He realized he wasn’t helping his case any, insulting Toby and the other Browncoat veterans, but he was darned if he was going to let them make him their patsy or scapegoat or whatever it was they wanted him to be. He wasn’t going down without a fight, and for the time being at least, his best and only weapons were words.
Sure enough, the crowd went berserk, stomping and hollering. They were out for blood — his blood — and Toby didn’t hesitate to egg them on.
“Listen to him,” he said. “That’s how little he thinks of you. That’s the attitude of a man who’d sell out his brothers and sisters. Get him out of here! I want him out of my sight.”
A barrage of hate crashed down on Mal as the guards formed a huddle around him and herded him back down the tunnel, led by the hatchet-faced woman with the lazy eye. His legs were wobbly. His wrists chafed in their bonds. Everything that didn’t throb ached and everything that didn’t ache throbbed. He felt about a hundred years old.
This time when they reached the fork in the tunnel, they took the other branch, away from the shouting and the fury. Away from Toby Finn, one of his best friends growing up on Shadow, who, by some inexplicable twist of fate, planned to be his executioner.
In the light of the torches, the hatchet-faced woman stopped. She turned towards the wall on the right, yanking open a rusted, wire-mesh door. The hinges squealed. Hatchet Face gestured impatiently at the opening. Mal’s escorts bunched in tight around him like they expected him to make a run for it. Like they hoped he would, so they could beat him down. His lizard brain told him to do just that. Make your gorramn play. See what it gets you. He knew if he walked through that opening, he was never going to come out again. Might as well make a stand here and now, even if it only hastened the inevitable.
As the guards shuffled Mal forward, time seemed to slow. Details of his surroundings became magnified, larger than life. Water trickled down one of the tunnel walls, drop by drop, disappearing into a dark puddle of muck. A moth circled a burning torch, flirting with fiery death. Something made a little screechy noise farther down the tunnel in the darkness. A bat, maybe. Hanging upside down, trying to fall back to sleep.
Mal’s heart pounded to a funereal cadence, the kind where widows in black veils walk lead-footed behind the caisson, the dead soldier’s boots dangling backwards from the stirrups of his horse. Damn, he was in such strange ungodly trouble.
As they reached the doorway in the wall, he slid his glance into the dim hole where they planned to plant him. It must have been a storeroom of some kind. Nothing on the floor, no straw for a bed, nor a blanket to cover himself. Just dirt. And rock. Behind him he could sense the mass of the guards, blocking his way out. Once more his very soul protested, screaming at him to save himself. To do something.
No. It would make more sense to be compliant. Do what they wanted him to. Bide his time. That would give him the leisure to think of a way out of this situation.
So a calmer portion of his mind advocated.
But then adrenaline took over, a surge of fight-or-flight, an impulse whose dictates were impossible to refuse. There was no decision to act. It just happened, of its own accord, like water flowing downhill. Mal spun on his heel, bent low and charged the nearest guard, shoulder-striking the man mid-chest and knocking him off-balance and backward. As hands reached for Mal, he used the space he’d created, lashing out with his right boot. Contact, as he kicked the man between the legs. Without his arms free to counterbalance him, the kick was a little off-center, a little too far back to cause maximum pain, but it was still enough to elicit a squeal and a gasp. Mal spun again, one complete turn, building momentum. The man was on his knees, mouth gaping, so Mal didn’t have to kick high to hit him in the jaw. He felt the impact all the way to his hip joint. It felt good.
Someone in front of him grabbed his shoulders and Mal lunged forward, using his head as a battering ram, driving the crown of it into the other’s midriff. The hands released him. Mal whirled around, then charged the person blocking the doorway, Hatchet Face herself. Before he could reach her, fists from all sides, all angles, rained down on him, slamming into his solar plexus, connecting with his jaw, his kidneys. Mal staggered forward under the onslaught, fell to his knees in the dirt, then toppled forward.
A crushing weight came down on his back, grinding his face deeper into the soft dirt. He couldn’t breathe. He grunted. It was the only noise he could make as the fist-pounding continued. Black washes of pain filled his mouth as the weight suddenly came off and he was dragged backwards by his legs into the storeroom, which was clearly going to serve as a holding cell. Angry shouts played counterpoint to the toecaps battering his sides. Then hoarse laughter as the door clanged shut with the sudden force of a coffin lid. A bolt clanked as it was shot home.
Oh, God, that was dumb, Mal chastised himself. Why’d I go and do that?
The man he had so soundly dropkicked pressed his bruised mouth to the rusted mesh of the metal door. “You’re gonna die,” he said to Mal, his voice dripping with relish just as his split lips dripped with blood. “And it’s gonna be slow. Reeeal slow.”
“And don’t get to thinkin’ anyone’s coming to rescue you, neither,” Hatchet Face crowed. “Apparently you captain a Firefly these days and have a crew. Well, we took you in your own shuttle from Guilder’s and made it look as though you were piloting it, and the reason for that is nobody’ll suspect otherwise, not even your people. They’ll just assume, being the yellow-belly turncoat you are, you lit out on ’em, and they won’t be bothered none to go after you.”
“If you believe that,” Mal said, “then you have sorely underestimated my crew. They ain’t easily fooled. They’re coming for me. I know it in my bones. And woe betide you when they get here, darling, because they’ll be pissed and they will seriously mess up your day.”
“Sure, sure,” said Hatchet Face. “Even if that’s the case, they’re bound to be too late. How long do you think you’ve got? We’re just waiting on a couple more folks to show. Soon as they arrive — and it’ll be any moment now — the trial will begin. And rest assured, it won’t be a long trial. Your life can be measured in hours, Reynolds. Savor what time you have left, because it ain’t much at all.”
18
The room was large, with an artificial rock waterfall that towered at least fifteen feet high. The water spilled into a tiled pond. Golden koi fish swam lazily beneath lily pads, now and then mouthing the surface.
Opposite lay a big, rectangular picture window bordered by gleaming swords and battleaxes. The view was of a particularly beautiful section of Persephone, where large swathes of cultivated gardens hung between the silvery sky-rises. A wealthy district. If the docks were hell, this was heaven.
Mika Wong, having ushered Book into the room and allowed him a moment or two to admire his surroundings, gestured for him to take a seat in an ornate overstuffed chair. He picked up a remote off a small table and clicked on a holographic fireplace next to the chair. Then he instructed a servant, a man dressed in a butler’s brass-buttoned livery, to fetch drinks. The butler filled two gold-hued cups from a matching decanter and handed one to Book and the other to Wong before gliding back over to a corner and stationing himself there, fixing his gaze in a dispassionate middle-distance stare.