Chapter Seven
WILL NEGOTIATE CONTINUED PAYMENTS ONCE JUSTICE IS DONE. HAVE LEAD ON BUTCHER’S IDENTITY. PROVIDE ALL AVAILABLE INFORMATION ON ONE VALENE brUINN. IMMEDIATELY.
The stars turn far above, beyond the shift and glide of the skyline.
Trinity’s song calls out, bittersweet, and I come back to myself, lying in a tangled heap in a rusty alley as my teeth start to chatter.
My bones ache, and I’m shivering hard. From the adrenaline, from the thirst. Probably from the blood loss.
The dark of the early-morning hours shrouds the blank faces of the buildings, but I can’t tell exactly how deep into the morning we are.
How long I was blacked out after I fell, tumbling, into the streets.
High above me, I can see the top of our boardinghouse and the gaping black hole where our home used to be.
A column of white smoke rises into the dark sky and drifts down into the streets in tatters.
It burns the insides of my nose and the back of my throat, but there is no sign of flames and I see the figures of steam teams moving in and out of the building. Containing the damage.
It doesn’t look like the explosion smashed up anyone else’s lodgings.
Small mercies.
I roll up to sitting, but I can’t manage to stand. My limbs are weak, it hurts to breathe, and the knife wounds on my torso throb and bite, oozing blood. When I press my hand there to try to stanch the blood flow, I think I can feel exposed bone.
I stare through the smoke without seeing it. My chest is hollowed out and empty, a hungry, aching blackness that lances down my limbs. It steals all my strength, and I want to collapse inside it.
No.
The Gold Towners have Halle and Kelda. I need to move. I need to pick up their trail. I can’t stay here and let myself be finished off. I owe them better than that.
I try again, bracing my arm against the rusty, rough side of the trash bin for purchase and pulling my legs up underneath me, biting down on a scream as my muscles and bones burn at the movement.
With my back pressed hard against the wall, I manage to slide into a stand.
Or close to a stand. I’m more vertical than horizontal. So … progress.
I pitch myself off the wall, staggering out of the alley, around the corner to the front door of the boardinghouse, which is currently propped open so steam teams can move in and out easier and deal with the mess upstairs.
No one is around at the moment, though—boarders have been evacuated and the steam crew is nowhere to be seen.
Just eerie quiet and the acrid smell of drifting smoke.
I crawl over to the vent grate hidden behind the stairs, wiggling it open, and every inch of my body sags in relief when I touch familiar canvas.
I drag it out, fingers trembling, and feel around, checking that every piece of my Butcher kit is still there.
The goggles, the soft flexible boots, the gloves lined with weights along the knuckles so my hits inflict more damage.
I find my knives, too—Wrath, Reason, Mercy, and Toothpick, all accounted for.
And lastly, cash and water packets. Sewn into the lining of the rucksack. Put aside just in case of a bad day.
Like today.
With fumbling fingers, I wiggle one of the water packets free and rip it open, dumping it into my mouth, not even caring that it tastes old and dusty.
The world tips underneath me, my head spinning, and I clutch my rucksack to my chest, leaning back against the wall.
I’m trying to parse out everything that just happened, but it all feels like a rush of sound and noise in my head, swamping me. I need to talk to Dani—
Dani …
Shit. If the Butcher was made, she could be in danger, too. If she isn’t already.
Reaching back into the grate, I pull out another piece of emergency gear—a long, hooded cowl that covers me from my head down to my knees—and pull it on.
My body wobbles as I stand, unsteady as a toddler, but my feet stay planted, my legs underneath me, and that’ll have to be enough.
Neither Dani nor I know where the other person lives; that’s part of our whole arrangement.
But we’ve got a designated rendezvous point not far from here, on the edge of East and North Parishes. I just need to make it a few blocks.
They’re the longest blocks of my life. I don’t trust myself to phase with my vision swimming so much and my limbs so bumbling and awkward; there’s too much of a risk of missing my target or making a mistake and phasing in front of some bystander.
So I have to walk, dragging one foot in front of the other, one arm tight against my side in a vain attempt at keeping pressure on my wounds.
Blood has so thoroughly soaked the side of my shirt that it’s starting to leach into the fabric of my pants.
It feels like there are eyes everywhere now. Having those assholes come into my home, the one place I thought I’d kept safe … A shiver ripples down the length of my body. The violation coats my skin, thick as the dust.
In a narrow side street between buildings, I pause to catch my breath, leaning against one of the walls.
I take several precious minutes to scope out the area, trying to detect anyone watching for me.
Only when I’m sure it’s clear—no traps, no Gold Towners lying in wait, no curious eyes at any of the windows—do I slip a bright-blue scrap of fabric from my pocket and tie it securely around a bar on the nearby fire escape.
Dani and I have a few different colors of cloth that we use to signal to each other, like the flags on the airships.
To indicate that there’s a job available or that we need to meet.
This one—the blue one—means that we need to reconvene at the safe house as soon as possible.
Dani should be on the lookout for it because we almost always meet up the day after a Butcher job to redistribute the paper we earned. I shouldn’t have to wait for long.
If she’s all right, that is.
Pushing myself back upright, I start moving again, pressing my palm against the bleeding stab wound. Pain shivers through me. My clothes are stuck so tight to my skin. They’re going to be an absolute bitch to peel off later.
The safe house is only another block and a half back in the direction I came, a low, slanted doorway tucked well off the road and out of sight that opens into a space that’s basically a compact storage closet.
Still, I’m shaking and out of breath by the time I get there, staggering inside and dropping to my knees on the dusty floor.
With the door shut, the closet is pitch-dark, and I fumble to light the small naphtha lamp in the corner.
Weak blue-white illumination fills the space, barely capable of shooing the shadows into their corners, but it’s enough for me to find the box, half hidden on one of the low shelves.
It looks like almost nothing—dusty and beaten-up and nondescript—except for the crystalline lockpad on the bottom, which most folks wouldn’t even look for.
It lights up when I press my thumb against its emerald surface, and the lid of the box pops open.
Inside are a number of different medicinal supplies that Dani and I have collected over the years, buying or lifting them from apothecaries at random.
Most of it is basic stuff—bandages, ointments, stimulant tinctures—but in a little pouch at the very bottom is a treasure I’ve been holding on to for a while now.
Hair of the dog. Three stoppered elixirs that, when combined, can knit up my stab wounds, so I stop leaking important fluids all over the place.
I know there’s a process to this—a correct dosage and all that in order to prevent some awful side effects—but there’s not a single apothecary in the whole city that I can trust to do this for me.
And it’s honestly the least of my worries.
All that matters is that I stay alive long enough to get Halle and Kelda back, and I’m pretty sure gaping holes in your stomach are one of those things that will definitely kill you.
Popping the cork off the first elixir, I bring it to my mouth, mutter “cheers” to no one at all, and then dump the shimmering blue-white liquid down my throat.
It tastes awful—acrid and sharp—and it hits my blood like frost, staining my skin purple as it spreads down my neck and into my chest and limbs.
A sensation like ice creeps behind my eyeballs, so cold it burns.
It takes several long minutes before the freezing starts to fade, and my whole body finally relaxes.
I grab the second elixir—filled with something that glistens iridescent red—and raise it up like a toast. This one swamps me with a suffocating heat, and I taste copper on the back of my tongue, so bitter it makes me cough and gag.
It fades a little quicker than the first one, though, and my head feels clearer than it has for hours.
Like some of the dizziness of blood loss is gone.
I fish the last elixir out of the pouch, holding it up in the dim light.
Pale green, swirled with harsh white. Once more, I drink it down.
It hits me like needlepoints, sweeping over every inch of my skin.
I almost lose my balance as it sears across my injuries—the pain is so sharp and intense it sucks the air right out of my lungs—but then it’s gone, as quickly as it came.
Reaching under my clothes, I prod at my stomach and side. There’s two ugly, raw-looking scars where my stab wounds were. Maybe a little inflamed. Maybe a little warm to the touch. But I can’t tap a fingernail against any exposed bone anymore, so that’s an improvement.
Good enough, anyway.
I slump back against the little sliver of bare wall in this cramped space, still exhausted despite the hair of the dog.
Or maybe partially because of it. Blood loss and rapid healing are a vicious mix.
I want to get up and get moving again, do something to track down my sisters, but every inch of me is so heavy it’s like I’m soldered to the ground.
But that’s okay because I don’t have to move yet.
I’m waiting on Dani, and as soon as she’s here, she’ll be able to help me figure out where to go, where the Gold Towners might have taken Halle and Kelda.
She’ll point me toward a target as surely as she can aim a pistol, and after that, the rest will be simple. I’ll have my sisters back in a matter of hours.
All I have to do right now is sit tight until Dani shows up.