Shadow Heart (37 page)

Hindsight
, she thought wryly. “What is it that you want?”

“I want to be home in my own bed, safe inside the walls of Alexandria and enjoying the fruits of the labor borne by lesser men. But I have a certain skill set that is called upon from time to time...skills that force me to leave those comforts and find those unfortunate souls that have run ill of the powerful, and kill them.” He paused as if for effect, smiling at her, waiting for the realization of his intentions to dawn on her, for the fear to appear on her face. But he came away disappointed, and his smile faded. “Were you any normal mark, Commander Sawyer, you would already be dead. But as luck would have it, you have something I need. Something that will free me from the bonds of my master. Oh I am going to kill you, so don’t harbor any hopes to the contrary. But you get to decide how much you want to suffer before the end.”

“I don't have anything that will be of any value to you,” she said honestly. “You can torture me to death and I can spill my deepest secrets to you, but none of them will make you free.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “You see, in all my time working in this particular field, my master has always sent me on missions that he himself was hired to accomplish. I can count on one hand the number of times he has sent me on a mission for himself, as was the case with you. He has a personal stake in seeing you dead, because you know something he believes should be lost to the world.”

“What is your master's name?” Grace asked. “Then perhaps I might understand what it is you are looking for.”

“The master has no name,” the assassin said quietly. “Perhaps he did once, but it died with the Old World. Now we only know him by what he does. You remember, Liz, the things he used to do to us. The long nights of conditioning, lessons taught by pain, molding us into the perfect fighting machines for Napoleon Alexander’s army. From a childhood of nightmares, monstrosities are born. Some more monstrous than others.”

Grace turned her attention to Liz, “You know this man?”

She closed her eyes and nodded, mournful.
A childhood of nightmares
… they must have known one another at the Capital Orphanage. Why did so much seem to lead back to that place? 301, Liz, and now this assassin. How many lives had that place destroyed? How many monsters had it created?

“Why are you headed west?” the man asked.

“To regroup with the rest of Silent Thunder,” Grace replied. “We were attacked, and I—.”

“I know all about the pursuit of the Spectorium, and that does not concern me. You were already traveling west when the Spectorium fell upon you. Where were you headed?”

“We...” Grace trailed off as the pieces fell together. He knew…it was impossible, but somehow he knew. She thought back to her conversation with Crenshaw, just a little less than a week ago now, though it seemed like an eternity.
Why are we looking for this, Crenshaw? Why not leave it buried?

Because we don’t know who else knows.

“Silent Thunder is a nomadic group. We wander. If not for the Spectorium chasing us we might never have made it this far west.”

The assassin paused for a moment to study her, then flashed a hollow grin. “I can understand why you want to protect the information. Things worth killing for are normally worth dying for. But you’ve only proven to me that what I seek is of value. Now, why are you heading west?”

“I already told you. I don't know what else you expect me to say.”

His grin faded and he drew the knife at his belt. Grace's heart thumped in anticipation, prepared to endure whatever torture he had planned but terrified all the same. This man had probably devised tortures she could not imagine, and she could imagine some terrible things.

But he did not advance on her. Instead he took a step back and paused. She narrowed her eyes at him, unsure of his game. And then he turned, swift as if in the heat of battle, and drove his blade deep into Liz's right shoulder. Her scream was muffled by the tape, but it pierced Grace all the same. She cringed as he yanked the blood-soaked knife back out and settled his gaze on her.

“That was a warning,” the assassin said. “Nothing too permanent, just a little blood loss. Lie to me again, and I'll take something more valuable.”

Grace hesitated, her gaze shifting between Liz and the assassin. Liz shook her head and mumbled something that sounded a lot like
Don't do it. He is going to kill us anyway
. A reality she already knew. But could she sit here and watch her friend suffer to protect what little information she possessed?

“Keep your mouth shut, whore,” the man waved his knife at Liz. “We've already established that I don't plan to kill you.”

A spark of hope ignited at the possibility that what he said was true. If she just told him what he wanted to know, he would complete his mission and let Liz go free. Grace would die regardless of the outcome, but she could save Liz untold suffering. A fitting final act, if not quite the one she had imagined for herself.

But to tell this man what she knew...if what Crenshaw said was true, it could risk the lives of every person on the planet. But perhaps if she could just tell him enough to satisfy his need...maybe she could mitigate that risk. She set her eyes on Liz again, and frowned. There was a different look in her eyes now: determination, ferocity. It made no sense given their situation.

“Well?” the assassin asked.

“We are headed to the Corridor.”

“Better,” the hollow grin returned. “Corridor Prime?”

“Yes.”

“And what lies in Corridor Prime that my master is so intent you never find?”

“A weapon,” she replied. “Something extremely powerful.”

“How powerful?”

“I don't know,” she lied. “But it must be significant. Enough maybe to turn the tables of the war.” Grace noticed Liz shifting strangely against the tree, but did not look for fear she might draw the man's attention to her.

The assassin studied Grace closely, trying to spot her lie. Satisfied, he moved on, “How do I find this weapon?”

“It is hidden somewhere in the city. There is a map, but I don't have it.”

The assassin stepped toward her, hooked now on the information she had fed him, lusting for more as it became clearer he might have found his leverage after all. Everything else faded from his attention, so that he did not see as Liz freed herself from her bonds and stepped away from the tree. She bent to lift a thick branch from the forest floor.

All the while Grace kept her features constant, trying hard to ignore the fountain of excitement rising in her chest.

“The map...” She said, keeping his attention. “Is in the possession of one of my people. His name is Harry Balzac.”

“Good. And where can I find this Harry Balzac?”

Grace cracked a smile, and at that moment the assassin got the joke. His expression soured and he turned to exact vengeance on Liz. But instead his head connected perfectly with the branch swung by Liz's good arm, and he dropped to the ground.

Liz's shoulders slumped, and she ripped the tape off her mouth. Then she looked at Grace incredulously, “Harry Balzac? Really?”

Grace shrugged.

The assassin coughed blood out on the ground and drew Liz's ire, “Still tying bonds like he taught you. I learned to escape those when I was four. Just takes a little time.” She raised the branch and brought it down with enough force to crush his skull, but he turned just in time to grab hold of it. He flipped Liz over him, and the momentum tore the branch from her grip. She crashed into the ground, and once again Grace's dread returned.

But Liz was back on her feet quicker than the assassin could rise, and she attacked him before he could prepare. He returned to his back within two seconds, and Liz kicked the branch from his grip. His knife having fallen in her initial strike, he was now weaponless.

Liz tried to deliver a second hit to the man's head, but he caught her foot and pulled her to the ground, attempting to pin her beneath him. But Liz had trained all her life to defeat men in combat, most of whom outweighed her and could overpower her in a straight fight.

She kicked the assassin in the groin—hard, from the look of it—and took advantage of his shock to push him off her. She rolled to her feet and kicked him again, this time in the stomach. She bent again for the branch, but that gave him the opportunity to roll away from her and grab—

“Gun!” Grace yelled. It was her weapon, confiscated when she gave herself up, and she could do nothing but watch helplessly as the assassin aimed the gun at Liz.

But her branch swung true yet again, and knocked the gun from his hand. It landed in the dirt at Grace's feet. The assassin charged Liz before she could fully recover from the swing, and all she could do was bring it up like a shield. The assassin took hold of it and drove her back against a tree. She gasped as the air was forced from her lungs, and fell to her knees on the ground.

The assassin grabbed her by the hair and threw her into the dirt. It was then that Liz saw the gun and dove for it. The man caught her leg and flipped her over, then straddled her to hold her down. His hands closed around her neck.

Grace looked down at the gun, mere feet from her, and cursed that it had not come even a foot closer. If so, she might have been able to...

Liz reached for the weapon even as she attempted to stay her strangulation with her other hand, and Grace knew what she had to do. She dropped to her butt on the ground and stretched her leg toward the gun. It was still out of reach, but just barely. With Liz's choking cries as her motivation, she stretched further, putting so much pressure on her bound arms that she felt they might break, and managed to get one toe beneath the weapon. She kicked, and the gun slid across the ground toward Liz's outstretched hand.

Her fingers grasped for it, but could not do any more than graze it. Grace had not kicked it far enough.

The choking noises slowed and Grace closed her eyes, wishing she could cover her ears to shut out the rattle that would signal the death of her friend.

Four gunshots cut through the air, and her eyes snapped open. Four holes had appeared in the assassin's chest, and he slumped over, dead. Now free to breathe again, Liz sucked at the cold air like a wounded animal and pushed the dead man off her.

At first Grace thought Liz must have gotten the gun after all, but it still lay in the exact same place in the dirt. So what had happened? Where had those shots come from?

In answer to her question, a figure emerged from the shadows of the forest, and then another, and another, and another. Ten, all told, converging on their positions with weapons drawn, their dark green uniforms almost black in the night.

The Great Army.

One of the men, most likely the one who had shot the assassin, picked up Grace's gun and stowed it in the back of his belt. Another, she saw, had found all three Spectral Gladii.

“What do you say, boss? Clean up the rest as well?”

The soldier closest to Grace knelt in front of her and looked her over appraisingly. But her skin did not crawl near as much at this as when he paused on her arm. “Slave's brand,” he said. “Runaway, perhaps?” He leaned forward to inspect it further, and his face turned white. He pulled back and studied her again, this time in a very different light.

“No more cleaning tonight, boys,” he smiled, though it did not touch his eyes. “We are all about to become very rich. Bruce will want this one.”

“What about the other?” Another soldier asked, motioning to where Liz still lay recovering on the ground.

The leader hesitated, “Her too. Good work tonight, Gents. Bag'em and let's go home.”

As Liz's face disappeared behind a black bag, Grace understood all too clearly what this was. Great Army soldiers were often given the chance to kill refugees or take them as their own. They were not dead, which meant these soldiers intended the latter.

She was about to be sold back into her worst nightmare. Brought full circle, back into a fate worse to her than death: slavery. These soldiers had saved both their lives, but at the moment she could not find an ounce of gratitude in her bones.

The black bag slid down over her head, shutting out the world and signaling the end of her freedom.

And this time, Eli would not be there to save her.