so apparent. "Well," he said, rocking back and forth on his heels. "I forget, you know. But he's there. I'm sure of it. I know I can be of use elsewhere now. But we'll know if we look at the plans."
DG stepped back, looking at Glitch warily. "Who are you?"
Glitch's face froze. "I'm Glitch, of course."
"No, you're not. You look like him, sort of, and you sound like him, sort of, but you're not him. I know you're not. You're not my friend. So who are you?"
"Fuck this," he muttered after a moment, lunging for DG. She shrieked and tried to let out a blast of magic to throw him back. But he had a tight hold of her arms, and the blast spun them around in a tight circle. They flew toward the wall, and DG's head hit a column with a loud crack.
She collapsed to the floor, still breathing but not moving.
With a grunt, the last of the glamour faded from the man's body. He was in a tight black bodysuit and a long hooded cape. He had dark eyes sunken into a sallow face and dark hair that almost blended into the shadows. He had a chain around his waist and a wicked knife sheathed and strapped to his thigh. He also had small, thin knives tucked into his boots and along the insides of his sleeves. He had trained for years how to use them most effectively, and how to use glamours to get close enough to his target.
His target was unconscious, however. And he was no closer to the battle strategy she was using or the map of her army outposts. He needed to get the hell out of Central City and back to Green Harbor to collect his payment. The whispers in the Sin District held that the breakaway counties were being punished by Old Magic and Horrible Things. The whispers were always vague and intimating the worst, and he was sure that they were false.
Lips pressed together unhappily, he threw the unconscious princess over his shoulder and moved back into the maze of corridors that only the servants knew about. The one that had told him how to get through the maze was still stuck to the wall in one of the corridors, cutlery she had been returning to the kitchens pinning her corpse in place. It might be some time before her violated corpse was found, and he planned to be far away when that happened.
But he needed the princess alive for that. He needed her to wake up and tell him what the battle plans were. He needed her to tell him the safest route out of the city; with the blockade at the Gates, the guards would know him for what he was and kill him on sight. If he had the princess in tow, he might actually make it out of the city.
The assassin broke out into a run, heading into the maze of the palace's back corridors.
***
***
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz belongs to Frank Baum and all of the modifications belong to SciFi.
Rating: NC-17 for language and lovingly rendered sex.
Pairing: DG/Cain, Azkadellia/OMCx2
Warnings: This takes place after the SciFi movie and after my story "The Edge of Dawn." This does refer to events occurring within that story, so you need to read that one first.
Summary: DG wanted to start a war with Lurlaine in the Mirror Zone. Little did she realize that it would lead to a war in the OZ as well...
Prior chapters can be found here.
White had been a thief since he could understand what it was to steal. He had been a thin and wiry child, underfed and hungry more often than not. He could disappear sideways into the wind, his mother's pimp had said, and his fingers were as quick as the wind as well. Pockets weren't that far away from his face, and no one thought a slip of a boy like him could possibly be responsible for all the wallets and coins and jewels stolen. He had an angel's face, though he didn't know where that came from. His mother wasn't particularly pretty, especially not now, not when times were hard and there was little enough work to keep the pimp's hands from knocking her about. White did what he could to help meet their room's rents, and some days his earnings were all they had.
War was bad on the Sin District, that was for certain. White hated it.
There was work to be had by the gates, though that was tricky business. Most of the castle guards didn't like boys hanging about, didn't like the shifty eyes and the sharp tongues of the older ones or the way that some of the dark clad people always assumed that enough coin could get their way in through the gates.
But there were also the dishonest guards, the ones that let them slip. Everyone knew that.
White crept close to the West Gate, where Old Haddigan had said that the dishonest guards tended to keep rotation light and easy. This was where the dark clad folk crept in, carrying coins as bright as the suns. This was where a little work could likely be had for a boy with sharp eyes and a disappearing body.
The dishonest guards let themselves be known by a square of color peeking out from behind the patch of the palace guard staff. Old Haddigan had said that it should be light blue or yellow, something easy to see and remember against the purple and white and green of the royal insignia, something easy to pass on by whispers. But White couldn't see any peep of color behind the royal insignia on the uniform of the guard at the West Gate, so maybe Old Haddigan was wrong about that little detail. The guards were thinned out and few wandered around in the dark any longer. The whispers in the Sin District was that evil magic was afoot, that the Gales brought in wicked magic to keep the traitors in line. It might be true, it might not. White didn't follow politics; no one cared what happened in the Sin District but the blackguards left there. Still, he had to admit, the shadows seemed thicker around the gates, and the dark seemed to have a heavier weight than they used to.
But White also knew that there weren't as many dead rats in alleys, or the homeless that slept amongst the garbage. Something was scaring them off. Or eating them.
"Benton," White heard someone hiss in the darkness. "Damn your ancestors, Benton! Where are you?" the voice called out. White pressed himself backward into the darkness, rubbing more dirt into his sallow cheeks. The joke went that he was called White because he had been that color when he was born, but all the dirt and soot since then stained his skin almost black in some places. White didn't care; it let him blend in better.
A figure in a dark cloak, the hood pulled down low over his features, came into White's view. He was looking around, clearly trying to find someone who should have been at the West Gate. He wasn't very happy by the absence of any figure there, and White kept his mouth shut and his breathing even. He narrowed his eyes a fraction to keep the whites from shining in the dark, just to be sure. There had been a single guard at the West Gate, but he had walked north some time ago. There hadn't been any color behind his insignia. This hooded figure was holding a yellow handkerchief in his hand, and it looked to be stained with blood from where White stood.
Perhaps Old Haddigan hadn't been completely wrong.
The guard was returning from his northerly patrol, and the hooded figure ducked behind a pile of crates that held garbage from the merchant's district. It would be hauled away in the morning. It reeked of a thousand different kinds of stink. The figure coughed, not used to the reek, and alerted the guard to his position. White just pressed farther back in his own pile; it didn't matter about the smell, it mattered about not getting caught and not having any creature dive down out of the muck to try to eat him.
The guard held his hand over his service weapon as he approached the crates, peering into the darkness. White knew he wouldn't find anything unless the hooded figure was stupid; there was only starlight above, and that made it harder to track light in the crooked alleyways between the Old Town and the City gates. The guard slipped on a wet cobble, and apparently it was just enough for him to see the flash of the hooded figure's handkerchief, still clutched tightly within his fist. "Oi, you!" the guard called out, rushing forward.
"Where's Benton?" the hooded figure complained, diving sideways and losing hold of his yellow handkerchief. "Benton was supposed to be here tonight!"
The guard got a shot off, but it went harmlessly through the hooded figure's cloak. The figure whirled around, and White could see the flash of weak starlight over the metal of a wicked looking blade. He'd seen those kinds of daggers before, belonging to the Thieves' Guild's rejects; they tried to band together to make their own guild, but they lacked to focus of the Thieves' Guild. White was too young for it; they took boys over twelve only. White was cunning, but he wasn't quite old enough for their minds.
The hooded figure was fairly inept at hiding in the dark, but he could wield that blade effortlessly enough that White knew he had some kind of training. White thought perhaps he came from outside of Central City; there was something off about his accent, something that the desperation brought out of him. He was no Central City slum kid, and not likely from the outlying city areas either. He was new, some kind of recent transplant, and White winced when he slit the guard's throat in a single move. Hot blood gushed from the guard's throat, falling down over his uniform like rain. The hooded figure grunted and kicked at the guard before spitting on his body. "Damn it, Benton," the figure hissed. "I need the way back out."
White kept his mouth shut, his breathing even and his eyes closed tight as the hooded figure passed. Most folk didn't check the garbage piles, didn't think to look down into the corners of things. They trusted their eyes too much, and trusted what they thought they saw far too much to be safe. White knew that he wouldn't be found.
But now he wondered what he had found, and how much it might be worth.
***
DG knew there were problems the moment the sirens started within the palace to alert the guards. Considering that everyone knew Cain stayed with her, the sirens meant to wake him had been placed in her suite as well. He was instantly awake and alert, a trait she still hadn't developed yet, and was pulling on his uniform. "Wyatt?"
"Stay here inside the wards until I know what we're dealing with, Deeg," he said, voice tense and his shoulders hunched. "With everything going on right now..."
"That's why I've been getting lessons..."
DG stopped at the drawn expression on Wyatt's face and the haunted look in his eyes. "Please, Deeg. I don't want to worry about you, too."
She tamped down on the urge to tell him that she could handle herself, thank you very much, and she had magic now to boot. She merely reached out and grasped his face in her hands. "Whatever it is, I will find you and kill you if you die on me. Got it?"
His lips quirked into a smile and he wound his arms around her shoulders. She could feel every button and cold bit of braiding that told his rank through the thin nightgown. "I wouldn't expect anything less from you."
Wyatt Cain strode into the central office for the palace guard in the south wing of the palace. All of the heads of security were present by the time he arrived. "What happened?"
"One of the Shadow Brigade rang the bell," one the lieutenants remarked. "Novae, I think."
Cain wasn't familiar with the name, but that didn't mean anything. "What do we know about the situation that led to the ringing?"
"Mannon's dead," another lieutenant said heavily. "We found his body by the West Gate."
They had known that Mannon was unfailingly loyal to the Gale line. Every man and woman in the central office was. The questionable ones had been sent elsewhere, to more observable locations in the palace and city. The questionable guards at the West Gate had been Benton, Lisdel, Tolono and Kittredge. Mannon was dead now, and there was no way to tell which guard should have been there in his stead.
"Novae thinks there's a witness," the lieutenant continued, her face earnest as she spoke. "We couldn't find any particular clues, but the garbage in the area..." She looked at Cain, almost apologetic. "It's the Sin District, so it's about as easy to find information as if we had gone to the Realm of the Unwanted."
"We'll need to move fast, before anyone that we suspect knows about this."
"But what do you-"
The third lieutenant in the room was cut off as a messenger raced into the central office. "The... Justicar... About ten minutes ago... A boy was found..."
"Catch your breath," Cain told the panting messenger, who looked ready to collapse. "You ran all the way from the Gate?" The messenger nodded, and Cain indicated for one of the lieutenants to give the messenger a seat and some water. "Drink, rest a moment, then start again."
The messenger looked at Cain gratefully and struggled to get his breath under control. "One of the Justicars for the West Gate area thinks she found sign of a boy that might have seen what happened. It's a known pickpocket in the area, some half starved thing. He was crawling in the garbage holds near the Gate."
Cain nodded at the messenger. "Let the man get settled with some food in the kitchens," he told one of the lieutenants. He looked to the other two. "With me."
Not running as fast as the messenger, it took twice as long to reach the West Gate area. The surrounding area in the Old Town was known as the Sin District. Whores openly sold themselves for pimps, the Sorceress' vapors were still sold and powders of dubious purpose regularly exchanged hands. There was no official Thieves' Guild, though there were several rival gangs that each purported to be an official guild. The black market was thriving here, and the underhanded dealings were rivaled only by what went on in the Realm of the Unwanted. The activities in Central City were contained in only the Sin District, at least.
Cain strode directly up to the Justicar for the Brickwall part of Old Town. Cain didn't know everyone in Central City, and Justicars tended to change every few years. Few people wanted to bear the brunt of an entire district's rage for very long, and Justicars were supposed to impartially mete justice to those that Tin Men brought in for breaking the law. It was strange that a Tin Man wasn't present when the Justicar was, and that the Justicar for Brickwall was instantly nervous once he saw Cain headed in his direction.
"Justicar," Cain intoned, nodding at the thin woman in the Justicar's uniform. "You're the one that found Defender Mannon?"
"I am," the woman said. "I am Justicar Carin, newly assigned to Brickwall, sir."
Cain smiled thinly. "Taking a tour of the Sin District, then?" he asked. The Justicar paled slightly at his sardonic tone. "Let me see the body."
The Justicar moved sharply, and Cain could see the stab wounds and the slit throat clearly. They were deep, even cuts with clean edges that didn't pucker. Straight edge and no poison, then, so not one of the larger Thieves' Guilds, Cain decided. He looked up at the Justicar. "You haven't moved the body, I hope?" The Justicar shook her head. Cain pulled on a pair of gloves and began to examine the way Mannon had fallen. "I heard something about a boy that was found a short time ago, a possible witness."
"He claims he has information," Justicar Carin said, though her tone was clear that she didn't believe him at all.
"I'll want to speak with the boy, of course," Cain said, moving to stand up. The Justicar bristled and opened her mouth to speak. "There's no Tin Man assigned to this," Cain interrupted sharply, "and that's a break in protocol for investigative procedure. I have experience, so I'll be taking on the investigation for this personally. That is all."
Effectively dismissed, Justicar Carin could only gape at Cain in shock until another palace guard suggested that she return home. Implicit in that request was that Justicar Carin refrained from discussing what had happened by the West Gate, and they would refrain from asking what she had been doing out in the Sin District in the middle of the night.
Two palace guards that had investigated the Justicar's call were physically holding the skinny wraith of a boy in place. He was spitting and kicking at them, shouting vile things about their heritage and sexual habits as the two guards stoically continued to hold him. Cain suppressed a grin at the sight of the boy and was glad that DG wasn't with him. She'd take a shine to the lost little thing immediately, and he knew very well what that would mean. She would want to stuff him full of food and add him to her little menagerie of stray people and creatures. The boy clearly could take care of himself, but DG would still want to coddle him.
But then, DG got the results she did for a reason.
Cain hunkered down until he was at the boy's eye level. He was careful to stay back far enough to be out of range of the boy's legs. "When was the last time you ate something?" he began, not even bothering to get the boy's name or blustering about how the boy would have to do what he was told.
The boy quieted, staring at Cain with deep mistrust. "Depends on what you're talkin' 'bout."
Sin District accent, so he was a home grown miscreant. Cain could work with this. "Actual food, and not garbage scrounged out of a bin somewhere."
The boy's jaw tightened. "I had a slice of bread two days ago."
Cain nodded and rose to his full height again. "Let's escort our young friend to the kitchens," he told the guards holding onto the boy. He could feel the boy's eyes on him like daggers, but could ignore it. That was a familiar feeling, like sliding into his Tin Man's skin. This was doing something, this was going to get results. He'd find something useful, something of interest to start getting to who killed Mannon. Mannon had been a good man, loyal and hardworking, with an ailing sister to inform.
"I'm sure we can start this all again once our young friend is properly fed," Cain continued easily. He ignored the sputtered curses from the boy and gestured for them to head to the palace by way of the kitchens. The Shadow Brigade had pointed out the boy, so he had been in the area when Mannon died. That didn't mean he would simply cooperate, and Cain knew what needed to be done. Breakfast was in a few hours yet, but the kitchens were always busy around the clock. People were always about in a place as large and heavily staffed as the palace, so there was always something warm to eat in the kitchens. Food would help the investigation better than threats and vague intimations; hunger always made tempers sharper and memories dulled.
The boy put away soup first, then sandwiches and fruit and tea and milk, all things he hadn't been sure about at first but he finally touched with Cain's urging. When he was full and a little more comfortable around Cain, he stopped looking at the guards with quite an angry gaze. He was still resentful, but just as Cain had hoped, he was less tense. "What's your name, kid?" The boy just stared blankly, jutting his jaw out slightly. "Unless you want me calling you kid while we talk? Most folk would rather be called by their names."
"White," the boy said grudgingly after a moment. He stared at Cain, wondering if he was going to laugh or demand a proper name from him.
But Cain merely nodded. "Fair enough. I have a friend named Ghost."
White visibly relaxed when he wasn't laughed at. "Old Haddigan knows a Ghost."
Cain laughed. "Is Haddigan still alive, then? Wobbly leg, missing three fingers on his right hand and has a glass eye?" The boy goggled at him, nodding. "I wasn't always part of the castle guard, kid," Cain said, and let the boy draw his own conclusions.
"So Old Haddigan really does know everyone and everything, then," the boy mused.
"Some things. I'm sure you know plenty he doesn't."
White looked at Cain shrewdly. "How much is it worth?"
"What do you want?"
White narrowed his eyes at Cain. He didn't want to overprice himself out of a sale, and he didn't want to underprice himself either. Old Haddigan often said the palace folk were stingier than they could afford to be, but they weren't stupid either. And if this fellow in the guard's uniform knew Haddigan, he had once known how the Sin District worked. "We can start with food, a favor to call in and ten guilders," White said as an opening salvo.
"If you need a favor, that tells me maybe you have someone to protect," Cain said slowly. He understood the kid's reticence if that was true.
White thrust his jaw out belligerently again. "What's it to you?"
"You might need more than one favor to call in, depending on the trouble that person is in."
"I could lie," White said, "I could tell you shit and you won't know it."
Cain leveled a gaze at White. "Do you really think I wouldn't know it?"
The boy gulped at the sight of Cain's tight expression. It had been worth a shot, but he was back to square one again. "No one comes to the Sin District no more. Rent's gotta be paid, an' I don't get enough to cover rent an' food." White stared at Cain. "There's shit to tell and truth to tell, if you want both."
"Tell me what happened." Depending on how observant the kid was, Cain could probably use another set of eyes in the dark. The Shadow Brigade was good at that, but they didn't live in the slums of the city and didn't know its underbelly. Even Cain didn't know all the major players anymore, though it was nice to know a few of them were still around.
White slowly began to stammer about the color codes at the gates, the name the hooded assailant had called for. He described the knife used, how quickly the guard had gone down since he had been there at the West Gate alone. He told the truth, every last bit of it, and watched Cain's face turn ashen in all the appropriate bits.
"I have a job for you," Cain said when White had fallen silent. "You are going to report to myself or to those two lieutenants back there," he said, nodding at the two that had helped to corral the boy in the West Gate debris. "Your job will involve keeping an eye on that Gate for us. If you see that man, anyone like him, with that knife, anything, I need you to come for us and ask for only the three of us."
There was more to this, White could tell. "What's this, then?"
"You might just help us find a traitor," Cain told the boy. "And if he's as high up as I think he is, it might be enough to end this war that much faster."
Win and win, as far as White was concerned. "Ten guilders up front, then," he said. The man in front of him had a lot of decorated braid on his uniform, so that was likely nothing to him.
Cain smiled and dug into his pocket. "Here's fifteen. Pay off that rent and feed whoever it is you need to feed."
White bit each coin to be sure they were real, even though he had the feeling they were. "Well, that's an easy enough job, then."
"Don't get yourself killed, kid," Cain intoned, standing. He nodded at the lieutenants. "They'll get you back where you were. Don't even tell Old Haddigan about this, all right?"
White sniffed disdainfully. "And give him a cut? Never."
Cain suppressed his laughter until after the boy left. Maybe DG's befriending technique wasn't all that bad. His old routine to threaten or browbeat the boy certainly wouldn't have worked in this situation at all.
And they were likely closer to closing in on the spies within the palace guard.
***
DG stopped in her tracks as she walked through the halls of the palace. "Glitch?" she called out in disbelief. "Is that you?" The figure up ahead stopped and half turned. She grinned and hurried ahead to catch up. "But you were with Raw and Ronsard and..."
The face was different. She couldn't quite place it, since it did look like Glitch. But there was something to the tilt of his mouth, the flash of the zipper at his head and the way his hair was twisted in on itself. Everything was just subtly off somehow, just enough that the hackles were rising on the back of her neck. It grew worse when he smiled at her.
"I was looking for you. Why don't we go talk somewhere? The room with the maps, perhaps. I like maps," he said cheerily. The voice was just off by a little as well.
DG froze. "I think we should find Raw."
"Well, he's still where we were..." Glitch's voice trailed off but DG didn't supply the area. Her teeth were on edge, and she was trying to back away without it being so apparent. "Well," he said, rocking back and forth on his heels. "I forget, you know. But he's there. I'm sure of it. I know I can be of use elsewhere now. But we'll know if we look at the plans."
DG stepped back, looking at Glitch warily. "Who are you?"
Glitch's face froze. "I'm Glitch, of course."
"No, you're not. You look like him, sort of, and you sound like him, sort of, but you're not him. I know you're not. You're not my friend. So who are you?"
"Fuck this," he muttered after a moment, lunging for DG. She shrieked and tried to let out a blast of magic to throw him back. But he had a tight hold of her arms, and the blast spun them around in a tight circle. They flew toward the wall, and DG's head hit a column with a loud crack.
She collapsed to the floor, still breathing but not moving.
With a grunt, the last of the glamour faded from the man's body. He was in a tight black bodysuit and a long hooded cape. He had dark eyes sunken into a sallow face and dark hair that almost blended into the shadows. He had a chain around his waist and a wicked knife sheathed and strapped to his thigh. He also had small, thin knives tucked into his boots and along the insides of his sleeves. He had trained for years how to use them most effectively, and how to use glamours to get close enough to his target.
His target was unconscious, however. And he was no closer to the battle strategy she was using or the map of her army outposts. He needed to get the hell out of Central City and back to Green Harbor to collect his payment. The whispers in the Sin District held that the breakaway counties were being punished by Old Magic and Horrible Things. The whispers were always vague and intimating the worst, and he was sure that they were false.
Lips pressed together unhappily, he threw the unconscious princess over his shoulder and moved back into the maze of corridors that only the servants knew about. The one that had told him how to get through the maze was still stuck to the wall in one of the corridors, cutlery she had been returning to the kitchens pinning her corpse in place. It might be some time before her violated corpse was found, and he planned to be far away when that happened.
But he needed the princess alive for that. He needed her to wake up and tell him what the battle plans were. He needed her to tell him the safest route out of the city; with the blockade at the Gates, the guards would know him for what he was and kill him on sight. If he had the princess in tow, he might actually make it out of the city.
The assassin broke out into a run, heading into the maze of the palace's back corridors.
***
***