Book 2, Chapter 52

As amusing as it was to watch Blue Rat squirm, I did have other problems to take care of. We waited in silence a moment to confirm that no one was going to pop up in response to his kill signal, then I said, “Look, I’m not here to kill you. I just have a message for the Wolf Pack. I’m sure they’re going to track me from my fight with Monolith and Swarm, and that trail is going to lead straight to you. So when somebody shows up, you’re going to give them my message. And, well, if you don’t survive being the messenger, tough break. I’m not exactly overflowing with sympathy for you at the moment.”

It wasn’t even that all his people had abandoned him, yet. I could still sense most of them in the building, surrounding us. But word had gotten around quickly, probably before I’d even arrived, if I had to guess. I’d fried some people at the gang’s base, but that left plenty of living bodies to run ahead and warn them of what I’d done and that I was coming.

Their ambush plan had too many holes to be something they’d spent time developing, but it wasn’t falling apart so bad that it felt like it had been thought up and implemented between me walking in off the street and this moment. Most likely they’d had a few minutes of warning while I’d scried and found my way here. With the time constraints they’d been working under, they’d managed a half-decent setup.

It was obvious this wasn’t the command room Blue Rat was running the show from. It was essentially empty except for a map on the ‘table’ next to the man. There were no assistants, no furniture, and, honestly, no reason to be here. I didn’t believe for a second that the room had been chosen for any reason besides the abundance of holes in the walls through which the gang’s no-doubt crack archery team had been commanded to pincushion me.

A little over half of the would-be assassins had abandoned their posts and were already fleeing the building. Those were the ones who’d presumably bet on Blue Rat not surviving this encounter. That was going to make things awkward for them soon enough since I had no intention of killing him. I wondered if he’d get away with punishing all of them or if he’d have no choice but to let their insubordination go.

I shifted my gaze from the holes in the stone walls back to Blue Rat. “So, unless you’ve got any other tricks or traps you’d like to try out on me, let’s get down to business.”

I got a sullen scowl in response, but all he said was, “What’s the message?”

“I assume some subordinate of Velvet’s is going to come through to find out just what happened out here,” I said. “Those two mages who rolled you out of bed in the middle of the night and put you to work are dead. That’s three core members of the Wolf Pack I’ve taken down in this city. And I’ve got names and targets. Velvet, obviously. Weaver, Ash, Echo, Keeper. Monarch. Freak’s already dead. You can let Velvet know he’s my next target.”

I paused and considered it for a second. Did I trust Blue Rat to deliver a message to the rest? No, not really. But did it matter if he screwed up bypassing Velvet trying? Also no. “If you think you can get a message around Velvet to the rest of the cabal, you can tell them that I’m willing to end this little spat of ours once Velvet’s dead. I don’t need to kill him myself. I just need him gone. Feel free to deliver that part or not at your own discretion. You don’t strike me as a man with the means to decide who exactly you get to report to, so I won’t hold it against you if you’d rather not tell that part to Velvet directly.”

Blue Rat’s jaw dropped somewhere around the middle of my little speech. Once it was clear that I was done, he shook his head and said, “You’re insane. You can’t take down the entire cabal. Even if you could, the Hierophant would kill you for disrupting the city.”

“Do I look like I’m worried?” I asked.

The men who hadn’t cleared out were still standing in their hiding places, though as far as I could tell without casting any actual divinations, they weren’t doing anything besides listening in. That, too, was part of the plan. They knew about me now. They were coming after me. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t giving up, and to think that there was a way of appeasing me. I doubted Velvet would be the next mage I killed, but if it got out that his death was what I’d been after all along, it just might help me get close enough to the rest of them to finish the job.

More than that, I wanted them to think I was focused on him, that I had some personal vendetta against one particular member of their group. The truth was that I’d never even heard of him until a few days ago and couldn’t care less if he was the next person to die or the last person. My only reason for focusing on him now was that he was coming after me hard – not that I blamed him. He was hardly the only person to get irrational about his family. I was the same way anymore.

“You might as well call back your people,” I told Blue Rat, “the ones that are still alive and willing to listen to your orders, at least. You were never going to find me anyway, not like this.”

Then I turned around and walked away, leaving Blue Rat standing there, mouth still agape, with no time to process what I’d told him or give any sort of order to the few people still watching the room. There was someone waiting for me out in the hall ahead. I was pretty sure I knew who without having to check.

“Thanks,” Lyxana said as I turned the corner and spotted her.

“Didn’t do it to be nice,” I said. “I don’t trust Blue Rat to give them the message. The more people who hear it, the better the chances of it reaching the cabal.”

“Still, some people I think of as friends are alive.”

“For now,” I said. “I wonder how the cabal will react. It might be better to convince anyone important to you to clear out soon. By the way, there’s a new kid who just joined a few days ago, maybe ten or eleven. Brown hair. Scar on his cheek. You know who I’m talking about?”

“I do,” she said. “Why?”

“I want to talk to him before I leave. Is he around here?”

“Probably somewhere. You going to kill him?”

“Nope.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Fine. I think I know where you can find him.”

“Lead the way,” I said.

* * *

It turned out Blue Rat had people working in shifts, and Tanner’s friend was sleeping in one of the buildings the gang had taken over. Lyxana led me straight to him while the other gang members watched in confusion or suspicion. More than one tried to approach her, but she just waved them back with promises to explain later.

“Juby,” she said, reaching out a hand to shake his shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Whaa-?” he asked sleepily. “Go ’way. ’m tired.”

“Wake up,” she said again. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“Huh?”

He sat up slowly and rubbed at his eyes, then froze when he saw me. Any trace of weariness vanished from his face, replaced with complete and utter panic. Juby tried to fling himself away from me, only to jerk to a halt when Lyxana’s hand clamped down on him. “Relax, kiddo,” she said. “He just wants to talk. Uh… you do just want to talk, right?”

“Yes,” I said. It was a struggle not to roll my eyes. “If I wanted to kill him, he wouldn’t have woken back up.”

“Do you have any idea how creepy it is to hear a child talk like that?” she asked me.

“I’m sure it’s not my problem,” I told her. “Think of me as a very short adult, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Not really,” she muttered.

“What do you want?” Juby asked, his voice quivering.

“You told them about me, didn’t you?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I swear on my parents’ graves I didn’t,” Juby said.

“You’re lying, but that’s fine. I don’t much care. You delivered two of them straight to me, saved me the effort of hunting them down.”

“What do you want, then?” Juby asked.

“Come with me. We’re going for a walk,” I said. “Get your stuff together if you have any and head for the door. I’ll meet you there.”

Juby started walking away, though he shot furtive glances back at me every few steps. I ignored that and said to Lyxana, “If he doesn’t come back, just tell people I killed him. Don’t waste time looking for him.”

“Are you going to kill him?” she asked quietly.

“No. When I first met him, he told me he didn’t want to be pressed into working for Blue Rat’s gang. I’m giving him his opportunity to leave. I don’t know if he’ll take it, but after everything that’s happened to him, I’m going to give him a chance to walk away. His friends are all dead. Monolith tore them apart. Or maybe a few of them survived. I didn’t stop to count the bodies or anything. Maybe he’ll go find the survivors, if there are any. Or maybe he’ll decide he’s got nothing else left to do with his life and he’ll come back. Either way, it’ll be his decision. Considering how much this city has cost him, I think he's earned that.”

“I don’t get you,” Lyxana said. “Are you a nice guy or a psycho hiding in a kid’s body? You threatened to murder dozens of people just a few minutes ago. You did kill people back at the main building earlier today. But now you’re taking pity on some random kid you’ve known for all of five minutes? Are you just a sucker for a sob story? It doesn’t fit.”

“People are complicated, and we’re hypocrites. Everyone’s got their soft spots,” I said, quiet enough that no one else around us could hear. “I am a monster in so many ways. Human life has no real value to me, but the children… If I can give them just a bit of kindness, I will. Life will kick them enough when they grow up.

“Keep it to yourself. If I find my enemies hiding behind a wall of children thinking that will save them, I swear by the six moons in the night sky that I will hunt you down personally and end you in a manner more painful than you can possibly imagine. There will be no escape from my wrath, not to the farthest shores or the deepest caverns.”

Then she did something that surprised me. She smiled and said, “You might be a monster, but you’re human, too. It’s comforting to know you have a heart under all that other crap. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your shameful weakness. Are you sure you want to be known as a child killer if Juby decides not to come back?”

“I’ve been rightfully called worse things in my life,” I said. “Now, I need to go. Juby is trying to make a run for it and I’m going to be annoyed if he gets far enough away that I have to make an effort to chase him down.”

“Goodbye, Keiran. For what it’s worth, I hope you do free this city of the mages keeping it under their thumbs.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” I told her. “If it happens, it’ll just be a lucky coincidence for you. Goodbye.”