Smoke and Shadow: The Fireweaver, Book 1

Chapter 6. NECK DEEP

CHAPTER 6. NECK DEEP

The woman washed up in the creek. Or what used to be the Rispahl River before it too had dried up. He'd done so many runs across the outerlands that he felt he'd worn his own path into the cracked landscape. It was harsh traveling in between cities for most, but he'd seen worse. 

Places where no one ventured. Forests and fields smothered in oily, toxic waters. Feats of architecture crumbling into sludge and slime. Bridges leading nowhere, and no birds in the skies. No fish in the seas. Places where nothing could live.

Nothing natural, that is.

Dej didn't send him to those places anymore. Anything of value was long gone.

The Anadeim thought again about the man he'd just killed. Never thought too much about his jobs. It was all a means to an end. But he thought on that one. Soweil. Not his real name, to be sure. And he never forgot a face. He wondered if the man finally recognized him too in the end as he drew his final breath, as the blood in his veins stalled.

He'd met with Dejkahn a few weeks before in the dark, paneled taproom of Chanette's Stayhouse. The Glasgow. A place where no one paid anyone any attention. Where someone could buy any kinds of attentions. But he wasn't there for that. Not that night.

Soweil had been there, hovering in the shadows. One of Dejkahn's men. A new face.

"Get her out. No witnesses. No survivors." Dej had paused as the waiter came with two beers. "I've got the cleanup crew lined up."

Cleanup crew meant explosives. And likely other agents who would come to make sure no traces were left behind.

"It'll look like an act of terrorism."

"That's the idea. No one can know she escaped." Dej lowered his voice as he told him exactly why she was kept in the lower levels of the prison.

The Anadeim took a drink. "I think I'll be needing something stronger than this."

Dej beckoned the waiter and ordered the most expensive cognac the Glasgow had.

"Bring her to me. Alive," he said.

The Anadeim looked squarely at Dej, a man he'd seen grow up. Over the years he'd found a sort of veneer of freedom living as he did, working for him. He had no love for the Rejkavs either, and so they had a common foe to hunt, to extort, to steal from. But something about this job didn't feel right. He'd learned to trust those pinpricks of doubt.

"Why this woman?" The Anadeim chose his words carefully. "She's got no value to you as an Anomaly. If anything, the wretched woman should be put out of her misery." Finton Willis and the attached labs were widely feared, especially by Anomalies.

"They will execute her."

"Sounds like the world would be better for it."

Dej took one last sip of the fine cognac, leveled a gaze at him, niceties gone. Without a word spoken, the Anadeim was fully aware of the yoke he wore. He'd worn it for three generations of Dej's family.

"Get her here," Dej said in a steel-backed tone to end further discussion.

Dej pulled up the holovid, like he always did at the end of any meeting, knowing well the power it held over him.

The image hovered and glowed in mid-air. There she was, Kahlan Kahmen, of his own kin; an Anadeim like he was. The only other he knew of still alive. She was sitting by a fountain, the sun on her golden hair. Safe as she was imprisoned. Protected from those who would destroy her.