Ilona Andrews - Fate's Edge

Kaldar reeled back a little. She could almost feel gears turning behind that pretty face.

“I’ve met your brother. If anyone should be cast off, it should be him.”

“That’s not how it works in our family. He is the heir, the pride and joy, who carries on the family name. I’m his younger sister.” And she wasn’t bitter about it. Not at all. “Anyway, my life is none of your business. Did you have any more questions about the heist? If not, you should go now. My patience is all worn down.”

The moment he was out the door, she’d grab Ling and bail.

“I need to find out who bought the box.”

“No clue.”

“Where can I find your father?”

“No clue, either.”

“Audrey, I really need your help.” Kaldar smiled at her. Now there was a work of art. If she were just a girl and he were just a man, and they met at a party, that smile would’ve guaranteed him a date. The man was hot. There was no doubt. But right now, all it would get him was a solid punch in those even teeth.

Audrey laughed. “Aren’t you sweet? Tell me, do girls usually throw their panties at you when you do that?”

He grinned wider, and she glimpsed the funny evil spark in his eyes. “Do men throw money when you do your little Southern belle?”

Pot calling the kettle black. “Men enjoy my ‘sweet tea’ Southern. Nobody here is enjoying that stupid grin on your ugly mug.”

“Ugly.”

“Hideous.”

The kids snickered.

“You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.” The Mirror agent sat straighter. “Do you know what you’ve stolen?”

“It wasn’t my job, and I wasn’t paid to know.” She waited for a jab. No good thief ever did a heist without knowing every detail, especially what and why. “We were paid to obtain the box and deliver it to the buyer.”

He didn’t say anything.

“The box had four seals on it, anyway,” she said.

“Did you look in the box, Audrey?”

“I said it had four seals on it.”

He just waited. Oh, for Christ’s sake. “Of course I looked in the box.”

He leaned to his gadget, whispered something, and nodded. “Did it look something like this?”

A pair of ghostly metal bracelets appeared above the table. At first glance they looked silver, but where silver leaned toward a gray shade, this metal blushed with warm tones of peach and pale pink. The wider part of each bracelet bent and flowed, thin and wide, like a ribbon. A smooth border tipped the edges, which otherwise would’ve been too sharp. At the other end, tiny pebbles of metal encrusted the narrow edge of each bracelet, seeded so close together, sometimes on top of each other, almost like barnacles on the bottom of the ship. The two bracelets together were an elegant piece of jewelry, unique and beautiful. She would wear them in an instant, with a flowing gown of pure white. But it was just jewelry. A hunk of metal, yet the Hand, the Mirror, and the Claws were after it, and now, curiosity was killing her. She had to know why.

“Yes, that’s what we stole,” Audrey said. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

“It’s a portable Gorleanean diffuser,” Kaldar said.

“What is that?”

The blond boy, George, stirred. The kids had been so quiet, she had almost forgotten he and his brother were there at all. “A Gorleanean diffuser functions like a magic battery,” the boy said. “You can charge it with a blast of magic, like flash, for example. It holds the magic for a while, but it starts leaking the charge into the environment right away. Also, they’re huge. The size of a house.”

“Not anymore.” Kaldar nodded at the bracelets. “These hold only a very small amount of magic.”

“What’s the purpose of having one?” George leaned closer and peered at the bracelets. “Some sort of last resort in battle, when you overflash? To keep from dying?”

Kaldar drew his hand over his face. “You are too bright for your own good. That was the original plan, yes.”

Audrey stared at the bracelets. She’d heard about flashing so much magic that your body gave out. But she had always thought that you simply passed out. “I never heard of people dying from flashing out.”

“Our sister almost did,” Jack said.

“You said it was the original plan?” George asked. “What is it used for now?”

“It holds just enough magic to help an augmented being cross through the boundary,” Kaldar said.

The room was suddenly quiet. Audrey caught her breath. The Edge had two boundaries: the first with the Weird and the second with the Broken. The boundaries barred the passage between the worlds. If you didn’t have enough magic, you couldn’t cross from the Broken into the Edge without help. If you had too much magic, the crossing from the Weird into the Edge would leave you convulsing in pain. The threshold to leave the Edge and enter an opposing world was even higher. Most magic heavyweights couldn’t make it into the Broken. The crossing killed them. And if people stayed too long out of their own world, the way back disappeared forever. The Edgers who moved to the Broken permanently lost their magic after a while. Some of them couldn’t even see the Edge anymore.

George cleared his throat. “So does this mean that someone with strong magic, like a Hand agent, can cross into the Broken with these?”

“That’s exactly what it means,” Kaldar said.

Audrey put her fist against her mouth, thinking. No wonder the Hand wanted them. If they manufactured enough of these, they could send their goons into the Edge and into the Broken. The boundary had always shielded the Edgers from harm. Their magic was weaker than that of people in the Weird. If any magic-wielding creature could just pop back and forth, it was all over. Her imagination served up the Hand’s agents trotting across the boundary, all spikes and tentacles and poisoned needles on twisted human bodies . . . Jesus Christ.

She sat down. She didn’t know too much about the Hand or the Mirror and their politics, but she knew that both the Dukedom of Louisiana and Adrianglia were large and strong, while the Edge was tiny and defenseless.

“If the Hand obtains this . . .” Kaldar started.

She held up her hand. “Now you listen to me. This isn’t my problem. I didn’t make the thing, I didn’t know what it was when I stole it, and I don’t give a damn what the hell it does now. If you think I’ll fall over myself in a rush to fight the Hand for it, you’re crazy. Do you know what they’re capable of?”

All mirth had vanished from Kaldar’s face. Only grim determination remained. “The Hand took two-thirds of my family from me. I watched people I loved being slaughtered. I will do everything in my power to make the Hand pay. And if it means I have to knock you down and walk over you to get to them, I will.”

He wasn’t kidding. A slight touch of insanity flared in his eyes. Audrey felt a pang of the familiar fear.

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” she told him.

“I won’t. The Hand will keep looking for the diffusers until they find them. I will find them first, and I need you to help me. If you do it willingly, the terms will be better for everyone.”

“And if not, what? You will make me?”

“If I have to.”

Fear squirmed through her. She clamped it down. “So there is no real difference between the Mirror and the Hand, is there?”

Kaldar held her gaze. “There is a woman in Adrianglia. Her name is Lady Nancy Virai. She isn’t the most patient woman in the world, and some find her methods frightening. If I were to drag your ass over to her, she would extract the information from you. But if you told her everything you knew, you would likely walk away on your own two legs. If I delivered you to the Hand, they would get the same information out of you as well. Then they would rape you and torture you for the fun of it. If you were lucky, they would kill you afterward. But most likely they would wring every drop of pain from you and simply wait for you to die. Most of them aren’t human anymore. They drink agony like fine wine. Run if you want—the Hand will find you. Sooner or later, your brother or your father will sell you out again, they will catch your scent, and you’ll wake up with monsters standing over you. You have contacts in the Edge. Ask any of them if I’m lying.”