Robin and Conjager trailed behind me as we approached the building—Robin because I’d told her in no uncertain terms to stay there, Conjager because even if he didn’t feel the bullet’s pain he was limping nonetheless. It was a tall, shabby apartment building, rusty shingles barely clinging onto the roof and a gutter pipe winding down the wall that had been thrice kinked out of shape. Rain trickled from its toothy mouth into a small, rippling puddle. Up on the third floor, a window had been methodically smashed, most of the corners picked clean.

It was dark, and there was no sign of life within. But its location, the way I could so easily envision the cruel snub-nosed barrel of a machine gun poking through that space made it our target. “You think they’re still there?” I whispered back.

“Would you be?” Conjager replied.

“Zamir would run as soon as it went wrong. But another…” I checked Bella’s barrel for the third time. Set and loaded and ready, but even she was outclassed here. Truth be told, I wanted nothing more than to do as I’d guessed Zamir would do and bolt for it. Run until I could make it home and have a drink and erase the memory of that terrible clunk-clunk-clunk creeping up on my heels. I put my hand to my head and rubbed my eyes, as though that could change anything. “You still want to do this, Robin? Still looking for bloodthirsty revenge?”

She crossed her arms. “I don’t—that’s not it. We have to do this. It’s the best we can do.”

“Now you sound like me.”

“I’m scared, too.”

“Then you stay quiet,” I said. “Follow me, and well enough behind we can’t be caught in the same burst.” I eased the ground-floor door open, one hand over the top hinge so that the squeaking, shuffling sound didn’t reach unfriendlier ears. The smell of old cigarettes hung high in the air, and the carpet was yellowed and cracked, the trails of old rainstorms streaked across the wall. I wished I had a better light than the trickle which crept in through the windows as I made my way up the stairwell, Bella held out in front of me like a saving grace.

We came out onto the third floor. There were a set of doors lining the hallway. Behind the second was a light that hadn’t shone out onto the street, and through the crack between the frame and the ceiling came Zamir’s voice. I froze. “…protection,” she said. “You can offer it, I know you can—and I need it.”

The other voice had a low, lilting purr to it, a docile tiger making sure you could see its claws. It wasn’t a voice I knew. “You believe you deserve it? For all you promised, she did not trust you enough to get caught out.” There was a sinister note to that voice. A chair scraped against the wooden floor, and the truncated dance of shadows in the light was paired with the sound of steps. The open door jerked closed.

I went to the third door. It was locked, but it looked like it’d been locked for a long time. The frame was warped and bent, too big for the door. I reached into my pocket and took out the keys to my office, Robin shooting me a quizzical look. “Not cause they’ll fit,” I whispered. “Watch.” I pulled the doorknob so that the lock pulled away from the frame, then poked the tip of the key into the wide gap the motion exposed. It was a simple coiled spring keeping the lock shut—easy enough to prod and bend until it uncoiled with a soft snap, like the click of a pen, and the door swung open.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Conjager raised an eyebrow. “Legitimate skills?”

“Useful ones.”

No one had been here for a very long time. The wallpaper was black and gold and peeling away. The desk and the phone were coated with a thick layer of dust, and an empty bottle of laudanum was tipped over on the floor with a faded green wrapper tied tight around it. High up in the wall, about a foot above my head, was a corroded metal grate, through which the sound of voices issued.

I grabbed the chair from behind the desk, set it down below the grate, and stepped onto it. The voices resolved themselves again. “The lion and the gazelle,” Zamir was saying. “Listen-”

There was a heavy thump, a rattle of metal. “What do you think this’ll do to you? Look at it.” I didn’t have to see a damned thing through that grate to know the purring voice was hefting that terrifying gun. I had no sympathy for Zamir, staring down it as she’d made us all do—but it was a terrible feeling nonetheless. “How easy do you think it’d be?”

Zamir’s voice was tight—trapped, perhaps, as she’d told me. “What more do you want?”

“I made this plan,” the voice purred. “You said I shouldn’t. You said you were in possession of something that would destroy Hexel just as cleanly—that would wipe the stain of responsibility from our hands. She trusted you then even if she doesn’t trust you now.” That voice moved, as though its owner were pacing a circle around Zamir. “You think Drakon will do it.”

“He—might.”

“And he will not kill the girl. That works well enough. What is it?”

“Information. Isn’t it always?” Zamir forced a laugh. “Animals may scrap over meat; we do so over what we know. Some handwritten pages. Drakon doesn’t even know they exist.”

“Where are they? Remember where you stand.”

Zamir sighed. “I’ve known I was a coward since this began,” she said. “But to have you drag it out of me, Arcadia... They’re in my apartment house on Hyencinth Street, not far from here. A safe I keep tucked away behind some books. I don’t dare move them and I don’t dare show them around.”

“It is hardly cowardice to make the right decision. Rats flee the sinking ship to survive.” There was the sound of Arcadia resting the gun on the floor. “You’ll go back there with me, you’ll make sure they’re handed over no problem. If it’s as you’re telling me, then you’ll have done your end. Jabberwock will see you made well enough for it, and there’ll be no bitter feelings.”

“No bitter feelings,” she agreed. “Except for Starling’s.” My breath caught. Her voice had risen, then, as though she were addressing me directly and not speaking into the air.

“What do hers matter?”

“I hope she might understand,” Zamir continued, with that strange imperative tone, that I should understand her here and now. “Sometimes there are no cards left to play, nothing except the wrong ones. Sometimes the bluff runs out and all you choose is how to fold, and to whom.” She swallowed, dragging herself back down to the room.

Arcadia answered that with a soft, sarcastic clap. “I’ll drink to that. Pick up that glass.” A drawer opened, somewhere in that other room. Something heavy and glass clinked against the desk. A chair was pushed back, scraping against the floor, and footsteps moved to meet it. “Tastes like something curled in here and died,” Arcadia sneered. “But it’s strong. All it needs to be.”

Madeline Zamir coughed. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. I wasn’t sure which of us she was saying it to. She coughed again, and then there was the sharp ting of a glass falling against the floor. Uneven footsteps, staggering back into the chair.

I pressed my hand up against the wall, as if I could reach her through it. “Don’t tell me it’s made you sick,” Arcadia purred.

Zamir didn’t answer. I heard her labored breathing for a few minutes, growing uneven and cut off by fits of spasms, until it stopped. A heavy silence descended and sat with us for a few moments more before Arcadia broke it. “A waste,” she said. “Goodbye, Zamir.”

The door opened and clicked shut, and there was the sound of footsteps moving away down the hallway. Then we were left again with just silence.