I woke up feeling like I’d puke if I moved, so I just laid there and hurt for a while. I didn’t have to twitch much to figure out my wrists and ankles were tied together and my mouth gagged. The room was light enough for me to see the stone floor I was laying on and a peeling wall across from it.
Okay. Someone was mad at me. That was a good sign, right? It meant I’d was getting close to something important.
I swallowed hard and discerned.
The fray in the Line hadn’t healed, but I didn’t see any fresh breaks, either. I stopped looking as fast as I could. The pall wasn’t making my nausea any better.
I twisted my wrists a little. Fabric. So whistling up a key wouldn’t help. If this was a theatre play, I’d call up a baleknife and cut myself free, but in real life that kind of contortionism would just give me a strained back. I braced again and sent out a call for Carel.
A boot slammed into my head. I had to let the call go, gagging as everything swam around me.
“None of that, Lorencz.”
Not a voice I recognized. But it came from somebody who knew me and could discern my call. I waited until my stomach settled down, then slowly turned my head.
Floor-brushing fabric moved backward. I rolled all the way over, wincing. My vision blurred again. When it cleared, I saw six people standing there, all dressed in long grey cloaks and masked in plain black leather with slits for their eyes.
It was possible I’d been kidnapped by some kinky private sex club, but I doubted I’d get so lucky. I chewed the gag a moment, wanting to say something snappy to show them I wasn’t scared, but they’d tied it too tight.
Somebody among them knew me, all right.
“Don’t even try to touch the Line,” one of them warned. It wasn’t easy to tell which one, since the featureless masks covered their mouths. I let my eyes wander. Gloved hands. The cloaks were closed and hung to the floor.
I glared at them as hard as I could, wishing I’d walked home with Aronson. Or better yet, with Droit. I wanted a smoke, bad.
“Now, listen carefully, Lorencz. This is one of those life-defining moments.” It was still hard to tell who was talking, but I was pretty sure it was someone different. This little group was pretty slick with its motionless stances and neutrally pitched voices.
I lifted my chin a little to indicate I was paying attention.
“It would be easy to say ‘join us or die.’ However, members who join under duress are never as productive as those who join us of their own free will. Therefore, we will avoid the cliché. If you refuse our offer, we’ll set you free, unharmed.”
I’d call that bullshit, except they were taking a lot of effort to keep their identities hidden. I supposed that if they were going to kill me, they probably wouldn’t make such an effort. I relaxed just a little.
“Our group is dedicated to advancing the cause of adjuration against the restraints of both the Reverence and the Vigilance. We believe that both of those institutions have seriously crippled adjurational research. Sentinels need freedom to experiment and to practice using the art in new and untested ways for the betterment of humanity. However, the rules of the Vigilance and the discrimination of the Reverence make it impossible for us to advance our field.”
I closed my eyes to buy myself a moment to think. It’d be easier if my head didn’t hurt so bad.
What I’d told Carel was true: I’d never spent much time worrying about adjuration and religion. Adjuration had gotten me off the streets; religion hadn’t, and that was that. I figured the Reverence was wrong about transients and the Line, but I didn’t have any bone to pick with Kyrchye or the rest of the Reverence’s teachings. Hell, I’d grown up on parish handouts.
And as for the Vigilance … I’d be the first to admit that its rules were a pain in the arse sometimes, but they had their uses.
They said they’d let me go, but I’d wager a month’s worth of cigars that every one of them was a sentinel and most were in the Vigilance. How much would refusing them hurt me in the long run? Was one of them Carel herself? Her comments the other day, had they been an attempt to sound me out? What about Aronson? Did that mild exterior hide the heart of a fanatic?
Shit. I should just tell ’em I’d join, and report ’em later. Except they had to have some way to secure their members’ loyalty, or they’d never trust me, a member of the Dockside Watch no matter how reluctant, to join their club. How? Who or what could they hold over my head to keep me in line if I joined?
Elliot, maybe, I thought at once. Or anyone or anything I cared about. They were bloody sentinels, after all.
I opened my eyes.
“Lorencz,” the speaker said. “We’ve been watching you. You don’t like rules; you chafe at constraints. We want that kind of free-thinker. You could help us make the world a better place if you were allowed to use your adjuration freely. The choice is simple. Join us and transform the world, or stagnate in your old life wearing the chains of your masters.”
Cute. They were trying to play on my ego and my politics. They had me pretty well pegged, except for the being stupid part. Okay, I’d never been at the top of my class, but I wasn’t dumb enough to buy a load of cheap revolutionary rhetoric, either. Or to think that a bunch of robed and masked kidnappers would be any more lenient than the Vigilance when it came to monitoring its members’ activities. I felt kind of insulted, actually.
“Nod to join,” the speaker instructed. “Shake your head to decline.”
I frowned, shrugged as best as I could.
“This is not a multiple-choice question, Lorencz.”
I shook my head.
A sigh.
“That’s too bad. You would have been a useful ally.”
One of the six stood, reached into their cloak pocket, and pulled out a small, lidded box, while another brought over a cup.
Nix? Visions of Jaspin shot through my head and, with a surge of fear, I sent out the strongest call I could. To hell with Carel or any other sentinel — I was calling Tegeus Droit. That mundane bastard was the only person I could be sure wasn’t involved in this farce.
“She’s making a call,” one of them shouted. I jerked to one side and rolled away, thrashing against my bonds. Moving made my head pound and my gorge rise, but I opened my eyes to the Line anyway and whistled up my favorite trick — balefire.
Flame burst through the Line, but so did a gush of raw bale I hadn’t called, pouring into the room like pus from an open wound. I kept rolling to one side and felt a burst of heat and a kick to my ribs. Vomit rose against my gagged mouth. I had to let the balefire go, but I felt my call hook and knew it would reel in Droit just as long as I could stay alive.
I’d scorched ‘em and they weren’t happy, but they weren’t dead, either. On the other hand, the room was on fire.
One of the masked sentinels called a baleblade.
“Kill her,” he said — at least, I was pretty sure it was a man’s voice. “It’ll be easier.”
“No!” Higher — a woman’s voice? Kyrchye, I hoped that wasn’t Carel. “She’s more useful to us nixed.” Dammit, I couldn’t tell — maybe, maybe not.
The one with the box shook its contents lightly into the cup. “Somebody grab her and hold her for me.”
I rolled closer to the burning wall, fumbling for the Line again. On a good day I can hold three calls at once; two without needing to concentrate. But my link to Droit wasn’t firm — I barely knew him well enough to keep the shape of his personality clear in my mind’s eye—and my head hurt like hell.
Still, pain’s better than oblivion. I whistled up another burst of balefire.
Cursing and dodging. More flames licked up the walls. I hoped nobody else was in the building. The cabal wouldn’t have taken me into an occupied tenement, would it? Surely it would have tried to avoid running into witnesses.
Three of the masked sentinels started for me, one holding the nixed cup. I squirmed away, twisting my wrists bloody as I tried to slip off the fabric manacles. No luck. A sentinel got close and I kicked with both feet, hitting them in the knee. The sentinel staggered backward, swearing up a storm.
“Forget it,” somebody shouted. “Just call a transient on her!”
I discerned the Line, saw breaks where the sentinels had their own calls out — one of them was trying to smother the balefire with a balewall, one of them was whistling up a balesteed, one was calling somebody else — the leakage in the Line was getting worse, and raw bale was casting its ghastly pall over everything in the room.
One of the sentinels grabbed my shoulder. I yanked myself over, squirming away.
“Gimme a hand!” they shouted.
This time two came at me at once. I tried to twist away at the same time I saw something probing at one of the breaks in the Line with long, needle-like claws and a serrated beak. I gave a muffled shout, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.
“Incoming!”
It was the age-old sentinel’s alarm, and my two assailants immediately forgot me and turned, dropping their calls in self-defense. For a moment I quailed. Which was better — to drop my call to Droit so we could seal the Line, and then get nixed for my trouble, or keep the call up and risk a major breach within Cislunar’s city limits?
“The whole Line’s fraying!”
“Drop your calls! Drop your calls!”
“Lorencz!” A mask turned toward me. “You, too!”
Eh, to hell with Cislunar. A transient can only kill you.
“Fine. Let it have her!”
“Grab her and bring her with us!”
“She still has a call out—”
“That’s an order!”
I squirmed backward, away from them, and they hesitated, looking from me to the fire to the transient. Then, like a damn miracle, the door slammed open. I looked up and saw Droit standing there, looking furious, and the call between us ended just like that.
The wound in the Line shrank, but I could see a bulge where the transient was pushing against its gaps and frays.
Droit looked from me to the masked sentinels to the burning walls and slowly, cruelly, smiled.
“Finally,” he breathed, daggers dropping into his hands with a sharp shake of his wrists. “I get to have some fun.”
I saw the sentinels start to call defenses, then hesitate, and then Droit was on them, his knives flashing and his teeth bared in a feral grin. One fell, clutching his chest, and the others broke for the door. Droit threw one of his knives and it buried itself in one of the sentinel’s necks. With a quick dip he pulled another blade from his well-polished boot and ran after the rest.
I rolled to a sitting position, annoyed at being abandoned in the middle of a burning room. Then Axton slipped through the door like a small shadow. He knelt beside me and sawed through my gag, then released my hands and feet.
The flames spread to the ceiling. The heat was becoming unbearable.
“Thanks,” I said, spitting and wiping my mouth. He slipped a scalpel back into his coat.
“My pleasure, Captain.”
He helped me up — I wasn’t feeling any too steady on my feet — and we ran out of the burning room, holding our arms over our faces. When I got into the hall, I turned around and discerned the Line, head pounding.
It was bad.
If it had just been the balefire burning, I could let it go and it would return across the Line. But the balefire had ignited mundane flames, which were now eating up the tenement. And while I enjoy the sight and sound of a good fire, I didn’t need another cut in my paycheck.
Nobody’s ever had much luck calling liquids and gases across the Line, but smothering fire with a thick enough balewall was a standard Vigilance tactic. I called three walls through the Line, feeling bile burning the back of my throat. It frayed even further. Nothing I could do about it, though. I held the walls firm and the flames within them sputtered and finally died.
I held the calls for five minutes and then had to let them go, staggering back against a wall and clutching my pounding head. The Line around me looked like lace. Really old, frayed, dirty lace that somebody had used to clean a dormitory jake.
The hallway was blackened from heat damage. I waited for the worst of the smoke to clear and edged back into the room. No more flames.
The two sentinels Droit had killed had gotten a little charred. I pulled off their hot, fire-seared masks. Some of the skin went with the leather, which I didn’t need to see, but their faces were still recognizable. Vigilance sentinels, both of them. Not friends and not enemies. Just people I’d seen at meetings and social gatherings and didn’t know well.
Axton knelt next to me and opened their burnt cloaks, revealing street clothes beneath. I searched one body and he took the other. The good news was, I could barely smell him over the smoke and burnt wood.
“You think Droit will catch us a witness?” I asked as we searched.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Axton said, absently. “He kills by preference, and he’s had to keep himself under control for a very long time. This will be a usefully cathartic opportunity for him.”
I shot him a sidelong glance.
“You wrote some kind of report about him…?” I remembered Droit saying something about it that night at Lily’s.
“Yes. I’m afraid its conclusions are outdated. I gained some interesting new insights today.”
“You oughta share ’em with the rest of us someday. I’m glad you were still with him when I called — that bastard would have left me here to fry.” I frowned down at the body. “Was he pissed at me?”
“He threatened your life, but he didn’t try to fight it.”
“He couldn’t. Calls hurt.”
“I think he might have tried, but he was curious.” Axton pulled the gloves off the corpse he was examining. I looked at the ring he’d revealed and pulled the gloves off my corpse. Same thing.
Axton worked the rings off the hands and held them up together. Topaz on gold.
“Looks like the cabal’s got a symbol,” I said. Axton inclined his head, handing me one ring and closing his hand over the other.