Belay the grabbing.
“You’re an outsider. Your kind exiled our kind into this swamp. We hate bluebloods. Right now Baxter is out there telling wild stories about the blueblood who came to kill the Edgers. By nightfall, it will be you and some friends, who attacked defenseless locals. By morning, the whole town will be out looking for the mysterious army unit of bluebloods Louisiana sent in to exterminate us. They will hunt you down with torches, like a dog. Stay here, hero, while I fix this.”
She strode over to Machete and crouched by him, the tip of her sword resting on the ground. “You’re alive, Kent?”
Kent moaned something.
“Tell Lagar that he isn’t the only one who can hire mercenaries. When we hire someone, we get the best. He would do well to remember that.”
She rose from the crouch and nodded at William. He took his fish and followed her down the road.
Cerise’s face was dark. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that six against one wasn’t a fair fight. I evened the odds a bit.”
“You call that evening the odds? You demolished them.”
Demolished. He liked that. “I left you one.”
“I noticed.”
“I promised to share,” he told her. “Manners are very important in the Weird. Lying would be quite impolite.”
Her mouth trembled and she hid a smile. It played on her lips for a second, lighting up her face, and vanished.
Want.
“I just told them that my family hired you,” Cerise said. “Now instead of thinking you’re some blueblood hell-bent on causing destruction, the locals will view you as a mercenary. That makes your presence a private matter between my family and the Sheeriles. Either way, you signed your death sentence—Lagar Sheerile will turn himself inside out to kill you now. Lagar isn’t a pushover like those clowns. His brother Peva once shot the hearts off a card at a hundred feet with a crossbow.”
“I’m very scared,” William told her. “Are playing cards a real nuisance in your part of the Edge?”
She snickered.
“Shooting cards is dumb,” he told her. “What is he, five? Or is he doing it to get women?”
Cerise waved her hands. “Never mind. You have two choices: you can either stay here and let them hunt you down while you look for your doohickey, or you can come with me to my house and wait until this blows over. We can probably smuggle you out once this mess dies down.”
He wanted to jump up and down and pump his fist. “To your house? In the swamps?”
“Yes.”
Play it cool, play it cool. “Hmm.”
Cerise glared at him, her dark eyes bright. “What do you mean ‘hmm’? You think I invite just anybody to our family home? If you’d rather be dead because you decided to play the hero and save me, you’re welcome to it.”
“What about your family? Won’t they mind?”
“Until we get my parents back, I’m in charge of my family,” she said.
The road broke through the trees, and they entered a small town. Wooden buildings, some on stilts, some on stone foundations, formed narrow streets. Somewhere to the left a dog bayed. The air smelled of food and people.
“Decide, Lord Bill. Yes or no?”
“Yes,” he said.
“We might get killed along the way,” she said.
“Nice of you to mention it.”
“My pleasure.” She pointed left. “Come on. Zeke’s place is over there. We have to go that way anyway, and the more people see us together now, the better. It will reinforce the idea that you’re working for me. And we can get rid of that awful thing.”
He won. He won, he won, he won. He could see the method in Declan’s madness now. Playing a hero had its advantages.
“I happen to think the fish head is an impressive specimen,” William told her.
“It stinks.”
“You wore a jacket full of rancid spaghetti for three days.”
“It was a disguise! Nobody pays attention to homeless people in the Broken.”
“Why were you in the Broken?” he asked.
“None of your business.”
She stuck her chin in the air and strode down the street. He snuck a glance at her ass—it was a remarkable ass—and followed her.
EIGHT
ZEKE Wallace’s shop occupied a large wooden structure that in the Broken would’ve been a barn. In the Edge, it must’ve passed for a respectable storefront, William decided, since it had a giant gator head above the door and a sign that said ZEKE’S LEATHERS under it.
William swung the door open and remembered to hold it for Cerise. The inside of the store was cool and dim. A long counter sliced the floor in half, offering a variety of knives, gator leathers, belts, and assorted junk. A man sat behind the counter next to a large crossbow.
William glanced at him, evaluating. In his early forties, lean, probably still fast. Skin like a walnut—weathertanned and lined. Hair, once black, now neither here nor there, worn on the longer side. Hooded dark eyes.
Their stares met. “What can I do you for?” the man asked.
“Looking for Zeke,” William said.
“I’m Zeke. What are you and your lady looking for?”
Cerise turned to him. “Hi, Zeke.”
Zeke flinched.
It lasted half a second, a mere flicker across the man’s face, but William caught it: eyebrows raised, eyes wide, lips stretched back. That was the one human expression he was very familiar with—fear. Zeke Wallace was afraid of Cerise.
The man recovered fast, in the same breath. “Hello, Ms. Mar. And how are you this fine evening?”
“Good, thank you.” She wandered down the counter looking at the knickknacks.
William raised the fish head. “I need this stuffed.”
Zeke looked at the head. “That’s a Gospo Adir eel.”
Cerise grimaced. “Yes, and he’s very proud of killing it.”
“The Sect won’t like it,” Zeke said.
“Can you do it or not?” William let some growl into his voice.
Zeke frowned. “Fish mount is a tricky thing. You have to scrape the meat out from the cheeks and skull and then soak the thing in alcohol to get the rest of the meat to harden. I don’t do them, but my nephew, Cole, has done some on occasion.”
“If it’s a question of money, I have it.” William pulled one of the Mirror’s coins from his pocket and tossed it to Zeke. It looked just like a normal coin, except for the engraving of the Adrianglian lion. The lion on the real coins had three claws, not four.
Zeke snapped the coin out of the air and looked at it. “Right. Well, you know what they say—money fixes everything. Like I mentioned, fish mounts are tricky, and there’s a couple of ways to do them. I’ve got some samples in the back. If you pick out what you want, we can talk price.”
He headed to a small door. William followed. They went into the back room and Zeke shut the door.
“I expected you yesterday,” he whispered.
“We ran into some sharks,” William said.
Zeke grimaced. “Figured it had to be something like that. That’s Cerise Mar out there. I about broke my head trying to think up a way to get you close to the Mars, and you walk into my store side by side with her like you’re bosom buddies.”
William sat on the edge of a table. “What’s the story with her family?”
“They’re swampers—native Edgers. A big family, very old, land rich, money poor. They’ve got themselves a family house out in the swamp. People call them Rats behind their back, because there’s so damn many of them and they’re poor and mean. The Mars aren’t afraid of blood or lock-up, and they hold a grudge like it was their family treasure.”
Zeke glanced at the main floor through a peephole in the door. “The Mars are feuding with their neighbors, the Sheeriles. The Sheerile family isn’t that big—mother and three sons, but they’ve got money and use a lot of hired muscle. The old woman runs the whole thing, jerks her sons around like puppets on a string. Rumor has it, Gustave Mar and his wife, Gen, disappeared a few days ago and the Sheeriles were involved. That’s a hard trick to pull off. Both the Mars and the Sheeriles are Legion families.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they have old magic,” Zeke said. “The families take root from the ancient Legion marooned centuries ago in the swamps. The Sheeriles would’ve needed help to take Gustave alive. Lagar Sheerile is very good with his blade, but Gustave is one mean sonovabitch. His daughter is of the same stock—if you get in trouble with her, don’t count on any mercy. A guy on the Sheeriles’ payroll says the Hand was involved in the whole thing.” Zeke frowned. “She’s getting impatient.”
Things were clearer but not by much. “Anything else?”
“That’s all I’ve got. If I need to reach you, where will you be?”
“In her house.”
Zeke’s eyebrows crept up. “You got invited to the Rathole? You must be a miracle worker.”
William hid a smile. Sure, he was.
Zeke pulled the door open. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“It’s all yours,” William growled.
Cerise looked up from the counter. “Are you done?”
“Yes.” William nodded.
“Zeke, can we use your back door?”
“Sure thing,” Zeke said.
A moment later they were outside, and William inhaled the scents of the swamp town swirling around him.
“Took you for everything you had?” Cerise’s eyes laughed at him.
“I held my own.”
“Sure you did.” The back of the shop faced the Mire, and Cerise headed straight for it. “Our ride is this way.”
“We have a ride?”
“My cousin,” she said. “Come on, Lord Bill. We’ve kept him waiting long enough already.”
“GENEVIEVE . . .”
The soft insistent voice reached through the fog clouding her mind and tugged on her, demanding attention.
“Genevieve ...”
Slowly Gen opened her eyes to the blurry world wrapped in a shroud of light too bright for her dilated pupils. The pain came slowly, from some dark well within her. It built on itself, growing dense and heavy. Hot claws ripped into her insides, and the world reeled and shuddered. A face blocked her view. It seemed ridiculously large, bigger than her, bigger than the room, darker than light.
“Can you hear me, Gen?”
“Yes,” she whispered through the tortured tempo of her breathing. She knew this voice. She knew it very well.
“Your daughter, Cerise, went to the Broken and came back. Why would she do that? Tell me.” A hand stroked her hair, and the voice came again, gentle, friendly, caring. “I know you’re tired. Tell me why Cerise went to the Broken, and I’ll let you rest. Come on, darling.”
Her dry cracked lips moved, shaping the words. “Go to hell, Spider.”
The pain swelled larger and suddenly burst like a fiery explosion. Her ears filled with the ringing of countless bells. The fire slid down into her chest and lower to scald her legs. It scorched the skin, melted the muscle, and sank its teeth into the bone. Instinctively she tried to curl into a ball, like a newborn, but couldn’t. The world spun in chaos, faster and faster with each rise of her chest, as if fueled by her breathing. Gen Mar retched and sank into oblivion.
CERISE strode down the twisted path, listening to the chorus of Edge cicadas seesawing in the underbrush. Night had claimed the Mire. It came on padded feet, soft and cautious, like a swamp cat, with its ears raised and its eyes opened wide. The reds and yellows of the sky burned down to deep indigo and purple. To the left the lazy, wide expanse of Deadman River stretched into the gloom. As the cooling air drained warmth from its calm current, the last of the nightweaver dragonflies streaked to the water, prickling the surface to snag water fleas in their chitinous claws.
She loved the night. The world seemed bigger somehow, the sky vast and endless, the soft darkness full of possibilities and excitement. Yeah. Right now excitement was the last thing they needed. Jogging down the path in hopes of watching Lord Bill trip on a stray root was as exciting as she wanted it to get. So far he hadn’t stumbled once. It was like the man could see in the dark.
He went through Kent and his thugs like a sharp knife through a ripe pear. Didn’t even break a sweat. She’d never seen anything like it. Kaldar once took her to an action movie in the Broken and she’d laughed the whole time at the ridiculous punches and kicks she could see a mile away, but she had to admit, the fights did look pretty. William’s fight didn’t look pretty. It was terrifying. He moved on liquid joints, so fast and sure, she just stood there and watched him until he was done.
She wished she could’ve watched again, in slow motion this time. He could’ve killed them all with his bare hands. He looked like he might have enjoyed it, too. And after all of that, he trotted over with a “Wasn’t I cool?” look on his face and tried to make her laugh.
I left you one.
Heh. He wasn’t even winded.