Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Five children huddled together in the middle of the floor, standing as close to each other as they could. A dark-haired boy of eleven or twelve, and four girls, three under seven and one teenager, probably sixteen or seventeen, wrapping her arms around the younger kids. All clean, all dressed in identical plain, undyed linen outfits like prisoners, and all, except for the boy, wearing identical frozen expressions on their faces.
Another boy, blond and sturdy, slumped against the bunks on the right side. His eyes were shut. Blood drenched his shirt and spread in a puddle on the stone floor. A big puddle. Oh no.
Two men flanked the kids, one older, with a sparse, dark beard and a shaved head. The other was younger, in his early twenties, pale, tall, and beefy, built like a defensive lineman. There was a faint echo of Derog in his face, in his hooded eyes and the shape of his brow, but his features were softer, less defined. That had to be Talpot, Derog’s nephew.
Derog looked at the injured boy, then looked at Talpot. The slow-moving hamster wheel that powered Talpot’s brain turned a couple of times. He held himself straighter.
“The first goal of a business is profit,” Derog said. “There are other goals. Growth, client retention. But all of them are driven by profit.”
Talpot relaxed slightly, probably thinking it was a lecture. A mistake.
“To sustain profit, one must have quality merchandise. What did you do with my merchandise, you shit smear?”
Talpot opened his mouth.
“You broke it.” Derog’s voice snapped like a whip.
Everyone in the room flinched, except me. I was too petrified, so I just stood there, staring straight ahead like a mannequin.
Derog stepped forward, grabbed the boy by his neck, and jerked him up with one hand. The boy’s head lolled.
“I can get a healer . . .” Lasa murmured.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Derog said. “He’s cold. He’s been dead for at least three hours.”
Oh fuck, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. . . .
Derog pulled the boy’s shirt up. “You stabbed him in the heart. A clean, quick kill. Congratulations, nephew. What a feat.”
He let go and the body crumpled to the floor, splashing into the blood.
The kids stood frozen. Not a single gasp. Nobody cried. They just went immobile like statues, their faces blank, except for the other boy, who glared at Derog with blatant hatred.
Derog pulled a rag off the bunk bed’s rail and wiped his hands. “You killed him, and you didn’t tell anyone for three hours. Do you think I am stupid, Talpot? Do I strike you as a man of limited intelligence?”
“No, terr.” Talpot bowed his head.
“I promised your mother that I would take care of you. That’s the only reason you’re not bleeding out on the floor next to him.”
Talpot stayed immobile, like a statue.
“You owe me a boy,” Derog said. “And by boy, I don’t mean one you snatch in front of his parents and the entire street, so I’ll have a city-wide panic with the guards breathing down my neck and have to suspend all deliveries for weeks. I mean a boy quietly obtained; a boy of good quality. Do you understand me?”
Talpot unhinged his jaw. “Yes, terr.”
Lasa was staring at me with single-minded intensity. I must’ve broken character somehow and now he was watching me like a hawk, waiting for me to stumble. My life was hanging by a thread. There were five children in this room. If I died now, nobody would get out.
I walked forward, picked up the rag Derog had dropped, knelt in front of the boy’s body, and put the rag onto the blood, gathering it like it was spilled water.
“What are you doing, Maggie?” Derog asked.
I looked up at him. “Mess.”
“That’s right,” Derog said. “It is a mess, isn’t it? A slow-wit understands, Talpot, yet my only nephew doesn’t. Bring the girl a bucket of water and get the body out of here.”
Talpot stomped away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lasa. The suspicion had melted from his face, and he was making notations in his book.
I went back to mopping up the blood. It was cold. Cold and sticky on my fingers.
CHAPTER 8
The blood refused to come out. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but the stain had settled into the grout between the stones. I would need bleach. Did they even have bleach in Rellas?
The horror of what had happened loomed in my mind, like a terrifying dark ghost that bent over me, watching me scrub the grout. Falling apart to deal with it wasn’t an option, so I ignored it and kept scrubbing with a blank look on my face.
The younger kids had started crying the minute the door leading upstairs closed behind Derog. The older teenage girl tried to calm them down, then another man came down the stairs, told them to shut up, dropped into a large chair in the corner, and propped his feet in beat-up boots on an old wooden trunk. He was about Talpot’s age, but where Talpot was thick, this guy was leaner, with a face that reminded you of a weasel, and skin so pale it was slightly green. His longish brown hair was pulled away into a sparse ponytail, and the jerkin he wore over his bare chest had burned patches on it.