“You did good back there.”
Fio said it without looking at him.
Just forward, walking, the station behind them and the carriage ahead.
Junei glanced at him.
A small smile.
“Thank you, sir.”
They climbed in.
San first, Fio after, Junei last.
The carriage moved.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Then San said “You’re reckless.”
Junei looked at him.
Said nothing.
San looked out the window.
“Although.” A pause.
“Sometimes reckless is what the situation needs.”
Junei looked at his hands.
“Is that your way of saying well done?”
“No,” San said.
“It’s my way of saying don’t do it again.”
Junei almost smiled.
Didn’t quite.
From the window Fio watched the city move past.
The streets were full festival season pushing everything outward, stalls spilling past their usual boundaries, the smell of fried sweets and marigold and hot oil coming through the window in layers.
A farmer’s cart moved below them stacked high with new crop, sacks tied with orange cord.
A woman was hanging bright red fabric from a second floor window.
Two children sprinted through the crowd with the absolute confidence of people who knew exactly where the sweets were and were not wasting time.
San smiled at something outside.
“Harvest came in well this year.
Festival’s going to be something.”
“Rice was better than the last three years,” Junei said.
“Someone I know farms two plots outside the eastern border.
Said it was the best yield since his father’s time.” He shifted in his seat.
Looked out his window at the passing rooftops.
“First time he sounded happy in a while.”
Nobody said anything for a moment.
“I hope everything goes right,” Junei said.
Quieter.
Not really to anyone.
Fio kept his eyes on the sky.
Blue.
Uncomplicated.
The kind of afternoon that made it hard to think about what was being planned underneath it.
“I hope so too,” he said.
The carriage slowed.
They looked at each other.
Then climbed down.
Two floors.
Old plaster, the color that happens when white stops trying.
The upper windows shuttered.
A wooden door sitting slightly crooked in its frame the kind of crooked that takes years.
The lane around it was ordinary.
A cat on a wall watching them without interest.
Someone’s washing on a line overhead.
A boy sitting on a step eating something, not looking up.
Fio went first.
San behind him.
Junei last.
Fio put his hand on the door.
It opened.
Inside one large room, better than the outside suggested.
Proper furniture.
Glass in the windows.
A table with chairs that matched.
The kind of interior that had been deliberately kept up, deliberately unremarkable from the street.
Fio went left toward the back room.
San moved to the far side.
Junei went right toward the kitchen.
The search was quiet.
Methodical.
The sounds of drawers opening, papers shifting, the soft knock of someone checking behind things.
Junei found it first a box on the low shelf by the kitchen window.
Plain wood, no lock.
He opened it.
Inside: three daggers.
Two knives, different lengths.
Ammunition loose in cloth wrapping.
He looked at it for a moment.
Ran his thumb along the cloth without touching the blades.
“Sir.”
Fio and San crossed to him.
San was already carrying papers folded, official looking, pulled from a drawer left almost fully closed.
He set them on the table.
Fio looked past them and saw the letter.
Smaller than the rest.
The ink red rather than black.
Sitting at the edge like it had been placed there in a hurry and not moved since.
He picked it up.
Read it once.
Then again.
Thanks, sir Voss.
Your work was done safely.
None of Nirakh or other suspects are on me, neither on your work.
— 12 Feb 1902. The source of this chapter is g.com.
The room was very quiet.
“Voss,” San said.
Junei looked between them.
“Who is Voss?”
“Naren Voss.” Fio folded the letter carefully.
Put it in his jacket.
“Banking.
Agriculture.
Half the city runs on his name one way or another.
The kind of man whose picture appears next to words like pillar and foundation in the papers.” He paused.
“Nobody questions him.”
San said nothing.
His face did something controlled.
They went back to searching.
The back room gave more books with pages marked at the edges, two firearms wrapped in cloth, a bundle of fabric stained dark in a pattern that wasn’t any kind of dye.
A coat hanging behind the door with a Nirakh insignia on the inside lining, hidden, the kind of thing you’d only find if you were already looking.
Junei held the coat up.
Looked at the insignia.
Put it back without saying anything.
Fio stopped at the far shelf.
His hand was on a drawer.
He had stopped moving.
Not looking at the drawer looking slightly past it.
Junei looked at him.
“What—”
“Weapon.” Quiet.
“Ready yours.”
He turned.
The man stood at the bottom of the staircase.
Black clothes.
Still.
A long dagger in his right hand, held the way people hold things they are comfortable with.
He looked at Fio first.
Then San.
Then Junei.
Taking his time.
“Dogs of Arvan,” he said.
Flat.
“As expected.”
“Thuggee?” Junei said.
The man’s eyes moved to him.
Something close to amusement.
“Young officer.
My price just went up.”
He stepped forward smooth, unhurried and in one movement had the dagger at San’s throat.
Close enough that the skin moved.
A thin line of red.
San went absolutely still.
“Let him go.” Fio’s weapon was up.
His voice didn’t change register.
“Step back and let him go.”
The man smiled.
“A dog that lost its bite.
Still barking.”
“Junei.” Fio kept his eyes on the man.
“Don’t fire.”
The man’s eyes moved to Junei at that the flicker of someone recalculating.
Why would he say—
Fio picked up the jar from the shelf beside him and threw it hard past the man’s head.
It hit the wall behind and shattered.
The man flinched one second, just one and Fio grabbed San and pulled.
The man came forward fast.
No space for distance now, just two people in a small room.
He came straight at Fio and Fio met him and they hit the table and went sideways off it.
Junei moved in.
The man’s elbow came back hard Junei got his weapon up and blocked most of it but the force still threw him into the wall.
He steadied.
Came back.
Fio fired.
The man moved not enough, the shot clipped his side.
He fired back and Fio took San down behind the overturned table and the wall took the bullet.
The man turned.
Looked at San on the floor.
Made his calculation.
He moved toward him.
Fio got there first.
The dagger went through the outside of his hand not deep, clean straight through.
The same motion caught San’s neck in passing.
Shallow.
A long line.
San grabbed Fio’s arm.
His voice completely level.
“Don’t stop.
Fire.”
Junei fired.
The shot took the man in the leg.
He went back not down, back, two steps toward the staircase.
He looked at his leg.
Then at Junei.
Then at the stairs.
He went up.
The rooftop was open sky that same blue Fio had watched from the carriage window, clean and wide and indifferent.
The man stood at the far edge.
Not running.
Not looking behind him.
Just standing there, weight forward slightly, watching them come.
“You carry their orders,” he said.
“You protect their names.
You call it duty and it makes you sleep.” He looked at Fio.
Then at Junei.
Steady.
“You are tools.
You were always tools.
The men above you know it.
You are the last ones to.”
“You kill innocent people,” Fio said.
“Without record.
Without hesitation.”
“We do what we do for survival.” The man looked out over the rooftops.
The city below going about its afternoon, completely unaware.
“You would not understand what it is to lose everything.
To have nothing left.
Nothing but the one thing you are still willing to do.” He looked back at them.
Something settled in his face.
Not peace exactly.
Resolution.
“We did not choose this path.”
“Long live Ashvara,” he said.
And stepped off the edge.
The bomb went first below them, the ground floor catching all at once.
Then fire, climbing fast.
The old wood in the walls taking it like it had been waiting.
Junei was already moving.
“The stairs—”
“San,” Fio said.
He went back.
The smoke in the stairwell was thick and low.
Fio went through it without slowing.
San was on the floor where they’d left him.
On his side.
Still.
Fio crossed to him.
Put his hand on him.
San’s eyes were open.
Looking up at something above Fio’s head looking at nothing, looking past everything, the way eyes look when they have stopped choosing.
“Sir.” Fio’s voice came out quieter than he intended.
“We need to move.”
He got his arms under him.
Lifted.
Got him toward the door.
Junei appeared in the frame took San’s other side without being asked, without saying anything.
They came out into the lane.
The men from the nearby buildings were already there with water.
Buckets passing hand to hand.
The fire high on the second floor but not spreading yet.
The lane full of noise and smoke and people moving with the practiced speed of a quarter that had learned not to wait.
Most of them moved around Fio and Junei.
Around San.
Junei looked at him.
His face did something that had no name for it.
Fio set San down.
Carefully.
On his back, properly, the way you set someone down when it’s the last careful thing you can do for them.
San’s eyes were still open.
Still looking at that thing above.
Fio stood.
Junei was already standing straight.
His weapon at his side.
His jaw set.
They raised their hands together.
The salute clean, held while the fire moved behind them and someone brought a white cloth and laid it over San’s face and the afternoon went red and grey with dust and smoke.
The festival sky watched from above.
Still blue.
Still entirely itself.
Fio lowered his hand.
He looked at his cut hand.
The blood had run down to his wrist and dried there.
He looked at it for a moment like it belonged to someone else.
Then he looked at Junei.
“Let’s go back to the station.”
Junei nodded once.
“We lost a friend.”
They walked out of the lane into the main road.
The city noise came back immediately full and ordinary and completely unchanged.
Carts and voices and the smell of festival food and somewhere nearby someone was laughing at something.
Junei walked with his eyes forward.
His hands were in fists at his sides.
Not from anger.
Fio noticed.
Said nothing.
They kept walking.