“No instruments” was the first thing she said.
I nodded my compliance.
“No prodding of any kind, and if I see your eyes glow, or if they even so much as look funny, I’ll carve them out.” She made a show of looking meaningfully at her knife before carving a piece of eel for herself.
“Done.” I tried not to stare at the blade as she cut through steaming flesh or dwell on how it had felt pressed up against my skin back in the Den.
“So where’s my payment?” Vincha shoved the piece of eel into her mouth.
“First I need to know you were in the Valley when it all happened.”
She snorted, swallowing. “Rust, yeah, I was there. Not many of us came out alive on that day, but I made it.”
“And you remember what happened?”
“I remember.” Her voice got uncharacteristically quiet. “I’ve been trying to forget ever since.”
“You were close to him.” It wasn’t a question. I’d spoken to dozens of ex-Salvationists about that period. Actually, I’d coerced, drilled, begged, seduced, bribed, threatened, and occasionally beaten the stories out of them. They had all talked, eventually. Each had a personalized version of the same story, placing themselves at its epicentre, yet they all had one thing in common: Vincha, and how close she was to the boy.
“Yes, we were close,” she admitted. “He was just a kid, small and skinny, frightened, surrounded by the worst Salvationist scumbags, a broken soul, like the rest of us. Somehow, we connected. I don’t know why. We just did.”
Galinak chuckled and said, “Woman’s intuit—” then ducked the knife that flew past my face and embedded itself in the rotted wall behind him.
“Go rust, cheap wires,” she spat at him, but without much zeal in her voice. Even the throw was halfhearted, although I was just guessing that, really.
Galinak and Vincha traded colourful insults for a while, but I didn’t pay much attention to the poetry. I was too excited. My long search was over and the key to solving the mystery was sitting in front of me. This woman knew what had happened, she knew, and for all her bravado and greed, I sensed that like the rest of them, she wanted to tell me her version of the story; all I needed to do was ask the right questions.
I knew what I was going to ask first, but I just had to wait until Galinak fell silent.
“What was his name?” I asked.
Vincha smiled coyly. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
I already knew, but that wasn’t the point. “I’ve heard many names.”
“Yes, they called him the Kid, or the Key, but mostly just the Puzzler. They never called him by his name, maybe because it would have reminded them that he was human. But I knew his name, he told me …”
“What was it?”
She knew …
“Where’s my coin?”
I took out two diamonds from my pocket and put them on the table.
She looked at them, then at me. “What are those?” she demanded.
“These will fetch you a quarter of what you asked for.”
She looked back at the diamonds with open suspicion on her face “Where?”
“Upper Towers will give you a fair price, or the East Coast traders if you want to make the trip. Most craftsmen would buy them as well, but for a reduced price.”
Anticipating her protest, I added, “No one could carry that much coin around. The diamonds are sound, and worth a quarter of what we agreed upon.”
She scooped up the diamonds into her hand in a fluid motion and inspected them before saying, “I’ll tell you a quarter of the story, then.”
“It’s a start,” I said, my heart pounding.
“His name was Rafik, but his friends called him Raff, a boy from one of the Wildener villages, you know, those who followed that weird Prophet who rejected technology. Of all the places he could have been born, fate chose for him the worst rusting place.”
Rafik lay on the ground, trying to stay still and control his breathing. If his pursuers would hear him it would be his end. He heard shouts and the thumping of feet hitting the ground a few yards to his left, and he fought the urge to bolt. There were two of them. A third one moved farther away, searching, but Rafik guessed he was still within earshot.
“Did you see him? Are you sure?” It was one of the infidels.
“Yes, I’m sure,” came the answer from such a close distance it made Rafik’s heart jerk with fear. “We take him out and we’ll have them all.”
Rafik closed his eyes and dug his chin down in the dirt, willing himself to be grass, praying to the Prophet Reborn for help, berating himself for any blasphemous thoughts or deeds in his past, for surely his sinful ways had brought him to this predicament. If what the infidel said was true, all his friends were either captured or taken out. He could not make up his mind which fate was better; the infidels had their nasty ways with captives, and he knew that for a fact. Poor Eithan—Rafik had made efforts to protect his friend, but they’d split up in the woods and Eithan was among the first to fall.
One of the infidels took another step towards the shallow ditch, and Rafik shivered involuntarily as he heard the enemy’s feet crushing the grass.
They were almost above him, standing on top of the mound. It was a sheer miracle neither of them looked down and spotted him practically lying under their feet.
After an eternity, he heard one of them say “Let’s go. He probably kept running east. We’ll find him soon enough—he can’t be too far away.”
The other infidel mumbled a defeated reply, and they began to move away. He was saved; thank the God and the Prophet Reborn. Rafik’s body, suddenly realising he’d been holding his breath for far too long, exhaled quickly. The gesture was followed, naturally, by a large intake of breath, which carried dust from the plants or the earth. Before Rafik could control himself, he sneezed loudly.
The rest happened in kind of a blur. He heard shouts of discovery and running steps getting closer. Rafik’s fist clenched over dirt and dead leaves as he uttered one last prayer to the Prophet Reborn. When they were on top of him, he jumped up and flung the handful of dirt into the face of the incoming infidel—who, bless the Prophet Reborn, was just opening his mouth in a shout of triumph. The result was pretty spectacular, but Rafik did not linger to watch. He was running again, this time faster than ever before, faster than he’d ever run in his life. He heard his pursuers behind him and bolted through the undergrowth, trying to lose them. There was no point in turning and fighting; he would be overwhelmed for sure. There was only one thing to do now: complete his mission or die trying.
Rafik altered his course midstride and burst through the undergrowth again. As luck would have it, he actually ran right between two surprised infidel guards, and before they managed to react he was already back in the foliage. Now there were four of them running after him. Four, two, it doesn’t matter, the exhilarating thought flashed in his mind, as long as they cannot catch me.
The infidels probably realised what he was trying to do, as several cries rose from the areas he passed, and they began converging on him from all directions. In his peripheral vision, Rafik saw dark silhouettes rushing almost alongside him. Soon they would pounce. Instinctively, he abruptly altered his course again, which took him in a direction away from his goal but also traced an arc that would confuse his pursuers just a little while longer—at least that was what he hoped to accomplish.