Bounty (12 page)

Mastodon stood at the sight of him as well, something he was oddly gratified by. And in contrast to Kane, she actually did look concerned. Of course, it could have just been for her own interests, if there was an enemy abroad clearly so fierce, but Godren took heart and felt disorientingly reassured.

“
Gods,” Mastodon uttered, looking properly alarmed. “What happened?”

Godren moved into the room, uncaring that he left a speckled trail of blood in his wake. He didn’t strain himself to present her with an answer.

“
I see you
aren’t
shy about bleeding on my carpet, after all. Here, let’s get something on that.”

“
No,” Godren protested. “Let it bleed.” He fell into the chair at the front of Mastodon’s desk, trying not to wince. “I shot myself.”

There was a pause.

“
Of all the foolish things to do, Godren,” Mastodon disapproved without pity, but she moved out from behind her desk to help. “Lea,” she addressed louder, eyes directed past Godren, and a figure moved up beside the chair seemingly from the shadows of the room. Godren wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed her, though, absorbed in his pain as he was. Even still, he hardly looked at her. He got the vague impression of a slender, dark-skinned woman, and though it was perfectly explainable that he’d missed her in the room, he found it a little odd that he’d never seen her around the Underworld at
all
.

“
Assess him, please,” Mastodon requested, then focused on Godren. “This is Lea, one of my servants. She is well informed when it comes to injury. I’m sure she’ll see what she can do.”

Silently, Lea knelt by Godren’s chair. She was tall, her reach still level with the majority of what she needed to get to, and Godren found his eyes skimming the top of her shaved head. Her eyes, nearly as dark as her almost-black skin, were utterly focused and emotionless, but gentle. She wore a foreign sort of tunic – collar encircling her neck just below her chin and fanning down over her neck and collarbone, under her arms where it fastened in the back. It stopped well clear of her knees, leaving her long black legs folded neatly beneath her.

She began by rolling his sleeve up for a good look at his hand, careful not to bloody herself. Godren tried to hold it so she could see.

“
So you shot yourself,” Mastodon pondered. “But did you cut it open to bleed yourself? I mean, you didn’t come home in this mess simply from sending a dart into your hand. Why all the blood?”

Godren ignored the term ‘home’, not liking it. “I didn’t cut anything,” he said. “I was bitten.”

“
You were – I beg your pardon – bitten?”

“
I was attacked by a wolf set loose in the outskirts of the Ruins.”

Mastodon stared at him. “A wolf,” she said flatly, wanting confirmation. Godren met her eyes and didn’t change his story. “Set loose?”

“
It had a master. When it bit into the poison and stumbled off of me, its handler took the silence as the end to a one-way battle and…came into the light, so to speak. The wolf
was
still standing, and I know I look like I
should
be dead, so he wasn’t worried about the exposure.” Godren winced with the last word as Lea found a tender spot, pressing his head back into the chair.

“
And then…?” Mastodon prompted.

“
Then the wolf collapsed, I heard the handler voice his surprise, and I reacted.” Godren paused, annoyed with the way the story ended. “He got away with my knife in his arm.”

“
Your knife,” Mastodon repeated, displeased. “I should have listened to Ossen and known the only person you could shoot with that gun was yourself.”

Godren tried not to let that get to him. He was glad when Mastodon continued with a prompting question, so his explanation wouldn’t sound like an excuse.

“
Why
didn’t you use the gun, Godren?”

“
I didn’t expect a man, after the wolf. The sound of his voice so close took me by surprise, and my survival reflexes kicked in. It’s instinct and habit to reach for my knives at the first sign of danger. I did resort to the darts, after he’d turned his back, but…I had trouble operating the gun, and my aim was faulty.”

“
Trouble because of your injuries?”

“
Yes.”

A bit of a silence stretched out as Mastodon considered, leaning back against her desk with her arms crossed.

“
So this wolf merely bit into the poison,” she said finally.

Godren nodded.

“
How potent were your darts?”

“
Leveled for paralysis.”

Disapproval showed in Mastodon’s eyes, but she refrained from voicing it. “He won’t be permanently out, then. Could you retrace your footsteps to the location of the attack?”

“
I could probably follow the blood,” Godren replied wryly.

“
Take someone there, once you’re patched up. I want the animal brought back and caged.” Her eyes turned suddenly unhappy. “It seems I’m not the only one developing a secret weapon. Boldness from the bounty hunters themselves was what I was getting annoyed with. Cultivating natural predators into their scheme…that presents a whole new level of fearlessness and savagery.”

Catching his breath as Lea set something afire, Godren replied, “Indeed.”

“
I don’t like this, Godren. I’d like you to pick up the pace.”

“
Anything more specific?” Godren prompted.

“
Yes; figure it out yourself.”

12:
T
RAPS

T
he alley was found threateningly empty where the wolf had collapsed from the poison. The report left Mastodon highly displeased, and Godren on edge.

“
I have an escaped prisoner, a rabid wolf, an unnaturally dangerous cripple, and an unnamed hunter all on the loose in my alleys,” Mastodon lectured her men. “Where is my security?”

“
Setting prisoners free, getting bested by cripples, mauled by wolves, and otherwise conveniently missing targets when the darts are turned to
as a last resort
,” Ossen volunteered an answer, looking pleased with himself.

“
Well that’s very clearly intended to single out two of us, Ossen, so where’ve
you
been?” Seth challenged. “Do you have a better excuse than getting
mauled by wolves
?”

That earned Ossen’s cold eyes, but Mastodon intervened.

“
Enough,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for excuses, or even candid explanations as much as promises to do better and suggestions of how you might accomplish that.”

“
I think we should sabotage the alleys,” Godren said, uninvolved in Ossen and Seth’s spitefully misguided concentration.

Mastodon looked at him. “Sabotage? How do you mean?”

“
If you have unwanted figures on the loose in your alleys, and there’s no easy way to set out and locate them, why don’t we set traps?”

For a few moments Mastodon stared consideringly at him, as if trying to find fault with his suggestion. Then she shrugged her eyebrows. “Why not? If you’d be kind enough to engineer said traps, Godren, then I’m all for such a scheme,” she granted. “I’m beginning to see what a good investment you were. Feel free to move forward with this.”

Godren could not help but be averse to the praise, conscious of his present rivals, but there was not much he could do to smooth it over, so he didn’t try. Acknowledging it in any way would probably only make it worse. So he let go of his resentment and focused on a more subtle emotion: dread. If Mastodon was keen on him proceeding, she would expect him to get right on it, and he was not too keen about that himself. He was stiffer than a statue after his ordeal, every muscle burning with soreness where it wasn’t bruised black or slashed open. His hand was especially stiff, feeling like it belonged to a corpse, and his neck was especially tender where the wolf’s teeth had punctured and torn. He looked like hell, too, which Ossen had informed him himself, and it was that which made Godren most resent that he had to baby himself along, that motivated him to ignore his injuries and get right on what Mastodon wanted him to do.

Curse pride,
Godren thought, half wishing he would voice his perfectly valid excuse and wait to fulfill the task until he could move without his body screaming in protest.

“
Do you have a map of the Ruins?” he asked, refusing to be weak or slowed down. Aside from brandishing resilience for Ossen's benefit, impressing Mastodon was a key to his survival. He had to keep her pleased, and if he didn’t keep himself humble, he knew she would do that for him. He couldn’t pamper himself.

Nodding, Mastodon unlocked a drawer in her desk and rolled it open to produce the requested document. It was a long, soft scroll, made of something halfway between parchment and fabric, and it was clean and spared of creases or cracks. Mastodon handed it over, and Godren carefully stretched his pained arm out to accept it.

“
And I’d like to sketch another version, if you have the tools to spare,” Godren mentioned. “To map out the best locations for traps.”

This time, Mastodon stood and went to another set of drawers, slipping out two sheets of plain parchment and adequate drawing utensils. Godren collected those, and then began studying the map while Mastodon finished addressing the men in her study.

“
I want you all to help with whatever Godren needs. Make yourselves agreeable and you’ll be more useful.”

Ossen was undoubtedly gritting his teeth at that, but he would never defy Mastodon to her face. He’d probably just make himself the opposite of useful when Godren needed something. Dreading his help, Godren thought maybe he just wouldn’t ask for it. But ordering Ossen around had a bit of tempting charm to it. He would have to wait and see what kind of assistance he ended up requiring.

“
And whatever happens,” Mastodon continued, “don’t let anyone else in, and don’t let any of the present trespassers get any closer. They shouldn’t be in my alleys to begin with.”

“
Do you have any idea who any of them could be, Mastress?” Bastin inquired, using the term of respect Mastodon had conjured for herself, a combination of ‘mastodon’ and ‘mistress’ that came out sounding like a more feminine version of ‘master’.

“
For a long time I’ve known the names and faces of my most prominent threats, but a new age has arisen, a new generation, and I’m afraid no – these characters are new to me, fresh blood,” Mastodon replied. “I will have to ask around and see what I can glean.”

Godren wondered exactly what she meant by ‘ask around’, since she hardly ever came out from behind her desk and certainly never went out. Perhaps she used the ghosts somehow, but who exactly were her contacts? Not that he doubted she had connections, but he was curious who they were.

With that, Mastodon was through with them, and they all went their separate dark ways. Godren headed to the courtyard to get right to work on drawing his plans, but was delayed for a time despairing over wielding the drawing utensils with his mangled hand. At first he thought he wouldn’t be able to use it at all, and kicked himself for not realizing something so blatantly halting before committing himself to this. He spent a long while massaging the stiffness out, careful not to massage the bruising, and was finally able to grasp the little tube that held the drawing lead. Starting with a compromising light sketch, he began recreating the network of alleys with plans for the traps they would set. It was all very faint as he carefully brushed the lead over the parchment, but he could darken it later.

As he drew the alleys from a bird’s-eye view, an idea slowly presented itself to him. Could the Ruins be navigated from atop the walls? Not only would that spare Mastodon’s men from the risk of tripping the very traps they’d set, but it would also present an unexpected, discreet vantage point for keeping surveillance on the alleys.

Warming to the idea, Godren installed some extra additions to the top of the stonework with his pencil. They would need a few bridges for convenience and some discreet ways up and down. Outlining a quick plan, he spent the next few hours putting it on paper. His hand cramped often, and he had to pause to massage it out, but he was eager to finish now that he’d gotten into the project and piqued his own creative interest.

When he was done, the bites puncturing his palm were open and bleeding, and his hand was aching and sore in its entirety, but he looked at the masterpiece sketched from one edge of the parchment to the other and didn’t even spare his agitated injury a second thought.

He just needed supplies, he thought as his eyes skimmed over his work. A few experiments would be necessary to engineer the traps he had in mind, but he already had a decent mental sketch of the details.

Finished with the plans, he rose to present them to Mastodon.

*

After the mistress of the Underworld approved the plans and produced the necessary equipment, the engineering and labor began. The mechanics of the traps were fairly simple and mostly similar regardless of how the traps themselves deviated. Setting them involved a lot of spider work, stringing the alleys with the properly poised thread triggers that dropped nets from above or pulled the crumbling top edges of the alley walls down on top of you. Whether caught or buried, the traps were sure to serve their purpose: preventing anyone from reaching the secret heart of the Ruins.