As it happened, Kiri only reached the part of her story where she found the first body at the Outsider’s headquarters when a whistle sounded at the window right at her elbow. Garon still didn’t know why they were at Colin’s house, but he knew enough that he didn’t feel too frustrated by Tagg climbing in the window and interrupting them. At least, he didn’t feel angry until Tagg straightened up and hissed right in his face: “Who are you?”
“He’s a friend of mine,” Kiri pushed between them, which in the small space meant she was smashed up against Garon. “Is that from him?” She pointed at a wadded paper in Tagg’s hand. The man nodded and shoved it into her hand. She jerked it flat impatiently and her eyes flicked along it.
“Useless, I know,” Tagg said.
“Await orders? Why would you do that? Didn’t he think you’d notice that all your friends are dead?” Garon tried to lean around her to read the note but he was blocked by the tight space.
“He must not have known about the attack when he wrote that,” Tagg said. “Maybe the Enforcer acted without orders.”
“But you said Neal threatened you with him,” Kiri pointed out.
“Maybe he got ahead of himself,” Garon said.
“Who is this guy?” Tagg demanded again, jerking his thumb at Garon. The hallway was so tiny Garon had to take a step back to keep from being jabbed in the chest over the top of Kiri’s head.
“He’s Garon.” Kiri waved the paper between them as if to ward them back. “We ran into each other in the High District. Don’t worry about it, you can trust him. He’ll do what I tell him to.” Garon got a little red-faced at that, but Kiri shot him a warning look and he clapped his mouth shut. “What’s important is that this doesn’t help us at all. We don’t have any contact now with the Enforcer or the Thief Lord.”
“I know a contact who might work for the Thief Lord,” Garon said.
“WHAT?!” Kiri rounded on him, and Tagg at her back looked nearly as surprised as her, though not as angry. If anything, he looked like he respected Garon a little bit more now.
“I said I--” Garon’s response was interrupted by a screeching crash from the other room. There was a scream and a thud, the wall beside them shook, and all three of them were trying to shove past the others to get to the main room first. Kiri was fastest, and slimmest, she ducked under Tagg’s arm and grabbed the doorjamb to swing around the corner.
At once Garon was sure that Tagg had been wrong about the Enforcer. An imposing figure was standing in the broken frame of Colin’s front door, silhouetted in the full light of day. His face was shadowed by his hood. Colin’s mother was crouched under the table, staring at him. Colin was crumpled on the floor against the back wall, he looked dazed, but he was blinking, awake and alive. He must have been thrown against the wall in that awful crash that brought them in. He was lucky to be alive.
Kiri didn’t miss a step; as soon as she came around the corner she launched herself forward so she came to a stop right between the Enforcer and Colin’s cowering mother.
Garon stopped in the doorway when Kiri did. He felt a thrill, he was about to see Kiri fight as the Firebrand. But she didn’t look like the Firebrand. She was dressed like a normal girl, tiny and weak standing right by the tall and terrifying Enforcer. And that was what the Enforcer saw, too, and with the massive strength that had thrown Colin against the wall he seized Kiri around the throat in one great hand and hauled her off the ground.
Everyone else in the room started yelling, and Garon looked around for anything that he could hit with, but Kiri and the Enforcer were only focused on each other. Her hand had started to glow, and he saw it, forcing her hand away from him with his free hand. Garon had found a broomstick, and was running forward to offer what help he could, when Kiri jerked and kicked with her whole body, for a moment the Enforcer lost his grip on her hand, and the room exploded with light.
~
Kiri’s head felt heavy as lead. Sound reached her, at first muffled like she had cotton balls stuffed in her ears, but slowly growing clear.
“...bring us something to eat.” It was Garon speaking, close by.
Her head was pillowed on something soft, but lumpy, and the rest of her felt like she was laying on rock. She was stiff and sore. And what was that smell? Kiri opened her eyes. She was laying inches away from a curved wall formed out of small stones mortared haphazardly together. The smell was...moldy? earthy? Where was she? The people who could tell her were still talking behind her.
“Not much longer,” it was Colin, answering Garon.
Kiri’s head felt too heavy to lift, so she rolled over to look at them--and it was just them, Colin and Garon. Colin’s mother and Tagg were nowhere in sight, not that Kiri could see very far. Her head hurt too much to move it around and another curving wall was just on the other side of Garon.
“Good, you’re awake,” Garon said, bending over her. “We’re in the storm drains,” he explained, anticipating her question. “Near the river. It works for now, but if it rains we’ll have to be out of here quick.”
“Why…” Kiri stopped. Her voice was hoarse and raspy, and it hurt.
“Why are we in the storm drain?” Garon asked, and Kiri nodded.
Colin jumped in then. “Well, you killed the Enforcer, when he attacked you. So you saved us, but the problem is that we were at my house and we don’t know if the Thief Lord is going to be mad about it. Tagg is hoping that the Enforcer was acting against orders and the Thief Lord will just think you did him a favor. But there’s a chance he’s angry about it, so it seemed best to go into hiding.”
“Tagg is trying to feel out the situation,” Garon said. “If we’re lucky we’ll be able to get out of here before nightfall.”
“And my mother is getting us food,” Colin said. “Are you ok, Firebrand? Do you want to eat?”
“I’m ok,” Kiri whispered. She shifted her eyes to Garon. She felt bad about getting him involved in this, even though it was very much his fault. He had insisted he would no be left behind, after all. “Your job?”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Garon shrugged. “It’s just dock work,” he said. “If my boss doesn’t understand, well, I’ll get a new one.”
Kiri tried to sort of nod with just her face. Her head hurt too much to move still. Apparently it had gotten as clear as it was going to for now. She wanted to ask Garon something else, but Colin was right there. Oh well, the kid was in deep anyway. “Your contact,” she croaked.
“What?” Garon said. “My what?”
“You said. Earlier…”
“Oh,” Garon shifted back uncomfortably against the stones. “Well, I did meet someone. Kind of, uh, saved his life actually.”
“So he owes you!” Colin nodded back and forth to Kiri and Garon, looking quite confident as if a life debt made for a sure bet.
Garon glanced at Colin. “Yeah. And I’m almost certain he’s in the Thief Lord’s network. I just don’t know how to ask him. You know, what do I do? Ask if the Thief Lord is mad at the Firebrand right now?”
“Yeah, you do,” Colin said. “He’ll tell you.”
“Maybe.” Garon looked doubtful. “But if Tagg comes up dry, I’ll try.”
~
Tagg came back much earlier than any of them expected. He’d told Garon he would be gone all day, but they were just packing up the midday meal that Colin’s mother had brought when the sound of him slogging up the tunnel came echoing up to them. Garon, sure it was too early for Tagg to come back, tried to urge the others to hide, but Colin just yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Tagg? That you?”
Tagg called back, and so everyone was waiting when he finally came close enough to talk easily. Kiri was feeling well enough to sit up now, but she kept her too-heavy head leaning against the wall with her apron bunched up under her neck. Everyone else leaned forward in anticipation, Garon with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What’d you find out?” Garon asked.
“The situation has changed.” Tagg folded his legs and sat down with a shake of his head. “We have a whole different set of problems now.”
“What do you mean?” Garon asked. “What did you find out about the Thief Lord?”
“I haven’t been trying to contact him or his network,” Tagg said, raising a hand when Garon and Colin started to protest. “Listen. Things have changed. This morning, the market was attacked.”
“Market? How?” Kiri croaked.
Tagg looked startled at the sound of her voice. He hadn’t heard how hoarse she was yet. “This morning three huge beasts, with glowing red eyes, attacked the market.”
“His dogs!” Kiri’s voice cracked horribly as she tried to shout with horror.
“They weren’t with him when he attacked us at Colin’s house,” Tagg said. “I talked to a lot of people. The attack on the market--it happened right after we were attacked. As soon as he was dead--and I mean it wasn’t more than an hour, as soon as he was dead--his beasts went on a rampage.”
“How many?” Kiri whispered. “How many dead?”
Tagg took a slow breath. He looked at Garon, Colin and his mother, then fixed his eyes on Kiri. “Dozens.”
~
The bank was muddy, too muddy to sit on without soaking right through her dress. So Kiri squatted to stay low as she stared over the water. The river was wider here than in Westfall. The shapes on the far bank were indistinct, her whole view was dominated by the moving water. The sunlight on the lightly wind-whipped waves danced and sparkled. It reminded Kiri of the beautiful creations of the glassmaker in the market, which caught the light in the same surprising ways, appearing to be more than what they were. She wondered if he was still alive. First she had pointlessly tried to help him with a thief, and now, what? Did she get him murdered some few weeks later? Why had she ever done anything in this horrible city? Everything she touched turned to ash.
Someone was coming out of the tunnel behind her, their footsteps squelching a little in the mud. It was almost certainly one of her friends, and if wasn’t, well...maybe they would kill her. She deserved to die.
Whoever it was cleared their throat, but Kiri didn’t turn. She picked up a small pebble from the muck beside her, not caring that the mud clung to her fingers and under her fingernails, and tossed it into the water.
“Kiri,” Garon crouched down beside her as he spoke. Kiri kept looking at the water. She couldn’t face him...or anyone...right now. “How are we going to fix this?”
Fix? What made him think things could be fixed? No matter what you did, they just got worse. And… “What do you mean we?” Kiri said, hating the grating in her voice. What right did she have to be hurt and pathetic right now? “What have you got to do with any of this?”
“I’m not going to get angry about that,” Garon said, though the tone of his voice showed that he was mad enough. “Because you’re hurt and in shock. But I have just as much to do with this as you did when you showed up in this city. You just wanted to help. Kiri, I want to help, too.”
Kiri finally looked at him. “You want to help?” Her voice cracked. “I haven’t helped, I’ve destroyed everything. You want to do that, too?”
“No, I don’t. You know...” Garon shook his head. “It’s a mess. But you have helped people. I’ve heard the stories. And we can fix this.”
“And you’re asking me how?”
“You have a lot more experience than I do.”
Kiri threw another rock in the river. She wanted to tell him that the only experience she had was with messing things up. Getting Gilliam killed...and who knows how many people in the marketplace...that was what she had done. It had been so fun, stopping thieves, sending bullies running, but all she had to show for it was death. But talking about that wouldn’t do her any good, and it wasn’t why Garon had come out here. There would be plenty of time to beat herself up later. For now, they really did need to fix this. She thought back, and there did seem to be something…
“This is going to seem like a crazy idea,” she said to Garon. “But what about this Thief Lord contact of yours?”
“I’ll contact him,” Garon said. “The Thief Lord has to be furious about the market. It was under his protection, right?”
“Exactly. The dogs are destroying things the Thief Lord is supposed to be protecting. The system will fall apart if people can’t trust him to follow through protecting them. He has to get rid of these guys, even if it means working with me.” Kiri’s voice was fading into a whisper, but she was determined to get the words out. If it hurt, it hurt, she didn’t deserve to coddle herself.
“I’m sure he hates you,” Garon said. “But from everything I’ve heard he’s ruthlessly practical. He can’t afford to have his Enforcer going around destroying people that never broke a rule. It threatens the whole system.”
“Would that be a good thing? I’ve been thinking for a long time about how to bring down the Thief Lord. Maybe this is it.”
“This isn’t the time. We need his help with this: it’s important.” Garon was looking right in her eyes now. Kiri had forgotten to be too ashamed to look at anyone else, and he was so intense she couldn’t look away. “After you left, Tagg told us more about what happened at the market. Trust me, those beasts have got to be stopped now.”
“All right then.” Kiri stood and wiped her dirty fingers off in the folds of her skirt. It left a streak of mud, but she was already covered in muck from the sewers and blood and who knows what else, so it didn’t really matter. “Let’s go find your friend.”
“He’s not a friend,” Garon said. “I don’t even know his name.”
“Seriously?” Kiri laughed. “Well, anyway. Let’s go.”