"They didn't break him out." I stood, looking around at the damage of the square, seeing lines of force and advance in the arrangement of wreckage. "He fought his way free. There was a body in the door of the car. I never really thought about how it got there."
"So he might be out there, free?" Owen turned in a slow circle, gazing around at the buildings on the square as if the Fratriarch might be looking down at us from some terrace. "We should organize search parties."
I snorted. "You should? Maybe a day ago, when I first came to you with this. No, he didn't get away. The living Fratriarch would have returned to the Strength of Morgan, no matter his condition. He battled, and was defeated."
"Who could do such a thing?" Owen asked, quietly.
I kicked at the stone-wrapped icon of the Betrayer, then looked up at the Justicar. "They have a history of it," I said, and walked off.
Behind me the whiteshirts started making plans to contain the Amonites, seal away the icon, and continue with the repair of the site. I walked over to the nervous pack of Amonites. There was an Alexian with them, his fist white around a jumble of those soul-chains. He was a thin man with a weak chin, but large, strong hands.
"Which one was it?" I asked.
He volunteered himself, before the whiteshirt could compel him forward. Another small man, though wide and strong. There was grease under his nails, and calluses on his hands. His skin was the color of worn leather. For all his strength, he quivered under his hood.
"You found the icon?"
"Yes, my lady."
"How?"
"I was… I was repairing the cobbles, my lady. As ordered. I was clearing out that ditch there, and turned a stone. The icon was there."
"Did it call to you?"
"No, ma'am. I heard nothing from it. I'm not… attuned to such things."
"You are a scion of the Scholar," I said. "You are attuned to his symbols."
"That aspect of the lord Brother… of Amon… such symbols are forbidden, as they have always been." He shuffled his feet. "And even if they weren't, I'm not… gifted, my lady."
"You can't invoke?" I asked, surprised. Rare for someone to swear to one of the gods without showing some noetic talent. Rarer still for that someone to swear to Amon.
"No, my lady. I worship with my hands, and my back, and my mind."
I stood quietly in front of him, looking for some lie in his broad, sun-scrubbed face. There was fear, but who was to blame for that? I turned to his keeper and nodded. When I turned around, Owen was two steps behind me.
"Scaring the witnesses?" he asked.
"Questioning them. I believe that's your job, of course, but someone has to actually do it."
"It is my job, Eva. Leave it to me."
"If I had, Justicar, where would we be? Kicking our heels in that lovely station? Drinking coffee, perhaps? Maybe we would have been able to question this man there, after someone else had found him and brought him to us."
"Better that than rushing around the city all night," his voice was steadily rising, "chasing ghosts and digging through bodies. There are people for these jobs-"
"We are those people, Owen. I am that person. I let the old man down. I will not sit and wait."
"You're overexcited. It's time we were back at that station. There is much to report on," he said, and put his hand on my wrist. Oh, mistakes, mistakes. Such glorious mistakes.
I pulled his hand toward me, until his knuckles brushed my belly, then flipped my hand over and grasped his elbow. Rotate, hip-check, and then toss. He hit the ground like a sack of flour, and then I was past him, turning from his rapidly reddening face and walking briskly to the taped barricade. The crowd that had been gathering at the yellow tape line was staring at the furious Justicar and the Paladin who had put him on his ass. Not every day that you got to see the scions of god fight, not since Amon had been bound and burned and drowned. So they stood and gaped. I gave them a smile and a short salute, and let them have their look.
All but one of them. A girl, twisting her face quickly away from the barricade, slipping shoulder-ways into the press of bodies, squirming through. She was dirty-faced, skinny-armed, the thick matte mane of her dark hair pulled back in a messy tail that spilled in curls across her shoulders. Black robe, black hood pulled back, the sleeves torn away to disguise the garment's origin. She wore an Amonite's robe. The girl. Cassandra.
She was gone, and now the crowd was staring in horror at me, at the bully I had pulled and was now pointing at them, at the space where the girl had stood, my finger tight on the trigger. They began screaming. Understandable, considering the mad fury in my face. The murder in my eyes.
The Justicar ran up next to me and put a hand on my gun arm. Without thinking I shrugged my shoulder into his chest, cracking the hilt of the still-sheathed blade across his teeth, then hooked his flailing arm and hip-checked him into the crowd, all without thinking. Reaction, and my hunter-mind was finally smoothing through the shock and anger. I put a heel into Owen's chest as I jumped over him and into the seething crowd. In pursuit.
I locked down the dozen questions that pushed for space in my brain. How the girl had escaped her chains. If she knew where the Fratriarch was, what had happened, if he was still alive. Why she came back to this place. Locked it down and ran.
The crowd thinned out after the immediate press around the barricade, but it was still a busy street in a busy city. Vendors and pedigears and carriages filled the streets, along with a loose river of pedestrians. Most of them were oblivious to the chase, only a few looking behind them in confusion as the girl ran past, wondering why she was in such a hurry. I pushed past them, following the invisible line of the Amonite's path through upset carts and startled citizens. I was as gentle as a tiger is to grass, as quiet as lightning before thunder's wake. I still had the bully out, barrel up, ready to snap forward should a shot present itself. Too many people, though. Too much interference. The girl stayed ahead, a glimpse of black robe or the bobbing cascade of ringlet hair the only sign that I had not lost my quarry.
One clear look, the girl rushing into an alleyway between two illmaintained buildings. I slid to a stop at the entrance. It was clogged with junk, and absolutely dark. A rapid hissing sound, then a thump. There were no other sounds of flight, no footsteps, no panicked breathing, no debris being shoved out of the way by a hurrying girl in the dark. Iron groaned in the blackness, and something fell from high up, dancing against metal as it dropped. Silence again.
I slid the bullistic into its holster and drew the blade, then stepped into the shadows and invoked the Torches of the Fellwater. My eyes began to glow with a pale, bluish white light that wisped in twisting tendrils across my cheekbones and into my hair. The bright street behind me washed out into brilliant light, but the alley resolved into blocky grays and blacks. I slid forward, sword at guard, looking for any sign of Cassandra.
The alley was cluttered with a carefully constrictive jungle of trash. The stone walls to either side were lost behind cardboard boxes and stacked iron pilings, tumbling down on the ground like a child's game of sticks. I stepped between them carefully, maneuvering between piles of junk, doing everything I could to keep the sword in a guard position. No sign of the girl. I looked up and saw that there were platforms above, suspended from a rough framework of metal tubing that was anchored into the hidden wall, behind piles of junk. A rope dangled loosely beside the rough structure, still slithering with recent movement. Quick climber, maybe.
"What is this place?" I asked myself quietly. This was not just a haphazard collection of trash in the crevices of the city. This had been built and hidden. Peering up into the alley's heights, I was momentarily blinded by the strip of early morning sky. I blinked the image away, startled into dropping the invokation of night sight. Darkness shrouded me, but in the few seconds before I lost my vision, I thought I saw a form flitting between platforms, high above.