Fate's Edge

attached to any of it. They were just things. Things changed hands a lot: I stole them from their owners and gave them to Dad, and Dad would sell them. Later, Alex would try to steal my take from me and sell whatever I stole to buy drugs. But the cross was only mine. Even my idiot father understood that. And then a violent man hurt me and took it from me, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I felt so helpless. Angry, scared, and helpless. It was like he violated something deep inside me. That was when I realized what it feels like to have something you cherish stolen. So I don’t do that anymore.”
    Guilt nipped at her. Except when my father goads me into it. Well, she would set it right.
    “So if I were to take something other than the cross . . .”
    “I will set your hair on fire, Kaldar. You’ll be bald.”
    Kaldar got up. “You wouldn’t.”
    “Try me.”
    They walked back to the clearing. “Friends again?” Kaldar asked.
    “Partners,” she said.
    “You don’t want to be friends with me, Audrey?” A seductive note crept into his voice. He said “Audrey” the way a man might say the name of a woman he had just made love to.
    “I prefer partners.” She raised her chin and winked at him. “Let’s keep it professional.”
    “Isn’t it too late for that?”
    “Don’t we have a heist to plan?”
    Kaldar sighed in mock surrender. “Yes, love.”
    Audrey let the “love” go that time. He had to have some small consolation after being knocked out.
    She was in too deep. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself waking up next to him, then she would be in for a hell of a heartbreak.
    At their approach, Gaston hoisted himself up into the wyvern’s cabin and stuck his head out. “Is it safe to come out?”
    “It’s safe,” Kaldar told him. “Audrey just explained to me that taking her things without permission is not allowed. Since I’ve never had anything taken away from me, I apologized.”
    Gaston hopped back onto the ground.
    “They’ll be taking us in a bus,” Kaldar said. Yonker had told them as much when they agreed to the camp visit. “Then they will walk us across one by one. Audrey is right—if things go sour, I’ll need you close. I’ll plant the tracker on the bus. Don’t take any chances, and don’t follow too closely. I don’t want one of Yonker’s goons shooting you.”
    “Can do,” Gaston said.
    A faint buzz spread through the air. Kaldar and Gaston looked up. A metal insect plunged down from the sky and landed on the ground between them. Gaston picked it up, extracted a narrow sliver of crystal, and pulled a gadget from one of the trunks. Shaped like a bronze flower bud, thrusting from a stack encrusted with tiny specks of crystal, the flower terminated in four delicate metal roots bent outward to provide a sturdy base.
    “News from the Mirror,” Kaldar said.
    Gaston pushed the crystals in a complex sequence. The flower bud opened, revealing pale petals in its center made of some strange material, paper-thin, but with a metallic sheen. Gaston set the crystal in the middle of the flower.
    Magic ignited inside the crystal and shot out in four streams to the ends of the petals. An image appeared above the crystal, floating in thin air. An average-looking man in nondescript clothes from the Weird looked at them.
    “Erwin.” Gaston’s thick eyebrows crept up.
    “The woman in the shot is not a member of the Hand,” Erwin said. “Her name is Helena d’Amry, Marquise of Amry and Tuanin. She is a Hound of the Golden Throne. Spider is her uncle. Full file to follow. Be careful, Kaldar.”
    “Shit,” Gaston said.
    “What does that mean?” Audrey looked to Kaldar.
    “The Hand protects the Dukedom of Louisiana, which is a colony of the Empire of Gaul. The Hounds protect the throne of the Empire. They answer directly to the Emperor,” Kaldar said.
    “Who is Spider?”
    “He’s the man I want to kill,” Kaldar said.
    A piece of paper replaced Erwin’s image, covered with weird characters.
    “What does it say?” Audrey tugged on Kaldar’s arm.
    “It says that Helena likes skinning people alive,” Gaston answered. “Also says that the guy who threw that head at you is named Sebastian. He is her right-hand man. His kill count is at forty.”
    “Fourteen?”
    “No. Forty.”
    Oh God.
    “This changes nothing.” Kaldar swiped the buckets. “We stick to the plan. Right now, we’ll concentrate on getting the invitation and feeding the wyvern. We