Roulette stared at the door to Mrs. Vliades’ room numbly, until Gregir knocked on it for her. Shortly the L’rovri woman came to the door, seeing Gregir first. “May I help—Alizabel? Goodness, dear, what’s wrong?”
She took a ragged breath. “Did…did anyone come here looking for me, Mrs. Vliades?”
The wolf woman’s ears lowered. “A young human man was here yesterday, right when I was clearing the table after dinner, asking about ‘a raccoon dancer.’ I didn’t know whether you were in or not, but since he didn’t seem to know you I didn’t give him your room number.”
“Did he talk to anyone else?” Gregir rumbled.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I was here in my room this afternoon, but I didn’t hear anything and no one else came to me.”
“You should get better door locks, yes? And you need a new one for room eleven now.”
Mrs. Vliades frowned, and shuffled out of her office, heading up the stairs.
Roulette stayed in the hallway, looking at the floor. “It was all my money, Gregir.
All
of it. Over fourteen hundred vars.” She laughed bitterly. “
Now
I really need the Aid Society, don’t I?”
He squeezed her hand between both of his gently for a moment. “You are safe, and that is most important. It means you can work to get more.”
“I should have kept trying to get it into a bank,” she muttered miserably. “Lisha said they make it hard here just because I’m not human, but I should have kept trying.”
“You cannot fix the past, yes? And…ah…” He trailed off. “I am afraid you should not have invoked her name. It has summoned her.”
“What?—” The raccoon’s ears folded back even before she turned to see Lisha descending on her like a thunderbolt.
“I told you
not
to leave under any circumstances,” Lisha snarled. “And you come back to the only place they’d know to look for you?”
“Were you following me? Again?” Roulette said, incredulous.
“Not until I couldn’t find you,
or
him, and had a suspicion.” She jabbed a finger at the wolf. “And you should have known better!”
He crossed his arms and glowered. “I am helping a friend. If you had any you would understand.”
Lisha’s volume rose with her temper. “You realize they likely have this place staked out, don’t you? You’re just lucky there was no one waiting for you in there.”
Suddenly Roulette wasn’t afraid or miserable. She was furious. “Lucky?” She shoved Lisha against the hallway wall, perversely gratified by the shocked look it earned her. “I’m
lucky
someone dragged me out of that room without letting me get my strongbox. I’m
lucky
that whoever robbed me didn’t do it until last night, so it turned out there wasn’t a rush after all. I’m
lucky
that thanks to you, I only have ten vars to my name!”
Lisha’s eyes had grown steadily wider through this tirade, her ears creeping backward. “I was looking out for you!”
“I’ve been looking out for
myself
since I was nineteen! I know how to look out for myself!”
The vixen had recovered enough to start looking angry again herself, teeth slightly bared. “If that was true, you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Mother of
devils,
Lisha.” She gave the vixen another shove. “Massey was looking for me at the
Society
yesterday, not here.”
“What?” The vixen looked shocked again. “You didn’t tell me—”
“It wasn’t
important
to me. I’m not the one on the crusade! Instead of worrying about your damn ‘Brothers,’ tell me what I do now. You have an answer for that?”
Lisha looked down at her with a wounded expression that just made Roulette even angrier. She stomped toward the street.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Back to the homeless shelter. It looks like I’ll be there a while, doesn’t it?”
“Dammit, Roulette!”
She set her ears back and hurried out, heading in the opposite direction of the Society and walking as quickly as she could. She heard Lisha and Gregir rush out behind her, heard Lisha start to call her name, heard Gregir say something softly reproving to the vixen. She didn’t look back.
Roulette had made it to the square
she’d danced in nearly every day before she slowed down. As the adrenaline and anger subsided, she stumbled, suddenly exhausted. She let herself drop to a street-side bench, then slumped forward, head in her hands.
When she’d moved to Norinton from Bergin Valley she’d hardly been rich, but she had enough to secure the room for a month and pay for meals. She’d exaggerated her new poverty to Lisha, but not by much—she had seventeen vars and change left. Her tiny, wretched, beloved room at Mrs. Vliades’ place had cost ninety per week.
She’d have to start over—but where? How? She couldn’t just find another corner in Achoren and begin dancing again. Even if Lisha’s conspiracy theories were wrong, she’d still committed a crime. A horrific assault, very likely a murder. Yes, it had been self-defense, but could she prove it? Was the Guard looking for her even now?
And what if Lisha
wasn’t
wrong?
Pull yourself together. You can’t just sit here sniffling.
Wiping her eyes, she steadied her breathing and sat up.
The sun remained high overhead, just visibly on its post-noon descent. Today, like tomorrow, was a day off for most businesses—as independent-minded from Ranea as Achoren was, they’d embraced the five-on, two-off work calendar wholeheartedly. The square was entirely empty; she wondered if anyone would bother to show up for the rally tomorrow. She wondered if
she
would bother to show up.
She could hear a horse-drawn carriage approaching slowly on another street. The hoof beats reminded her of an old mantelpiece clock back at her parents’ home in Orinthe, a marvel of brass gears, something in it making a solid
clunk
twice a second. Time was ticking past.
On even a coldly practical level, leaving Gregir and Lisha behind at the boarding house had been foolish—she still should have gotten the wolf to help her carry the damn trunk back to the Aid Society. She wasn’t staying at the boarding house anymore, after all. She hoped Mrs. Vliades wasn’t going to charge her for the broken lock.
Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t paid attention to the footsteps behind her on the sidewalk until they stopped nearby. “Nice afternoon, isn’t it?”
She turned to look up, startled, to see a burly human—around his mid-thirties, if she knew how read their ages correctly—standing by the bench. He dressed like a dock worker, rough denim pants and jacket. “It’s pleasant enough, yes,” she said, smoothing her dress down.
He clucked his tongue at her, looking sympathetic. “You look like you’ve been crying.” He reached into a jacket pocket and withdrew a handkerchief, holding it out to her. The carriage came into view, turning a corner and heading down the street along the square toward her.
She swallowed and took it, dabbing her eyes. “Thank you.”
“Guess you’ve been having a trying day.”
“That’s a good enough description of it,” she said, handing the handkerchief back.
“You’re real far from home, aren’t you? Most Procya are from down south in Orinthe, right?”
“Yes,” she said, mildly surprised that he used the formal race name, let alone knew anything about them. “I’m probably not staying here in Achoren much longer. Not that it isn’t a beautiful place, but…”
“But it’s not your home,” he supplied.
“No, it isn’t.” She sighed a little and smiled. “I should be on my way back now.” She started to stand up.
The carriage, just passing by, stopped.
“Why don’t we give you a ride?” He put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down against the bench. The door opened and another man jumped out. He held a black sack in one hand, and rope in his other.
Roulette’s ears went flat and she twisted in the man’s grip, pulling away and starting to stand again, but the men grabbed her arms.
“Let me go, you—”
The sack came down over her head, and her nostrils flooded with the scent of cinnamon. She screamed, still twisting, trying to keep her arms from being pulled behind her back. “Get her up quick,” the first man muttered.
They lifted her up into the carriage, and she kicked wildly. Her foot connected with something soft but solid, and she heard a clatter and a curse. This gave her a little satisfaction, but didn’t save her from being shoved face-first against the carriage’s wall. She screamed again, her panic rising. Someone tied her wrists together as the carriage rolled off at a much faster clip.
“Let me go!”
“Shut up,” someone—the second man, she guessed—yelled above her. Then pain lanced through her side as she was kicked. Kicked by someone with a boot. She curled away, sobbing, and tried desperately to clear her head.
Cinnamon oil, definitely. She’d read about this trick—it blocked the nose of kidnapping victims with a good sense of smell as effectively as the sack blocked their eyes. It could also partially mask more nefarious chemicals, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t hold her breath for long. It didn’t stop the burning in her nostrils. She kept herself from crying now, tried to keep her breathing shallow and even, and tugged on her wrists and jerked her head from side to side, trying to shake the sack off.
“Stop squirming like that,” the first man’s voice said. “It’s tied loose, but you got a big fat muzzle that’s holding that bag in place, animal girl. So just sit quiet until we get where we’re going. Just a couple minutes.”
Roulette shut her eyes against the cinnamon fumes and finally just sagged in place.
When they pulled her out
of the carriage and marched her into—somewhere—she didn’t struggle; it likely hadn’t been more than a five-minute ride, but the fumes had made her start to feel light-headed and a little nauseous.
The floor became bare, cold stone, very much like the Aid Society’s. For a moment the feverish thought that it
was
the Aid Society flittered through her mind, that somehow they were all in on this together, but that didn’t make much sense. And she doubted Lisha was that good an actor.
Someone shoved her down into a wooden seat and yanked the sack off her head. Her eyes watered so much she could barely see, and even after several heaving breaths all she could smell and taste was cinnamon.
“Stay still,” the man in front of her—the one who’d first approached—commanded.
“So
this
is what killed Jerald?” someone else—the second voice from the carriage—said, tone bitter.
“Did a hell of a number on him.”
“Time to pay attention,” the first one said, slapping her cheek twice lightly and snapping his fingers in front of her face. “How did you get into Jerald’s room?”
Her vision had started clear; she tried to focus on both faces.
“How’d you get your hands on his herani?” the other one asked.
The first one shot the second a warning glance, then looked back at her. “How’d you even know where to find him?”
“He let me in.” From what she could see, the room they’d taken to her was still in use as a warehouse. Boxes were pushed up against a few walls, and some drawings had been pinned to one of those walls. Architectural plans?
“He let you in,” he repeated, then sighed. He knelt down in front of her, so his eyes were level with hers. “Look, animal girl, we’re being polite about this right now, but we don’t have to be.”
Her feet remained free. She considered kicking him in the face, but resisted the temptation. Unless she could free her hands, she was helpless. “He saw me dancing,” she said. “In the square where you grabbed me. I was there every day.”
“We don’t go uptown much,” the second one said in a dry tone.
“He asked me to come to the Blue Orchid after dinner. I did. He didn’t tell me his name, he just wanted to pay money to have me dance for him.”
“What kind of dance?” the second one said, gaze narrowing.
“What kind do you think?” Roulette said steadily, looking directly into his eyes.
The first man backhanded her hard enough to knock her out of the chair. She couldn’t do anything other than steel herself for the impact with the floor.
“You watch your mouth around us,” he growled.
She rocked herself upright into a sitting position, remaining silent. She’d accepted that she was going to die here.
“Now try answering the question again, and tell the truth.”
“Do you want the truth, or do you want me to tell you what I think will keep you from hitting me?”
He clenched his hands into fists.
“The
truth
is your friend invited me to his room. And that had a bunch of perfume bottles already with him, all filled with herani.”
The two men exchanged glances. “How’d you know he had that?” the second asked.
“I didn’t. I didn’t even know what herani was then.” She smiled bitterly. “I thought it
was
perfume. I thought I was spraying perfume in his eyes.”
“Why?” the first said, voice low and dangerous.
“To try to keep him from raping me.”
She expected the kick when it came, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. She wheezed, clenching her eyes shut.
“We
know
who you’re working with,” he spat. “Killing him wasn’t enough, you terrorists have to ruin his reputation, too?”
“Terrorist.” She rolled back into a sitting position a second time, still breathing hard, trembling with rage as much as fear. “You tell me why he had those bottles if
I’m
the terrorist.”
“Don’t you—”
“And if I’m lying, you tell me how they found his body.”
They exchanged glances again.
“Or do you two
really
think I broke into his room, killed him with his own acid, then pulled his pants down?”
“Damn you!” The first one didn’t kick her again, but instead grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her to her feet. “What did he tell you about the herani?”
“Nothing.”
“
What did he tell you?”
he screamed in her face.
“Nothing!” she screamed back.
He spun her around and grabbed the end of the rope tied around her wrists, then dragged her backward, flinging her through an open doorway. She skidded along the floor a yard, hearing the door slam behind her. By the time she pushed herself upright she’d heard what sounded like a padlock clapping shut.