Thirteen Mercies, Three Kills Read online

  “Angela Richards” was written in beautiful longhand at the very foot of the frame, on a golden plaque. Her full lips were curved into a tiny smile and her emerald eyes were beautiful and warm. She loved wearing crimson. I tugged on my lip piercing, the familiar pull on the lower lip bringing some comfort. If the toad senator was telling the truth, even that portrait belonged to him now.

  After a while Nana cleared her throat. “Mighty fine day we had, Miss.”

  I tore my gaze away from the portrait and focused on my governess, former tutor, and only family. “Tell me, Nana, how did you manage to get us a meeting with Nikola Skazat?”

  “Jean vouched for my character. The wanderer’s been helping marauders fight back against the harvesters. We’d never have managed to hold our ground against them without her potions.”

  “Really? So she’s against what’s happening in New Bayou?”

  “Yes. Rather against Verner, if you ask me. Since he’s behind all of it, it stands to reason there’s some bad blood between them. I suspect it’s why she agreed to help us in the first place.”

  I got up and paced around. “Could my father have done what the toad said? Signed over all assets to him?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why ever would he? That slimy toad’s lying, he must be. If he has papers, then he’s faked them. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’s done so.”

  I stopped pacing. Slowly turning around, I noticed Nana’s eyes were filled to the brim with secrets, secrets I yearned to share. The tight line of her lips was worrisome.

  “What do you mean, not the first time? What are you hiding from me?”

  With a deep sigh, she dropped her shoulders. She ran a hand over her face and seemed to struggle with a dilemma.

  “Beatrice Herran, if you know something important, you must tell me. You know you must.”

  “The truth of the matter is Stanislaw Herveux has been keeping your yearly float factor measurements a secret. You can’t turn against him without proper protection. Your life might be at stake here.”

  Stunned, I sat back down. A soft breeze ruffled the flames of the candles in the room. “Why would my measurements need keeping secret?”

  “Because they’re constantly positive, is why.”

  That made no sense. No one’s float factor was constantly positive.

  “Since when has this been going on?”

  “Started when you were about ten, Miss.”

  Beginning with the year Mother died, then.

  “Nana, I feel like there’s more to this. What’s really going on here?”

  She shrugged and seemed to become smaller in the chair. “You have to understand this has been a great secret. Only your father, myself, and the senator know. If anyone were to find out… you can imagine your soul would make the finest floating fuel in town. Harvesters would waste no time in collecting you if they found out. Your soul would be worth who knows how many times the price of any other.”

  I thought it over as I chewed on my lower lip. It all made sense, then.

  “The toad was blackmailing Father, wasn’t he? And marrying me was his ultimate request. Though I still don’t get why. It’s glaringly obvious he dislikes me, and I sure do dislike him, so why go through all the trouble?”

  “He loves his fortune, he does. It’s what keeps him alive. You do realize he should have been terminated long ago. But he hasn’t been. He’s friends with the mayor, but friends wouldn’t be enough. And because of him and those like him bribing their way out of terminations, innocents are harvested on the streets instead. Because them engines need fuel to keep running, don’t they?”

  The yearly measurements were a delicate time. Many people’s factors changed from one year to the next, even more often than that. The poorest citizens became so by paying fines for their negative factors while the ones with positive float factor were rewarded in credits. It was like watering plants so you might soon pluck them and use them. Keeping them happy until termination could collect on that positive. Or Verner on the negative-factor souls.

  Thinking of the reaper made my skin crawl. Not all alkemists were like that, but the ones who were, Verner in particular, made me sick. Feeding on souls was what reapers did to increase their powers, or maybe for the sheer pleasure of it. He made it public too, along with the fact he only fed on the negative factors once the mandatory termination rule came into effect. Suspiciously close to that time the harvesters began collecting citizens off the streets and taking them to the Galleries, the belowground of the hovering platform on which our town rested. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind Mayor Naraku and Verner were in cahoots with the harvesters, and many even suspected they commanded them themselves. And I was supposed to become that monster’s apprentice or another monster’s wife. Stellar options, I concluded. Just stellar.

  I was sick to my stomach. Running a hand over my brow, I leaned back in the chair.

  “Here, you get some sherry. Looks like you need it,” Nana muttered, giving me a small glass.

  Rivers of sherry wouldn’t quite help. Not unless I could drown in them. My list of options was becoming short and getting shorter by the day. If I turned against Herveux, then he’d share my secret. And harvesters would waste no time in collecting me if my factor became known. I’d be rich payment.

  “So I’ve been taking New Bayou’s credits every year for the last ten? No penalties for my factors?”

  “None. It’s quite the reliable source of income for the senator, plus your inheritance wouldn’t hurt. Staying alive is expensive. He needs a lot of credits to do so. And you might bear children with similar qualities, increasing the family income all the more. I’m sure he’s counting on it.”

  But then something else crossed my mind.

  “My factors were constantly positive after Mama’s death. They hadn’t been so until then, I take it.”

  Nana nodded, not making eye contact. Many people’s family members had been lost, yet they hadn’t become positives because of it. The simple fact my mother died of the withering wouldn’t have caused such a change. Something else must have done it, but what could have? There was something odd to it.

  “What else? What else happened around that time? Perhaps it’s something that can be undone. Perhaps I can at least turn that toad Herveux away. You must tell me.”

  “All I know is that you were ill. Very ill. And they… they took you to another hovertown to see the Wanderer Alkemist, and she made you all better. But that’s all I know, Miss. I promise you.”

  “They took me to another hovertown?”

  She nodded.

  “To see Nikola Skazat?”

  “Exactly.”

  “With one of her potions?”

  “I presume, Miss. I wasn’t there, and when you came back, well… there wasn’t a right time to ask about it.”

  “Because my mother got ill? After we came back?”

  She swallowed. “Well, yes, but….”

  Cold settled over me. “Mama got the withering because of me, didn’t she? Because she traveled with me to see Nikola Skazat in another hovertown?”

  Nana rushed to clutch my arms and she knelt before me. “You mustn’t think that way. It’s not like that at all. Your mother loved you more than anything in this godforsaken world. She wouldn’t accept you thinking like that. You know better than anyone that the withering strikes at random, that—”

  I softly caressed her face, shutting her up as soon as my palm made contact with her cheek. Withering mostly struck those who left the hovertowns or those living near objects brought from the Outside. My mother left the hovertown because of me. It was as simple as that, really. The room spun and everything grew shadowy as the chatter of ghosts became louder. Too loud. Deafening.

  I couldn’t process much more. My soul shivered as guilt for Mama’s death settled there. I was guilty for her torment, for her two days of horror. It was all my fault. My body became numb and my eyes stung.

  “W
hy haven’t you told me of this before, Beatrice Herran? Why keep me in the dark?”

  “It wasn’t my secret to share, Miss. I thought your father would tell you, that he would—”

  “He blamed me for her death, didn’t he? The way he’d almost never meet my eyes or stand my presence for longer than necessary, the way he threw himself into termination as soon as he could without seeming like a bad parent. All those times I wondered why I wasn’t good enough for him to love, and you never once said a thing. Not a thing.”

  She paled, her eyes widening. “I promised your mother I’d protect and take care of you, Miss. There was no good to come out of it if you’d been told when you were younger. And then as time went by, I realized it was too late to say it, so I… I hoped your father would tell you in the end. But he never did.”

  “Protecting me like you were. Or maybe protecting himself. Don’t look so distraught. I’m not shattering as a porcelain doll would, see? I’m all in one piece.”

  I didn’t feel in one piece. I felt like a broken kaleidoscope, like the bits of colored glass were covered in soot now so light couldn’t pass through them anymore. I felt tainted, dirty.

  “You haven’t been in one piece since Mrs. Richards died, Miss. We both know that.”

  I nodded because it was true. Some things were too obvious to deny, after all. I got up slowly, the floors shaky under my feet as I advanced toward the door. Once there I turned around halfway. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, Mrs. Herran.”

  “But Miss….”

  Raising one hand, I turned away from her and faced the door with resolve. I wouldn’t cry, I absolutely wouldn’t. Not yet.

  “Thank you, good night.” I spoke clearly and exited the room.

  I’d done twelve mercies and two murders, I now knew. The first person I killed was my mother. I carried the blame for her death, a dark stain on my soul that would never wash away no matter how many mercies I performed.

  Chapter 9

  THE NIGHTTIME hours fell heavily on our hovering platform, but sleep avoided me. Ghosts seemed more eager than ever before to chatter around me. The odd flow of conversation gave me some solace from my own thoughts.

  My illness ten years earlier caused the destruction of my family, I realized. It wasn’t my will or desire, of course. But did it truly matter whether I intended to cause all the havoc or not? The end result was the same: Mother fell to the withering, Father fell half-dead inside and ran toward his termination at the first real chance he got.

  He tried to protect me, though, all these years. Tried to keep my factors a secret. He loved me, even if he didn’t seem able to take my presence for too long at any one time. I decided I’d find comfort in knowing he loved me despite it all. And my resolve to kill the reaper only grew stronger along with that comfort.

  Sure, the mayor was a dirty official and the senator a filthy one, but the root of all evil was still Verner. After all, the reaper who founded the hovertown made the laws. Was it any wonder his town took after him, consuming souls and sprouting death and misery? Just thinking about him made my stomach roil.

  When morning came, I crawled out of bed and sighed. Nana knocked on the door to bring me breakfast. It tasted as gray as my thoughts, but I ate it. After washing and dressing, I decided to go to the drawing room for a while and pretend to read the paper. Father used to do that in the morning, extra candles lit up to give the impression of the perky start of a day. I’d sit there beside him and pretend we were talking or laughing together. But just sitting there was good enough I thought now as I stood in the empty room.

  The fact we still had papers was one of the oddities Verner did for his hovertown. It was his will they be printed and given out to all citizens at no cost. Many collected them later to light fires. Wood was an expensive item since there was a shortage of it. There was a shortage of lots of things, in fact, and whoever controlled farming and growing platforms gained unthinkable wealth—always the alkemists, of course. All materials were provided by those production platforms, factories, or simply floating growing grounds. It had actually become cheaper to buy tech equivalents whenever possible, like golem horses for a carriage, which cost a quarter as much as living ones. And so the luxury of having news printed on paper was one of those gestures probably meant to make citizens feel appreciated, cared for… or bought.

  Picking up the paper, I scanned the titles. More subtly glorified deaths by the harvesters, more scuffles with marauders. Nothing new. Not until Nana marched into the drawing room.

  “She’s here, Miss. Nikola Skazat is here.”

  The way my stomach quivered had to be on account of not sleeping.

  Breathing in deeply, I nodded. “Show her into the parlor, then. I’ll be there shortly.”

  After Nana left the room, I got up and marched into the hallway. Nikola had been there. Her smell still hung in the air and made my heart rush. I inspected myself in the mirror and composed my face into a semblance of presentable. Making a good impression with Nikola was imperative. I wasn’t sure if needing her help was my only reason. Perhaps I wanted to impress her on a personal level. I’d figure it out later on. After practicing my synth smile a few times, I decided I was ready.

  She paced steadily in the parlor while Nana stood there. My heart fluttered and my gaze shot to the new boots, the fresh black suit, all the way up to her odd eyes and the slicked-back black hair that reached her nape. Sweet ink and needles, did Nikola have an effect on me.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  I gulped and nodded. She walked toward me with purpose, reached down again, and kissed my hand. This time there was no glove to separate her lips from my skin and a shudder crawled through my bones. The smoothness of her lips felt almost indecent. My heart thumped stubbornly and my face heated up like an oversized candle.

  I cleared my throat. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  She grinned. “A pleasure, definitely.”

  Nana frowned as she sat down. “Well, aren’t you two cute.”

  Nikola eyed Nana curiously and plastered a smirk all over her face. There was something deliciously wicked about her.

  “Let’s sit down and chat, shall we?” I offered.

  Nikola’s gaze kept the good habit of not leaving me. Her expression was unreadable. Where else could she have sat but right in front of me, of course. My hands twitched and my shoulders tensed. Why wouldn’t she look away? Why couldn’t I?

  “Well, then, Nikola, have you given my proposition any thought?”

  She reclined in her chair and slowly crossed her long, shapely legs. Her high boots caught my eye, and I indulged in curiosity for a moment or two. The pants she wore clung to her figure more than those of yesterday’s suit. Today she wore her pants tucked into those knee-high boots, outlining her thighs all the more. The beautifully rounded shape of them was obvious while she sat cross-legged. The suit jacket was buttoned up, its edges parting softly where her legs met her upper body, slightly distanced to make a terribly distracting V-shape below the nicely contoured waistline of her suit. If yesterday’s suit made her curves clear, today’s made it terribly obvious. And I couldn’t look anywhere else.

  When she cleared her throat, I blinked and looked back up into disturbingly intense eyes.

  “You understand that by taking you in, I would make Edgar my enemy.”

  Nibbling on the inside of my lower lip, I gazed at her. “I was under the impression you’d done so already. Why else would you help marauders?”

  She slid her gaze in Nana’s direction and smiled tightly. “I see we’re sharing all kinds of stories.”

  “There’s been enough secrecy here, Miss Skazat. Too much of it, in fact. I think my miss deserves to know the truth if she wants to.”

  Something strange passed over Nikola’s face as she looked back at me. “Everyone wants to know things, Mrs. Herran. But then they regret having asked most of the time.”

  “Well, I won’t regret asking,” I said evenly. “Now between S
enator Herveux’s thinly veiled threats and Verner’s ungodly desires to master my apprenticeship, I’m afraid I find myself rather pressed for time and answers. Have you reached a decision?”

  She frowned. “What threats?”

  “Herveux claims to have papers indicating that Mr. Richards has signed over his entire estate and all assets to him. He’ll take away everything if my miss doesn’t marry him,” Nana butted in.

  I might have liked that particular truth to remain hidden for a bit longer. After all, a creditless apprentice might have been less appealing than a wealthy one. The promise of wealth could have proven convincing to Nikola, but that was all gone now. My shoulders slumped.

  Nikola regarded me as Cannari finally showed up with tea. A few moments of silence ticked by as our butler served us, possibly prolonging the moment so he could listen in on the conversation. But we waited silently for him to leave.

  Finally she cleared her throat. “I’d be honored to master your apprenticeship, Cristina Mera. We’ll have you declared a changeling with the universal authorities within the day. And if your senator friend decides to make good on his threats, then I invite you and Mrs. Herran to stay with me at Darkwillow. The matter of your inheritance will surely clear up quickly once you’re officially a changeling. I’m sure Herveux finds it easier to threaten a presumably scared young lady than a soon-to-be alkemist.”

  I thought I heard choirs of divine beings singing right about then. Salvation!

  I smiled. “I appreciate it. But I have to ask what it is you’d like in exchange for the kindness of hosting us in the meantime.”

  She chuckled softly and her eyes shone. “Aside from the pleasure of your extended company, I can’t say I’m asking for more. Let’s be honest here. You hate Edgar. So do I. It makes sense that we should stick together.”