She sat down. She didn’t know too much about the Hand or the Mirror and their politics, but she knew that both the Dukedom of Louisiana and Adrianglia were large and strong, while the Edge was tiny and defenseless.
“If the Hand obtains this . . .” Kaldar started.
She held up her hand. “Now you listen to me. This isn’t my problem. I didn’t make the thing, I didn’t know what it was when I stole it, and I don’t give a damn what the hell it does now. If you think I’ll fall over myself in a rush to fight the Hand for it, you’re crazy. Do you know what they’re capable of?”
All mirth had vanished from Kaldar’s face. Only grim determination remained. “The Hand took two-thirds of my family from me. I watched people I loved being slaughtered. I will do everything in my power to make the Hand pay. And if it means I have to knock you down and walk over you to get to them, I will.”
He wasn’t kidding. A slight touch of insanity flared in his eyes. Audrey felt a pang of the familiar fear.
“Don’t sugarcoat it,” she told him.
“I won’t. The Hand will keep looking for the diffusers until they find them. I will find them first, and I need you to help me. If you do it willingly, the terms will be better for everyone.”
“And if not, what? You will make me?”
“If I have to.”
Fear squirmed through her. She clamped it down. “So there is no real difference between the Mirror and the Hand, is there?”
Kaldar held her gaze. “There is a woman in Adrianglia. Her name is Lady Nancy Virai. She isn’t the most patient woman in the world, and some find her methods frightening. If I were to drag your ass over to her, she would extract the information from you. But if you told her everything you knew, you would likely walk away on your own two legs. If I delivered you to the Hand, they would get the same information out of you as well. Then they would rape you and torture you for the fun of it. If you were lucky, they would kill you afterward. But most likely they would wring every drop of pain from you and simply wait for you to die. Most of them aren’t human anymore. They drink agony like fine wine. Run if you want—the Hand will find you. Sooner or later, your brother or your father will sell you out again, they will catch your scent, and you’ll wake up with monsters standing over you. You have contacts in the Edge. Ask any of them if I’m lying.”
Run if you want . . . Yeah, right. His eyes told her that she wouldn’t get very far. He had no intention of letting her go. Just like before, when she was a child, technically she was given a choice, but practically things had been decided without her.
“It’s not my mess,” she told him.
“You stole the stupid things. You made this mess; you’re in it up to your eyeballs.”
“No.”
“Audrey, weigh the odds.”
She had. Audrey looked away. Her gaze snagged on the book of Greek myths she had been reading yesterday. Like Odysseus, she was stuck between Scylla and Charybdis: the Hand on one side and the Mirror on the other. Each would swallow her without a moment’s hesitation.
She liked her place. It wasn’t much, but it was so cozy and comfortable. She liked her old couch and reading her books with Ling curled by her feet. She just wanted to be left alone. That was all.
“You may not like my ugly mug,” Kaldar said, “but as corny as it sounds, I am your best hope for survival. I’ve fought them, I’ve killed them, and I will do it again.”
This had gone from bad to the end of the world in a hurry. “And if I help you?” Audrey asked.
“I can’t promise that you will survive. But I promise that I will do everything I can to protect you, and if we succeed, the Mirror will see to it that you won’t have to fear the Hand again.”
“Is that code for ‘the Mirror will kill me’?”
“No. It’s code for they will do for you what they’ve done for my family. They will give you enough funds and space anywhere within Adrianglia to make a brand-new start in comfort.”
He really did think she was born yesterday.
Her family finally screwed up so badly, they put the whole Edge at risk, and she was the one who had made it happen. She could deal with it, or she could walk away and be known as the girl who destroyed the Edge. It stretched like a ribbon from ocean to ocean, all across the continent. How many people lived in the Edge? It had to be thousands. Thieves and swindlers and conmen. Her people and their children. All at risk because of Seamus Callahan’s greed and her daddy issues.
Audrey raised her head. “I will help you find where Seamus unloaded the diffusers. That’s all. The moment you know your next target, I am out. Do we understand each other?”
Kaldar smiled, and this time his smile was savage. “Perfectly.”
SIX
AUDREY had a conscience. She was good at hiding her motivation, but Kaldar had practiced reading people for way too long to miss the subtle tightness in the corners of her mouth, the eyebrows creeping together, and the glimpse of sadness in her eyes. She felt guilty. Probably even ashamed, although of her own involvement or of her family’s stupidity, he couldn’t tell.
Kaldar pondered it, turning it over in his mind. Conscience was a virtue he tried very hard to avoid. True, there were things that were just not done: injuring a child, forcing a woman, torturing a dog. But beyond those basic rules, everything else was just a cumbersome guideline he strived to ignore. He supposed it made him amoral, and he was fine with that.
His world was clearly divided: on one side was the family. Family was everything. It was a shelter in the storm. A place where he would be welcome no matter what he’d done or would do. On the other side lay the rest of the world, like a ripe plum, ready for plucking. Between them ran the line of demarcation. When he crossed it to the family’s side, he was a devoted brother, cousin, and uncle. When he crossed it to the other side, he became a villain.
The heist was the Callahan family’s responsibility. Audrey was a Callahan, and she had stepped up to take it—that he understood. He would’ve done the same. But considering how much she loathed her family, he would’ve thought self-preservation would be a much stronger motivation for her. He’d misread her, and now it bugged him.
Audrey was a puzzle. He quietly examined the place, cataloging her possessions. A solid fridge, dented but clean. Same with the stove. Worn but plush furniture. The chair under Jack sported a very neatly sewn seam where something had torn the upholstery. He bet on the raccoon.
The three windows he could see were narrow, and each one had a heavy-duty shutter, lockable from the inside. A functional dagger hung on the wall between the kitchen cabinets. A small bow waited unstrung on the shelf above the plates, and below it a pair of yellow work boots, streaked with mud, sat on the floor.
Her three bookcases held an assortment of books, all well handled and shopworn. A dozen plastic horses each about six inches long sat on one of the shelves. A few had wings, and at least one sported a horn. On the top shelves, tucked away from raccoon paws, lived a collection of stuffed animals: a pink kitten, a panda, a frog with a yellow helmet marked with a star, a wolf. Daggers and stuffed frogs.
Her decorations made no sense: a blanket in a bright Southwestern style that clashed with everything, a Star Wars movie poster, some sort of potted flower, a scented candle, and a tomahawk. She was like a little magpie: if it struck her fancy, she brought it home.
He’d seen this before, in Cerise’s husband, William. Kaldar’s cousin Cerise was practically his sister, which made the changeling wolf his brother-in-law. The man was a trained, savage killer. He killed with no doubt or remorse and suffered no pangs of conscience after the deed was done. And then he went home and played with toys. His childhood had been pure shit. William had essentially grown up in a prison, barely disguised as a school. It was the fear of that same prison that had driven Jack to stow away on Kaldar’s wyvern.