Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Pain pain pain. Her skull was breaking apart. There was a high-pitched ringing in her ears and she wanted to be sick. She tried to move, to press a hand over her mouth, and found she couldn’t.
That woke her all the way up, panic battling with pain for her attention.
She opened her eyes and winced, the light stabbing through her skull as a counterpoint to the pulses of sharp agony already there.
Blinking, eyes watering, she realised that the light wasn’t actually all that bright.
It was an oil lantern of some kind, set on low, but it still hurt her too-sensitive eyes.
She was in a sitting position, back against what felt like a stone wall, legs out in front of her on bare, filthy wooden floorboards.
The room she was in looked like some kind of storeroom, with wooden shelves that were mostly empty of goods but full of ancient cobwebs.
There was an old, cracked wooden barrel not far away, with the lantern set on top.
The air was stale and dusty, dry in her nose and mouth.
Cold was creeping through her body. Someone had removed her jacket, sweatshirt, the gun, and her boots, leaving her in her long-sleeved t-shirt, hard-wearing trousers and bare feet.
She supposed she should be grateful she was still fully clothed, but the idea of someone patting her over, partly undressing her while she was unconscious, made her stomach turn in disgust and anger.
Panic followed the anger as she remembered the zauber that had been tucked into her pocket.
It sent a tiny pulse of warmth through her and she closed her eyes for a moment, beyond grateful that she had not lost the precious object.
Then she had to wonder how it had escaped the notice of whoever it was who had searched her.
Even sitting still, she could tell that her pockets were otherwise empty.
The zauber sent another pulse of warmth through her, this time with more than a hint of smugness.
She should have known that such an old object would be able to defend itself, or disguise itself well enough to escape notice, even while she was out of action.
The disgust returned. She had been taken down by a skip.
That had never happened to her. Not in ten years fugitive-hunting in low city.
There had been someone else out in the forest with her and Findo, but that was no excuse.
She should have been ready for that. She knew how clever Findo was, and she’d seen how many people Jonah had at his disposal.
So she’d let herself get caught, stripped of her tools, and dumped here in this storeroom.
Someone had also tied her ankles together with what looked like crude rope.
Trying to shift her shoulders, she realised that her hands were also tied together behind her back.
She made a low sound of irritation and disgust.
“You woke up fast.”
The voice snapped her attention outside her own discomfort.
There was another person in the room with her.
Disgust rose again as she wondered what else she’d missed.
A quick look around confirmed it was just the one other person, which didn’t make her feel any better.
She should have noticed him, even behind the lantern light.
A young man with a familiar face. Rhodda’s son and Devin’s grandson.
He was standing on the other side of the barrel, near the door, a gun in his hands. Guarding her.
The young man was watching her with what he probably thought was a tough expression but which just looked sulky to her.
Not pleased with his assignment, she guessed.
She tilted her head to get a better look at him, trying to see around the lantern, and regretted the movement at once as the pain in her skull flared.
“They’ve got you playing nursemaid, I see,” Hallie said. She saw a flare of anger on the young man’s face. “Couldn’t find anything else for you to do? No floors to scrub or dishes to wash, kid?” It was a weak taunt, but it seemed to work.
“It’s Brock,” he said, anger on his face, chin lifting a fraction. “Not kid.”
“Well, you look like a kid to me,” Hallie said candidly. She knew that her outward appearance suggested she wasn’t far off his age. One of the side-effects of her transformation to hochlen.
“I’m not,” he insisted. Which just made him seem even younger.
It didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. There was an edge to him that Hallie had noted with Jonah’s other men.
Something she’d come across with low city’s street gangs.
A familiarity with violence. And the way he was holding the gun let her know he was trained to use it.
Her chest tightened with a familiar mix of apprehension at what the dangerous young man might do and sorrow for the experiences he’d had which had drawn that hard shell around so young a person.
“How did you get stuck with this job, then?” she asked. She seemed to have him all to herself, and she might learn something if she could get him talking.
“Jonah asked me. Personally.”
There was a weight and reverence to those words which told Hallie just how much of a hold Jonah had over the young man. Brock.
She thought back to the conversation she’d overheard between Knot and No-knot.
Jonah provided the men in his employ with pay and food.
From what Knot had said, it didn’t sound like there was too much fighting involved.
Even so, from what she’d seen of Jonah, he kept his people occupied, one way or another.
Giving them something to do and a sense of purpose, even if it was just obeying his orders.
There were patrols. From the way the armed men had moved, Hallie also guessed there was some kind of training regimen.
There was also the house and equipment to look after.
All necessary tasks, but still a far cry from daily life in either of the island settlements, which had looked like it involved hard work from morning to night, with little prospect of real money.
Although there was food available in the settlements, it had to be grown, produced through effort, and she could easily imagine there were times when even basic food was scarce.
For a young man, bored and restless with his life, she could see how joining Jonah’s group would be attractive.
There was more to it, she thought. The kind of hero-worship that Brock was showing didn’t just happen from being paid and fed.
She remembered the way Jonah had stood outside the house, caught in the brilliant beams of the floodlights.
His presence had commanded her attention, even from her hiding places - first in the stables and then in the forest. The effect must have been even more potent close up.
And over time could have been almost impossible for an impressionable young man to resist.
“And do you always do what Jonah asks?” Hallie asked, doing her best to keep the judgement out of her voice. Brock may never have met his grandfather, but even so she was struggling to reconcile what she knew of Devin with this spoiled young man.
“He’s trying to build something, you know?
” Brock said. And there was that note of reverence again.
Hallie tried not to show her disgust on her face.
She didn’t think Jonah had any intention of building anything at all, unless it was his own fortune and power.
“Keep us independent of the hochlen.” The last word was said with an approximation of the scorn and revulsion that both Nicholas and Jonah had managed to put into it.
Hallie couldn’t help wonder just how much direct experience Brock had had with hochlen.
Even if he’d lived in low city with his mother, he might not ever have met one of the elite - Hallie certainly hadn’t.
All her impressions and beliefs about hochlen had been gathered from what the elders around her had said and taught her.
It had taken actually meeting and working with some of the elite for her to learn that not all of that was true.
She wasn’t going to change his mind by arguing, though.
She tried to shift position, to get more comfortable, and winced as more pain shot through her head.
She could feel her body working to heal itself, far more quickly than any human would.
In a little bit of time she’d be more than capable of dealing with the young man.
Just not right now. And there was also the matter of the rope ties to deal with.
For now, she could keep him talking. It distracted her from the cold that was working its way through her.
“I met your mother, you know,” she said in a friendly, conversational tone. “She seems like a decent woman. Hard working. Did you join Jonah’s crew to get away from her? Some kind of teenage rebellion?”
“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brock said, hot anger in his voice, shoulders tight as he took a step towards her, gun lifting a fraction.
Hit a nerve, Hallie thought, and kept the satisfaction off her face with some difficulty. It was hardly a great leap of imagination to work out why Rhodda’s son might want to be here, away from his mother.
“Does she know that you’re one of his followers?” Hallie asked. Another guess, based on what she’d seen and heard so far.
Brock’s face twisted into an ugly snarl and he lifted the gun.
Whether to shoot her or smack her on the head with it, Hallie never found out, as the door behind him opened and two men appeared, silhouetted in brighter light from the next room.
Hallie’s heart sank. The two people she least wanted to deal with right now. Jonah and Findo.