Bounty (2 page)

A few slumped beggars and darting urchins frequented the fringes of The Ruins, but once immersed in the depth of the crumbling buildings, there was no one at all. The lonesome shadows were the only things that watched him go by, and though they were lifeless, he
could
feel their eyes. Everyone whispered about the ghosts that hung around Mastodon’s domain, and Godren did not always doubt the stories. It was a good place for ghosts, really.

He saw the flash of a cat’s eyes before he noticed the glint of steel. Mastodon’s guards, feline and human alike, stood around her mansion blocking the entrances. Seeing Godren, the criminal at the nearest entrance flashed a morbid grin to complete the series of telltale glints in the night, confirming that Godren had come to the right doorstep.

“
Nice of you to drop in,” Kane greeted ominously, and kicked open the door. Without gesturing for Godren to enter, he waited for Mastodon’s guest to step past the threshold without the invitation, as if daring him to. It did not escape Godren that once he did, the cat at Kane’s side started to purr.

Inside was a single vast room, dark, barren, and broken. The patchy ceiling towered above the dirty, rubble-strewn ground, all the floors of the multiple-story building gone from in between. Broken windows and other unintentional gaps in the walls dotted the structure with scars, and it was a wonder the thing was still standing at all. Even the stone that remained seemed warped, like wrinkles that came with its incredible age.

A fire pit stood at the center of the room, ablaze with flame that you couldn’t see from outside, and that, admittedly, did not stretch far into the shadows of this room. Bastin, Mastodon’s head bruiser, sat on the other side of the fire, looking like he sat in the dark.

“
Well, well,” Bastin drawled. “Look what the cat dragged in.” He cackled as if it had been a great joke, and spat on the fire. There was a sizzle, and then the flames melted away, leaving no ashes or wood. There was only a dark pit, baring the first few steps of a spiraling stone staircase below before the rest of it disappeared underground.

Taking his life in his hands, Godren began his descent. He spiraled down, down through the dark, using the outer wall for guidance. He feared – perhaps irrationally, perhaps not – slipping off the curving, inner edge, falling to his crushing death at the foot of the steps below. There was no rail to prevent such a fate, and certainly no light to encourage his safe passage to the bottom. Occasionally he would catch a pair of glinting cat eyes watching him from deviating levels of the stairs, but he never seemed to pass them by. A little cautiously, he imagined treading on one of their tails in the dark, careening sideways as a feline scream scared him out of his wits.

He reached the bottom without incident, though, and followed a trio of waiting cat escorts through the suddenly carpeted hallways of Mastodon’s lavish Underworld. The crime queen certainly lived in luxury, making more than the best of a life that forced her to live in the dark.

When he reached Mastodon’s quarters, the door opened for him.
Ghosts,
he thought with suppressed unease, stepping inside.

A smoky incense laced the air of Mastodon’s vast antechamber. The woman herself sat behind a desk that rested in the far, lower level of the room. “Ah, Godren,” she said from where she sat in the dusky, smoky corner. Her voice was slightly raspy, as if the smoke of her incense had singed her lungs over the years. “How are you, my unacquainted pet?”

Skirting a lavish sofa, Godren descended the few steps to her level and seated himself very carefully across from her.

“
I’m faring,” he replied without commitment.

“
Thanks to me,” she reminded him, starting things off with a wily poise right away.

“
If you’re going to start claiming I’m in your debt, you can stop wasting your smoky breath right now,” Godren hazarded making a stand. He was not going to be controlled that easily. “Any man would rather kill himself than be in your debt, my lady mastodon, myself wisely included. All you’re going to gain this way is my suicidal blood all over your lovely carpet.”

“
Maybe that’s what I want.” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, allowing him to consider that. “I care nothing for my carpet, Godren. It’s not as if it was expensive. It was just as easily attained as the rest of my smuggled goods. You should know that.”

“
Of course,” he granted.

“
And it wouldn’t be the first time blood has been spilled on my carpet.”

“
Then shall I just get on with it?” Godren asked, making as if to reach for his belt knife.

“
Not so hastily, Godren. All in good time.”

She has a way of saying things,
Godren thought, letting his hand rest.

“
I see you do not want to be prodded. Perhaps a bribe will work instead.”

“
What do you want?” Godren asked, trying to avoid a crafty introduction that would lead up to her ultimate desires and have him snared before she even got to the point.

Mastodon considered him. “I would like to commission you to fulfill a service to me.”

“
Commission? You mean without holding something over my head and taunting me with it whenever I lag in my duty to you?” He knew he was being risky speaking to her this way, but as long as she wanted something of him and they hadn’t struck a deal yet – particularly one that confirmed she would likely have him killed at the first sign of treachery – he had a slight edge for speaking his mind. Admittedly it was a perilous edge, ready to crumble underneath him and give way at any wrong turn, but it was an edge.

“
Yes, commission,” she confirmed, her smoky voice surprisingly patient. “I have nothing against bargains, Godren, even if I do fancy threats. I may be in a dishonest business, but I am not a dishonest businesswoman.”

“
Just an elusive one. You did not answer my question. What do you want of me?”

“
I’ve watched you in this city, Godren. I’ve watched you rise from a puppy to a wolf. A reputation like yours does not go unnoticed by someone like me. Nor does it go un-admired and dismissed. I can use people like you. I want people like you.”

“
Because we might become valid threats one day if you don’t tame us young?”

“
You think I can tame you young? With a tongue like that? You demonstrate your defiance quite clearly, Godren. I see that,” she assured him. “However you must remember that whether I can tame you or not, I
can
kill you quite easily, so watch yourself.” With that warning, she dismissed his flippancy. “Now. Let me explain my position.”

“
By all means,” he granted a little dryly. He’d only been trying to encourage this development in the conversation since she had opened her elusive mouth…

“
I’m developing a bit of a flea problem.”

Godren blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“
The human kind, Godren. Don’t play dumb with me; stupidity does not become you. There is a rising vice astir, and I want it terminated.”

“
What sort of vice?”

“
Lawmen do not bother me. They don’t
mess
with me. But bounty hunters are a greedy, ruthless bunch all their own. They disregard the law – not to mention rumors of magic – to get their hands on great prizes, and their unlawful actions are pardoned or overlooked when they present such prizes to the law.
They
annoy me. So I’m putting a price on their heads.”

Godren blinked again. “You’re encouraging a new breed of bounty hunter? One to hunt the originals.”

“
Precisely.”

“
And me?”

“
I would like to appoint you my personal hunter, paid in advance.”

“
I’m not a murderer.”

“
Really? I’ve heard otherwise,” Mastodon countered tauntingly.

“
I’m
not
a murderer,” Godren repeated more forcefully, jaw set fiercely though he kept his eyes neutral.

Mastodon did not look fazed, but she did not provoke him further either. “No, but I
am
, Godren. And I hold that over your head whether we make this agreement or not, as I always have. It has nothing to do with this bargain, but you will never be safe again. You never have been.”

It was a glaringly blatant warning regardless of the pointless sugar coating she lathered on.

“
Why would you pay me in advance? Why would you single me out and appoint me? I’m sure the price you set will encourage a fairly sufficient job of things without my help. In fact, why don’t you just…snap your sparking fingers and do it yourself,” Godren suggested, placing his hands on her desk and rising to see himself out. What was in his head, that he was acting so boldly?

“
But I like you, Godren. I want a relationship with Raven City’s most wanted. Like I said, I’m a businesswoman. Relationships pay. And you wouldn’t be getting such a bad deal yourself, you know. Think about it. You’re a Most Wanted in danger, every day, of being caught by the law. I’m a Most Wanted that the law cannot touch. The safety here is absolute. You won’t find it anywhere else.”

Despite the explanations she offered, Godren still thought she must be at least partially driven by a fear that he would one day rise to or past her own infamous level of power in crime. Whether she was jealous of the shadow of competition he would cast over her business or afraid of the threat he would present as a more powerful figure toward her life, he could not say. But she had to meter people like him, he knew. It had always been the key to her continuing success and survival.

What Mastodon offered was, of course, a tempting thing. Safety so absolute could
not
be found anywhere else. But really, considering the good points of the deal was not going to be the deciding factor of this matter. Mastodon offered them so he could think he’d made the choice himself, but it was the blade poised to take him out should he refuse that ultimately gave him no choice at all.

“
What if I don’t want safety?” Godren asked. “What if I’m not afraid of danger?”

“
Not afraid of danger?”

“
I’m a criminal ace, Mastodon. Or so the rumors say, and so you suggest.. I thought it would be apparent that I’m not afraid of them catching me.”

“
The bounty hunters did.”

“
And they fed me quite well to keep me alive and healthy as the law specifies I must be. What makes you so sure I did not
want
that? As you so tauntingly like to say” – he shrugged – “maybe that’s what I wanted.”

“
As a criminal ace, you can steal your own food, Godren.”

“
But I don’t have to,” he pointed out.

She considered him, eyes narrowed dryly. “What’s the purpose of being an ace if you do everything the easy way, ay? So you got caught on purpose, did you? To indulge in the luxury of your care-bound captors.”

“
That
is why I am not in your debt for rescuing me, and
that
is why your offering of safety does not tempt me. If you want a relationship, it will have to be based on something else.” He was bluffing, but there was always the chance that it would work, if he played his cards correctly. Or maybe he had to just get lucky, but it was still possible. He at least did not want to go down on the record as easily defeated.

Suddenly, he had an idea. “A haven here does not interest me, but perhaps I would settle for peace between us.”

It was Mastodon’s turn to blink. Godren had to continue before she got suspicious. By claiming to ‘settle’ for peace, he hoped she would see it as less than she offered him, because it was the same basic agreement just minus her protection. But of course, he could use that peace to his advantage wherever he went, in more ways than he could put the restricting walls of her ‘haven’ to use. It would have been a prison to him, and this way, he would be free. He had to be free. He would never escape the criminal lifestyle and identity if he clung to Mastodon’s domain. She could not know he ultimately wanted to escape this life for better things, though, and that offered hope that she might not find fault with his conditions.

On the other hand, he had made it look like he was getting less, and it did look suspicious to suddenly change his mind about murder for less benefit. How to smooth that over…

“
But I don’t want to murder,” he said gravely. “I will protect you until the vice is done away with, and I will catch them if I must, but I will not hunt them down and stab them in the back.” There. Now it appeared they were both getting slightly less than they had set out for, but that was how business went, after all. You aimed high and left room for bargaining, so you still came away with a profit in the end. Hopefully, offering his protection would seem like a more superior relationship than his mere business, and Mastodon wouldn’t be able to refuse.

“
Peace between us,” she mused. “An arrangement where I refrain from tampering with you and yours, I stay out of meddling with your affairs except in the case of another bargain, and you will do the same in turn?”

“
In addition to this job,” Godren confirmed, hoping that edge would convince her. It shouldn’t look suspicious now; she expected to be feared enough to be treated to extra investments of insurance. And it should be plenty tempting if his suspicions about her own fears were correct. She would let him go free, but he would have agreed to stay out of her affairs. That was a bargain in itself, the one she might have secretly been fishing for, but doing this job for her, with minor deviations to satisfy him, would let them both keep their secrets while getting what they both wanted.