The police station was unusually noisy for a weeknight. Gray-suited street officers dragged in angry teenagers, drunks, and prostitutes every few minutes. But the stream of foot traffic remained confined to the hall between the front door and the overnight holding cells, without a single message coming back to the detectives’ offices. Kella was straightening up her desk for the evening when she saw the desk sergeant coming her way with a young woman behind him. He walked quickly to reach her desk ahead of the woman and he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “It’s about that special address you mentioned earlier.” He stepped away with a wink and then hurried back to the front desk.
Kella shook the young woman’s hand, noting the worry lines on her forehead and clamminess of her hands. “Miss? I’m Detective Kella Massi. Let’s just go over here to a private room and you can tell me what happened, all right?” She motioned toward a half-open door and the woman went inside, tightly clutching her shoulder bag with both hands.
The electric bulb in the ceiling was burnt out, but a lamp was glowing on the table and the small room was bright and warm. The woman sat down at the table as the detective closed the door behind them. She said, “My name is Jedira Amadi. I’m a medical technician at the prosthetics shop just a few blocks over on Greenwood Road. That’s where I saw it. I mean, that’s what I came to tell you about. I need to report a…a medical crime.”
“Greenwood Road.” Doctor Medina. Kella sat down across from the woman and slowly pulled out a small pad and pencil from her jacket pocket. So it’s started already. Or have they been coming in all along and I’m just now getting in on the madness? “All right. Start at the beginning. Take your time.”
“Well, I was getting ready to close up and go home for the night, about two hours ago, when there was a knock at the door,” Jedira said. “We were closed, but I went to see who it was anyway. It was a pilot with a burn on her arm. It was pretty bad, but I cleaned it up as best I could, and then we got to talking for a little while. Eventually she left and I was getting ready to lock up when I heard a noise in the basement. I went down to see what it was and I found a room.” She stopped abruptly and swallowed, her eyes darting off to the side.
“It was open?” Kella asked. Of course it wasn’t. “What was in the room?”
“The door was locked, but I have the master key for the building so I was able to open it…”
Kella’s pencil froze. Oh crap.
“…and that’s when I saw the cages. Dozens of cages. There were dogs, birds, monkeys, a giant turtle thing, a snake, a cat.” Jedira gestured in a circular motion as though there were more to her list but she couldn’t quite remember what. “Anyway, I tried to open the cages, but they had a different type of lock on them. That’s when I saw the machines.”
Kella rubbed her forehead. “Let’s just back up for a minute. You saw some animals in cages. How does that constitute a medical crime?”
“I’m just getting to that part,” Jedira said. “The machines. They were in the animals. I mean, there were other machines in the room, on the floor, but these machines were different. They were in the animals, detective. They were inside the animals.”
Kella looked in the woman’s wide, pleading eyes and nodded slowly. Okay, you can defuse this. She’s a medic. Break it down for her logically. Take the emotion out of the equation. “Miss, you said you’re a medical technician. I assume your office treats all sorts of patients with all sorts of medical tools.”
“No, no! These weren’t tools. They were, were, I don’t know what they were, but they weren’t the tools or prosthetics we use on people. These were different. Sunken. Into the skin. Somehow.” The young woman swallowed rapidly and rubbed her forehead.
“Okay, so you saw some medical tools or devices that you weren’t familiar with. Who do you work for exactly?”
“No, you don’t underst-Doctor Elena Medina.”
“Ah.” Kella smiled and nodded slightly. “The Espani who does all the free work for injured laborers. I’ve heard of her. All right. I think I’m beginning to get the picture. You were in the office after hours, unsupervised. You entered a room you had never entered before. You found animals being treated with foreign medical instruments, most likely by your foreign supervisor. And now you are concerned about the animals’ well-being. Is that correct?”
“Well, I, I mean, yes, but, but it’s not that simple.” Jedira frowned, still looking slightly green and extremely exhausted. “These weren’t mechanical legs or skin shields. They weren’t on the outside, they were inside, sunken into the skin, with clockworks, moving parts, moving inside them. Hurting them.” Bright tears shone in the corners of her eyes but she knocked them away with a clenched fist. “It didn’t make any sense. That’s not what we do. There’s no good reason for that. Why would she do that to them?”
Kella sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the medical technician. You should be telling me. But I appreciate your bringing this to my attention. I’ll be sure to follow up with Doctor Medina to make sure nothing unethical is going on. All right?” She offered Jedira her standard professional smile, serious but not unfriendly.
Jedira shook her head. “No, I’m telling you, something was very wrong down there. You didn’t see the machines. I could hear them clicking inside the dog’s belly, and he was whining and scratching at it. The whole place smelled like an outhouse, and it was full of these machines I’ve never even seen before, and I’ve seen a lot of strange machines.” Jedira clawed her hands back through her hair. “Doesn’t that concern you? At all?”
“Miss, you just described every hospital I’ve ever been in. It sounds to me like this Doctor Medina is developing some new medical devices or techniques for injured workers and she’s using some new machines that you are not familiar with. Which is not a crime. Tell me, Miss Amadi, are you a doctor?”
Jedira blinked and the look in her eyes hardened. “No. I’m a technician. I make prosthetic arms and legs, and hands and feet, too.”
Kella pretended to scribble on her pad. I’m sorry I have to do this to you. You don’t deserve it, but when does that mean anything anymore? “So you admit you’re not qualified to diagnose a patient, particularly one with unusual or exotic symptoms, and certainly not an animal. And your expertise does not extend beyond arms and legs, does it? But more importantly, you didn’t see any people being treated strangely, did you? Only these caged animals?”
Jedira lips wavered for a moment before any words could come out. “No, I didn’t. But if you would just come with me back to the workshop, I could you show you. Right now. Please, it’s only a few blocks.”
“Why? If you couldn’t assess these animals or identify these medical devices in their bodies, then I doubt I would be able to, and I’ve seen quite a bit.” Kella sighed. “Look, miss, I can tell that whatever you saw was very upsetting, but you need to realize that these things happen. Medical experimentation is often unsettling, but it is rarely inhumane and it is for the betterment of our people, in the long run. Believe me, I see it all the time. I investigate industrial accidents every day.”
“But aren’t you a specialist in medical crimes? That’s what the desk sergeant said.”
“Medical crimes?” Kella tried to smile politely. “I’m not sure there’s any such thing. I spend most of my time trying to determine whether accidents were really accidents, and whether a worker or a factory-owner is to blame. There is a fair amount of medical analysis involved, though.”
“Fine, then come to my office and tell me what happened to the animals in the basement,” Jedira said. “Just come and look. It will take two minutes. Please. Just look at them.”
Kella cleared her throat and stopped trying to look friendly. “Look, if I have some time tomorrow, maybe I’ll come by, but I can’t make any promises. We’re very busy with our current case load. I’m sure you’ve noticed all the fights, the vandalism, the injuries. It’s been a rough month for everyone.”
Jedira closed her mouth and nodded, her eyes downcast and long thin fingers curling back around her shoulder bag. “There’s something else. Nitroh. I smelled nitroh down there. Sometimes I smell it on the miners I tend to, so I recognized it. Detective, nitroh is an explosive, not a medicine.”
“I see. As I said, I’ll look into it. If I have time.” Kella led the woman back to the front desk and saw her out. The detective cleared her throat. “In the mean time, I suggest you refrain from exploring your employer’s private rooms, and from making serious allegations against one of the few pillars of our struggling community without any evidence. Good night, Miss Amadi.”
The young woman looked up at her from the bottom of the steps, a horrible mask of defeat and loneliness etched around her eyes and mouth. She nodded once and left.
Kella waited until Jedira turned the corner and passed out of view, and then the detective jogged down the steps and headed off in the opposite direction. Screw this. I’m never doing that again. Lady Sade can find someone else to cover up her shit.
Detective Massi strode through the quiet city streets with her fists clenched in her jacket pockets. She wound her way around slower pedestrians, silently cursing them for existing. Their only purpose in life was clearly to not reach their destinations and thus take up space on the street, just to be in her way. She took alleys and little lanes where grass struggled to grow between the cobblestones, darting through the light of the gas lamps and the shadows. Her steps quickened.
The neighborhoods changed radically, almost from one block to another. Houses alternated between one, two, and three stories, breaking occasionally for the open expanse of a park or square, and contracting into sheer canyons walled in by warehouses and factories. Voices echoed from every direction, along with the clinking of plates and the slamming of doors. People, everywhere. People going home, eating supper.
As they should be. Not poking about in basements.
Kella turned a corner and nodded to the guard at the front gate, who let her enter the courtyard of the private estate. She passed the gardens and fountain and climbed the marble steps in front of the stately manor house, its tall windows glowing with golden lamplight. She rapped as politely as her mood would allow, and when the doorman opened the door he took one glance at her and stepped aside, out of her way. “Supper has just concluded, detective. The lady of the house is in the study to your left.”
Kella crossed the foyer and passed down a narrow hallway where oil portraits hung in near darkness to a small study furnished with padded leather chairs, bookcases bowing beneath weighty tomes, and glass cabinets displaying old Indian crockery, primitive Europan spears and knives, and other exotic antiques.
The two people seated by the lamp in the center of the room looked up at her and set their teacups aside. Lady Sade motioned toward the couch. Kella sat down carefully, trying to look less like an angry police officer and more like an obedient citizen. It proved difficult.
“Detective, good evening,” Lady Sade said. “Have you come to tell us some exceedingly good news about the recent rates of street crime?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“No, I didn’t think so.” Lady Sade glanced at her companion, an older gentleman with a thick black beard, and she picked up her tea. “Is it Chaou? Any news of our missing ambassador?”
“No, I haven’t heard anything about her. This is another matter.” Kella folded her hands tightly in her lap to avoid curling them into fists. “A matter regarding the doctor you introduced me to this afternoon.”
Sade nodded. “And?”
Kella looked at the man, the stranger, but neither of them seemed at all concerned about discussing the doctor openly. “A young woman came to the police station tonight. I was on my way out, another few minutes and I wouldn’t have been there to catch her. She’s a medical technician working for your doctor. She says she saw the animals in the doctor’s basement being mistreated. She saw machines she couldn’t identify.”
“Indeed. Did she now? And what was this young woman’s name?”
The detective narrowed her gaze. “She described, in some detail, the various animals and machines that she saw. She wanted to show me, but I brushed her off and I tried to convince her that whatever she thinks she saw was nothing criminal.”
“Good.” Lady Sade sipped her tea silently. “Do you think she will let the matter drop?”
“No, I don’t,” Kella said. “She was terrified and disgusted. She came straight to the police as soon as she saw that room. I’m guessing she’ll probably tell her friends, or anyone who might be more supportive or sympathetic, and then go back to the police again, possibly with more evidence. She might even try to free the animals herself. She was very emotional.”
“Then we have a problem.”
“My lady, what is this doctor really doing?” Kella asked the question too quickly, before Sade had quite finished speaking. For a moment no one spoke, and the detective wondered if she would be chastised for speaking out of turn. She had heard rumors, only rumors but more than one, that Lady Sade frequently dispatched her private agents to punish those who were even slightly rude to her. Case files full of unsolved poisonings and stabbings washed through Kella’s mind.
But the lady only sipped her tea as before. “What did I tell you the doctor was doing?”
“Research, to help people.” Kella knew she was frowning, but she didn’t care anymore. “Is that what the doctor is really doing? Does she plan to help future patients by inserting these machines into their bodies? And by experimenting with explosive chemicals?”
“You seem upset, detective.” The governor tilted her head. “Why is that?”
Kella glanced down at her hands and forced them open to rest on the arms of the chair. “My lady, when you approached me about performing certain tasks for you, to help you with certain projects, I took that to mean I would be protecting the peace of this city and the security of the country. I was honored. And I understand that difficult times and circumstances require us to make certain sacrifices, to do what needs to be done, rather than what we would like to do.”
“But you no longer feel that way?”
The detective tried to put the words together in her mind as carefully as possible. “I am no longer certain that my actions are in the best interests of public security.”
“And if I explain to you exactly what the Espani doctor is doing, then that will set your mind at ease?” Lady Sade passed her empty cup to her silent companion to be refilled. “Do you want to know everything that I know? Do you feel you deserve to be privy to all of my private enterprises? Or is it that you wish to debate with me how I should conduct my affairs? Perhaps you have studied our national politics, the currents of our markets, the tides of public opinion and morale, and you have some suggestions as to how I might better serve my people?”
“No, my lady.” Kella glanced down, a quiet rage simmering in her chest.
“No?” Lady Sade shrugged her slender shoulders as she received her steaming cup. “As you wish. Then you will simply have to trust my judgment in the matter of the doctor.”
“Yes, my lady.” Kella studied the silent man, trying to place him. His face was familiar, probably from the rough portrait sketches in the newspapers that made everyone look vaguely alike. For a moment, the detective considered formally resigning her special appointment. But then what? A knife in a dark alley to silence me, and someone else takes my place as her errand girl? No, I’ve got to stay inside on this one until I know what’s going on. “I’m sorry I disturbed you and your guest, Lady Sade. It won’t happen again.”
Lady Sade nodded curtly and slid back in her seat, just a bit, and turned her body to face her companion, and Kella sensed that she had been dismissed. She stood, smoothed her jacket, and left.
Detective Massi took the long way home, which was one of several long ways she had deliberately mapped out in her mind for various reasons. This particular long way required her to cross several wide open parks and squares that offered no convenient places to loiter in hiding, and carried her past many long shiny store windows that cast enormous reflections of the streets around anyone who happened to walk by. This was a popular neighborhood, one filled with cafes and teahouses and shops peddling both traditional and novelty items from clothing to mechanical toys. During the day, these parks and squares became stages for singers, storytellers, acrobats, and preachers, and in the evenings they plied their trade all the more fervently, but now, in the dark of night, these places stood empty, swept clean by street workers and guarded only by the silent gas lamps sputtering atop their posts.
It took more than a half hour of meandering through open spaces and past reflective surfaces for Kella to spot the dark figure following her. He walked with a male stride, his posture too correct for the business of lurking and sneaking. He moved from shadow to doorway to corner, silently and swiftly. He clearly thought he knew his business. He didn’t.
Kella felt through the pocket of her gray jacket to the only weapon issued to members of Security Section Five: the police club, a slender little bit of wood with a small iron ring screwed into the business end to lend it some extra weight. The detective wondered how threatening a professional killer would find such a weapon. Her hand slipped around to the small of her back and she pulled out a folded knife and she thrust it into her front pocket. At the next corner she paused, kicked her shoes loudly against the stoop as though to clean them, and then sauntered into an alleyway where she promptly flattened herself against the wall and waited.
A moment later the dark figure flowed past the mouth of the alley, so quickly and quietly that Kella almost missed him, but she stepped out into the street and just managed to tap him on the shoulder.
The man in the black cloak whirled about, and though his face remained shadowed by his hood, the gun in his hand gleamed brightly. Kella grabbed the long barrel of the revolver in her left hand and then dealt the man a vicious punch to the throat with her fist wrapped around her folded knife. The man gasped and stumbled, but did not release the gun, and Kella felt the cylinder begin to turn beneath her fingers. She snapped the gun up and toward him, wrenching it free of his grip and then stepped back, brandishing both her unfolded knife and the gun. “Don’t move.”
The man fell still except for the one hand still massaging his throat. Then he broke into a run and vanished down the next alley. Kella sprinted after him, darting down the alley around discarded bits of broken furniture and piles of rags and wide dark puddles. Ahead, she saw the stranger reach the end of the alley and dash to the left down the street. Kella passed the corner a moment later, ducking as the man in black lunged at her, swinging his fist level with where the detective’s head should have been. Instead, his arm whirled through empty space and his wrist connected with the brick corner of the building, and he cried out. Kella snapped up from her crouch and threw two punches to the man’s stomach, and then kicked his legs out from beneath him.
The man fell to the ground on his rear, not so much moaning as growling through clenched teeth as he squeezed his injured wrist with his other hand. Kella knelt down beside him, leaning her knee against the man’s leg, pinning him in place. She shoved the gun in his face as she unfolded her knife blade. “I said don’t move.”
“I can see why she picked you. Even if you are old.” The man’s voice was strained as he tried not to make any more pained noises. “You’re pretty tough.”
“That makes one of us.” Kella pushed back the man’s hood with the tip of the open knife. An unremarkable male face stared up at her in the lamplight. An adult, but of any age. Neither handsome nor ugly. Nothing memorable about him at all. The perfect agent. “Do you have a name?”
“Not when I’m working.”
“Well, you’re not working anymore. Possession of a firearm and assaulting a police officer. You’re under arrest now, and probably will be for some time.” Kella poked inside the man’s coat with the barrel of the gun, but found no other weapons. “You were going to shoot me? In the street? Seems like a good way to attract a lot of attention. Not very assassin-like. You’d wake people up, they’d coming running to see what the fuss was about. You’d only have a few moments to get away or hide.”
“My orders were very specific.”
“Orders? From Lady Sade?” Kella frowned and nodded to herself. “So were you just lurking around the house waiting for someone to kill, or did she have to send out for you?”
The man merely winced as he continued rubbing his wrist.
“No, I didn’t think you’d want to talk about her.” Kella straightened up and glanced around the empty street. “Not to worry. That’s what cells are for.”
The man managed a wheezy laugh. “I won’t talk in a cell, either.”
“Then you can just rot in one. Either way works for me. Come on, up on your feet.” The detective pulled the man up, wrapped her fingers around the sturdy fabric of his collar, and shoved the muzzle of the gun into the small of his back. “All right, let’s take a walk.”
They set out down the street in single file. The man in black tilted his head back with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in making some sort of deal?”
“Only if you and all of your little friends feel like testifying against Sade before a high court.”
The man snorted. “I was thinking of a different sort of deal. As in, you let me go and I tell you where another of my little friends is right now.”
Kella jerked her prisoner to a halt under a streetlamp. “Where?”
“Let me go first.”
Kella slammed the man into the lamppost. “Where?”
He grunted. “I don’t think you have time to play guessing games. We already wasted a lot of time meandering through this neighborhood. My little friend has quite a head start on you, and she’s very motivated to make a good showing tonight. So let me go and I’ll tell you who the target is.”
Kella shoved the man away, turning him so they stood face to face, and then she shoved the gun into his cheek. “Who is it?”
“Look, I know you’re an honest officer. Make the right call. Let me go. After all, I haven’t hurt anyone, and I’m unarmed. You saw to that.”
“Who is the target?”
The man squinted and pursed his lips. “Third district. Some sort of medical machine shop. One of the employees. A girl called Amadi.”
I never mentioned her name. Sade must have a list of the doctor’s employees. Kella tightened her grip on him. “It’s the middle of the night. She won’t be at the shop.”
“No.” The man smiled and took a small step back from the gun. “So my friend is no doubt running around town at this moment, trying to find where she lives. I got the easy job, killing you. I hate research. Questions. Talking. Boring.”
Kella grabbed the man’s shirt and yanked him forward, and brought the butt of the gun down on the top of his head. The assassin slumped against her, unconscious. She pulled out her manacles and hastily shackled the limp body to the lamppost, and dashed away into the city. All the way back to the third district! Kella glared at the road flying by underfoot. At least she knew the target’s name, the whole name. Jedira Amadi. But she didn’t have an address. Yet.
She pounded up block after block through the fifth district, darting around corners, narrowly avoiding two collisions with young couples walking arm in arm in the dark. As she crossed the avenue that marked the edge of the third district, Kella bent her course east, angling not toward the prosthetics shop but toward the police station. She burst through the heavy doors, drawing stares from the handful of officers still leaning over the papers on their desks, and ran to the records room. The narrow room was little more than a long path for walking between two rows of massive filing cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling. The detective scanned the drawer labels, then yanked open the city directory. Amadi, Amadi… Jedira Amadi. The address. Five blocks away.
Kella strode back into the main room and pointed at the officers at their desks. “You over there, get down to High Street in the fifth district. You’ll find a man shackled to a lamppost near Carter’s Square. Bring him in. Attempted murder with a firearm. The rest of you need to sweep the streets right now for a lone killer, female, possibly armed with a revolver. Stop and search anyone you find out there. Usem, you’re with me.”
The room leapt to life as officers grabbed their jackets and clubs and lanterns and rushed out into the street. The one officer loped away to the right and Kella led the others to the left into the third district. They jogged through the darkness and puddles of light around the lampposts, crossing streets and squares and alleys. In ones and twos, the officers dashed away in every direction until only Usem was still with her. Finally, Kella pointed out the small door next to a bakery bearing Amadi’s address. The door was locked.
“Jedira Amadi!” Kella pounded on the door. “This is Detective Massi, from earlier. Jedira! Miss Amadi! Open up! Hello? Hello!”
The detective paused as a distant strain of music caught her ear. Someone was whistling a single clear melody echoing faintly down the street. She turned and saw a figure in a white coat in the middle of the road sauntering toward them. A woman, she guessed by the way she walked, and as the seconds passed she saw that the woman was staring at them. The tune warbling out of her pursed lips was a nursery rhyme, a lullaby that had the oddly disturbing sort of lyrics typical of all lullabies, softly bribing the child to be quiet and go to sleep, or else a monster might appear. Kella hated lullabies. She knocked on the door again, but kept her eyes on the woman in white.
The stranger angled toward them. Her whistling grew louder, rising and falling in time with her footsteps, and her hands remained in her pockets.
Kella beat on the door again. “Miss Amadi?”
The whistling broke off, and the detective saw that the woman was smiling, her gait suddenly breaking into a swinging sort of swagger, a lazy swaying accompanied by a cruel grin. “Thank you, for that. The name. It’s always good to confirm the target’s identity through a third party.”
Kella pulled the gun from her pocket and pointed it at the stranger. “Stop right there. Hands where I can see them. Right now, hands up.” Usem pulled out his club.
The woman, still grinning, slowly raised her empty hands. “Hm. The gray coat says police, but the gun says not-police. So one of them must not be yours, and I’m betting it’s the gun. Where’d you get it? Hm? It doesn’t look like standard army-issue. Did you swipe it from a crime scene?”
“Something like that.”
The woman laughed a husky, condescending laugh. She had an enormous hawk-beak nose set between eyes and lips that seemed sculpted to convey only cruel amusement. A thick mass of limp black hair disappeared beneath the collar of her white coat. “That’s Merin’s revolver, isn’t it? The idiot. Using a gun. I told him not to be taken in by all the flashy toys you people have, to stick to the old ways, but no, he had to go and steal a gun. Stupid, even for a Persian. I always knew he’d die young.”
“He’s not dead.”
“Then you’re as stupid as he is.” The woman’s hands drooped below shoulder level. “Very important, very powerful, people have hired me. These people like things done and done properly. On time, as instructed. Merin understands that, so as long as he’s alive, he’s a danger to you.”
Kella heard soft, uneven footsteps behind the apartment door. “And I suppose as long you’re alive, you’re also a danger to me?”
The woman’s hands fell a bit farther and she resumed walking forward. “Very much so, but only for the next few moments.”
“I said don’t move.” Kella strode away from the door into the street. “No one listens to me, no one ever listens to me.” She pointed the gun at the woman’s feet and pulled the trigger.
The cylinder rotated slightly, then clicked back again.
The stranger smiled. “I told Merin not to carry a gun. I also broke the stupid thing when he wasn’t looking to teach him a little lesson. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to actually be here when it failed. You’re not Merin, but you’ll do. The look on your face is precious.” She dashed forward across the small space between them and collided with the detective with two fists and one steel-toed boot all at once.
Kella staggered back and fell to one knee, stunned and gasping, unable to focus on the pains in her chest, stomach, and leg. The woman moved in a swirl of white cloth and blurry limbs, all flying and snapping into position as though God had decreed that her fists and feet belonged in the detective’s flesh and bones at that precise instant, and nothing in creation could prevent them from striking. Amid the flurry, Kella glimpsed a bloody bandage around the woman’s hand.
Usem brought his club down on the woman from behind, but she leapt back against him, inside the sweep of his arm. The detective gasped and dropped his club, and when the woman stepped away Kella saw the knife buried in Usem’s chest.
Kella heard a woman cry out and looked over in time to see the bakery door open for a brief instant to reveal Jedira’s terrified stare, and then the door slammed shut again. The detective refocused on the woman in white and staggered upright just as Usem collapsed to the street, still gasping, one hand gripping the handle of the knife.
Damn it. I can’t help Usem and protect the house at the same time. As she stared down at him, she saw the detective’s hand fall from the knife and he slumped back to the ground. Damn it, Usem. I’m sorry.
She cleared her throat and tried to focus on the woman in white, only barely able to ignore the fresh bruises all over her chest and arms. “You have a strange accent. I would have said eastern, but you don’t seem to like Persians.” Kella shifted, placing herself between the woman and the door.
“Most Samaritans don’t.” The woman surged forward again, fists flying in tightly controlled jabs too fast to count.
Kella took a dozen blows to the head and stomach before she could even raise her arms to shield herself. She barely heard the faint sigh of a blade slipping free of its sheath, and the detective hurled her body to the ground and rolled away.
“Oh no,” the woman said calmly. She held up a long thin knife. “Look. I just chipped the tip against the wall here. I’ve had this knife a very long time. I liked this knife. And I’m running out of knives as it is.”
Kella stood up, this time with her own fat knife unfolded in her hand, its wide blade bright and shiny in the gas-lit haze of the street. “You talk a lot for a killer.”
“I’ve heard that before.” The Samaritan tossed her thin blade aside and quickly produced another identical one from inside her white coat. “But not everyone hides in the shadows, stalking their prey like Merin does. I often work in broad daylight, in public, with more witnesses than you might believe.”
“Oh, I believe you.” Kella wheezed, her chest aching and her head ringing from the last blitzing. A curious green and purple blot drifted across her vision.
“Thank you, for that.”
“You and Merin work together? Partners?” She blinked, trying to get the blot out of her sight. It looked too much like a rabbit.
“Not precisely, no.” The woman ran a finger along her new knife’s edge. “But we run in the same circles. We’re contracted through the same broker.”
“An assassin’s guild, then?” Kella massaged her chest and arms where she could feel bruises of all sizes forming deep in her skin. “Interesting. Tell me more.” Her head was clearing, but too slowly. I can’t beat her.
The woman laughed. “You think you’re buying her time, don’t you?” She nodded at the closed door through which Jedira had momentarily appeared. “Letting her escape out the back door while you distract me?”
Kella froze, a sharp frost blossoming in her gut. “Yes.”
“Well, that might have worked, but I jammed the back door shut before I came around the front just now, so I’m guessing that, at this moment, she’s down in the basement, pressing up against that door, wondering why it won’t open. Alone, in a dead end. Incredibly convenient for me, really. It’s not the cleverest trick, but it does make the job easier.” The Samaritan spun her knife through the fingers of her uninjured hand, dexterously twirling it back and forth. “Speaking of the job, since Merin didn’t kill you, I suppose I’ll be making a bit extra tonight.”
Kella exhaled slowly, raising her hands to meet the next assault.
The woman assumed a similar fighting stance, then smiled and dashed away toward the baker’s door and kicked it in. The rusty lock popped free of the doorsill and the door swung open. A frightened shriek echoed from within. The Samaritan vanished into the dark opening in a flourish of white coattails.
“Stop!” Kella leapt after her, plunging through the splintered remains of the door and gouging bits of skin from her hands and cheek as she did so. “Don’t touch her! Get back here!” She raced down the narrow hall, spun at the end, and dove down a rickety wooden stair into the cold of the basement where she could hear a lone and terrified voice stammering below. At the bottom, she turned the corner and saw the assassin standing in the center of the room and Jedira Amadi backed up against the cellar door that should have let her up into the alley behind the shop. Jedira’s eyes locked with Kella’s for a moment. Tears streamed down the young woman’s face and a wordless pleading babble tumbled from her pale lips.
“Hey!” Kella lunged at the Samaritan’s back, but the killer whipped around and smashed a small bony fist into Kella’s throat. She stumbled back into the wall, stunned, gasping for air, her brain unable to process the chaotic sensations of pain in her neck.
“I just had a wonderful idea, officer.” The woman spun her long stiletto across her fingers. “What if I kill her and frame you for it? That’s much better than an unexplained body in a basement. There’ll be a scandal in the police department, everyone will lose faith in the government, and there will be fear and chaos in the streets. It’ll be fun.”
“Never…happen,” Kella croaked as she shuffled forward, her eyes darting from the spinning stiletto to the killer’s eyes and back. “Now just listen. No one has to die. I…I’m willing to cut you a deal in exchange for your…testimony against her, against Lady Sade. You’ll have to do time for killing Usem, but we can work something out.” The sheer effort of talking around her throbbing throat was almost unbearable.
The woman shrugged. “Or I could just kill her.”
“No!” Kella dashed forward, only to have a steel-toed boot smash into her belly, slamming her back into the wall and blasting all of the air from her lungs. She fell to all fours, trembling, trying to force herself to inhale and breathe even as she tried to stand back up. Suddenly, she realized that she couldn’t hear Jedira crying anymore.
The detective sat up just as the Samaritan stepped on her wrist and jerked Kella’s broad knife away. A fist drove her head back into the floor and the basement exploded in green and purple lights. In a daze, Kella watched as the woman in white plunged the thick blade into Jedira’s body lying spread-eagled on the steps below the cellar door.
The killer paused. “You know, I’d love to leave your own knife in your arm or leg, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t make much sense to the police when they find you, and I would hate to confuse them.” She plunged the blade up into a thick wooden beam overhead. “This won’t make much sense either, but that will just add to the mystery of your raging bloodlust, won’t it?”
Kella staggered up. She took a moment to stare at the dead woman at the other end of the room. Jedira stared blindly up at the ceiling, her throat slit from ear to ear. She’d still be alive if I hadn’t gone to see Lady Sade tonight. “Do you even know why Lady Sade wanted her dead?”
“I do, actually. Not that she told me, but after a while you pick things up here and there.” The woman smiled as she wiped her stiletto on a rag. “She’s an ambitious woman. You’d think with all she has, she couldn’t possibly want more, but she does. A woman after my own heart. And she’ll probably do a better job than that old cow of a queen you have now, so you should be grateful, actually. Until they hang you, of course.” A white boot swung up and kicked Kella back into the wall. The air left her lungs again and for a moment all she could do was try to stay on her feet as she gasped.
“Stop…you.” Kella’s vision went white for a second but her mind was racing. How? How exactly are you going to stop her, detective? You’ve lost. The girl is dead and you’re barely breathing. Some police officer you turned out to be…
“I doubt that.” The Samaritan slipped her long knife away into her coat. “When they come for you, I suppose you’ll try to say that it was me, and not you who did this. A Samaritan woman dressed in white.” She laughed. “They won’t believe you, of course, but it should add a bit to my mystique. You know, for the newspapers. Perhaps I’ll start doing this on all my jobs. I’ll become a legend in my own time!”
“A real professional wouldn’t want the attention.”
“I never claimed to be a professional. I’m just very, very good at this.” Her hand flew out in a blur and Kella had one instant of pain in her forehead before the world vanished into oblivion.