Pelkaia paced, pressed her ear against the door and heard nothing – a false silence? There was no way to be sure. Thratia’s people could be out there now, listening as she was, hoping to glean some small facet of information. She clenched her jaw, rested her temple against the cool pane of wood.
“What can I do?” she asked, and as the silence stretched she began to fear Galtro had died. Then his voice came to her, reedy and soft.
“You make damned sure the corpses of Thratia’s men are found with the others, you understand? Rat out her little game. Can you do that?”
It’d been a long time since a smile touched her eyes, but she felt the corners of them crinkle all the same. “It’ll be a pleasure.”
When the old mine master’s eyes emptied of life, she stepped forward and took back her dagger, spilling clotting blood upon the floor. She cleaned the blade against his shirt and brushed his eyes closed with her fingertips.
Regret formed a lump in her throat, but she choked it down. He was a clever old man, and so far as she could tell he cared about his people. Cared, but not enough to stay the hand of the empire when it came to her son’s life. She scolded herself for her moment of regret. Whatever Galtro had said at the end, it wasn’t enough. Would never be enough to absolve him of what he’d done. Not even his blood, pooling now, could cleanse the crime he’d committed in being complicit in Kel’s death.
Fists clenched, she stood and surveyed the records room. Somewhere in the bureaucratic minutiae was evidence of Valathea’s treachery. An order for Kel’s line to load the special ship, an order for the very same line to meet its end.
Footsteps echoed down the hall, drawing to a stop by the door. She grabbed Galtro’s fallen blade and stole away into the shelves to crouch behind a thick wooden crate stuffed full with yellowing paper.
The interlopers made quick, quiet work of breaking the door in. She stole a glance while they were still getting their bearings and saw the three that had passed her in the hall earlier. Two swordsmen and another with a crossbow out. Pelkaia hefted the weight of her throwing dagger in her hand, imagining the metal still thirsty for life, and marked it for the crossbowman. She tucked her head down and listened.
“Fucker’s already dead.”
“Makes our job easy.”
“No it fucking doesn’t. Who killed him?”
“I don’t know, maybe he pissed off one of his people.”
“Whatever, let’s just stuff him with sel and get out of here.”
“Ugh, we’ll have to patch that new hole he’s got.”
“Shut up, both of you. The door was locked from inside.”
They fell silent, and Pelkaia found it hard to concentrate on the sounds of their steps over the beating of her own heart. She ducked her head down low to peek through a tiny crack in the shelving and saw the crossbowman step closer to Galtro, putting his back against the wall as he surveyed the cluttered shelving. The other two fanned out, advancing, not yet close enough to get within reach of her. She took a deep breath, settled her nerves, and let the first dagger fly.
A scream and a clatter. The heavy thud of dying meat smacked into the unbending ground. His colleagues swore, rushed forward. Pelkaia sprung to her feet and the second dagger whipped free. It went wide, opening the sword arm of the trailing man. He dropped his blade and cried out, grasping at his opened flesh with his working hand. The fingers at the end of his wounded arm flicked and flexed, dancing to their own impulses now.
The other man closed upon her, bringing up his blade high and wide. She parried with Galtro’s sword, the screech of steel by her ear raising goosebumps, and stepped back. Her retreat bore her into the shelf behind with a breath-stealing slap. She grunted, just barely making it under arcing steel.
Star-bright pain exploded in her side – a fist connecting – the pain a rising tide but not life threatening. She lurched sideways to compensate. The arcing blade bit back down, notching her shoulder. She grunted and slashed out – wild and desperate. A lucky swipe spilt the man’s guts upon the floor, the hot stink wafting to her panic-widened nostrils. He collapsed over his wound with a whimper.
Sparing a moment to kick the fallen man’s blade away, she freed another dagger and launched it at the wounded man lurching toward her over the body of his fallen comrade. It stuck in the hollow of his throat, buried deep, and he gurgled red spittle as he crumpled to the ground. Pelkaia leapt over the fallen men and swung around the corner of the shelves toward Galtro and the crossbowman. She had Galtro’s sword out and ready, but the crossbowman was already dead.
Gasping for breath, she threw the blade aside and bent to rest her palms against her knees. Bile threatened to rise in her throat, but she choked it back. You trained for this, you stupid woman. She slapped herself across the face and shook her head. Forcing her chin up, she surveyed what she’d done.
Four bodies. She’d always been prepared to take more lives, she’d told herself over and over again that it might be impossible to avoid. But there were those three young men, bright eyes drained to empty shells, open mouths drip-dripping and fingers freezing in rictus claws. Whatever she had told herself, it didn’t take them away. Didn’t fill them with life and set them on safer paths.
Anger gripped her, cold as death. How dare Thratia send these young men into this place for what – the death of one man? She had to have realized the danger. Had to have known they would not all make it back alive. Thratia could not be so stone-headedly confident as to assume those three boys, boys her Kel’s age, would be able to infiltrate this place with its watcher guards – Galtro himself a trained soldier – and make it out alive. How dare she put these young men in Pelkaia’s path?
She sucked deep of the offal-and-iron air, forcing herself to straighten. To ignore the panging complaints of her shoulder, her hip joint. To ignore the creaking of the withered bones kept straight by her braces. What was one more name on the list?
She would show the commodore the depth of this cost.
With a clenched jaw she moved amongst them, closing wide eyes with trembling fingers. Her time was running out. Though the fight had been quick, it had been noisy. How long until someone came looking? How long until the dead blue coats were found by other eyes?
One more thing. One more thread to pull taut.
She plunged back into the jostled shelves, scanning the carved faces of the boxes. Years ago, when she’d been taken off the line for her faked injury, they’d kept her working down here. Hoping that she’d get well enough to return to the real work. She’d lingered, learning her way through the maze of paper and wood until they’d lost faith in her recovery and kicked her to the retired quarter.
In that time, she had learned well. Fingers still smeared with blood, she tugged out the box of reports from the month in which her Kel had died. She paged through, eyes darting, until she came across the week of the accident. She yanked the relevant cluster free, spilt its temporal neighbors to the floor, and opened the folded packet.
There it was. The official accident report. The details were brief, a break from their usual precision. She knew only what she’d been told – what Warden Faud had told her, when he’d knocked on her door with his hat in his hands. A landslide. No chance of survival. Terrible accident. Word for word the story she was looking at on the report, now.
Accident reports were messy things, scrawled over and over again with bits crossed out and rewritten as the details of the event became clear. There was no evidence of revision on this slip. It was pristine. Perfect. They hadn’t even bothered trying to hide that it was a forgery.