Chapter Three

[cityofthehand]

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CHAPTER THREE



The house filled up quickly. Guards, prefects, and officials streamed in as news of the murder spread. All the races had people there. Some came even from the Tracts, sent by the Tract Lords themselves. The professor must have been a very important man for his death to merit this attention. Anywhere else in the Palm and the guards would have cited Maira for wasting their time and hauled the body off to the Nobody Graves.

In the chaos and noise, Maira became invisible. No one noticed her until a random Pahali prefect told her to move out of the front room because they wanted to use it for a scrying. She obeyed without a word, nervously removing herself to the kitchen. She sat on a cushion at Decaran’s dinner table, eyeing the pantry. A sorcerer would have healing herbs, or at least aloe leaves. Unwilling to risk asking, she remained silent, staring over what remained on the wood table. Food was scattered, a plate laid shattered on the ground. A tipped over cup had spilled wine and then rolled under the legs of a stool in the corner.

Decaran had not even properly finished his last meal. Then she noticed that there were two plates. Two cups. Someone had shared this last meal with him. His killer, probably. Anyone who could eat with the person they were about to kill wouldn’t hesitate to come after her. She’d seen their face. They probably knew about the device as well.

Yet there was something about the killer that wanted for cold calculation. There had been too much wild, mournful desperation in their demeanor. Perhaps neither the professor nor his murdered had come to the table expecting death.

After a long while, two Asna’isi in full armor entered the kitchen. The one with creamy yellow wings demanded she leave in the stereotypical cold, arrogant Asna’isi way. The other one with gray wings grabbed her arm and pulled her to a room in the back of the house with a table covered in papers and scrolls. The minute she was inside they turned away, as if she had ceased to exist. The door was closed and she was left again to sit and wait until someone told her she could go.

Eventually weariness overcame her. The cotton stuffed, silk sitting cushions around the low table were comfortable enough. A heavy robe was draped over the table. She hesitated a moment, because it was the professor’s. He was dead now, and had given her an impossible tasks with no promise of any payment but certain doom if she failed. She picked it up awkwardly by draping it over the back of her hand and taking it to the cushions. It smelled of incense, ink, and a human body. It was not a bad scent, she thought, as she laid herself down and pulled the it over her.

She fell asleep quickly and woke up someone’s boot nudging her in the back hard enough to hurt. Coming to with a gasp, she forgot about her hands and tried to pull herself up with them. The moment she did, fresh agony washed over her. She winced and pulled them in close to her body as she looked up to see who’d kicked her.

The kicker was a glaring Pahali prefect with solid fire-orange eyes and a blocky, thick body. The prefect’s leathery, bat-like, pale brown wings were spread. This was a sign of dominance among the winged races. The farther out, the more dominant. The fancy clothing and intricately patterned outer robe and the jewelry marked them as high ranking. This was no street patroller, but someone who served directly under their Councilors.

Outside their Tract, councilors spoke for all their race. This was their prefect staring down at her. It might as well have been them. The prefect had a partner, another Pahali, androgynous, with yellow eyes and wings as deep a brown as Maira had ever seen.

The first one glowered at her and walked around the table, gracefully bending at the knees to sit. The other remained by the door.

“I’m Senior Prefect Sanan Wuaro Seesoon. This is my partner, Prefect Qallac Lah Crossing-over-rocks. We’ve come to ask you questions about Professor Decaran’s murder. You’re going to answer them when we ask them. We have the authority to arrest you in the name of the Pahali Councilors and High Chief Cloudkicker as a threat to our Tract if you do not cooperate,” Seesoon said, speaking with intensity that sent a wave of fear over her. Why were the Pahali even interested in a human sorcerer? Surely they were more concerned with keeping up their long standing tension with the Asna’isi.

“I told those other prefects what happened,” she replied.

“Now you’re going to tell us.”

Maira looked out the window. The sky and the position of the moon told her midnight had passed already.

The prefect stopped her before she spoke. “This delivery, do you know who sent it? What was it? What was in it?”

She shrugged. “Just a package. You’d have to go to Haringe to see who sent it. We don’t make them give their names unless they want the delivery returned.”

“Did someone give their name for this one?”

“No. It’s not on my run sheet,” she said and then continued explaining how she’d gotten to the door and heard a scream.

“Do you usually go inside a stranger’s house if you hear screaming?”

“No, but obviously something was wrong.”

Seesoon talked very fast now and very directly. Orange eyes locked on her in a way that made her skin prickle like a heat source was far too close to her skin. “So, why did you care? You’re a courier, it isn’t your problem. How did you know it was a bad scream? People scream for lots of reasons. Perhaps they were doing sex. Why did you come in?”

“I couldn’t just let someone get stabbed and not do anything,” she said. It came as no surprise the prefect was suspicious of any good deed. Life in the Palm could be brutal and brutality as common as paving stones. Plenty of people would let someone die at their feet, but those people had usually been given a lifetime’s worth of reasons not to get involved.

Maira was not one of them, despite everything. Not yet.

And now, it had gotten her into a world of trouble. Maybe those other people were not soulless, just wise.

Seesoon glared, broke a grin that curved orange-tinted lips. “Ah, but how did you know he was being stabbed, you said you just heard a scream.”

“I didn’t say that I knew then. I know it now, but at the door -”

“It could have been something else. You didn’t know, you just went in.”

“I can tell the difference between sex and stabbing!”

“But you didn’t know it was stabbing, you just said so. So how did you know?” the prefect demanded, voice pressing her with each word. She breathed long and hard before answering. They were deliberately trying to rush her into giving away something before she had time to think. This was all a trick, to confuse and unbalance her. They didn’t even do her the courtesy of telling her how to refer to them. It was meant to trick her into disrespecting them, giving them another reason to put her on the defensive.

Luckily, the she didn’t have to lie about most of the attack itself, just what happened after it. If that luck held, Seesoon wouldn’t think to ask anything probing about the time between the killer leaving her running screaming into the streets.

“Why aren’t you answering?” Crossing-over-rocks demanded from the door.

“Because you aren’t giving me time to remember properly, that’s why,” she said, deliberately taking her time with the words. If they wanted to go fast, she’d slow them down as best she could or stop talking. Maira drew another generously long breath. “I didn’t know he was being stabbed, but the way he screamed wasn’t anything I’ve ever heard during sex. I used my best judgement.”

“You saw the murderer when you came in? What did you see? What gender, what species, what race?”

“A human, there weren’t any colorings or wings or anything. Tall, sort of well built but not bulky looking. Medium, maybe. But it wasn’t like they stopped long enough to say ‘oh, my name’s such and such, I take the masculine’. Taller than me. Dark hair, eyes. I told the others this already!”

“Tell us anyway. What kind of a knife was used? Long knife, short one?”

Maira closed her eyes and attempted to remember. The only image in her head was the silvery blade and the blood. The size and shape were beyond what her mind could hold. She’d seen all she needed to at that point - a bloody knife. It wasn’t a sword and it wasn’t so small she didn’t see it. “I don’t know. The length of my hand, I think.”

“Could it have been longer? Was it round, curved, did it have anything on it?”

“Just blood,” she said, pointedly. “Someone was getting stabbed to death right there in front of me, I didn’t take the time to ask the killer about the fucking knife!”

“Careful of your words, human,” Seesoon warned her without heat. She resisted rolling her eyes. She had a lot worse language than that she used on a daily basis. She spoke New Pahalie prety well and knew the words for ‘Child of a Cuntless Pig’ (it was useful when someone’s wings smacked you in the face in the market). She curled her lips in and schooled her temper, coaching herself not to fall for the trick of becoming frustrated by the interruptions. It was important to remember what she had said and to keep saying it consistently over and over. Otherwise they’d be even more convinced she was lying.

It took a long time to do that, but eventually, they came to the end of it. She thought she had passed the tests. Seesoon frowned and looked at Crossing-over-Rocks. They traded looks and then rose to their feet.

“Can I go home now?” she asked.

“No,” was all they said, in unison, before they left.

Moments later, another pair of prefects entered. A buzzing noise came in through the opened door. She leaned forward and saw the people waiting along the walls. Prefects from each of the Councilors were there. The ones coming in were the Tsaqa. The buzzing noise got louder as they approached. Their two sets of fluttering, delicate wings stilled only once the door was closed. The first prefect was delicately built, small, and fragile looking with dark sea green braids and solid sea-foam green eyes that made for a disconcerting stare. The other was taller and more substantial, pale as beach sand, with blue hair and eyes that might have passed for human if not for the irises being so solid and intense.

Like the Pahali, they tried to trick her. They too, failed to introduce themselves and immediately started picking at every word she said. They plucked at each word and phrase, requiring her to explain until she wasn’t sure what they were talking about anymore. They spoke in High Domainish, making it harder to understand them. It was an obviously calculated move. Most human Palm residents natively spoke Low Domainish or their own ethnic language. The rich and the other races spoke High Domainish. She repeated herself again and again until they got bored and literally buzzed off.

Next came the Dhatan prefects. If the Pahali and Tsaqa were mentally frustrating, the Dhatan didn’t bother with mind games at all. They came in quickly, slammed the door and frowned menacingly. One sat next to her, getting too close for comfort. When she was slow to answer a question, that one slammed a hand over Maira’s. She screamed and tried to pull away, but the weight and strength of the prefect made that impossible. She begged the Dhatan prefect to stop and the pressure got worse, the prefect pressed harder. Pain zipped up Maira’s arm and back down again, she feared her hand would be crushed beyond repair. The other one was shouting at her, but she couldn’t pay attention through the agony.

“I’m just a messenger, I don’t know anything!” she screamed. The hand finally lifted, but she was not even given the space to breathe before the prefect grabbed the back of her neck and bent her over, slamming her head against the table so hard her ear started ringing.

She gasped for breath, staying frozen and stiff on instinct, breathing between her teeth in huffs. It wasn’t the first time she’d been hit, slammed down, or beaten. Maira knew how this went. If you couldn’t win and the person hurting you was bigger, you let them assert their power until they were satisfied. You took your beating, let yourself become as limp as an old rag and protected your head and chest. Usually, if they saw that they got the submission they wanted and you gave up your food or blanket, they’d stop once you were adequately bruised. The less you angered them, the better. You complied, showed respect, and stopped crying if they yelled at you to stop crying.

The Dhatan didn’t seem to care that she was sobbing out her answers. The grip on the back of her neck was so strong that it choked her from behind, pulling the skin of her throat too tight.

“What did Professor Decaran say to you? He must have said something!” the Dhatan prefect with the hand on Maira’s neck yelled, loudly and so close to her ear that it hurt.

“Nothing, I swear!” she cried. “He just died, that’s all, he just died.”

The second prefect shouted, “We do not believe you!” and grabbed her wrists, yanking her forward over the table so that she was bent over it. The wound in her side opened up again, as fiercely painful as being stabbed all over again. She squealed and squirmed, alarmed at the vulnerability of her backside exposed in the air like that. She drew in a hiss of breath and shut her eyes.

Leather squeaked. Maira opened her eyes, praying it wasn’t a belt being loosened. It wasn’t. Instead, one of the Dhatan had taken out a leather rope with a heavy, solid ball the size of a fist on the end of it. After twirling it in the air, the prefect brought it down right beside Maira’s face. The wood cracked, sharp splinters angling up out of the dent left in the table. She stared in wide eyed.

“Please! The professor said nothing, nothing at all! I swear!” she cried, sobbing even harder as the Dhatan pushed her down even harder. She clenched her entire body tight, preparing for the first impact. She kept her eyes locked on the one twirling the rope, trying to estimate when the blow would come. The door opened slightly and through the crack, other prefects - two Asna’isi prefect and one of the Tsaqa who’d finished with her - watched. An Asna’isi prefect with gray wings smirked openly, locking gazes with her as she sobbed.

“We do not believe you,” the one holding her wrists repeated. She braced herself with a helpless scream. The ball twirled, wooshing in the air over her head. It would break her spine, surely, with Dhatan strength - unequalled in all the races - behind it.

“That’s enough!” someone shouted into the room. The wooshing stopped. Maira, sobbing uncontrollably, opened her eyes. She couldn’t see who had spoken. “The rest of us have to talk to her.”

“This is true,” said the Asna’isi who had smiled. “It is our turn, Prefect Sauride.”

“Very well, Prefect Hazewind.”

In an instant, she was released and she didn’t waste the opening. Scrambling, she retreated to the wall between two bookshelves. She still cried, wiping her face furiously on her arms to keep her vision clear. Her breath rattled and wheezed out of her throat. She watched every little move the Dhatan made as they left her to the Asna’isi.

The Asna’isi said nothing when coming in. They carried very small knives on their belts and were dressed in rich, pale blue and white robes. Their wings were folded out, making them look larger than they were. They were not the same ones who stuck her in this room, she knew that much by the colors of the wings. One of them cast a cold, solid blue eye down at the blood on the table, her blood, and the damage done there. An eyebrow was raised as if to say ‘well, that’s one way of doing it’. Maira went on weeping, pressed against the shelf, bent over her bleeding side.

“Close the door,” the gray-winged prefect said to the other. Maira’s eyes went wide.

“I’ve told everyone the truth,” she begged. “Can I go home?”

“No,” Hazewind replied, in a very chilly voice. “Now you will repeat all that you have told the others, and you will answer all questions we ask.”

Pain and fear, not bravado, lead her yell, “I want to go home!”

The blue winged Asna’isi stepped forward, staring down at her with a smirk. She fell quiet and trembled. “You are not a very intelligent creature, so I will endeavor to explain this in terms you understand. The Dhatan lack for sophistication and refinement in their methods of gathering information. Be assured, we do not want for precision.”

The Asna’isi drew a stiletto blade and crouched down, wings unfurled to full width. Suddenly, she could focus on nothing else but those wings and the feeling of being descended upon by a bird of pray. Hazewind pulled her up by the collar of her shirt and dragged her to the table, pushing her face first over it. The other prefect took over holding her down while Hazewind walked away.

It did not matter that this prefect was not Dhatan. Asna’isi strength still trumped human anyday. Epecially hers at that moment. “I told the truth, I swear. There’s nothing more to tell,” she begged.

“No,” the other prefect replied, uncaring. Behind her, Hazewind pressed a blade to her spine, in the middle, just enough to hurt and let her know it was there.
“You are a courier.”

“Yes. Yes, prefect, I am. I said that!”

“You must run to make your living. Do you know that if I put this blade into your spine, just here,” Hazewind said and pressed hard. It hurt. The skin threatened to break under the sharp pressure. She gritted her teeth to bear it. “Just a few inches in, you would never run again. Do you know what it is like to be lamed this way? Your legs wither in front of you, shriveling like dried fruit. It is not fatal unless it becomes infected. Did you know that an infection of the spine is one of the most painful sort one can contract?”

“Have you cleaned your blade lately, Hazewind?” the other prefect asked, brightly and conversationally.

“I believe I have been negligent in this,” Hazewind replied. The smile they shared was more terrifying than the angry Dhatan frowns. Anger was comprehensible. Maira understood how to contend with brute force. This kind of removed, emotionless malice she could not fathom, bargain, or reckon with. They would do as they promised. Perhaps even if she complied.

Some said Asna’isi felt no emotions at all, or had them supressed by magic. Maira trembled as the thought that the two holding her would not have any way to comprehend why they shouldn’t hurt her and discard her, why she was anything more than an animal. She felt like an animal then, a trapped and frantic one with all reason and dignity stripped away.

They asked her questions, cool as they please. She wailed back her answers and flinched at the slightest move Hazewind made with the blade. Sometimes the prefect pressed a little harder or leaned the point one way or another to push her into a fresh wave of panic. Finally, the prefect stood, gave a look to the other and they walked out without a word.

“Does this mean I can go?” she asked.

Then the door opened and two more prefects entered. These were Rok. One was half-Pahali, half-Human with an elegant, clever look, and long black and orange hair in braid down their back. Flame colored freckles matched flame colored eyes, all typically Pahali. This one had no wings, thus they had to be a Rok. The other was half-Dhatan, taller, with a sort of square face and tall, blocky build, a flat muscular chest and short cropped hair, wearing clothes that were typical of human women, a skirt and sharp toed boots and a frilled, lacy shirt under a figure-fitting coat.

The half-Dhatan Rok carried her messenger bag. The deliveries had all been opened and stuffed back in. Maira collapsed forward, balled up and crying.

“Maira?” a soft voice said. She looked up. The half-Pahali prefect was crouched near her, but not too close. “Are you all right?”

Maira shook her head, clusmily getting up to her knees. “Please. Please let me go home.”

“Soon, I promise. My name is Captain Enaqi Yena Lookinghard. This is my partner, Lieutenant Kei-zi Tutenga. You can call me she or Yena, I take the feminine. He takes the masculine, you can call him Kei-Zi. Or ‘hey you’, he answers to either,” she said. The gentle joke provoked an involuntary smile even as she sniffled.

She narrowed her eyes. They weren’t prefects. The necklaces around their necks were red stone carved in the shape of a hand. They were worse than prefects. They were Red Hand, secret police of the council. The Red Hand outranked everyone. They could do whatever they liked. No one questioned them or even fully knew what they did. The Red Hand answered only to the five highest Councilors, no one else. They alone had the power to intrude upon other races’ Tracts if so ordered.

It was an odd place for two Rok to end up as high ranking officers. Maybe they were extra talented at torturing people.

Yena must have sensed her looking at the necklaces. “That’s right. We work for the Red Hand.”

The confirmation made her frantic. “I told them everything, I swear. There’s nothing else, there’s nothing!” she sputtered.

Yena put her hands palm down in the air, as if to show harmlessness. “Hey, it’s all right. It’s all right. We believe you. I’m sorry hey did this to you, it was wrong. I will have a word with my superiors about them,” she said, like she was taking some kind of oath. Maira nodded. It was obviously a ploy, playing nice after the others had been brutal, but that didn’t stop Maira wanting to latch on to the first kind person she’d met all night.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t bring any bandages. I didn’t realize you were hurt so badly. You were very brave to fight the attacker off.”

“I don’t know who they were, I never saw them before.”

“I know. I only want to ask you a few more things, and then you will be free to go home.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You have my word as an officer of the Red Hand. This is the last of it.”

Maira nodded. Kei-zi came towards her and offered her a courtesy bow. She returned it by dipping her head as much as she could. “Did you see anyone else on this street or near it, love? Maybe someone else walking around, another messenger, nightwatcher, anyone?”

She thought about it. None of the others had asked that, so she didn’t have an answer rehearsed to the point of being automatic. She shook her head and whispered back, “No. No one.”

“That’s good. Thank you,” Yena said. “When you left Professor Decaran’s body to get help, did you see anyone then?”

“Just the two guards.”

“I know you’ve been asked about what Professor Decaran said, but what about the one who stabbed you? Did they say anything to you?”

She thought about it, not sure whether it would be safe to tell Yena about him apologizing. She looked into the woman’s eyes. There was either real compassion or a flawless imitation of it there. “I didn’t tell the others, I didn’t think it mattered. They just said sorry.”

“What?” Kei-Zi asked, stepping a little closer, but out of curiosity. His face was scrunched with confusion.

“When they stabbed me, it was more by accident than anything, because we were fighting for the knife. They said sorry. Something was weird about them, they seemed…scared. When I tried to fight them again, they did magic and ran away.”

Yena nodded, then looked to Kei-Zi. This obviously had been very useful information, though she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t care, either. She just wanted to get as far from this house as possible.

“Is there anything else that you think might be helpful? We understand if you didn’t tell the prefects anything. I don’t blame you. The way they treated you is inexcusable.”

Maira shrugged slightly, then shook her head. She dared to say, “I just want to go home.”

“All right, you’ve done very well, Maira. Thank you. I know this has been difficult, but you’ve been really brave and we’re grateful for that. Kei-Zi and I will see you out. Can you get home on your own?”

She nodded quickly. She could fly like a bird with it’s tailfeathers on fire if it meant getting away from this place.

Yena stood and then stooped down, gently taking Maira’s arm to help her up. Kei-zi gave a soft, unhappy smile, like an apology. He approached and held the bag for her. The strap had been tied together so it would hold. She nodded and let him gently it over her body, on the opposite side of her wound.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

They walked on either side of her, throwing glares at everyone around them as they left the room and took her through the house. Conversation stopped and all those gathered stared at her as if she were on display. She gathered herself with slow breathing and forced herself not to react as she stepped over the bloody stop wher the professor had died.

Outside, morning was broken though the sun was not quite up. The sky was lightening into blue. Between the buildings to the east, the first signs of golden rays reached out. Maira breathed deeply. She could go home. She had lived.

“Maira,” Yena said, softly. “If you want to press a claim against the prefects, Kei-zi and I will stand as witnesses for you. Our word will mean a lot.”

She half smiled, half frowned. “I’m sure the Council will fire them all immediately,” she joked, sadly. Even if she did complain, at most, it would be written down and put in the records. Nothing would happen. These were prefects, and she was a human woman.

Yena seemed to understand as well and didn’t press her further on the issue.

“Be safe. Have your hands looked at as soon as you can. I’m going to give you something, all right?” she asked and reached into her jacket pocket. She pulled out bright orange square of paper with black characters on it that gave her name, her office, and her home address. “You can find me in these places. If you remember something or something happens, come to me and tell me. I promise, you won’t get in any trouble. And if your boss is angry with you, show this and say what happened. I will see that they understand.”

Yena put the paper in Maira’s bag for her and gently closed the flap over it. “Be safe.”

“Thank you,” she replied and bowed to them as far as her woun would let them, to show gratitude and respect. They bowed back and as they rose, Maira’s eyes met with Yena’s slanted, fiery-colored ones. She had not realized that Yena was so devastatingly beautiful until then.