Broken People (10 page)

Still, Renard smiled and nodded at people as
they passed by, stopping to shake hands on the way. He was as
popular as someone who ran a circus would have been expected to
be—maybe
too
popular. Well-mannered and educated, he didn’t
quite fit into the scenery. And, unlike all the other performers,
he wasn’t wearing a mask.

"No mask?" Dale asked.

The magician raised a hand and wiggled his
gloved fingers. “The audience is more prone to believe an act it
knows can’t be real if you go out of your way to prove you have
nothing to hide.”

“So it’s all smoke and mirrors?”

“More or less,” Renard said. “We’re not so
keen on mirrors. That’s why we got rid of the ordeal of putting on
makeup.”

“Those masks are … quite something.”

“Yeah, though you’ll have to talk to our
specialists if you’re curious. I was never good with technology,
not the kind we use anyway.”

Such a statement coming from someone whose
work relied on highly advanced technology made Dale shake his head.
The man was either very modest or used to a different type of
technology. He ran a factory of spare parts, for God’s sake.

Once they left the cone of light surrounding
the fair and stepped into the darkness separating them from the
train, Renard tapped his walking stick against a rock. A faint glow
lit up the stick’s handle. It bothered Dale’s eyes more than
helped, but the magician obviously didn’t have Dale’s
enhancements.

They crossed the last couple of meters in
silence, and Renard placed his hand on the logo painted on the side
of the car before climbing inside. That gesture likely triggered a
sensor to keep track of visitors, since there was no door to open
anymore. What did that mean in terms of security? Would the gas
have gone off if Cole had been alone, or had Cielo released it? Not
like any of them would have volunteered the information if he
asked.

In the last compartment at the end of the
car, Spinner hummed quietly to himself, checking data on the
screens in front of a shelf filled with vials. “This one … this one
… and this one … No, not this one … Ah, this one, yes …” He picked
out colorless vials and set them aside.

Renard’s light footsteps made him look up.
“Oh, it’s you … boss.” He cast a glance at Dale. “Umm, we had a bit
of a problem, but it’s all taken care of.”

Broken glass had been swept away, and the
place looked pristine again. A clueless visitor wouldn’t have any
idea of the horrors that took place in there, hacking people up to
fix them and putting them back together. Exhibit number one lay
unconscious on his bed, but Rake was absent, and so were the
intruders.

“Do you expect more problems of the same
nature?” Renard asked.

“No, we’ll be prepared if they return,”
Spinner said.

“So you can proceed as planned? I’m sure Mr.
Armstrong is concerned.”

Dale settled for a nod.

“Absolutely,” Spinner hurried to say. “Rake
has gone to bring another door from the storage. We’ll install it
and, after the show, get to work.”

“I’d like to stay,” Dale said.

“Not here,” Spinner said decisively. “What
we do is not for the faint-hearted, and we don’t want to add any
risk of infection.”

“If you insist, you can wait in my car,”
Renard said.

“But it will take all night,” Spinner said.
“There’s no point in waiting. We’ll inform you in the morning how
it went and what we plan to do next.”

With both of them clearly wanting to get rid
of him, Dale prepared himself to insist, but Rake came in.

“All done,” the taller knife thrower said,
his face impassive.

“You don’t need me here. Please excuse me.”
Renard headed for the door. “Don’t be late for the show.”

Dale took one glance at Cole, then turned to
Spinner. “Tomorrow. I want news as soon as possible.”

“Yes, we’ll send word,” Spinner said. “Then
you can come if you want, but we intend to keep him under sedation
for several days until we complete the grafting.”

It sounded like a complicated and painful
procedure, so Dale had no choice but to agree with their terms.

Thick clouds hid the sunlight as Rake left
the factory the next morning. The smell of fresh blood had lodged
inside his nostrils, and his left eye twitched from all the
squinting. They had called it a day after several difficult hours.
By the time they had stopped, the client’s body showed signs of
distress but, as far as they could tell, the transplant had gone
well. In a day or two, they would know how many grafted nerves had
taken and would function properly, and which ones they would have
to remove. So it would be touch-and-go for a while.

He shook his head. Armstrong didn’t seem
like the type of guy used to waiting. Rake climbed into the car he
shared with Spinner. His colleague had stayed behind to get
breakfast from the cafeteria car, but Rake was too tired to wait.
Carrying the heavy door from five cars away and putting it into
place by himself had exhausted whatever strength he had left after
the show. He was starting to feel his age. Later than most, but
still annoying. All he wanted was to fall into bed and sleep until
the next show.

When he opened the door to his room, he
found the bed already occupied.

“What took you so long?” Riella raised her
head from the pillow to throw him a glare. As she shifted, a curly
lock of red hair twisted and wrapped around her right breast. “I
don’t have long. Serioja should wake up soon.”

The woman lay naked on his sheets, and Rake
wondered if there was anything that might ever intimidate her. Her
official partner finding out about their illicit affair surely
didn’t.

“We had a lot of work to do.” Rake took off
his jacket and hung it on a rack behind the door. Except for the
blade locker, he kept the décor to a minimum because he never had
time to clean the place, and he didn’t like a messy room. One by
one, he pulled the blades from around his body and deposited them,
wrapped in leather sheaths, on the shelves inside the locker. Once
free of them, he turned off the magnetic fields generated by
various parts of his body and allowed himself to relax.

“Are you done now?” Riella asked in a bored
voice that didn’t accept “no” for an answer.

Rake ran his fingers through the short hair
on the back of his head. “For now.” He sat down on the edge of the
bed and bent over to unlace his boots.

Riella crawled on her knees behind him and
lay on his back, an arm wrapped around his neck. “Do you know what
people are saying?” she murmured by his ear.

“Mmm?”

“They say Nicholas is on his way to take
over the circus.”

“Do they?” Rake straightened his back and
proceeded to unbutton his padded shirt. “Would that be such a bad
thing?”

“Big Dino will never stand for it.” Riella’s
soft breasts rubbed pleasantly against Rake’s shoulder blades,
eliciting a small groan from him.

“Big Dino neglected to delegate a
successor,” Rake said, freeing his arms from the sleeves.

Riella ran her fingers over the sharp edges
poking from under his skin, signaling the places where the
prosthetics wrapped around his joints. With the fields off, he felt
them cooperating less.

“While he’s out, he has no say in the
matter.” Rake tossed the shirt away and rested his hands on his
knees, frowning at the floor. “We can’t let the circus die.”

He leaned back to allow Riella to climb into
his lap and straddle him. She was as flexible as the contortionists
but despised their act. In her opinion, going out naked would have
been preferable, as opposed to mangling her body in such
disgraceful positions.

Rake’s big hands slid up and down her torso,
enjoying the warmth of her skin.

“It’s already falling apart.” Riella pouted.
“The music from last night was atrocious. The Nightingale missed
half of the notes. She wasn’t into it at all.” Her complaint turned
into a moan when the Rake’s thumb brushed against her nipple, and
her back arched.

“She had an off night. It happens.” He
clasped her chin between his fingers and made her look at him,
showing her who was in control. “Now, how much time do we
have?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“That will do,” Rake said and roughly threw
her onto the mattress. He wasn’t that tired after all.

Riella let out a delighted laugh and pulled
him to her.

The number columns added up evenly. Although
she had several accountants on her payroll, Aurore periodically
made unannounced visits to the jewelry stores and pawn shops she
owned to look over the books. What people tended to ignore when
faced with her golden arms and legs was that her brain worked
better than any machine. She was good with numbers and possessed a
fantastic memory. No one cheated on her twice.

Her bodyguards helped, but it wasn’t just
the manpower. Making it to her blacklist represented the equivalent
of business suicide. If word got out the Golden Lady refused to
work with you—and she would make sure it did—all doors closed in
your face. People trusted her judgment when it came to business.
She had created a small, comfortable empire for herself, so
whenever things ran out of the known pattern, she became
suspicious.

“Shaz, why are people bringing in so many
spare parts all of the sudden?” Aurore asked the older lady sitting
behind the counter.

The woman briefly raised her eyes from the
trashy novel she was reading, gave a disinterested shrug, and
returned her attention to the book.

“It’s not winter yet, so they’re not
freezing or starving.” Aurore ran her fingers through her hair and
tightened the ivory clasp holding it back. “If anything, they
should be desperate to buy parts so they can have them adjusted and
installed while the circus is here. It’s cheaper than buying new
ones.”

“Don’t ask
me
. I’m only buying and
selling this stuff,” Shaz said. “I never ask where it’s coming
from. It’s the firm’s policy.”

And it had been working fine for years.
Nothing was reported to the police, but each shop kept logs on the
items passing through—prices, buyers, sellers, dates, everything.
If an item needed to be tracked, the best place to start was here.
So when confronted with an avalanche of similar items, one could be
sure that, sooner or later, someone was going to come and ask
questions. Better stay ahead.

The chime of the doorbell announced a new
customer. The bulky man stayed away from the cluttered shelves,
ignoring their contents, obviously not wanting to have anything to
do with them. A seller then. If Aurore hadn’t worn her gloves, the
man might have given her a second look as she sat at the round,
antique table, leaning over her book. But common people didn’t
expect to run into the Golden Lady at a pawn shop.

He dragged his feet to Shaz, and from the
pocket of his large sheepskin coat, he retrieved a small package
that he placed on the counter.

“I … I’ve got something.” He unfolded the
wrapping.

Shaz looked down her pointy nose at the
gleaming metal inside the folds and raised her voice, startling
him. “We’ve got another one!”

Maintaining her composure, Aurore rose from
the table and joined them. She recognized the prosthetic as part of
a more complicated wrist holder. They had first been introduced a
decade ago and still circulated in various circles. Given its size,
it had been designed for a child.

“It still has blood on it.” Aurore wrinkled
her nose at the brown spots decorating the joints.

“Well, how else would you get it out?” the
man retorted, but beads of perspiration appeared on his
forehead.

“You could have cleaned it,” Shaz said,
turning the prosthetic around with a pair of tweezers. “It’s not
totally useless.” She cast a glance at Aurore.

The man looked from one woman to the other,
his gaze shifting and refusing to make eye contact.

“Relax. She’ll take it,” Aurore said. Firm
policy: never turn down a customer’s goods because you may never
know when you’ll need them. She nodded at Shaz to take the package
to the storage room in the back of the shop, then turned to the
man. “I just want to know from where you got it. It’s obviously not
yours.” She pointed with her chin at the man’s big fists.

“My-my niece needed it a while ago … but she
outgrew it.” He shifted his weight on his feet and mumbled, “And we
don’t want it in our house.”

“Why not?” Aurore asked. “You can barter
with it or sell it to someone for more than you’ll get here.”

A snort came from the back room, conveying
Shaz’s opinion on Aurore’s way of doing business.

“Those who need this type of thing—” the man
nodded towards the back door, “—fall into two categories: either
they can afford to buy new parts, or they don’t have money for both
the procedure
and
the parts. Neither will come to me.”

“But that’s not why you’re selling it,”
Aurore said.

The man let his head hang. “The war is
coming. People say the enemy has machines able to detect us because
of our prosthetics. And when they get here … We don’t want to take
any risks. I don’t have implants, but my wife does. When they get
here, we’ll have them removed. It will be tough.” His voice trailed
off as tears welled in his eyes. He rolled a shoulder and cleared
his throat. “It’s not much of a life, but it’s all we’ve got.”

“Shaz, give him a bonus … for the story.”
Aurore granted them a thin smile and returned to her seat at the
table, leaving them to argue over price. It was not her job to get
a good deal. “Wrap that for me, will you?” she said after the
customer left. “I’ve been looking for one of those for ages.”

“And how will you be paying?” Shaz’s
eyebrows rose. “We only accept cash.”