The Fire Eye Refugee Read online

  “Hard to argue with your success. I have made some quiet inquiries around the city. As a fetch, you are peerless. But you leave me guessing at your motivation.”

  She looked at him long, feeling the pressure he radiated. His men around him. The Fire Eye ignored in the sky. She was being evaluated, but if anyone here was not being upfront about motivation, it was Ban Terrel. She kept quiet.

  Finally, he turned back to the view, bringing strong, weathered hands up to rest on the rocky ledge before them. There was a more relaxed lean to his stance. “Her name is Leah Jordene. She is of mixed-blood, a Farrow mother named Maggie Jordene. A Gol father. She is twelve.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  He didn’t like being inserted into the narrative and distanced himself with his response. “Last report on her was eighteen months ago, before the Winden siege began. She was tall for her age with reddish hair.”

  “What can you tell me about the mother?”

  “If she is alive, she is likely somewhere out there. She is in her middle forties.” He looked to the darkness in the west. “The mother was not unskilled in food preparation and had worked enough in Ferris to achieve modest recognition. She would have been placed near the kitchens.”

  Which meant she had a better chance of being alive. Food had guards. If one wanted to find the centers of power in refugee camps, one looked to where the food and water came and went.

  “If I can find them, do you want me to approach them? Do they know you’re looking? Will they know your name?”

  “See to their immediate security and then give me their location. Keep my name out of all stages of your investigation. I have powerful enemies.”

  “I charge—” Kay began but he waved her off.

  “Sort the details out with Yamar,” Ban Terrel said, turning away from her while gesturing to the closest man. Kay glanced at him. Yamar wore the sharp, grey uniform. He was a head taller than the others. He had hands with long fingers folded in front of him, gaze lowered.

  Kay turned back to Ban Terrel. “What about the father’s name?”

  “Good luck in your search.” The only answer she got. And then the meeting was over.

  …

  Yamar took her arm and led her to the stairs. He was calm and collected. He started by taking the stairs two at a time with his long legs, then slowed when he saw she was moving slower. Her cloak was pulled tight around her as she tried to process the investigation she’d just, apparently, signed up for. After giving her a few moments, Yamar launched into the details. He’d researched her daily rate and was fine with it. They could cover expenses. They already knew where her office was and would be by to check in two days from now. She wasn’t to contact Ban Terrel, only go through Yamar. Ban Terrel wasn’t joking about the enemies thing. She should keep her eyes open for unwanted attention. If she needed muscle inside or outside the walls, they could set it up.

  Kay was feeling okay about the job by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs. Her hire made sense. She was getting paid for her Farrow connections, her ability to track down someone outside the walls without drawing too much attention. Fair enough, sounded manageable despite Ban Terrel’s evasion about the father. She was wondering whether Yamar would be forthcoming about Ban Terrel’s familial indiscretions. Then Yamar handed her off to another of Ban Terrel’s men at the bottom of the stairs, a soldier named Reagan, and things went south.

  Kay could immediately sense trouble within Reagan. After Yamar left, there was scant eye contact before he roughly grabbed her arm to lead her across the plaza, still buzzing with families and vendors. His eyes were busy roaming the crowd. He was under instruction to escort her home but he was the one setting the direction. If she was lucky, he was just a fool, one who couldn’t handle even taking minor direction from a woman. But she didn’t like those eyes. Was he working a different angle? It was a little early in this game to allow herself to be taken. Did she deal with this before getting dragged into a dark alley? The only thing that stopped her was, if he was working for someone else, she wanted to know who. This was the problem with not setting up an escape plan.

  She decided to push back just as Reagan got her to the edge of the crowd. She pulled her arm back and turned to face him. “I’m the other way,” she said.

  “Honey,” he said, “you’re whichever way I say you are.” He was big for a Gol, black hair hung over one eye. Battered face with old scars. Why had they handed her to him? Intimidation? Or had he taken a mask off, one that worked well enough to fool Ban Terrel? He reached out to grab her again, but his eyes were up, looking back to the crowd. He missed.

  Kay slid her hands inside her cloak. She gripped her baton in one. The other carefully pinched out some powdered demonlord pepper from one of the jars on her belt. Her fingers would burn for hours whether she used it or not, but that never bothered her.

  “We should talk—” she began but he cut her off.

  “Oh, you’ll talk. You’ll have plenty to say.” Still looking up and down the alley, maybe whoever he was expecting was meeting him here.

  Kay decided not to wait around. She flung the demonlord in his face, followed it up by hitting him hard in the back of the knee with her baton. When he crumpled before her, she lined up and cracked him in the neck. Out cold, not even much chance to feel the sting of the pepper in his eyes. Oh, well. Unlikely anyone would think to wash it off. It would wait for him to awaken. She, on the other hand, needed to move.

  She blended back into the fringes of the crowd, then ducked into a different alley. If there were watchers in the crowd, she didn’t see them. She saw no one following her as she went half the way back to her office, then, when she changed her mind, all the way back across the city to the western gates. Kay had remembered an underground fight between Farrow and Gol barefist champions was scheduled for midnight just outside the city. It would be in her best interest to learn what she could about Ban Terrel and a soldier named Reagan before news of her hire leaked. And to start setting herself up for a trip to the refugee camps tomorrow in a hunt for Leah Jordene, potential illegitimate daughter of a Gol man of consequence.

  Her fingers burned and the Fire Eye shone above. She should be home, she had set this week aside as a holiday, but the night seemed to call to her. As she neared the gates she could see stray lanterns, giving up on their futile quest to reach their glorious mother in the sky, surrender to the eastern winds and run up against the city walls where their small flames died.

  Chapter 2. A Fetch at the Fight

  The fight was in an old warehouse just outside the city walls, its interior lined with benches, a depressed fighting pit in the center. The crowd was loud, mostly men, mostly Farrow. They wore rough clothes, radiating a sense of restrained violence, though not too many were openly carrying weapons. The Farrow idolized their fighters, liked to imitate them and mimic the appearance that they were ready to hop into the pit in an instant.

  Among the golden-skinned Gol clustered in small groups around the warehouse, Kay saw only a few swords. For the few Gol present, it was likely none could afford the expensive weapons charges the Dynasty put on blades. One armed group she recognized, however. Off-duty Home Guard, exempt from licensing fees. And she knew a couple of them.

  She joined the group of three, two she’d seen before. The highest ranking of the bunch, a thick-waisted man named Jules, was telling a story to the others. He kept going after giving Kay a nod. A good sign. She cultivated her relationship with the Home Guard carefully. She needed them for referrals and staying on their good side meant less chance for them to steal bounties out from under her. Kay had heard Jules’ story before, knew the exact moment he’d deliver the punchline and draw laughs from his group. He played his part. When the laughter subsided, he turned to Kay.

  “Wouldn’t expect you here, Kay. You make it on one of the undercards?” Without waiting for an answer, he looked at the youngest in his small group. “Go find Kay a drink. Gin.” The kid looke
d annoyed, but went to do his bidding.

  “He’s gonna spit in it, isn’t he?” Kay asked.

  “Not if he wants to keep his job, he ain’t. So what brings you out?”

  “Been a while since I’ve been outside the walls. What brings you guys?”

  “We were told to keep an eye on things. Not in any official capacity of course. Least the promoter knows the score. We’ve been drinking for free all night. Hop on our tab.”

  The kid returned with a gin and a pitcher of beer. He handed Kay the drink and poured the beaming Jules and his partner a fresh beer. “You’ll do well, kid,” Jules said. “Let me introduce you to Kay here. If she has a last name, she keeps it close to the vest. Kay is what we call a fetch. The rich folks hire her to find their missing kids when they think we aren’t moving fast enough. Most of the time, when it’s something a little more serious than a runaway, we do all the work and track down our leads and show up to rescue some poor little princess all ready to receive her gratitude and the gratitude of her rich mommy and daddy. And what do we find? Kay’s already there. Then she gets the credit. Occasionally she’ll buy us a round, but don’t hold your breath.”

  “Well, let me get this one,” Kay said.

  “Aren’t you clever?” Jules said dryly. He raised one finger in a gesture Kay had seen many times before. The start of another story. “So this one time, kid, this set of twins goes missing. Too young to be runaways, so we’re thinking they were taken. We’re working with the family, a rich one, waiting to hear what the ransom request is. One of the detectives, a sharp guy, asks the family if they fired any servants recently. Turns out they had and the guy sounded like bad news. So we take a crew down to his house. It’s me, Skull,” Jules gestured to his partner, “and a couple of greenies like you. We get to the street and something ain’t right. All the neighbors are out and there’s this guy hollering with a bloody nose, blood all over his face. We ask the crowd, where’s the servant guy live, and they point us to this rundown house. But the bloody nose guy keeps hollering, trying to tell us we need to check out his house, some crazy lady broke in. We gotta tell him to get the fuck out of our way. All set to break down the door but it’s already busted in. We go in and the servant is unconscious on the floor. No one else but lots of signs of struggle. So we come back out, say, ‘Okay, fuckface, show us what you want to show us.’ Bloody nose guy says some woman came into his house with a pair of brats and then busted his nose and locked him out. Sure enough, it’s Kay, and she’s got the two kids with her. Turns out she got there first, took out the servant but lost track of his partner. He got out through the back and so she wanted to get off the street with the kids before he has a chance to make another try at them. So she picks a random house and shoves the kids in. When the owner turns out to be a prick, she busts his nose and locks him out. Best part was, the dumb fuck partner circles back around when he sees Kay outside the house and tries to sneak past us while we’re sorting all this out. Gave Skull and me a chance to break in our new boots. I thought we taught him good, but even after we finished I don’t think he was as scared of us as the busted nose guy was of Kay.”

  Jules gave a hearty laugh at his own story. Kay and Skull joined in. It never hurt for the rest of the crowd to know she had some Home Guard backing. They weren’t bad guys, mostly. Sometimes they dragged their feet in helping out families without money or connections, but they’d saved her from one or two dark alley encounters.

  She stopped quickly though when she realized the kid wasn’t laughing along. He was eyeing her, and when he saw Jules wasn’t paying attention, he parked a glob of spit right on his lips and gave her a mocking look. A gesture saying he saw the wet in her blood, recognized her Farrow features, and he didn’t like it. He was a purist. The Gol purists, the ones who hated mixed-bloods, thought of other races as below them. Used the terms wet or low to convey that their status was far below pure Gol. It was not good to see a purist climbing on board the Home Guard. A dark alley encounter might go a different direction with this one.

  Kay gritted her teeth and ignored the gesture. On a different day she might have found a way to express her disapproval, but the tides had grown dark and uncertain lately. She didn’t want to test alliances before she had to. Or inflame new enemies by shoving their teeth back down their throats. She felt the throb of fire growing on her cheeks and knew she needed to leave this conversation before the flame bloomed.

  She made an excuse to walk away, her mood dampened as she scanned the crowd. She fought a small sigh of relief when she saw Calum, a mixed-blood bookie she sometimes swapped info with. His attention was fixed on the fights. She slid onto the bench right behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Who’s gonna take this next one?” she asked.

  Calum had a sullen, concentrated look about him. In the ring, two Farrow were warming up. They were shirtless and gloveless, both lightly sparring in their respective corners. Calum was ignored by the crowd, which probably meant he hadn’t gotten authorization from the Farrow promotor to take bets here. He tossed a smile back over his shoulder. “Aren’t you supposed to have the week off? I never pegged you as coming to the fights for fun.”

  “Just landed a job looking for someone outside the walls. Figured it couldn’t hurt to see if there were more contacts could be made.”

  Calum was scanning the crowd. “There are a couple of good ones here. Turnover’s crazy though. This latest Farrow wave has some real hardcases. Don’t extend any credit.”

  “I just need information, someone close to the kitchens.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Now look here.” Calum was getting excited as another fighter appeared in the wings, ready to enter. “Everybody’s excited about the top card, an undefeated Gol middleweight against a Farrow camp up-and-comer, guy by the name of Amos Farr. The Gol fighter comes from the Bosun Crew, a street tough but he has good discipline. Amos will take a dive, all the Farrow money is on the second or third minute. Promoter keeps his Gol hosts happy, lets them feel tough, gets the refugees feeling the sting on their pride and clamoring for a chance to redeem. Won’t be a good fight. But interesting to see the Bosun Crew getting in with the Farrow.”

  Kay could see the Bosun, clumped together near the ring. All wore blue shirts, sleeves cut off, shoulders motley with tattoos of bears and naked women. Their golden skin and short black hair stood out among the paler, red- and brown-haired Farrow crowd. There were few other Gol among the crowd. Kay knew the Farrow would respect the courage of the Bosun in venturing outside the walls to a Farrow event. In their eyes, many of the Gol seemed frustratingly blind to the opportunities outside the walls. As a people, the Gol tended to respond poorly to the uncertain, just one of the factors that had contributed to the lack of a comprehensive strategy to deal with the refugee situation. They had lived behind closed borders a long time, their focus inward and upward.

  Most of the Bosun were watching the fights studiously or talking amongst themselves. Dissecting their new opponents’ tendencies. But a few stood, chatting with Farrow, none of whom Kay recognized. One lean Bosun was surrounded by a group of Farrow. Kay wondered what deals were being made.

  “So the real fight is this one coming up,” Calum said. “Promoter couldn’t land a good Gol versus Gol, but no problem on the other side. This one here, warming up, he’s eastern Farrow. More of them were against committing to the war with the Winden. They got here first and have set themselves up best they could. Did better at salvaging gold than the westerners. Westerners are only just arriving, the ones who survived the battles. And they ain’t happy to take the back of the line. So this fight was the real draw, not that you should tell the Bosun that. You ever back in Farrow for an election? I never asked who you vote.”

  Lots of mixed-blood had romantic notions of Farrow. They liked to pretend that things like votes between the parties, which largely fell on an east-west dividing line, were respected there. Kay had no such illusions. She had been an orphan then an exile. She’d never v
oted in her life and never even knew anyone who had. “I’ll vote for whoever you think is going to win the fight.”

  Calum laughed. “So the easterner is more of a known commodity. Has been around the camp and he’s good, real good. But playtime’s over. Am I gonna put my money on a camp fighter, or am I gonna take the one fresh from the war? Western fighter’s a soldier. I’m guessing if he didn’t go to the canvas for the Winden, he ain’t gonna let anything short of a sword in his guts end this fight. Fuck skill, he’ll want it more.” Calum gave Kay a sideways glance. “Why the kitchens?”

  “A girl’s gotta eat,” she replied.

  He smirked and looked back to the fight, fingers twitching like he was counting gold. The fighters finally squared up. With no referee to keep things moving, the fights tended to break out more than start clean. They didn’t bother with round breaks, so everyone bet on the minute it would end. The fights tended to be short, so sometimes the fighters milked their time in front of the crowd. It looked like the easterner was more interested in taking his time than the westerner. Kay had a feeling Calum was right about the outcome. She was about to lean back and settle in to watch the complicated dance before the fight got going in earnest when Calum spoke again, leaning closer while the rising noise of the crowd prevented others from hearing. “Good you’re here though. I got word there’s a Farrow looking for you. Used the name Keara but it was clear he meant you. Way he was asking around, seemed like I wasn’t the first mixed-blood he tried. I told him I’d get you the message, in part just to shut him up. It’s not an easy time for us. Don’t need to give anyone excuses to question mixed-blood allegiance. Don’t want to end up outside the walls. His name’s Alban. Said you could find him at the camp center.”

  Alban. So the asshole had survived the war and finally made his way to Celest. What a terrible way to celebrate the Opening of the Fire Eye, learning he was nearby.

  Calum was rubbing at his jaw. He asked in a low voice, “You hear about the fire?” Kay shook her head. “Earlier tonight a bunch of purists burned down some new buildings in the Shallows. They were set to house the Farrow if the Dynasty opens the gates. Word got out and the neighbors turned up. Didn’t take long for the fires to start. Not Celest’s finest hour. The Dynasty weeps.”