“So what do you know about this Morell de Braose?” Kaldar asked.
“That information would be extra.” Gnome shook his bottle. “I’m out of stout, so I’ll take cash.”
Kaldar reached inside his hoodie and pulled out a gold coin. An Adrianglian doubloon. Five hundred dollars. Gnome’s gaze fixed on the coin. Kaldar set the coin on its edge and spun it with a quick flick of his fingers. It whirled in place.
“I know de Braose owns a castle,” Gnome said. “And six thousand acres of the Democracy of California to go with it. He came on the scene about twelve years go. Nobody knows where de Braose is from for sure, but he did away with the baron who owned the estate before him, killed off a few of his neighbors, and remodeled the castle. About a third of his land is in the Edge, and he pops back and forth across the Broken and the Weird at will. He likes the Broken’s antiques, and he hobnobs with the bluebloods from the Weird.”
Well, that was neither here nor there. How was Morell de Braose funded? Where was his castle? How many people did he employ? How did he make his money? Those would be the questions a competent thief would ask. She settled back to watch Kaldar.
Here’s your test. Let’s see how good you are.
Kaldar appeared to be in no hurry. “How did he get his money?”
“There are rumors.” Gnome shrugged. “People say he traffics in weapons, art, and other merchandise.”
“Human merchandise?” Kaldar asked.
“Like I said, there are rumors, but every robber baron in California comes with those kinds of rumors. They’re a lawless crowd. Anything goes. De Braose was never caught in the act, so I don’t got anything concrete.”
A slaver. Audrey fought a shudder. There was no worse scum in either world. They already had the Hand and the Mirror—apparently this mess wouldn’t be complete without a robber baron/slaver in the mix.
“How big’s his army?” Kaldar asked.
“Garrison’s forty men, give or take. Plus a special guard. How many he can raise in a pinch is anybody’s guess.”
Too many. Way too many.
“Why such a large force? Is he ambitious?” Kaldar asked.
“He isn’t land-greedy, if that’s what you mean. De Braose holds art auctions once every few months,” Gnome said. “He sells everything, outlawed automatics from the Weird, stolen art, weapons and medicine contraband from the Broken. These are invitation only; if you don’t have an invitation and a million or two in liquid cash, you shouldn’t bother even showing up. The army’s there to make sure the guests arrive safely and depart safely. It’s a big deal: the whole thing takes three or four days, and he throws banquets and balls as part of it.”
“When is the next one?”
“In eight days. Trust me, you ain’t getting in.”
If Morell de Braose had bought those stupid amplifiers from her father, he’d sell them at the auction. They were too hot an item to hold on to indefinitely. Kaldar had to get into that auction, which sounded pretty much impossible. Well, good luck. It would be his problem and not hers.
“What about this special guard?”
Gnome grinned. “He’s got himself twelve of the Republic of Texas’s finest sharpshooters. A mercenary outfit called Eagle Eye. They don’t miss. And if the guns don’t get you, he also imported himself sixteen of Vinland’s veekings. I’ve seen a picture once. They’re all seven feet tall and carrying axes that would cut a tall tree down in one blow.”
Kaldar kept playing with the coin. “Does he have any enemies?”
Gnome flipped the page, and the hippy woman looked back at them. That was some stare. It would give a seasoned murderer the creeps.
“Magdalene Moonflower.”
Magdalene Moonflower, right. And that wasn’t a fake name, not at all.
“She hates him. She’d be your best bet.”
Kaldar rolled the coin across the table. Gnome swiped the little gold disk and grinned. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
Ling shot between the shelves and leaped onto her lap.
Someone was coming. Audrey tensed. Kaldar rose to his feet. Gnome reached to the top of the nearest shelf and retrieved a shotgun.
Audrey got up and ran through the house to the window overlooking the forest. A moment and Kaldar joined her, standing too close. They scanned the woods.
Nothing. No movement troubled the Edge wilderness.
Behind them, the shotgun clanged as Gnome chambered a round.
A green human-shaped shadow detached from the gloom between the cypress branches, about twenty feet above ground.
Audrey caught her breath.
The shadow leaped. It flew thirty feet, its wide, tattered cloak flaring behind it, and landed at the top of a pine.
What the hell was that?
“Why jump around in a cloak?” Audrey whispered.
“That’s not a cloak,” Kaldar said next to her, gently nudging her aside. “That’s his wings. The Hand is here. We have to go. Now.”
Another person appeared between the trees. He was unnaturally lean and painted in swirls of green and brown. The man looked at a cedar trunk and scrambled up the bark like he had suckers on his hands.
Gnome pulled a box of ammo off the shelf. “You go ahead. There’s a door out back. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Kaldar snapped. “You see that man in the cedar? That’s a
lesarde
-class operative right there, and that over there is a
boddus
. Those two are never let off the chain because they’re both so twisted by magic they’re unstable. That means there is a Hand officer out there, pulling the strings, and they come with a commando unit, twelve operatives, maybe more. You stay here, you die.”
“They aren’t getting into my house.” Gnome locked his teeth.
Idiot.
Audrey thrust herself in front of him. “Gnome! Are you crazy? Come with us! All this stuff isn’t worth your life.”
He bared his teeth at her. “This stuff
is
my life. You two get the hell out of my house.”
Something thumped on the roof and scrambled across it, fast, scratching the shingles.
Oh God.
“Go!” Gnome growled. “Out the back door.”
Kaldar’s hand clamped around her wrist. “Come, Audrey.”
She shook him off. “So you’re just going to die here? Why?”
“Because I spent my life working my hide off for this house and everything with it,” Gnome said. “That’s fifty years of trading and bargaining right here. I know every single thing on these shelves, and the Hand ain’t getting it. None of you are getting my shit, not you, not them.”
“You stupid old fool!”
Gnome waved her off with an angry jerk of his hand.
Kaldar grabbed Audrey’s hand and yanked her, pulling her with him through the house.
“Let go of me.”
“He made his choice. You stay, you die with him.”
“I said let go. You don’t know where you’re going.”
He released her hand and she ran, zigzagging between the shelves, Kaldar a step behind. They passed the pedestal with the book still on it. It was still open to Magdalene Moonflower’s portrait. If they survived this, she would be their next stop, and the Hand didn’t need to know that. Audrey lunged for the book, nearly colliding with Kaldar.
“The page,” he barked, bumping into her.
“I know!”
Audrey grabbed the book and ripped a handful of pages free. Kaldar ran his fingers along the seam, pulling little clumps of paper out, until no evidence of the pages remained, and shoved the pedestal. The giant volume crashed to the floor, closing. Audrey dashed to the back of the house, through a side room, and to the small door. Kaldar grabbed the handle and strained.
“Locked.”
No dead bolt, only a keyhole. “Let me.” Audrey pressed her palm against the keyhole and let her magic seep into the lock. Three, two . . .
The lock clicked. She pushed the handle and ran out into the open air. Ling sprinted into the forest, passing her.
Kaldar drew even. “Keep moving,” the agent murmured. “Keep moving.”
They scurried into the trees.
“Which way is the cliff?” he whispered.
What? Had he lost his mind? “Straight on.”
“Lead the way.”
She broke into a run.
Behind them, something clanged with a heavy metal thud. Audrey glanced over her shoulder. The metal shutters on the house were snapping closed one by one, locking it down. Anxiety squeezed her chest. She remembered when Gnome first showed her his “defense system.” He was trapped within the house, like a sardine in a can.
She looked back again. People in green and brown converged from the grass and trees, climbing onto the house, one from the left, the other two from the right. A man crawled over the roof, moving on all fours. He raised his head. His eyes bored straight into her.
For a second she stopped in her tracks, frozen by the sudden fear. A strange, revolting feeling flooded Audrey, grasping her stomach and throat and crushing both. Nausea writhed through her. The tiny hairs on the backs of her arms rose.
The man opened his mouth. A long black tongue flailed among a forest of long, needle-thin fangs.
Magic washed over Audrey in a sickening miasma, clinging to her skin. Tiny jaws nibbled on her flesh, trying to worm their way inside. Audrey spun and dashed through the woods. Tree trunks flashed by. She ran like she had never run before in her life, all but flying over the forest floor, trying to get away from the awful magic. Her feet crushed undergrowth. The magic chased her. She could feel it flooding the woods behind her.
A shotgun barked, its fire like thunder:
Boom! Boom!
A high-pitched shriek tore through the forest, spurring her on. Something had caught the full blast of Gnome’s fire.
Boom!
Glass shattered. Something thumped.
Boom!
A hoarse howl lashed her ears, and she knew it was Gnome screaming his life out.
The trees ended, and she skidded to a stop on a carpet of brown pine needles. Ahead, the ground stopped, as if cut by a giant’s knife. A vast blue-green valley stretched far below.
Kaldar shot out of the woods, and she caught him and spun him around.
“What now? They’re coming.”
Kaldar pulled his bag open and took out a small bronze sphere the size of a tennis ball. He squeezed its sides, lifted it to his mouth, and exhaled. The sphere buzzed like an angry beehive and unrolled into a metal wasp.
“Gaston,” Kaldar said.
The wasp shivered. Thin golden membranes of twin wings rose from its back. With a faint whir, the insect took to the air and streaked away, behind the mountain.
Kaldar pulled a coin from his pocket. “Do you trust me?”
“No!”
“Well, you’re going to have to.” He gripped her hand. “Whatever you see, hold still. If you move, it’s over. Not a sound.”
The coin in his hand turned white. A transparent shiver spread from the coin, sliding over his hand, his elbow, his shoulder, and rolling over her. She thrust her left hand into her pocket. The reassuring cold of Grandma’s cross slid against her fingers.
The coin’s magic swallowed them. Colors slid over the outer surface of the spell bubble and snapped together, mimicking the fallen log and the trees around them. They blended into the forest, invisible.
She’d heard about this. The mirror spell, the one that gave the Mirror its name. So Kaldar hadn’t lied after all.
Tiny needles pricked her skin. Fear slid down her back like an ice cube melting along her spine. Audrey froze.
The foul magic caught up with them. It seeped through the mirror barrier and dug at her skin, trying to pry her open.
Kaldar squeezed her hand.
The bushes rustled.
A man stepped out into the clearing. He moved hunched forward, neck stretched out, as if he were a hunting dog who had somehow learned to walk upright and was tracking its prey. Green-and-gray camo paint swirled on his face. His long brown hair fell on his back in dozens of tiny braids. He was so close that if she took three steps, she could have touched him.
Heat streaked along her skin, and Audrey had the absurd feeling that she was about to burn alive. She could almost feel the tiny hairs on the backs of her arms curl from the heat. Kaldar’s fingers pressed into her hand gently.
It’s just like a regular job. You’re just standing there, waiting for the security guard to pass before you open the door.
Breathe easy. Breathe easy. You don’t want to get busted, do you?
The man pulled back his cloak, letting it slip off his shoulders. Muscle corded his nude upper body. His frame had no fat at all, and his tan skin hugged his bones, too tight, like a latex glove.
Audrey exhaled slowly through her nose. A familiar calm settled over her. She forced herself to relax muscle by muscle until she simply stood next to Kaldar, as if the two of them were on a date, watching the beautiful mountain view.
The Hand’s agent turned, raising his arms, holding curved narrow knives in each fist. The flesh along his sides, right over his ribs, split.
The disgusting magic smoldered around her, threatening to burn her.
The skin over the man’s ribs rose in two flaps, like fins on a fish. Spongy red tissue lay underneath, moist and veined with blood vessels.
Jesus Christ.
The magic slammed into her like an avalanche, overwhelming her senses. It slid against her skin, scraping it like the edge of a sharp blade, burning, hotter and hotter. Nausea came. Her stomach twisted. Acid washed her throat.
Breathe easy.
Audrey held completely still, concentrating on inhaling and exhaling. Her heart slowed down.
The man turned left, then right, slowly. The red flesh on the man’s sides fluttered like a fish’s gills. He was smelling the air, Audrey realized. She glanced at Kaldar. The bastard was smiling, watching the Hand’s monster like he was the biggest lollypop in a candy store.