Now Playing: KNAC
Topic: Mercator Arc
Order of the Raven
Retribution
Smoke hung in the chill, bitter rain mixed with nanophage spores, a fog of war that gnawed the flesh to the bone. The war band watched the advancing cloud from their perches of iron, the exposed black skeletons of their homes. They were naked save for their armor and boots, and helms of machine eyes; a black substance like tar covered every inch of exposed flesh to trap the weaponized spore. Their only weapons were bladed instruments of sick cruelty, war hammers of their prized iron, and their feared name.
Amex was the only one who did not crouch in his place. He stood proud as fire gave its color to the low cloud deck. He did not flinch as distant a-mat mortars flashed hard radiation and crisp blue-white brilliance. He watched the smoke below, filling the channels between husks of buildings and piles of rubble. He sought men, the enemy, his helm eyes attuned to the ambient mass background looking for subtle variations within the gravity frequencies.
The squad came like a promised gift. Soon, furtive, questing lasers stabbed out of the blanket of hungry smoke. Amex did not care. Let the foul enemy see them before they died.
Of the war band, Amex was the only one that wore wings. The black feathered limbs had once been a property of the theater and were fully articulate. He had affixed them to the back of his cuirass, the tips of the broad feathers dripped blood from an earlier kill. He extended the wings halfway as the search lasers swept closer, a signal to his men to prepare to repel. From underneath his helm, locks of his long hair fell to his shoulders. Finger bones, fastened to thin braids like beads, chimed on the wind, heralding the coming storm.
Fat, sparkling and mottled beams of green scanned the ruins of the building below, daring to tip up and wash the waiting men on their perches. Amex called forth his blade, the Ethrudhan; in fluid form it spiraled down the armor of his right arm, pouring itself into its rigid form as it extended from the grip of his hand. The light scattering off the clouds gave the blade the look of iron cooling on the anvil.
The moment came and Amex spread his wings. The criminal war band descended on strands of flexcable, their blades and hammers poised for battle. The troops below were not entirely caught by surprise and their guns roared. “Corvus mortus!” they shouted to one another, taking defensive postures. Strobes of muzzle flashes filled the smoke and dust like lightning popping through a thunderhead; shadows of men lurched within.
Amex’s band was upon the Legionnaires. Molecular thin blades cut the foul enemy down. War hammers crushed and smashed. Bullets bit back. Ethrudhan fell man and machine, scything through all. Blood splattered his armor. The bones in his hair made merry music.
They lost few. The enemy much more; they were not accustomed to close quarters combat preferring the safety of long range attacks. Amex surveyed his victory in the rain savaged smoke. They gathered the bodies of the enemy that remained intact. “Give ‘em wings,” he ordered and his men attended to the backs of the dead and unconscious. New blood joined the earth, made thin by steady rain.
The low clouds churned and glowed a sick sulfur as the bloated sun broke over the horizon. Amex and his men transported their horrors to the break in the rampart, a line of debris from razed buildings once made from spacecraft parts; the eastern river had never been an obstacle. The League will see their handiwork, their blood work, and their fear would deepen. Their terror would still them as they dared take to the heart of the old city of iron. But a new thing happened as Amex’s soldiers laid the bodies out for review.
A brilliance like a chunk of star flared from beyond the tall rim of the crater where the city huddled. Then came a thunderclap that rang the skull and shook the bowels. Amex turned his face to the sky. Ozone stung his nostrils. The enemy had discovered the ancient secrets to unleash the terror weapons in the Homesteader above. Any moment now they could lay waste to the entire Iron City. He hated their cleverness. If only Avis had gotten the Infiltrators up and running first. . . .
But no. Why had the spaceport been hit?
Linked to the wave, his weave reported the skirmishes were stopping. The a-mat shelling ceased. For an hour and a half there was confusion across the wavecast network. The enemy Homesteader had fallen to others. Pavona? No one knew.
The lander descended through the clouds, a gleaming ovoid like an egg sitting atop a spike of raw energy. It came down upon the rampart of spacecraft junk, its exhaust thrust turning metal beneath to white-hot pools of slag. Other debris caught fire. The pilot of the lander cared not for these possible hazards. Landing struts flowed out from the body, impervious to the flame. Yet the flame did not last long as some field from the craft drew off their life.
Soldiers from the League and the Association held their places, commanders uncertain. Who had command of the Homesteader? What would they do with it?
Amex had his men creep closer. The clouds grew cold and dark. Lightning flashed in the west. The rain fell in fat drops, like plump insects.
A part of the lander peeled open and dark men stepped out. Their skin was as black as Amex’s nanophage barrier, but he saw that it was their natural color. He watched in awe from the telescopic vision of his helm eyes. He had never before seen such men.
They were guards, perhaps scouts, for their leader disembarked and he was a giant among them. His skin was just as dark, but his features were not like those of the guards, with their broad noses and thick lips. But his hair was like Amex’s and waved like living things in the gusts. But it was the unfurling banner that froze Amex’s heart in a surge of impossible hope.
A red pennant snapped in the wet wind. On it a black bird symbol sprawled. This strange man wasn’t much different than him! Amex could not contain his joy and exhilaration. He spread his mechanical wings and, shouting the name of his war band, led his men in a charge to the lander. The horde was unopposed. The strangers watched, silent and still. Amex and his Men-at-Sides labored up the treacherous rampart, avoiding getting their feet caught in the tangle.
The stranger was taller even than Amex. They knew neither Pavic or Junc, but had their own tongue that was long and labored the ears. Amex felt in the presence of a god. The exalted stare of those alien eyes seemed to pour into him, mingle with his soul. Amex formed Ethrudhan and kneeled to one knee. He lay the blade horizontally between himself and the stranger.
The dark giant knelt. Two of the man’s questing fingers reached out and traced through the tar on Amex’s jaw, leaving two naked, white streaks. He looked at the goop covering his fingertips, then smeared the tar on a bit of refuse. The stranger took the broad shimmering blade offered to him, admiring it, a ghost of a smirk curling his lips. Amex began to rise when the stranger swung Ethrudhan through his neck.
Mil Kariden slammed awake, a plane through his neck tingling. He thought he heard the jangle of finger bones.
* * *
A recruit’s marks. That’s what they were. Kariden studied the left side of his jaw in the privy’s mirror-mode optic array, his back aching as he leaned over the sink. Nanotech tattoos. Not like the permanent ones on Dessero’s or Ganton’s face. Not the marks put there by Raum himself. These were low rank marks. Marks that seemed to say “Prove yourself first” and he wondered hadn’t he done that? What further deeds were needed?
The tattoos were like fingerprints smeared down his jaw. One of Ganton’s men did the job, dipping his fingers in the goop and raising them to Kariden’s face. It burned as it seeped into the skin. His weave caught the taste of invasive algorithms: tracking codes. Kariden allowed it lest Ganton become suspicious of his more advanced weave.
It looked artificial, like graphite dust pressed into his flesh, not like the others, the Ravens marked by Raum. Theirs looked natural in an odd sort of way, like a black birthmark, a part of them. Those men never spoke of their induction, but they all shared that same shell-shocked look of men who had gone through Hell and come out the other side. They were men of an exclusive club, sneering down at recruits like Kariden. He hoped that whatever lay beyond his meeting with Raum was worth the effort. He hoped the Rector was right, that he could spread a cure of goodness against the immoral disease afflicting Cratertown.
He was informed the tattoo could not be altered or removed save only by Raum on the day of his formal induction. “When is that?” “When there are enough of you to warrant Raum’s attention,” Ganton had replied. Kariden left the mark alone. He sensed the anti-tamper system was clever enough to become a weapon against him should he try to recode it. Funny how some tech was inferior to his, and some about equal or better, a hodge-podge of machine strands. The machines meshed into his flesh and their code felt old, from some prior golden age of nanotechnology. He had no need to recode the anti-tamper system anyway. He only had to confuse the Raven wavecast of his whereabouts, tricking the system into believing he remained in his apartment in the Parish. Simple.
There were other ways to hide the mark when the mark needed hiding.
He quit pinching and deforming his face and stood straight. Kariden lifted a squeeze tube from the edge of the sink. He squeezed a dollop of the cosmetic smart salve onto his finger tip. He rubbed the pale grayish stuff onto his skin, wiping it across the marks. The cream read his skin tone and soon the two dark streaks across his jaw disappeared. He had stolen the makeup from Syvanda, the girl whose leg first caught his eye on that fateful day he first stepped into the Skulls, the Raven’s private saloon.
If it weren’t for her, he would not be embarking on this personal bit of detective work.
“You fancy a bit to eat before we skump?” Syvanda had asked from the open kitchen of her apartment, pouring two drinks. She had that lilting accent that marked her from Heil Thericon. “A girl can’t be ‘spected to work as well as she’s want, famished and all.”
Kariden waited for her in the sitting room, on the edge a worn chair that smelled of mildew and dust. “No. Not at all.” He knew she wanted to be pampered and fed since the skumping was free by the twin mark on his face. She wanted to be treated like a lady, at least somewhat removed from the lifestyle she found herself in, if only for a little bit. If only for an evening. Kariden could grant her that.
“Absolute aces,” Syvanda said gaily, stepping around the counter into the room. “Otherwise I’m apt to just lie there. And that wouldn’t be much fun a’ tall.” She offered Mil a tall thin glass of pale sparkling wine.
“I suppose not,” he mumbled, standing. He took the drink, admiring her form.
He hated to compare her to Daphia Ulden, but there it was. No one he had seen on this rain drenched rock approximated Daphia’s beauty and her classic lines of ancient Pavonan aristocracy. But Daphia was untouchable. Syvanda quite the opposite. She was by no means ugly, a little tall, making the length of her shapely legs insatiable; her nose was a bit longish, her eyes owned a devious sparkle, and her throaty laugh rang like a bell announcing good times and great fun. She had no love of venom, and kept herself at a limit of mild intoxication when she drank. Kariden suspected something terrible had happened to her to warrant this personal temperance. He saw it in her eyes, some past pain when the bit-girls of Skulls got too drunk and wild.
Syvanda was still dressed for the tavern, wearing a tight yellow shirt with a deep cut neck to draw eyes to her endowedness, and a dark high-hemmed skirt to show off those long legs. When outdoors, she draped herself in an ankle length raincoat and carried an umbrella like a deep scoop, the inner surface coated with an optic array like a one way window. Her coat hung on a peg over the drip grate next to his, close as lovers.
She beamed at him, her calico hair falling around her face and brushing her shoulders. She raised her glass to toast. “To good times all ‘round.”
He met the toast, the glass chiming. “To us.” Kariden said it because she liked to hear it, but it was a lie because he thought of Daphia when he did.
They downed the wine in long gulps, then kissed. Kariden enjoyed the touch of her, but he was wary of the act. He knew Syvanda wanted more. She wanted a way out of whoredom and she saw him as her exit. She could become his woman and no one else’s.
All he wanted from her was to feel human once in a while. Connected.
“Can’t very well go out looking like a tramp just come in out th’ rain,” she said, leaving him her glass and strutting down the hall to her bed chamber. “Won’t do a’ tall.”
Alone in the room, Kariden spied Syvanda’s optophonic array painted over a large rectangle of stiff cardboard leaning against the counter, forgotten behind a chair of the dining table. Having little else to do, he placed the empty glasses on the counter and pulled out the array, set it up on its easel, and activated it with a touch. He cycled through the wavecast channels with his weave. A lot of it was torturous cyberscapes from people who thought themselves artists and entertainers when they certainly were not. Some was live streaming visual-audio captures. Others bloviated their version of the news.
“Chance a bit o’ talk with me, Mil?” she called out from the bedroom.
“Yeah,” he replied, shutting off what looked like a robbery. In progress.
He stopped in the open doorway of her bright-lit room, leaned against the jamb thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets. He found Syvanda standing before a full length mirror propped up between two open wardrobes stuffed with clothes, her back to him, naked save for a pair of plain undergarments and a satiny corset she tugged over her breasts. The mirror must have been a lavish gift from a wealthy client, for it was actual silvered glass in an ornate wooden frame. An optic array was certainly cheaper and more practical, but the mirror seemed to give a life to her reflection, as if it were merely a doorway into another—albeit off-angle–world where her twin blocked the way.
She threw a glance at him over her shoulder then continued to wiggle into the garment. “How ‘bout the Reimel? You eaten there?”
Kariden scratched the back of his neck, studying the floor. “No I haven’t.”
She caught the hesitation in his voice. “Is ‘ere a problem with it?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “No, it’s fine.” Except he assassinated a man in the entranceway. “Whatever you want.”
“They have the best food on the Spaceport Row,” she claimed, making some minor adjustment to the way her breasts fit in the corset. “Been some time since I’ve last eaten out that way.”
He knew what she eluded to. “Why don’t you find another house?” Better clientele. Better class of people.
Syvanda barked an incredulous laugh. She swiveled the point of her chin to her left shoulder. “Come tie me.”
Upon the invitation, he stepped into the room. A fragrance blossomed from her that reminded him of the flowers from Tullis, of spring days playing in the yard when the breeze would carry their scent. He took the ends of the flat strings crisscrossed down her back. “Laces huh? You know they have machines that do this, don’t you?”
She laughed softly. “You have a lot to learn, Mil Kariden.” Then, “Not so tight. I do want to eat. A lot.”
He relaxed the laces and tied them off. “How’s that?”
“Much better,” she said turning around to face him. Syvanda rested her forearms across his shoulders. She looked up at him, pouring her eyes into his. “Did it thrill you?”
He shrugged, “I suppose.” He didn’t know what to do with his hands so he risked placing them on her hips.
“Mm-hmm,” she nodded. “It’ll thrill you more to unlace ‘em.”
He smiled.
“Or would you rather the machines did it?”
“No,” he chuckled, “I think you are quite right.”
Syvanda gave him a peck on the cheek and pulled away to the wardrobe on the right. She found a shimmering pearl-like evening gown and held it out for review. “What do you think? You think it will hold up in the light?”
What the hell did Kariden know about women’s clothes? “Looks great.”
She studied the garment as if contemplating options. “Under this light . . . but I have pure white in here. Don’t know about the Reimel. That’s the problem with this place, the light is shit. The outside light is literally shit. A girl can’t look her best in this drab dismal place.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” he offered. He could care less what effect the light had on the color of her dress. She was lascivious regardless, and that, truthfully, was all he cared about.
“Probably right.” She stepped carefully into the gown, slipped the thin straps over her elegant shoulders. Syvanda stepped past him to her vanity desk, flashing a shy smile. She checked the thin layer of cosmetic salve smeared around her eyes and cheeks, and used her weave to adjust their color parameters for a palette of browns and coal, with a hint of deep blue. She pressed a tube to her lips and the salve livened their natural tint. Next, she pulled a gossamer hairnet from a tin and dropped it onto the shaggy mess of her tresses. The net drew and pulled her hair up, curling the bulk of it all around and over itself toward the center where it twisted around into a kind of knot. He gathered that it looked like a plump sagging overlarge cap, or a pastry. The net itself was invisible.
She drew up from the chair and Kariden watched her sort through the other wardrobe until she came away with stockings and knee high boots. Syvanda plopped down on the edge of her bed, the hem of the dress running tight across her knees, and beckoned him over with a finger. He walked to her, looking down at her with a sloppy grin deviling his youthful face.
“Help me into these.” She held up the rolled stockings.
Mil took them and squatted. The doxy lay an ankle across his thigh. Kariden slipped the dark micromesh hosiery over her toes and along her arcing foot, over the sharp knobs of her ankles. He unrolled the material up her shin and calf, aroused by the touch and form of her leg. Over the knee, to the hem of her gown, and under it along her thigh, cool and smooth under his fingers. Mil tugged the lace stocking top as far as it would go. He let his hand linger on the inside of her thigh, as if committing the feel of her to memory. She straightened her clothed leg out and flexed her toes, delighting him with a lustful giggle.
He brushed his lips across hers in the barest of kisses, lost in the fragrance of spring day afternoons, giving her a promise of what he would do to the rest of her. She moaned and her mouth pulled into a lazy and longing smile. Syvanda dropped her leg and pressed her other foot into his thigh. He ran the other stocking up her leg, trembling in excitement. She moved her head to peck him, but he leaned out of the way, teasing, laughing.
He thought fleetingly of Daphia’s shoe—the scuffed and broke-heeled trophy he claimed for saving her—as he held Syvanda’s boot, a thing of white glossy material, split down the side and hanging open. Its morphing sole could raise her heel several inches, or lower and spring forth cleats like any other rockboot. He eased her foot into it and machines in the seams sealed it together as if it were in reverse action of ripping apart. He helped her into the other. “So unlacing a boot is not as exciting?” He grinned at her.
Syvanda laughed. “Who said anything about taking them off.”
Kariden chuckled with her, pressing his mouth to hers and easing her down to the bed. Daphia flared through his mind and he pushed her away, as if she had bolted from a closet he had locked her in, and he struggled to put her back. They kissed slow and measured, devouring the feel of one another until Syvanda’s belly rumbled and they broke into laughter, nose to nose.
The visit to the hotel and restaurant bothered him less than Mil Kariden expected. His soul felt concealed behind a tarry veneer where the bite of guilt or shame lodged ineffective. A battered courier-turned-limousine dropped him and his date off under the protective overhang where he had dropped the man Ganton and Dessero had assigned to him, the kill that pulled him into their ranks. And why should he feel anything for that bastard? Why should his stomach unsettle in fear of the place? The violence, though sickening, came deserved. The man carved women.
The thought made Kariden sigh as he escorted the lovely Syvanda under the large awning, to the sparkling expanse of glass windows and automatic glass doors of the hotel, a place like a Pavonan marvel in a heap of junk. Syvanda threw a quick glance behind them, Kariden catching her eyes lowered, as if she were trying to recognize the place on the graded rock where the contents of the target’s head splattered in a goopy red mess. As if she understood the meaning of his sigh. Slashes of insect-angry rain stung with stray needles as they hurried to the sanctuary behind those doors.
As a Raven and his escort, the maitre d’ ushered them to the opulent backrooms of the Reimel’s restaurant, where the experience of fine dining would come a discount, part of the perks of having the establishment protected by Chief Ulden and his men. Everything on the menu was grown local from expensive indoor plots and artificial meat tanks. Kariden had no idea what many of the food choices were, and, laughingly, left the decision to Syvanda.
The small talk prior to the meal ran a gamut of topics. If there was one passion Syvanda had, it was talking. She had an opinion for everything and no problem sharing it. Kariden let her carry the weight of the conversation, enjoying her lilting, questing accent, and mannerisms. She allowed herself silence only when the plates arrived, composing herself prim and proper as a Baroness. Mil wondered if Daphia ate this way.
Tantalizing, succulent aromas wafted from the sizzling food that looked more like art than anything meant to be eaten. The taste and texture of the meat took him back home to Tullis, where as a boy he had enjoyed the steaks of local herbivores. Flavors exploded against his tongue in a dizzying array. The cut of beef was a far cry from what he had been eating of late, the skewered grilled strips of areela from braziers squeezed between tight alley walls, meat that was rumored to have been meant for hospitals, and not for their cafeterias.
Near the end of the meal, Syvanda flashed him a concerned, curious look. “D’ja know there was a man killed out front, not long ago?”
Kariden stopped chewing, then continued. Swallowed. Reached for a glass of iced tea. “No. Wasn’t aware of it.”
“Really?” She studied him as if looking for a lie. “Was all over the wave.”
He drank a modest sip, and set the glass back. “Oh. Well, I don’t stay on the wave much. Must miss a lot of news.” Except what passed for news out here was opinion, agitations, and propaganda. The real news came from the bulkers and the taxi drivers. If you wanted to keep on top of things, that’s where you went. He knew Syvanda knew this, as smart and together as she was. Any good doxy did.
She shrugged, bit into some shellfish. “Looked like something you boys might have done. Thought you might know something.”
He cut into the thick slab of meat. “Yeah. But we aren’t the only ones serving justice around here.” The Rector was not squeamish about executions. Nor were many of the Guilds.
“Justice,” Syvanda said with a crystal goblet of wine hiding her mouth. The elegant woman drank and held the glass as if another swallow was forthcoming. “Weren’t nothing like that a’ tall.” She pulled another draught of wine and set the glass down, then dabbed her lips with the corner of a napkin she had pulled up from her lap. “Was murder.”
Kariden cracked a nervous grin and hid it by stuffing his mouth with a forkful of sauced lettuce. He chewed and scratched above his nose at the corner of an eyebrow . “Why do you think that?”
“The man was looking for his daughter.”
Kariden saw the man again, through the tunnel of death as he walked, the frieze of the overhang about to hide him from the shot, his palms hot and tight against the grip, the trigger, a cold sliver of metal. No. he wasn’t looking for his daughter. He had come to cut up girls. “And where was she?” This supposed daughter.
“Over in the Vinestickle,” she said as if the young girl could be nowhere else.
Kariden swallow down the knot crawling up his throat. Vinestickle. Or, as some said, Vines-tickle, a row of shacks the proprietors had the nerve to call brothels. This did not sit well in his stomach. He saw the young doxy from the photograph Dessero suggested he forget, her face and body superficially slashed, robbing her of her beauty. She’d come from the Vinestickle. But Dessero said she was one of theirs . . . from a Raven house. “What happened,” he exhaled, trying to sound normal under a tumult of apprehension. He wiped his hands on the cloth covering his lap.
“It’s always the same story, isn’t it? From what I understand, she was one of Hasco’s imports . . . poor dear. Those girls never get much of a chance, unless they get noticed.”
Kariden nodded impatiently.
“So anyway . . . her family seemed to have had some money, some connections, you know how it is, and her dad tracked her down, through Hasco’s network—which must have took some doing—and followed her here. He was about to look for her when he was murdered before he could even check in.”
“You certain of this?” His words were cold, and the uneaten food lay like poison in his plate. He forced himself to calmly take his glass of tea and drink from it as if a storm had not just exploded in his head.
“It’s on the wave,” she reminded. Then she leaned over the table, the bearer of a secret, “And I have my connections . . .” Syvanda let him dwell on that, sinking her stare into his before pulling back and composing herself prim and proper.
“I’m sure you do,” he answered, a notch above a whisper. “What about the daughter? What happened to her?”
“You know, that’s the saddest part. Father being killed is one thing, but . . . some bastard had cut her up real bad. . . .”
Kariden turned his attention back to the food in his plate, cutting into the thick steak, hoping to hold onto the pretense that the conversation was mere gossip he knew nothing about. “A tragedy,” he muttered before forking the meat into his mouth. It tasted bland.
“Yes,” Syvanda agreed. She stared at Kariden expectantly, a lose strand of gold bobbing beside her cheek. “Terrible.”
The Raven’s mind reeled, this made little sense. What reason would Ganton and Dessero have to get rid of the father . . . if the wealthy man hadn’t been the one doing the cutting?
Syvanda added, “She wanted to leave, you know? They think she might have gotten a bottle out to her father”—a note slipped past to a bulker captain.
His breath held up in his mouth. He exhaled. “So Hasco had her . . . cut? As punishment?” The bulker captain still kept agents here, even after they tried to kidnap Daphia Ulden, the chief’s daughter.
Syvanda shrugged. “Probably.” She sighed. “So much terrible things go on out here and no one seems to want to do anything about it.”
How did Ganton figure into this? Being the boss of his little gang, he put these jobs together. What did Ganton care about a cut up doxy that didn’t work for the Ravens? Hell, when did he care about whores period? Kariden figured he could slash Thessa’s face and Ganton would laugh. And why did he need her father killed? Just to stop him from taking her? To send a skumping message to Hasco? What kind of message would that be? There were more strands in this tangle.
And which girl was it? Kariden had seen a few in his mission briefing. He bit down on his lip.
He wanted to ask her more, but he didn’t want pique her curiosity as to why he was asking more. There were other ways to get that information from her, without her knowing. Syvanda might not do to learn the truth.
She was a good throw around the bed, Kariden had no doubts about that. And Syvanda didn’t mind doing some throwing herself. He concluded that it wasn’t a matter of if, but when her bed would give way and drop her and whoever she was skumping to the floor.
He railed, their bodies pressed together, slick from a sheen of sweet. He cradled her head and face in the deep pillow as she yelled her pleasure near his ear, gasping for breath. He wondered how much of her actions were real and how much were show. It was a passing interest. She didn’t seem to notice the interest his fingers had in her scalp.
His weave had pushed its wirve endings out, penetrated her skin painlessly, and entangled with her own weave. Her sensations ghosted over his. She gasped at the shock of the shared pleasure, feeling what he felt mixed with her own sensations, as did he of hers.
Syvanda giggled from ecstasy. “Never. Done this,” she breathed against his cheek. “Intense.”
He used the overwhelming shared experience to mask his true intention and seeped intrusive code into her network, hiding his presence from her higher functions and awareness. He sipped from her memories, gathering all she had stored in her weave’s fluid cache concerning the man he assassinated and the abused daughter he sought to save.
Now he knew which girl had suffered, and in particular which brothel she had worked in the Vine’.
Syvanda shuddered against him with a long howl, the heels of her boots digging into his lower back.
Part 2
