Fate's Edge

and whine, but in the end, crossbows and rifles would come off the walls, and the Mars would ride out to fix whatever he’d wrought.
    The Callahans couldn’t stand each other. Alex despised his sister and thought his father was a sucker. Since Audrey returned the hate, using her brother’s safety as leverage was out of the question.
    Audrey wasn’t an obnoxiously common name, and the list of PI firms in Olympia had to be somewhat limited. It shouldn’t take him too long to find her . . .
    Ahead, a vicious snarl ripped through the afternoon. It sounded inhuman, but he’d heard it before. That’s how William sounded when he cut through people like they were butter. Kaldar sped up.
    A scream of pure terror followed. A changeling here in the Broken? William could cross back and forth, so it was plausible . . . Was someone else from the Weird or the Edge here for Callahan?
    Ahead, an adolescent boy, around fifteen or sixteen, stumbled out from between the hedges bordering the entrance to the parking lot. His nose was bloody, and both of his eyes sported red puffy bags that promised to develop into spectacular shiners. Red whip marks crossed his forearms and neck.
    The boy stared at Kaldar, looking but not seeing, his eyes two pools of fear, and took off down the street, limping. Kaldar broke into a run.
    A moment, and he turned the corner into the parking lot. Four adolescent kids rolled on the ground, clutching various limbs as a result of a savage beating. In the center of the carnage Jack stood, his arms raised in a trademark South Adrianglian style. Next to him, George brandished a car antenna.
    Damn it all to hell.
    The bigger of the boys moved. George let him rise halfway and whipped the car antenna. Right, left, right. The kid tumbled down.
    George glanced up, saw Kaldar, and grabbed Jack’s shoulder. The two kids froze.
    He had to get them away from the damn parking lot before someone called the cops. Escape first, explanations later. Kaldar moved past the prone bodies to the first decent older vehicle he saw and slid the long narrow strip of metal from his sleeve. The boys followed. A second to pop the door open, another three seconds to hot-wire the car, while Jack slid into the back, clutching a small cat that looked dead, and George hopped into the shotgun seat.
    Another second, and they pulled out of the parking lot and merged into the current of cars, heading out of the city toward the boundary and the safety of the Edge.
    Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He had the two wards of the fucking Marshal of the fucking Southern Provinces in a stolen car. An entire continent away from where the two of them were supposed to be. In the Broken. Where they had beat up some Broken children. Well, if those children weren’t broken before, they were surely broken now.
    Fate, that bloody, vicious, fickle bitch. Sometimes she loved him, and he could do nothing wrong. And sometimes she stuck a knife in his back.
    Kaldar adjusted the rearview mirror until Jack’s face swung into view. “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “They were torturing the cat,” Jack said.
    That explained volumes and nothing at all. “Who else knows you’re here?”
    “Why are you asking?” George asked.
    “So I would know if I could kill you and dispose of the bodies.” That ought to shake them up. For all he knew, Declan was scouring the countryside looking for these precious darlings and breathing fire. How the hell was he going to get out of this?
    In the rearview mirror, Jack gathered himself. Kaldar was suddenly aware that sitting with his back to the boy left his neck vulnerable.
    “You won’t kill us,” George said from the front seat. His voice trembled slightly.
    “Why not? Cerise is mildly fond of you, but I have no emotional attachment to either of you. I could slit your throats and toss you into a ravine. Nobody would know. You can be sure I would be sad and express my condolences to your sister at the first opportunity.”
    George paled and stared straight ahead. No tears, no hysterics. Some sort of calculation was taking place behind those blue eyes. At least the boy was thinking. That was usually a positive sign.
    “We told Lark that we had stowed away on your wyvern. She will wait until Declan and Rose panic, then tell them where we are.”
    It wasn’t enough that Fate had stabbed him with a knife. No, the blade had to be poisoned. Kaldar feverishly sorted through the possible outcomes. How in the world would he