David squinted into the late morning sun. ‘It’s Laura, I think – I wonder what she’s doing out here today.’
‘I hope nothing’s wrong back at the store.’ Jennifer felt a knot begin to twist in her stomach. She should not have come back to Silverthorn.
‘Let’s find out,’ David said and hurried up the path with Jennifer close behind him. ‘Laura,’ he called as he reached her, ‘what are you doing out here without a coat? Is something wrong at the store? Is everyone okay?’ His breath came in great clouds; he was in good shape, but running at this altitude was hard for anyone.
‘Hello Jennifer Sorenson,’ the girl said, ignoring her boss. Her voice was almost a growl. ‘I have been looking for you.’
Jennifer froze, waiting for billowy clouds of breath to form at Laura’s lips, somehow knowing none would. The girl wasn’t breathing.
‘No, please no,’ she whispered, ‘oh, David. I’m so sorry-’
‘What’s going on?’ David demanded. ‘Laura? Please tell me what this is about-’
The girl broke in, ‘Jennifer Sorenson, I need the portal, now. We can do this a friendly way, or-’ Laura collapsed in a heap, a discarded pile of clothes and fleshed bones, but no spirit, no soul remained.
‘-we can do this an unfriendly way.’ David’s voice had changed. He bent down and plucked something from the girl’s hand, a packet of something, maybe.
Jennifer couldn’t look at him. Overcoming her momentary paralysis, she turned and fled back along the path.
Too soon, she was exhausted – she wasn’t in good sprinting-at-altitude shape – and she was forced to jog. She tried to ignore David’s voice – no, not David, anymore, some demon prince – as he exhorted her to stop.
‘You can’t run, Jennifer Sorenson. You realise I have your daughter.’
That stopped her in her tracks. As she doubled over to catch her breath, the mother lioness within her roused itself. In spite of the icy cold, she was sweating. ‘You motherless prick,’ she snarled, ‘if you hurt her, I swear to Christ I will tear out your black heart with my own hands.’
‘Time is wasting and you have a choice to make,’ David said, ignoring her toothless threat.
‘What choice?’ Jennifer didn’t back away; she could see a wound on David’s hand was dripping dark blood onto the snow. She shuddered.
‘Turn the portal over to me and live, or die right now,’ David said. ‘I very rarely offer anyone a choice. You should consider yourself honoured.’ He smiled, but like the voice, it was no longer David Johnson’s smile, just a twisted caricature. ‘So what will it be?’
‘Why give me a choice?’
‘Because either way, I get what I want, which is to return to Eldarn today.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
‘Insightful, too,’ he said, ‘how delightful.’ He chuckled. ‘I plan to kill Hannah, very slowly, and very painfully. If I let you live, then you will live knowing there is nothing you can do to save her and I can rejoice in the fact that I have driven you mad with helplessness and grief. For me, it’s undoubtedly a win-win situation. For you, not so much.’ The idiom sounded strange in that not-David voice; Jennifer lost control and charged the thing that had stolen David Johnson. She chose death.
As she ran blindly towards him, tears freezing on her cheeks, David’s face changed. A quizzical look passed over his features, as if things were not working out the way he had planned; maybe Jennifer’s actions had taken him by surprise. He tilted his head slightly, as though listening for something, ignoring the fact that a crazed, fifty-something woman was coming head-on at him.
Though distracted, he side-stepped her attack and sent her sprawling over Laura, the dead check-out girl. As she crashed down, Jennifer cried out in pain and tried to roll back to her feet for another lunge.
Not-David had gone back to contemplating the forest. He didn’t look at her, but held up one hand in a wait-just-a-moment gesture, then said, ‘Jennifer Sorenson. You are the luckiest woman in this unlovely world. I don’t need you any more. Of course, I still plan to torture and kill Hannah, and I will be sure to bring a piece or two back here for you, but for now, I don’t need you. A very good, very old friend of mine has allowed his curiosity to get the better of him again and he has just opened the door for me to go home. Goodbye, dear Jennifer Sorenson. We will meet again.’
With that, David Johnson seemed to shimmer – he looked like he was under attack by a cloud of yellow and green insects. He stepped from the bicycle path into the snow and faded away.
CARPELLO’S WAREHOUSE
Brexan was about to give up for the night. She’d spent two days searching and she was tired and cross, and only the thought of food was keeping her from screaming her frustration aloud – when she spotted Carpello Jax himself, slinking along the side of one of the warehouses she hadn’t yet identified. He stayed in the shadows until he reached a window near the back. Huddling behind a pile of empty boxes, Brexan watched, but it was nearly half an aven before he moved back towards the pier. She ducked down low to the ground until he had turned the corner, then started to trail him, keeping her distance. This time she would be extra careful – no bumping into crates or scolding irritating children – the last thing she needed was a repeat of the Jacrys mission that had ended so ignominiously.
She followed the merchant through the sparse evening crowd, warm despite the cold night. She tried to work out what Carpello been doing back there – from what little she could see he had been eavesdropping at the window, but if that was his own warehouse, that didn’t make any sense at all – unless… the only thing Brexan could imagine frightening the fat man enough to make him run, weeping, in public, was someone trying to kill the rutter. Maybe that’s why Carpello was sneaking about his own warehouse.
She watched him cross the great bridge before she did the same and descended onto the lively northern wharf. He walked away from the waterfront and into a street Brexan recognised as running to the barracks in the old imperial palace. The city was well-lit here, much more brightly than on the industrial southern wharf: if people came to Orindale to enjoy the food, the wine and the Ravenian Sea, they came to the northern pier, where the aromas of different cuisines perfumed the air, lively bellamir music lifted the spirits and young people flocked, looking for love but willing to settle for lust: here there was a nightly celebration of life in the occupied city. If they came to do business, maybe to seek their fortunes in the shipping industry, they came to the southern pier.
Walking carefully to avoid her boots clattering on the cobblestone street – this was an affluent part of the city – she marked the house Carpello let himself into: a tall, well-built and obviously expensive townhouse. The intricate stone masonry and stained-glass windows made it an easy place to find again in the daylight. She took in as much of the street as possible as she muttered, ‘Now, I’ve got you, Carpello, you horsecock, and I am going to carve Versen’s name in your chest.’
She grinned to herself and retraced her steps back to the southern wharf, where she spent the night huddled by the same window Carpello had visited earlier that evening. She dozed from time to time, but heard nothing; by the time the sun rose over the docks she had about decided it was abandoned. Just as she was about to leave to find some food and tecan, she heard the brace on the dock-side door slide back. Someone was coming out.
She dived behind the shelter of the building and hustled down the alley, ducking behind the same boxes she had used to hide from Carpello, but no one passed her, so she ventured out from behind her makeshift blind and moved cautiously onto the waterfront. Even from a distance, she could recognise the gait of the man walking away from her: Jacrys or Lafrent, Prince Malagon’s spy and Lieutenant Bronfio’s murderer always carried himself as though he knew something no one else knew. So Sallax hadn’t killed him.