Ilona Andrews - On the Edge

Rob’s mouth hung open. He turned and saw Declan, looming in his path. Rob went white as a sheet.

Rose resorted to the last weapon in her arsenal. “Declan, please don’t hurt him.”

Declan leaned an inch toward Rob. His voice was a low snarl. “Run.”

Rob dashed down the path. He was never a good runner, but he cleared the stretch to the road at record speed.

“You shouldn’t have stopped me.” Declan stared after him. He looked like he was about to change his mind. No matter how fast Rob ran, Declan would catch him.

“I could’ve hurt Rob. First, I could’ve shot him.” She reached into her tote and showed him her gun. “Second, I could’ve fried him with my flash. I didn’t hurt him. I could’ve, but I didn’t.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why? Do you have feelings for him?”

“No! At least not the kind of feelings you’re asking about.”

“Then why?”

“It’s kind of complicated. I’ll explain it if you promise not to go off hunting Rob.”

He mulled it over. “Very well.” His tone made it plain that he was doing her a favor.

Rose did her best to disguise letting out a breath and sat in the grass on her side of the ward line. He sat cross-legged and looked at her. He was still wearing the jeans and the sweatshirt. The jeans hid most of his boots, and from his feet up to his neck, he should’ve looked like a man from the Broken. Should’ve but didn’t. He held himself like a man who never rode in a crowded bus. His shoulders were too wide, his posture too forceful, and if he were to step into one of the busy malls of the Broken, people would probably trip over themselves to give him his space.

His hair added to the effect, but his eyes and his face were worst of all. Even when he was calm, like now, his eyes made you catch your breath. They were the eyes of a noble from the Weird, who expected to be obeyed and would enforce his orders without a moment’s hesitation. Instead of looking like a native of the Broken, Declan ended up looking like a blueblood who had dressed up in otherworldly garb for Halloween.

And she had to explain the complex rules of the Edge to him. How would she ever find the words?

“In the Broken, when a man assaults a woman, the police are called,” she said. “They review the evidence, and if there is enough of it, the man is taken into custody, charged with a crime, tried, and if found guilty, put away into a prison. What happens in the Weird?”

“In Adrianglia, a similar process,” Declan said. “Sheriffs examine the evidence and take the guilty party into custody. If they fail to apprehend him, they call the headhunters, and if they fail, they call the Marshal. Someone like me.”

She would definitely prefer the headhunters. It sounded ominous, but not as bad as he. “It’s your job to apprehend criminals?”

“Only some. You have to do something remarkable to gain my attention. Please continue.”

“Do you know what happens in the Edge?”

“I expect you’ll enlighten me,” he said.

“Nothing.” She checked his face to see if it sank in, but it might have been a mask for all the good it did her. “In the Edge, there are no police, no marshals, sheriffs, or any kind of protection. There is no impartial third party. Instead, the entire community of East Laporte sits there and watches to see what will happen. Because there are so few of us, everyone knows everybody else and everything we do has consequences.”

She took a deep breath. “If a woman gets assaulted, it’s between her family and the family of her attacker. They might come to an agreement of some sort on restitution or punishment. Or they might spend the next few decades lying in wait with their guns trying to splatter each others’ brains all over the local greenery. Nobody likes a feud. Feuds are messy: many families are related, and when a feud flares, all of East Laporte can go up in flames. Innocent people get hurt, and the trade suffers. A lot of us make a good chunk of our money from trading with the caravans from the Weird and then selling what we bartered in the Broken. If the caravans know there’s a feud, they’ll skip the town and visit someone else.”

He nodded.

“We try not to feud. We try to be reasonable. That means that punishment has to fit the crime. Let’s say a man tried to kidnap me. I would be within my rights to kill him, and I’ve done it before.”

Declan gave her a probing look. “You’ve killed a person?”

“Twice. But only in self-defense. My father and grandfather did some killing to protect me, too. Nobody can get mad about that. Sure, relatives of people whom we killed hate us and will take pains to ruin my life if they get a chance, but public opinion is on my side. I was attacked, and anybody in my place would defend themselves. That’s reasonable, right?”

“For the sake of argument, I suppose so.”

“Now let’s take Brad. I was only a kid. I thought I loved him. I came to him in the most difficult time of my life, hoping that he would be my shelter. My rock in the storm. And he tried to knock me out with a club and sell me to Rob’s dad. I hate him. I hate him so much that when he’s near, my hands curl into fists and I don’t even know it. When you beat him bloody today, it was glorious.”

The hard line of his mouth relaxed slightly. “Glorious?” he said.

She nodded. “I’ll cherish the memory of him rolling around in his own puke for the rest of my life. But it cost me my job.”

“I’ve heard,” he said. “It wasn’t my intent to make you lose your employment.”

Rose waved her hand. “No need to be so modest. You planned it all out brilliantly—getting me fired, cutting off my only source of income, all the while positioning yourself as my hero and savior.”

Declan’s eyebrows came together. “That is brilliant. I wish I would’ve thought of it. Alas, I was simply being charitable to a fellow human being. Brad needed to talk. All I could do was lend him a willing ear.”

Declan the Good Samaritan. She grinned. “You also generously lent him your fist.”

“Well, you didn’t expect me to slap him with an open hand. One simply doesn’t.” Declan smiled back. It was a genuine smile, and it transformed his face. Instead of a blueblood, in the space of a moment he became a man, a living breathing man, irresistibly handsome, and funny, and someone she wished she knew. The effect was shocking.

Rose looked at her feet, trying to hide her eyes before he saw her reaction. Which was the real Declan? That was the question.

“Back to Brad,” she said. “When he hit me with a bat, I flashed at him. It was a low flash, and it didn’t kill him, but it hurt him very badly. I still hear him screaming in my sleep. As far as the Edge is concerned, that particular crime has been punished. Now you’ve opened a new can of worms.”

“But it was a glorious can,” he reminded her.

She laughed in spite of herself and looked up at him. “Quite. Brad got his ass handed to him, and the Simoen family retaliated by making my job disappear. I don’t blame you for it. Nobody could’ve predicted that my job would evaporate. But at the end of the day, I still have no way to feed my family.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“It’s like a complex mathematical equation,” Declan said. “The balance must always remain at zero.”

“It doesn’t always. People get away with all sorts of things. But we do like to balance the books. People will give you a chance to settle things yourself, but if you go killing and maiming people left and right, pretty soon the entire town will pool its resources and take you down no matter how powerful you are. Let’s go back to Rob. He’s a worm, and propositioning me was a low thing to do. It was humiliating. I humiliated him in return. We’re even, and what’s best is Rob thinks that nobody knows about this but the three of us. He’ll remember it and you, and he’ll try to kick me if he gets an opportunity, but it’s not like he was beaten in public and became the laughingstock of the Edge. If you go after him and pummel him into pulp, he’ll have to retaliate. The Simoen family is large and wealthy. My family is very small. I shouldn’t probably be telling you this, but all I have are my brothers and my grandmother.”