Bounty Page 5

  Godren snorted bitterly. “Couldn’t we have been given a sign? Something a little more subtle than the rude awakening that was thrown in our faces?”

  “I guess destiny is ruthless sometimes. And unjust. And two-sided.”

  Godren sighed. “And who are we to defy it?”

  “Well if I ever get one measly scrap of a chance, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  Godren was going to agree vehemently, but remembered the listening ghosts and reminded himself to keep things harmless. He decided to drop the subject, settling on the fountain ledge in search of a state of mind that would cure his weariness. As his dangling fingers trailed over the water, he found himself half-hoping he would fall in while he was asleep – that he would fall into that pool of memories that had appeared as visions next to his reflection, or that the water would wash everything away, and free him of the stains that bound him to an inescapable reality. Or maybe he would drown, he considered distantly as he faded toward sleep. Drowning in a pool of memories would be a nice way to go, where he could pretend it had all ended back then after all – when his happiness had been a near, easy thing to recall, before the matter of his escape had gotten out of hand.

  7: Defiance and Allowance

  Kane called a meeting from his station above ground, and the summoned attendees made their way to the upper world to oblige, gathering in the crumbling interior of the empty building that was the Underworld’s main entrance.

  Bastin was there, standing commandingly in a way that looked at the same time perfectly at ease – achieving, somehow, a fierce sort of lounge. Kane looked decidedly ominous the way he was stroking the cat at his crouched feet, the animal and him both watching the arrival of those summoned with steady, unblinking eyes that seemed to lurk in their skulls.

  Godren and Seth entered up through the floor – up through the fire pit, insubstantial and burning with unnatural flame as it always was. The fire, of course, was turned off for their passage, but Godren had to wonder, since the stuff was clearly not real, if it wasn’t something they could walk through quite simply without being burned in the first place.

  Ossen wandered in late, in no hurry to ensure that he wouldn’t receive some unwelcome manner of discipline for his careless tardiness.

  “Report,” Bastin ordered curtly once everyone was present, having not said one word up until then. Godren and Seth had waited awkwardly in the ignorant silence as Bastin and Kane waited, unblinking, for the last addition to the meeting.

  Godren glanced at Ossen, not certain who was expected to begin.

  Ossen seemed to see no troublesome question to take pause at in that area. “Everything went according to plan,” he volunteered. “That is, so long as they managed.” He sent an austere glance in the general direction of Godren and Seth.

  Bastin and Kane – even the cat – turned their eyes on the ones Ossen indicated.

  “Mastodon’s orders suit you two?” Kane asked, a hint of a smile hovering at the corner of his lips.

  “Well enough,” Godren replied, refusing to commit to either side of the issue he was being teased with.

  “That’s good,” Kane said, glancing only briefly in Seth’s direction before dismissing him without pressing for a satisfactory response.

  “How many were there?” Bastin wanted to know.

  This time, Ossen looked to Godren.

  “I found three,” Godren offered.

  Ossen’s eyes shifted to Seth. Seth raised a stubborn eyebrow. Not wanting to look childish, Ossen took up the silence before he could get caught in the act of waiting to hear his rivals’ claims in order to decide on his own. For good measure, still set on landing a taste of his original blow, he smiled gloatingly at Godren. “Six,” he said easily, smoothly doubling Godren’s own claim.

  Seth snorted, and when everyone’s eyes turned to him it was hard to say if he’d drawn them or if they were merely looking for the last answer to the inquiry. “Twenty,” he mocked ridiculously, openly playing Ossen’s game to make the scandal clear, perfectly willing to look ridiculous himself if it meant exposing the player at the other end. And if it didn’t expose him, well, at least he got the pleasure of making it clear he was accusing him.

  Godren stayed out of it, despite the mix of tense disapproval and congratulatory pleasure he felt at Seth’s bluntness. He bit his tongue and stood still, holding his breath to see how easily it would blow over.

  Kane and Bastin looked at Seth without expression. They did not appear supportive of Seth's scoff, but neither did they seem to care one way or another. They let it go, simply looking impatient for a serious answer.

  “Two,” Seth admitted, not sheepishly. “They were just worth ten men each.”

  Bastin nodded, satisfied enough. He didn’t care about the thrown-in aspects of personal rivalry. “Any exceptional cases?” he wanted to know secondly. “Besides the rascal Ossen brought in for interrogation?”

  Godren glanced curiously at Ossen, wondering at the prisoner he hadn’t caught wind of until then. “There’s one that should be looked out for,” he mentioned, keeping his focus on the meeting. “One that got away.”

  “One got away?” Ossen demanded, sounding appalled.

  Godren ignored him, grimly meeting Bastin and Kane’s eyes. “An old crone with a wooden leg. She’s not to be trifled with. Not lightly.”

  A strangled sound escaped Ossen. “You got whipped by a female?” he chortled. “An ancient, wrinkly mot with a bloody crippling wooden leg? What’s wrong with you, Godren?”

  Ignoring him still, Godren continued to report. “She had knives–”

  But Ossen deliberately took it as Godren’s excuse, and rolled his eyes. “Oh,” he said very meaningfully, as if that explained things.

  Kane and Bastin were taking Godren a little more seriously, so he continued without sparing Ossen a glance.

  “She fought me. As strange as it sounds, she was…dauntingly fierce. I have the marks to prove it.”

  They seemed to accept that, and the gravity he voiced with it. Godren was appreciative that no one suggested he was simply lacking in self-defense. Ossen clearly wanted to, but no one else appeared to doubt his ability, and he felt slightly smug at that.

  “How did she get away?” Bastin asked, and Godren realized he might not be completely off the hook.

  What to say? he despaired, at a loss. ‘She disappeared’? Was it better to conjure up convenient settings to make her vanishing act more believable, or should he stick to his thin-air theory?

  “I don’t know,” he finally confessed. “Every move she made was baffling, disconcerting. It all seemed like it should have been impossible for her to achieve.”

  Glaring dully at this point, Ossen was staying out of things. He tried to feign disinterest, but mostly he appeared unhappy with the attention Godren was receiving.

  “Do better next time, Godren,” Kane instructed – halfway between warning him and encouraging him.

  Godren nodded once, just relieved that they accepted his story and respected his judgment.

  “So we have a figure on the loose,” Bastin said to everyone. “Dangerous in the least, but suspicious as well, if you ask me. Keep an eye out for this crone, and bring her in next time. She bodes ill for our convenience, if Godren is to be trusted.”

  Everyone nodded, filing away the description for future reference.

  Bastin turned his eyes to Ossen. “Might as well see if we can get anything out of the little rascal,” he suggested. “Would you like to conduct an interrogation?”

  “With pleasure,” Ossen replied, dark eagerness lighting up his face.

  Little rascal? Godren felt something stir inside him at the term. Something like alarm. As Ossen followed Bastin underground, he suddenly felt a wave of subtle dread move through him. Seth went to get some fresh air, disgusted with the meeting. But Godren lingered in indecision, with Kane watching him, before stealing himself after the duo that had descended to the dungeon. His head ha
d barely cleared the ground before the artificial fire flamed to life above him. A cat on the stairs started purring as the light of the fire flashed in its eyes.

  When Godren reached the dungeon, he entered to find Ossen standing over a child on his knees in a cell, with Bastin calmly watching from without.

  Pausing just past the threshold, Godren watched gravely.

  “Your pockets were loaded, brat. Who hired you, and what bloody for?” Ossen was demanding.

  “As if I’d tell you lot!” the boy shouted up at his interrogator. “You can’t make me! Couldn’t even if my life depended on it!”

  “Your life does depend on it,” Ossen pointed out, trying to scare him. “So spit it out.”

  “Alright,” the boy replied, eyes flaming. And he spat at Ossen’s feet.

  Ossen stared at him – though, probably, he glared. Godren couldn’t tell from his vantage point.

  “You asked for that, you miserable brute,” the boy said harshly.

  Ossen took a deep, steadying breath, probably for show. “It’s not worth keeping strangers’ secrets when your life is on the line, little man,” he tried to reason with the kid, but it turned into more of a growl.

  “I’d just as soon be torn to pieces for my betrayal,” the boy snapped. “So I’m going down as an honorable rebel. How do you like that?!”

  Beginning to circle him impatiently, Ossen stopped behind him and clouted him viciously across the skull. “Miserable boy,” he snarled. “Look at yourself. What ever made you think you had any chance at attaining any honor at all? You belong to the most dishonorable clan in existence.”

  “Shut up!”

  Ossen laughed. “Nice try, cur. You’re a sorry excuse for a rat. Your mother sleeps in a gutter, and your father is the gods know who, but surely a beast whose footsteps you’ll follow in if you survive that long. Not likely, since you survive on slime and mold, stealing from the plates of your mutt siblings just to quiet your selfish, starving belly. Don’t tell me you’re not relieved, deep down, when one of them dies or goes missing in the night – you lot all think with your stomachs and love with your animal instincts.

  “Now I’ve been straight with you, so let’s be straight with each other, shall we?”

  The boy was trembling, angry and ashamed. Godren clenched his jaw. Bastin just kept watching – patiently, it seemed. Unconcerned.

  Ossen waited.

  The boy just kept trembling, his fists clenched. He had no intention of answering.

  “Well?” Ossen asked through gritted teeth, losing patience.

  “I hate you,” the boy murmured.

  “I don’t bloody care,” Ossen yelled, “if you bloody flaming hate me! Is that what I asked you?” he demanded.

  “My mother doesn’t sleep in a gutter,” the boy said defensively, barely containing himself yet barely able to speak. “She sleeps in a coffin. And it was my father who put her there.” Glaring up at Ossen with all the passionate hate in the world, he finished with a vehement declaration; “I will never,” he swore, quivering with rage, “follow in his footsteps.”

  Drawing himself up decidedly, Ossen stared down at his victim, emotionless. “Then you will follow in your mother’s.”

  “Ossen,” Godren finally intervened, drawing his rival’s lethally annoyed attention and Bastin’s sly curiosity. “The boy’s harmless.”

  “He’s what we would least expect, that’s what he is,” Ossen retorted. “I’m not going to be the irresponsible one that naively lets him go.”

  Then do it out of compassion, Godren thought, disgusted. “Then what’s it going to be? Punishment? Further persuasion?” He shied away from the word ‘torture’, but they both knew exactly what he meant.

  “How about both, and we can kill two birds with one stone?” Ossen suggested cheerfully.

  “What’s your point, Godren?” Bastin asked.

  “Did you ever think of bribing him with reward rather than threatening him with punishment? I’ll bet he can endure a fair amount of that,” Godren replied bitterly. “Pain is no stranger to his kind.”

  “Fine. If you’re such an expert, you do it. Let’s see you preach, Godren,” Ossen drawled. “But how could you preach with a clear conscience down here – how can you pose as anything virtuous when, welcome in the Underworld, you know you’re just as bad as the rest of us?” Taking on a taunting tone, Ossen’s words bit deep. But Godren wasn’t about to storm out, affectively ashamed. He shrugged off the condemning insults, for the boy’s sake.

  “If it’s effective, Ossen, why do you care how it’s done?” he snapped. “If it has potential to be affective, why didn’t you think of it yourself?”

  “I never said it had potential,” Ossen denied quickly.

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Enough,” Bastin interrupted. “Have an open mind, Ossen. And Godren – your concern is unwarranted. The boy will get his chance,” he promised, but there was nothing reassuring in his tone.

  That’s a great walloping comfort, when it’s been made clear that your chances aren’t good.

  Godren knew a dismissal from Bastin when he heard it. You learned to identify those kinds of things early on if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders for any significant period of time. Unwillingly, but knowing he could not bear to stay to watch anymore as it was, he spun on his helpless heel and escaped the dungeon.

  It was a difficult thing, leaving. Guilt and frustration hounded him for leaving the boy to his fate. How could he ever forgive himself for allowing things like this to proceed without intervening? He was going to end up loathing himself as much as he did everyone else in this dark business, he knew. But there were so many things that left him torn. When you had to compromise with justice one way or another to survive, how did you decide when to ignore right and wrong and when to fight for things? He walked such a sour, torn line – driven by personal interest that was not selfish, but a valid fight for survival – while his actions treaded dangerously on harmful paths destined for victims that he didn’t know how to judge. He didn’t have the right to judge. When was it finally too much? When did it all fail to be worth his perseverance? And would he have the strength to let go, to push it away and end it? Or would he finally just give in, because he had no strength at all?

  8: Ulterior Motives

  “Do you recall anything else about this crone?” Mastodon pressed him. She was intrigued by the cripple, and Godren wondered, by her expression, if she was jealous by the idea of someone else in her alleys honing supernatural abilities.

  “Like what?” Godren asked, casually picking up a feather quill from her desk and turning it over in his hands. He liked to assume a casual air in her presence, as often as he could force himself to do it.

  “What did she look like? Have an imagination, Godren. Don’t tell me you’re unobservant and only notice the remarkable features on the young and beautiful ones.”

  Twirling the feather in his fingers, Godren focused on its blurring fronds. “She was pretty much a standard old crone,” he said. “Wrinkly, gray-haired. But not hunched so much as crouched. And she had icy blue eyes, very sharp. Evident streaks of unbecoming veins. Perfectly unremarkable nose. Does that help any?”

  “It could. Thank you for trying. I do appreciate it,” she said dryly.

  “Anything to make you happy,” Godren said absently, playing ignorantly along. I shouldn’t have said that, he thought, but there was no help for it now. Hopefully she wouldn’t take him too seriously – but she probably wouldn’t, because she could probably see right through him. She wasn’t stupid.

  Suddenly her eyes shifted and her dry little smirk slipped, as if something in the room had caught her attention and she wasn’t thrilled by what she saw there.

  But there was nothing there.

  Then her eyes landed back on him. “He’s gone.”

  “My lady?”

  “Our prisoner is on the loose.”

  “What?” Godren unconsciously stopped twirli
ng the feather, for a moment not comprehending.

  “The boy.”

  To that, Godren had no reply. Part of him was alarmed, another part daring to hope that something miraculous and unorthodox had set the boy free. “He got out?” he asked softly, treading carefully.

  Mastodon stood swiftly, coming out from behind her desk – something Godren had never seen before. He watched her stride past, wondering if he should still be sitting there…

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To consult with my miserable staff,” she replied over her shoulder. When she got to the doors, she stopped and faced him. “Godren,” she said gravely.

  He looked at her.

  “Bring him back.”

  Then she was gone, leaving it to him. Godren stared after her, suddenly sapped of focus and filled with paralyzing dread. No, he finally had the composure to think. No, not me. He sat there, unmoving, staring at the closed doors without seeing them. A sense of pain clenched him at the idea, darkening the shadow of dread that fell with the anticipation. He couldn’t act. If Mastodon only knew what she had asked of him. Not that she would have cared, but still, she couldn’t know…

  To be aware of the abuse going on around him was bad enough. To be a witness to these things, gritting his teeth and averting his eyes, was enough to slowly squeeze the life out of his soul. To be responsible for it…

  He would never be able to look in a mirror again. He would never be able to close his eyes, for fear of seeing the monster that lurked inside him.

  But how could he ignore Mastodon’s orders? He recalled the way she had become aware of the boy’s escape, as if she had found the information in the emptiness of the room. There was a ghost present. An unseen servant of Godren’s mistress, watching him procrastinating instead of jumping up to fulfill Mastodon’s wishes. He couldn’t have this getting back to her.