Feargus

  Days Until Rhian Returns: 5

  Crew and Company Placement:

  With me ? Zack

  The estate ? Peter

  The base ? Adeline, Michael, Strauss, Evelyn, Alex, Teeth, Everleigh

  The lair ? Rhian, Rhydian, Riz, Bells, Sebastian(?)

  Old theatre ? Jakob

  It’d been a minute since I’d had to run a good, old fashioned interrogation. I was familiar enough with questioning Partisan defectors, but a hybrid-whatever-she-was… what was she? I stepped around the lass curled up in the corner. Judging by the height, Strachan.

  “Could you get in her head?” I asked Zack.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Delphi.

  The other one had been Delphi, Strachan, and Celestian by our estimation. But this one—

  I crouched, put my hand to her face, and tilted her chin around. Strong jaw, sturdy build, dark olive skin tone.

  Amali.

  I didn’t see any obvious Celestian, Endican, or Senec markers, but really, there was no telling if we’d even be able to identify each race correctly after multiple mixes. I checked for a tattoo, but like her partner, her neck was blank.

  “Is this where you found her?” I asked Zack.

  “I’d anticipated the dead one would have a partner who’d go looking for him eventually. I was correct, and so I followed her search, and when she didn’t find him, I followed her here. That’s when I incapacitated her. I doubt if there are others.”

  “Notice anything else helpful?”

  “She was anxious, nervous.”

  “No other belongings?”

  Zack shook his head, which I reckoned was truthful but incorrect.

  For now, I picked up the map and the two blank pieces of paper on the ground near the lass. On the map, the guard compound was circled, the Steel Needle, the Jaskar, and the Goose and the Gander. I wondered what they were looking for where Vivienne was concerned. There were a few possibilities I tossed around while I examined the blank pages. Blank pages, except—

  I ran my fingers over the uneven surface.

  “Zack?”

  “Yes?”

  “Light, please?”

  Zack stepped over to the grimy window, retrieved the handkerchief from his breast pocket, and wiped a circular spot clean. The outside was still dirty, and it was winter in Amalia, so the light that filtered through wasn’t much, but it was enough.

  When he clocked my questioning expression, he shrugged. “I’m not a lantern.”

  From my bag, I pulled out a small kit of writing utensils I kept handy, including a sharpened charcoal pencil. With the blank page pressed up against the window and the pencil held at an angle, I ran it over the surface where I’d noticed changes in elevation.

  Zack watched quietly.

  The rub revealed the outline of a heavy-handed, slanted handwriting. Some of the letters were illegible, but there was more than enough to make some sense of the contents.

  Here’s what I pieced together:

  

  No sign of our targets. Site in Oskari ??? short of a suicide mission. If any survived, ??? no longer in territory. Had to eliminate Quinn ??? suspected liability ???? and opportunity for ??? better alone. I will continue my search in Delphia ??? discussed.

  T.L.

  All right, so—taking a look at the letter: I had loads of questions, but there was a fair bit of information I could use buried in those few lines. The most interesting one was that whoever wrote the letter seemed to be covering for us, or for themselves, and was planning, or pretending, to take their search to somewhere we weren’t.

  But who was Quinn? Was the lass T.L.? Was the lad Adeline killed T.L.? Or were they someone else entirely? Well, we were about to find out, hopefully, because it was almost time to wake up the lass.

  But first, I knew she and her partner had to be hiding possessions somewhere. They were still mortals who needed to eat, so they would have money, and they’d have weapons, tools, and so on.

  I doubted they were going for a complex secret stash, just somewhere to store their things while they were out so it looked like nobody had been there. Also, to be fair, there weren’t many options. I moved to the fireplace, shoved my hand up the chute and grabbed on to the bottom of a bulging burlap satchel. I wiggled it out carefully.

  Zack watched quietly.

  Inside the bag: a map of Amalia, and two smaller maps of Oskari and Istok. There were knives—and not the dinner kind—a pair of pliers which would be useful for a number of tasks, including torture, lock picks, a small crowbar, an envelope containing three hundred and twenty five notes, some more blank paper, a few changes of black clothes, spare gloves, and what appeared to be a sheathed, silver plated stake. Typical tools of the trade, really. No surprises.

  I snatched a blank sheet of paper from their stash before putting everything back into the bag and shoving it up the chute again. I then went around and placed the map and two pieces of blank paper exactly where they were. I stuffed the one I scribbled on into my bag.

  The lass had a knife clipped to her belt, but I didn’t bother disarming her. For one, I wanted her to feel safe. For two, I wasn't worried about a knife when I had a Zack.

  “Can you wake her up?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Zack replied. “Would you like me to keep her frozen?”

  “No, and if you could step outside, too, that’d be great.”

  “You don’t want me to stay?”

  “Not yet, but listen at the door and be ready for anything. And when you hear me say the codeword shenanigans, please barge in and put her to sleep.”

  “Understood.” Zack nodded once and made for the door. After opening it, he tapped his cane against the frame three times before he stepped outside and closed it.

  Meanwhile, I’d positioned myself on the floor near the lass. Not too close to seem threatening, and not too far away that she’d worry about my having a tactical advantage. I kept it casual, see, leaning against the wall nearby, one leg pulled up and my arm resting against my knee—open and unarmed.

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  It was just under a minute before the lass stirred and opened her eyes. I watched while she took a quick inventory of her situation, and when she spotted me, I smiled winningly.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Aye, that was the same reaction I had when I came home from vacation and found you here, sleeping in my favourite dirty corner.”

  The lass squinted her pale grey eyes, sitting up slowly. Remember, I knew she had a knife, so I had to expect she’d pull it on me, but without looking like I was expecting it. I was also certain she had Strachan blood, so she’d be fast. I held my position.

  “Feargus Finlay, I’m guessing,” she said.

  “Got it in one. But I’m afraid I don’t know your name, and I didn’t know your partner’s either when I killed him. There just wasn’t time for formal introductions.”

  The lass’s eyebrows jerked upward for just a tick. “So he really is dead.”

  “So dead,” I answered.

  I scanned her posture: drooping shoulders. Her facial expression: lips slightly parted, her eyes closed briefly. Her response: a quiet sigh. Relief.

  “I’m Quinn,” she said.

  But wait—she was Quinn? The contents of the letter replayed in my mind: Had to eliminate Quinn ??? suspected liability ???? and opportunity for ??? better alone.

  “Quinn—good Strachan name,” I said.

  The lass shrugged. “I guess you want to know who I am, and what I want with you.”

  “See, normally I like to have conversations like that over dinner, but we’ll work with what we’ve got. I do have crackers, though, if you’re interested.”

  The lass chuckled with a downward glance. “I’m good.”

  I nodded along casually, waiting for her to take the lead.

  Eventually, she shrugged again. “Well, at least one of us isn’t leaving this interaction alive, so I guess it doesn’t really matter what I tell you, does it?”

  “I can’t answer that, mate.”

  Quinn nodded. “I was going to kill him myself if you didn’t,” she said. “That was my plan.”

  “I get it. Occasionally my partner makes me feel homicidal, too.”

  Her laugh was a wee bit less restrained that time. “Yeah, well. I think I made a big mistake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted out.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Mate, you’ll have to be more specific if you want my advice.”

  “Tag and I are—well, were—part of a secret reserve of Partisans at Palisade.”

  Skeptical face. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “That’s why it’s secret.”

  “Fair play. And what exactly is this secret reserve meant to be doing?”

  “Handling the things the rest of you can’t because of your limitations.”

  “Limitations?”

  “We’re all cross-bred.”

  Surprise face. “That explains why I couldn’t place you,” I said wondrously. “Don’t get to meet too many mixed folk.”

  “Yeah, why send three separate Partisans to do what one could do by themselves? Anyway—we were enlisted to track and capture you and your friends for the Assembly—especially the Delphi. It’s not uncommon we get sent to deal with the more dangerous defector groups, or the ones the Assembly want to keep hush-hush from the rest of Palisade.”

  “So, what, you live at Palisade? Do they keep you in the walls?”

  Quinn laughed again. “No, in the floors.”

  “Well, that’s not strange at all.”

  “Yeah, I never bought into much of what they were selling us down there, but most of the others are so—” Quinn twirled a finger around her ear. “They can’t help it.”

  “So how’s all this lead to you wanting to kill your partner?”

  “Because if I could get rid of him, then I’d be free.”

  “So you weren’t planning to go back to Palisade?”

  “No way. I’ve written a letter to Councilwoman Blanchett in my brother's handwriting, telling her that I was a traitor, and that he’d had to kill me to maintain the integrity of the mission.”

  “Your partner was your brother?”

  “We have the same mother.”

  “That’s heavy, mate.”

  Quinn shrugged. “So, yeah, I plan to declare myself dead, and as Tag, tell them that I couldn’t find you people in Amalia, so I’d be checking Delphia next according to our orders.”

  “Why write the letter? Why not just disappear?”

  “Because when Tag inevitably never returns to Palisade, they’ll only be looking for him, not me. I’m off the board this way.”

  “Aye, smart.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn answered. “So, how do we do this? First blood gets the kill?”

  “By the sounds of things, I have no reason to kill you, mate. But if I did something to upset you, maybe we could shag it out instead?”

  I only half meant that. It’s all about the reaction, isn’t it?

  Judging by the smirk on Quinn’s face, it was a hard maybe.

  I grinned, but actually, if she turned out to be a safe bet, I reckoned Michael might find her interesting. For now, it was back to business.

  So, Quinn’s letter actively worked against the letters we planned to send Faust and eventually Blanchett. I learned she’d delivered the letter to a secret drop spot, and that once a week, when one of these special Partisans was out on a job, the reserves sent someone out to check them. She said they wouldn’t be collecting the mail for another two days.

  Now, here’s the conundrum: the lass had been rather forthcoming, hadn’t she? And I could empathize with her position a great deal, actually. So the last thing I wanted to do was have Quinn be hunted down herself because I intercepted her letter—which I fully intended to do. But if I was to convince her to give me the drop location, I needed to make it worthwhile for her.

  “Look, Quinn, me and my friends need the Assembly to believe we’re alive now. And you want them to think you’re dead.”

  “Right.”

  “So, maybe we can make this work for the both of us.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I’ll leave a message of my own at the secret drop for the messenger to pick up. A taunt, a confession, and some kind of evidence that you and Tag are dead.”

  Quinn squinted. “Why would you help me?”

  “Because we want the same thing, don’t we? And besides, I might need your help later. And in the meantime, how about I set you up somewhere fun and relatively safe? Somewhere we can easily stay in contact.”

  “Where?”

  “Do you know anything about mixing drinks?”

  “I know a fair bit about drinking drinks, does that count?”

  “Absolutely, mate. Absolutely.”

  So, my plan was risky. Letting Quinn out into the wild, even if under the watch of my trusted Gander friends, was risky. The evidence and my instincts were telling me she was being truthful, but you don’t really think I’d do all that without checking my work, do you?

  Well, after learning the location of the secret drop, the schedule, and who to expect on pick-up, I dropped the cue for Zack. “Any reservations before we move out? We’ve got a complex web of shenanigans going on here, and if you’re not sure—”

  The door opened, and half a second later, Quinn was fast asleep.

  I stood from the ground, and Zack tapped his way over.

  “Get any vibes from her?” I asked.

  “She was telling the truth.”

  “I could kill her.”

  “You could, Feargus Finlay.”

  “I probably should.”

  Zack tipped his cane in my direction.

  Right, so—if I killed her: that’s a player off the board and a variable I no longer had to think about. But if I didn’t: that’s a possible ally, that’s information about the still mysterious Partisan reserve group, that’s potential information about the Six and their structure, that’s leverage if ever needed, and that’s not information I could get in one sitting—not before proving myself to her first. So far, I’d given her reason to believe she could trust me, but I hadn’t given her any reason to fear me. For this to work, I needed a bit of both, and while normally that's where Rhian would come in, Rhian wasn't there. So, that's where Zack came in.

  “Will you play the Law for me?” I asked Zack.

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks, mate.” I made my way to the door, pausing with my fingers around the handle. “All yours,” I said before stepping outside.

  But don’t worry: I watched it all through the smudgy circle in the window.

  When Quinn woke up, Zack was crouched in front of her, staring. But when she immediately scrambled to her feet, he straightened out—towering over her short stature.

  Now, Zack spoke too quietly for me to hear what he was saying, but let me tell you, what happened next was entirely unexpected, mates. In the space in front of him, Quinn dropped to her knees in reverence, her hands clutched together as if praying. And with that, Zack leaned down, whispered something in her ear, and by the time he left the old, abandoned house twenty-five seconds later, Quinn was crumpled in a heap on the floor crying.

  Zack held the door open for me. “All yours.”