Between Friends, page 4
“Not there,” it said. “The pocket.”
My hand slapped the charred bit of cloth that should have been my pocket, and something black and rectangular came away in my hand, shedding tendrils of fabric that floated away on the hot air.
My card. My card was black as ink—black as hopeless death. Now it wasn’t just Red for Deportment, it was No Return Whatsoever and Kill on Sight.
I looked down at it, and the kid looked down at it.
“What’s that mean?” it asked. “That doesn’t look good.”
“Nothing,” I said. I flicked the card away into the corpse-filled playground and it fluttered for a moment like black ash before it disintegrated. “Don’t need it any more, that’s all.”
“Hang on,” the kid said. Its brow was furrowed. “Black…Athelas said something about black-carding a Behindkind—hang on! They’re going to kill you?”
“D’like to see ’em try,” I muttered. “I’ve still got one more leg.”
“That thing you said you had to do,” the kid said unexpectedly. “The errand—it was to kill me, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“You were meant to kill me, weren’t you?”
“What—how did you know?”
“Makes sense,” the kid said, shrugging. It wandered toward the most freshly dead dropbear and prodded it with one foot. “You remember I said people have been disappearing here and around Tassie?”
“I remember.” I didn’t look at the kid; for a ridiculous reason I couldn’t pinpoint, I felt ashamed. Maybe it was because of how often I’d actually thought about killing it.
“Yeah, well some of ’em came back. Dead. None of the dead ones disappeared around here, but they all came back here when they were dead. And then I was pulled here, and there you were, and the dropbears…so… Do they always send you?”
“What? No, they don’t always send me! I’m just a pay-cheque lep’! I haven’t drawn bow for twenty years, since the last war!”
“Oh.” The kid seemed to accept that, which irritated me. Why was it still so trusting? “Then that was some flaming good shooting.”
“Stop trusting people so quickly!” I snapped at it. “That’s how you end up dying!”
“I’ve got good instincts about people,” said the kid blithely. “So your card is black because you didn’t kill me?”
I shrugged. “Never did learn to do what I was told. I found something I shouldn’t have found, and someone sent me here because they wanted to make sure I didn’t bring it up somewhere inconvenient.”
“Oh,” it said. Then, unexpectedly, “Want your leg back? It’s a bit chewed up, but it’ll still work.”
It brandished the mutilated peg leg at me—when did it pick that up?—and a gobbet of dropbear spit smacked into brown dirt.
A rush of affection coursed through me. That was a good leg, that was. Lasted through the second half of a war and a dropbear attack. I’d polish up those bite marks nice and shiny and it’d be just as good as new.
“Go on, then,” I said.
The kid cheerfully tried to screw my mutilated wooden leg back on—all right for it to be cheerful, it was only sporting a black eye and bloody nose; no one was going to kill it on sight—and promptly knocked me over again.
I glared at it and tried to get up, but something bigger sent me flying head-over-heels with one blow. When I managed to unscramble my limbs and my brains, there were three much larger figures between me and the kid. It wasn’t until I was upright that I realized who they were, and then I wished I’d stayed on the ground.
I knew them all.
Massive, silver, and icily furious, that one in the centre was Lord Sero, heir to half the Behind world. Zero. The kid had said Zero. If the kid’s Zero was Lord Sero, then—then that Athelas it’d spoken of—
My stomach dropped even further. At Lord Sero’s left hand was Athelas, steward to Lord Sero—genteel, pleasant, and smiling politely. And if you don’t know better than to trust that, there’s no hope for you. On Lord Sero’s right was that vampire. Not everyone knows about him; I guess I’m just lucky. I’d never met him before—though I’d seen his tracks—didn’t want to meet him now. He was looking at me like he was curious about how long it would take to drain the blood from someone of my size as opposed to someone of a more average height.
All three of them. All three of them together.
I was going to die.
Great. Twice in one day. If it came right down to a choice between Lord Sero and dropbears, I would have picked the dropbears. At least they were stupid enough to go for a wooden leg.
I didn’t even have time to blink before Lord Sero had me by the throat. I gaped up at him, completely out of words. What could I say? I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. If he was angry at me for saving the kid, then why was he standing between me and it? If he was trying to protect it, why was he scruffing me?
So I just sort of choked at him for a moment or two until he said, in icy, fragmented words, “What. Are you doing. With. My. Pet?”
I choked at him again. This time, it could have sounded like, “What?”
“Ah, baegopa!” sighed the vampire, around Lord Sero’s shoulder. I didn’t know what he meant by the words, but the cold, sharp-edged grin he shot me was pretty clear. If Lord Sero didn’t choke me to death, the vampire would drain me.
“Oi!” yelled a voice. I had the feeling it had been yelling for a while, but do excuse me if I was more concerned with the vampire and the fae. “Let go of him!”
Lord Sero turned, taking me with him. The vampire did too, still showing that half, tooth-edged, and utterly humourless grin, and we all stared at the kid. It stared right back at us, bloody, defiant, and ready to die. It looked so small and helpless.
Did that little human thing really just raise its voice at the Lord Sero?
“Let go of him!” it demanded again. This time it kicked him in the shin, too.
I winced and ducked my head, but Lord Sero only blinked. He looked down at the kid and said in an experimental sort of way, “Bad Pet!”
“He saved my life!” the kid yelled. “What did you hit him for?”
Athelas, alone of the four of them, looked amused. “We may have acted rashly,” he said. “Zero, perhaps we should put our good friend the leprechaun down to recover. He seems anxious.”
“Ajig baegopa,” said the vampire, but he put his hands in his pockets and backed away leisurely, as if that’s what he’d been going to do anyway.
“We’ll get you something else to eat,” Athelas said to the vampire, as Lord Sero put me down on the ground very gently. “Pet will finish preparing the meal when we get home.”
“I should put holy water in it,” grumbled the kid.
The vampire looked startled. “Ya! Petteu—noh—”
“Holy water won’t kill him,” Lord Sero pointed out.
“No, but it makes him sneeze something flamin’ good,” said the kid vindictively.
“’S’cuse me,” I said. “But if you’ve decided not to kill me, maybe I could just slip away sort of quietly—”
“What about your card?” the kid asked. “You can’t get back Behind, can you?”
“I’ll sort something out,” I said hastily. “No need to worry yourself about me.”
Athelas looked mildly amused. “What’s this about his card?”
“He had one,” the kid said. “Someone made it black, though. I think they did it because he wouldn’t kill me.”
The vampire’s eyes went dark again, and he took a step forward. Lord Sero didn’t move, but his voice was still cold when he asked, “So you were sent to kill Pet?”
“You’ve scared him again!” the kid said accusatorily. “Look, his wooden leg is drilling holes in the ground!”
I squeezed my eyes shut briefly and begged the kid, “Please stop trying to help me!” Every time it tried to help me, things got a little bit worse.
“Someone’s sending people through Between,” the kid said. It didn’t listen real well, for someone with two ears still intact. “Far as I can tell, anyway. It’s what they did to Five-Four-one. They’re using normal Behindkind to murder humans, we think. They kick them through without warning, tell them to kill someone, and if they don’t their cards are blackened so they can never get back. But he didn’t kill me. I think that’s what the dropbears were for, to make sure.”
“Who sent you?” Lord Sero asked. If I wasn’t already feeling icy to my toes, I would have frozen.
“Can’t know for certain, your lordship,” I said stiffly, professional instinct taking over from personal. I must be crazy.
“Ya,” said the vampire silkily. “Chugolae?”
Even the kid looked worried. “He wants to kill you. Are you sure you really don’t know?”
I cleared my throat. “Might have been a few odd quirks in the money trail of a company I’ve been following the last few months.”
“What quirks?”
“Um.” I glanced between Lord Sero and the vampire, unsure of which one I wanted to keep an eye on the most. “They’re a group called Allied Traders; they trade with a few companies on this side of Between.”
The kid blinked. “There are other humans who know about the Between and Behind?”
“You’re not the only one, sunshine,” I said, forgetting myself. I turned back to Lord Sero. “I mean, well, your lordship, um—well, they’ve been trading in what they call organic resources, but their holding sites are a front.”
“No stock at any of them?”
“Not a sausage. I only caught onto them because they’ve been trying to be a bit clever with their taxes. Last night I told my supervisor about the investigation so I could take it up the chain.”
“And this morning you find yourself thrown into the human world with orders to kill a certain human or risk never coming home,” said Athelas. He was smiling. “A swift, decisive action.”
“Got it in one,” I said. My tone might have been a bit sour; I wasn’t smiling about it all, but there was no way I was going to try and stop him from smiling. “And those empty warehouses—”
“Ohhh!” said the kid. It was angry again. “They’ve been—the people are the stock? I know you said they were selling them, but—!”
“Interesting.” That was Athelas again. Trust him to find it interesting. “A two-pronged business; Behind, a human stock mill—”
“In the human world, a murder for hire set up,” I nodded. “It’s probably how they’re paying for their human stock. Want to bet they’re using all normal Behindkind for it? If I’m righteous, I can’t go home to tell about it; if I’m a killer, I’m home but in as deep as they are.”
“Munjae dukae issoh,” said the vampire silkily.
“Why two problems?” asked the kid. “We only need to find out who’s been sending Behindkind through to kill humans and stop them stealing other humans, don’t we? They’re the same problem.”
“No, there are two problems,” agreed Lord Sero.
“Perhaps three,” murmured Athelas, and for what felt like the first time in ages, I grinned a bit.
Lord Sero shot him a frosty look.
“A visit to the human front of Allied Traders is in order, I think,” said Athelas, ignoring both the frosty look from Lord Sero and a frowning one from the kid, who didn’t understand the interaction but definitely saw it.
I grinned a bit more, because I wondered which one of them was going to tell their pet that the second problem was finding out who had hired someone to kill their pet through the intermediary of Allied Traders; or that the third problem was how that person knew this pet was cared for enough to merit being killed.
“You,” Lord Sero said to me. “You’re coming, too.”
That wiped the grin from my face. It’s probably part of why he said it. “Your lordship, they’ll kill me if I go there!”
“They’ll kill you if they catch you here, too,” Athelas said mildly.
“Thanks,” I said. “Got that idea myself.”
* * *
There’s a certain kind of calm to company buildings Behind. Some of that is because they’re rooted in the surrounding greenery to keep their assorted Fae and Other employees as happy and productive as possible. Part of it is because Fae and Other are tricky folks who love to find tricky ways around business.
There was a kind of calm to the human offices of Allied Traders, too; but this calm felt like more of a smug calm. It got up my nose because it suggested that no one could mess with them, and that anyone who did try to mess with them was going to have a bad time.
It was a good feeling to break up a bit of that calm the moment I entered the building. It was a smallish two story building in the streets of a nearby town that Lord Sero called Huonville and the kid called Hoonville, with a sarcastic twist of its mouth; old and brightly-painted on the outside, it was all fake white modernity on the inside, and I could feel the edge of Between that hung around it the minute I got in. They weren’t expecting a leprechaun, and they weren’t too happy to have one in there, either; all three of the secretaries in the lower level trotted after me, bleating, as I took the elevator up to the top floor.
One of them must have managed to warn the top floor, because when the doors dinged open, there was a meeting party. Well, a guy in a suit, anyway. There were a few sleek cubicles up here, with a few sleek humans pretending to work while they stole glances at me, but when they saw that I was a leprechaun, half of them rose to their feet to gawk shamelessly.
“Good evening, sirs and madams,” I announced. “Please remain in your seats. Your company is being audited.”
“On whose authority?” demanded the one in front of me. “Stay where you are, everyone. I’ll handle this. Now, I don’t know who you are, but—”
“You’re the boss, are you?”
“I am the head of the board,” said the human, drawing itself up. “Who are you, and what authority do you represent?”
“I’m with the BTA,” I offered.
It smirked at me, which I found annoying. “Then you’d better sit down while I call your boss,” it said. “I think you’ll find your authority doesn’t go for much around here.”
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not here under the authority of the BTA, isn’t it?” That wiped the smug look from its face momentarily, which pleased me so much that I tapped my peg against the floor twice, smartly.
“But you said—”
“Didn’t say I was here under the authority of the BTA, did I?” I reminded him.
“Then whose authority are you—”
“His,” I said, as the elevator dinged again. I jerked my thumb behind me and cleared the way for Lord Sero, who filled the elevator doorway behind me. The human swallowed and fell back; and as it did so Lord Sero stepped through the door, Athelas and the vampire flanking him. The human kid trotted in behind them, observing the scene with interest.
“Are you the head of the board?” Lord Sero’s voice could have shaken the foundations of the building—or maybe it was just me that felt the trembling right to my bones.
“Yes.” That was a definite tremor in his voice. I had the feeling he knew exactly who and what Lord Sero was. “Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know who you’re working with Behind, who authorised a human mill start up, and who gave you the job of killing our pet.”
“Your—your pet?”
The kid touched one finger to its eyebrow in a salute. “Hi.”
“I’m not authorised to give you that information.”
The vampire JinYeong laughed and said something softly.
“He says,” said the kid, “that it’ll be more fun finding out this way, anyway.”
“Pet,” said Athelas, “Show the head of the board into his office for us.”
The kid shrugged and went and opened the door. The head of the board walked past it, his face almost as white as Lord Sero’s, and vanished within. The kid came back to stand next to me and hissed, “Won’t he just call the Behind offices if we leave him alone in there?”
Athelas smiled faintly.
I said in an undertone, “That’s what they’re counting on.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me,” the kid said. “Oi. I think that one’s trying to sneak away.”
That one was wearing a skirt, so I suppose it was female. She looked like she was trying to back away quietly, but when she bumped into JinYeong, who somehow managed to be behind her without a moment’s notice, she sat down again very quickly.
One of the trousered ones in another cubicle asked, “Can we go? You’ve got our boss.”
“You,” said Lord Sero, “will stay. You will all stay.”
“What did we do?” blustered the human. “We’re employees! We’re not responsible for what our company does!”
“Employees?” I laughed. I hadn’t spent the last three weeks going over every inch of Allied Traders for nothing. “You’re board members, every one of you!”
The female tilted her chin. “All right, what if we are? What we’re doing isn’t illegal, and we’re making an unprecedented link between Human and Other kind.”
“You tried to have me killed!” said the kid indignantly. “That’s illegal over here!”
“We’re not a human company,” said the female. “We’re a Behind company and we fall under Behind laws.”
“And it’s not like we’ve done anything but facilitate a thriving industry across borders,” said another of the board members. “There’s nothing you can do to us, legally!”
“Nothing according to human law,” said Lord Sero, with a white, glittering smile that held no humour. “But we don’t run by human law, either.”
“We’ve done nothing against Behind law, either!”
“Between you and the dropbears,” I said to the whites of all those self-righteous, terrified eyes, “I’d pick the dropbears every time. At least they only wanted to eat us; they wouldn’t have tried to tell us to be grateful to help the ecosystem along.”
“There’s the little matter of coerced murder for hire and tampering with Identify Cards,” Athelas said.
