Poison Tree (18 page)

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

Given what Sarik had put her through, Alysia deserved to take any shot she wanted.

“Also, you’ve lost your free lunch,” Christian added before storming out.

She hesitated for a moment, then followed him, not in the hope of catching him but because the only alternative was continuing to hide in her room.

Near her father’s office, however, she saw a sight that enraged her: Kevin, her father’s current favorite flunky, leading Jeht and Quean across the dimly lit chamber. Jeht walked ahead of the messenger, perfectly composed, as if completely unaware or uncaring of the grandeur of the Onyx Hall. His brother looked distinctly more nervous, as if he were less trusting of the stranger.

Christian had reached the scene first and was staring at Kevin with murderous intent. “You went to my house?” Christian demanded.

Jeht, meanwhile, caught sight of Sarik. His eyes widened as he took in the change in her appearance—especially the
addition of what was probably more metal than he had ever seen another tiger wear.

“What are they doing here?” Sarik asked Kevin, her voice every bit as sharp as Christian’s.

Kevin flinched, explaining quickly, “Kral sent me for them. He gave me a message to repeat, in their language. They came with me.”

“Divai, ona,”
Jeht said, his voice questioning but his words formal.

“Gen’maen’gah’la,”
Sarik replied. Literally, it meant “You are within my sight,” spoken as a leader to a lesser tiger in the clan. To Kevin, she added, “My father has no right to bring them here.”

“You can tell him that,” Kevin replied. “I’m just—”

He broke off as the door to Kral’s office opened and the leader of Onyx emerged.

“Mik’ra,”
Sahara greeted him, not by title but simply as
Father
. “Why have you summoned my—”

“
Your
 … what?” he replied, using the informal pronoun instead of the formal one she had used for him. The exchange was short, but she could see Jeht contemplate it and guess what it meant: she had backed down and failed to declare herself independent from her father.

And this wasn’t a time or place where she could reengage that fight. Christian was watching her, waiting for her to speak up, but she knew that challenging her father at that moment, in his own territory, would only get the boys killed.

Jeht prodded his brother, and Quean knelt before Kral in a Mistari’s submissive pose, both knees on the floor, head
bowed, and wrists crossed with palms up. Symbolically, the posture said that they were ready to receive with open hands anything their leader was willing to give—even if that was a knife across the bared wrists.

Jeht, on the other hand, met Kral’s gaze squarely, then bowed his head and offered his hands as his brother had without sinking to the same level. The choice was intentional, and telling. He was aware that he was not in charge here, but he may as well have said aloud
I’m not certain that you are, either
.

Kral and Jeht regarded each other stoically, the three-hundred-year-old guild leader and the nine-year-old princeling. Somewhere down the line, if Kral couldn’t tame him, Jeht
would
be a threat. Sarik tensed, wondering whether her father would feel forced to strike Jeht down and whether she would be able to do anything if he tried.

Aware that speaking out of place and saying the wrong thing might earn her a beating, Sahara chose her words with care. “If he’s too much of a risk, no one will fault you for refusing him. His other king did.”

Kral responded exactly as she had hoped he would, with pride and showmanship. He turned his back and said as he returned to his office, “They may stay. Sahara, show them around.”

The instant Kral was gone, Jeht crossed his arms, and Sarik realized he was trembling. He knew how to play the game, but that didn’t mean it didn’t frighten him. He had fully expected Kral to kill him for his defiance.

Maybe he would have been glad it was over.

What Jeht didn’t know was that, unlike in a Mistari tribe,
the challenge he posed wouldn’t necessarily be dealt with directly. A child in Onyx lived a dangerous life. Sahara and Christian knew that.

Cori had known that, too
, Sarik thought as Jeht pulled his brother close and leaned his chin on the four-year-old’s head, hiding his fear from Quean but unable to hide it from the rest of the world.

M
AYBE IT WAS
childish, but the moment Christian had answered Sahara’s private phone, Alysia had lost all desire to speak to him. She would wait until they were standing face to face, so she could see his expression and try to understand
anything
going through his crazy brain.

From the moment they had met, they had
clicked
. Despite completely different backgrounds and goals, they had always worked well together. Together they had decided to do what no one else had done: join all three guilds and say “screw you” to the rules. It was all about the challenge—it was
always
about the challenge.

It had been for Alysia, anyway, until the day she had joined SingleEarth, and for the first time, the challenge had been
paired with something else: expectations. Responsibility, not just for one moment and one contract, but for
people
, day after day, who knew her name and smiled at her in the hallway and relied on her to do her job. Her first two-weeks’ paycheck was worth less than she would have charged for two hours’ work in Bruja, but something about that stupid check, and the way it said her last name on the top—her
real
last name, the one she’d gotten from her father, which not even Christian knew—convinced her to stay not just two weeks, but two
years
.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, but what about someone who is a little bit of both? Where did she want to go now? Back to the Crimson safe house, which was apparently the only place she could stay unless she wanted to crash like a fifth wheel with Christian and Sahara and the kids? Back to SingleEarth, so she could explain why they had been shot at and where Sarik had gone?

A temporary solution was suggested to her as her phone chirped, alerting her to a text message:
The contract against you was just dropped at Frost
.

That was vaguely unsettling, as the only person who should have had that cell number was Ravyn, but Ravyn wouldn’t have known anything about what contracts were or were not up in Frost. Alysia would have suspected that the information came from Christian if she hadn’t had recent evidence that he had been sleeping at Onyx just before the message arrived.

Trap?
she wondered.

Possibly, but she had to risk it.

Besides, Frost called to her. It had been hers before she had met Christian.

Each of the Bruja halls had its own style. Onyx had its converted theater, Crimson had its farm, and the Bruja guild hall, which was mostly only used for events like the competition for guild leadership, was a redbrick house with white shutters. The Frost guild hall was in the middle of a quaint suburban neighborhood; it consisted of four middle-class homes connected by underground tunnels. Frost had been known to call the local police on guild members who were stupid enough to look out of place as they approached.

The key to the front door was still hidden in a planter, but the elaborate computer setup that had occupied the “office” on the first floor had been replaced by a home theater that would surely have been the envy of the neighborhood even if the screen hadn’t been an interactive whiteboard—a touch-sensitive computer screen, like a giant tablet. When Alysia touched the screen, it flickered to life and showed all of Frost’s current job listings.

Nice upgrade
, she thought as she quickly confirmed that the contract against her was gone. Nearby, she spotted a digital pen. On the off chance that the operator was currently logged on, she wrote on the screen,
Did current leader install the new tech?
If Christian had done this, she would have to reassess his competency as Frost’s leader.

She waited, wondering if the board operator would reply.

The individual responsible for controlling the board was an utter enigma. No one knew who he or she was. The system itself probably wasn’t
actually
hacker-proof—nothing really was—but no one ever discouraged members from blatantly trying to mess with it, and yet to Alysia’s knowledge no one
had ever broken in. She was one of many who had tried with no success.

Alysia had almost decided the operator wasn’t attending the board when a picture spun into place: a kitten, tangled in computer wires, with a caption saying
WHICH ONE CONTROLS THE INTERTUBES?
Beneath it, words began to appear as they were swiftly typed elsewhere.

fearless leader bolted the door for three hrs so he could figure how to use the new system
.

Alysia snickered. That was sad. Predictable, but sad.

you looking for a job?
the operator asked.

Yeah. Something nØØb-level
.

She needed to start small, because she was out of shape and out of practice, and it would take her a while to catch up enough electronically that she could take on one of the more exciting jobs in that realm. Two years was a very long time in the computer world; she had kept up with reading and research while at SingleEarth, but that wasn’t the same as knowing all the ins and outs and back doors of modern technology. She would also have to make new contacts for obtaining documents, since she didn’t have access to SingleEarth’s specialists, who for altruistic reasons made identification papers, passports, and the like for needy individuals.

this one looks relevant to your interests
.

A new listing rose to the top.

Retrieval: Heirloom painting and frame with ritual and sentimental value. Reward offered higher than assessed value of materials. 5,000, method of payment negotiable
.

“Ritual value” implied that the work was in some way imbued
with magic. Including information about the assessment value was the client’s way of ensuring that the mercenary who picked the painting up didn’t try to sell it for parts, which for magic items could include anything from enchanted charcoal bits to diamonds and platinum. The reward was ridiculously low for a ritual item, which meant Alysia would definitely have a third party assess it before she turned it in, but its value could be more on the sentimental side. A low reward like that normally suggested an easy job, too, which she hoped would be within her current abilities.

Intrigued, she kept reading.

Last seen in possession of Maya. Previous owner Kral kuloka Kral. Painting lost in a bet six years ago
.

That could explain why the board’s operator had thought Alysia would be interested. Accepting the job might be suicidal, though, unless the painting was somewhere Maya wasn’t guarding.

Alysia reached to tap the
Client
button but found little in the way of useful information.

Client: Anonymous, paid escrow
. That meant he or she probably wasn’t well known by the guild but had already put five thousand cash into an account as a deposit.

Mostly for curiosity’s sake, she tapped the button for more information, including a description of the piece:

10 × 10 inches, abstract painting, with detail in silver and gold thread. Frame is dark wood with silver details and black and red stones. Difficult for most individuals to look at directly
.

Well,
that
was interesting.

Has guild leader seen this?
she wrote, using the digital pen.
It was doubtful that Christian had bothered to read such a low-level post, but if he had, he might have noticed the same thing Alysia had: this painting wasn’t with Maya. In fact, Alysia had seen it, recently, in Kral’s little torture chamber.

has not returned to frost hall since posting
, the operator replied.

Alysia was a third-level member of Onyx; she had every right to enter the Hall itself, and unless Kral currently had someone in there, the interrogation room was probably unguarded.

One phrase from the posting particularly intrigued her, that bit about how the painting had been “lost in a bet six years ago.”

Apparently, a lot of important things had happened six years earlier.

With a shrug, Alysia wrote,
Looking into it
. It wasn’t a guarantee she would take the job, but it would let the client know that someone was considering the possibility. For the moderator, she added,
Thanks
.

you were good before you disappeared don’t disappoint now
, the operator replied, before erasing both that reply and Alysia’s thank-you.

There were a few questions Alysia needed answered before she went after the prize.

For one, she wanted to know why Kral had been making bets with Maya in the first place. He didn’t seem like the gambling type, and if he was going to start, it probably wouldn’t be with a mercenary of Maya’s caliber, or with stakes as low as a 5K ritual-item painting that neither he nor Maya was likely to have any use for.

A second issue with the scenario was that Maya had been hired to kidnap Kral’s youngest daughter, Cori, right around the time the painting had supposedly entered Maya’s possession. It was reasonable that she might have returned it to him along with other items of value as part of an attempt to gain forgiveness and curry his favor after Cori’s death, but to someone like Kral, five thousand dollars was more of an insult than a gift.

There is one more thing
, Alysia thought as she started to turn away from the board and then turned back. Once again using the pen, she wrote,
Ben?

Was it possible? Ben had seemed about twenty years old, at
most
. Granted, Alysia had joined Frost when she was fourteen, but Sarta had assigned the Frost operator eight years ago, and as far as Alysia could tell, the individual running the boards hadn’t changed since. Ben wouldn’t even have been in his teens yet.