“Well, there’s not many of us left,” I say. “You’re dressing them all up in dusters and giving them juicy contracts to steal for you.”
“Out of chaos, us. Thieves of order,” he says, and traces his finger along the table in one elegant movement. It reminds me of the time I took Trigg ice-skating. He didn’t move with the elegance of this man’s finger, and that was what I loved about him. There’s no honesty in elegance, not in the elegance of humans at least. “When you took my sword from the museum, did you know from whom you were stealing?” the Duke asks.
“I did not.”
“Lying,” Gorgo says.
“Convince me,” the Duke says. I don’t know where to begin. “Would you be more eloquent with a grenade in your mouth? I have some on board.” He nods back to the yacht idling on the landing pad beyond the construction floor.
“Do I look like an idiot?” I ask. “If I’d known, I’d have walked away. Shit, I’d have shot the man who asked me to do it. There’s a difference between bold and stupid. I know which side this falls on.”
“Do you?” the Duke asks. “Your reputation says otherwise. It reads as if you have a…death wish.”
“That again…” I roll my eyes and feel a stabbing pain behind them.
“Four of your heists in broad daylight. Nearly always public spectacles.”
“I work for middlemen. Arbiters. Occasionally they leave out details about the job. In this case, important details like whose protection the sword was under.” I lean forward, selling hard because my life depends upon him buying what I’m selling. “I don’t rat. And I don’t play with the Syndicate. Man has to have a code.”
Any moment now I expect to feel a carbon hard wire around my neck. Or the nip of one of those Martian pitvipers Syndicate thorns love to import just for play. The last thing I’ll see is this pretty jumped-up ganglord reclining in his chair like he’s king of the universe, when he used to be little more than a sex toy. All this new money expects everyone else to have a short memory. Wish I did.
But the wire doesn’t come. Neither does the bite.
“In the Gardens, they teach us body empathy as well as the art of shadow dancing—a proportional mimicking of body language to make the subject at ease,” the Duke says. “It facilitates emotional bonding. It makes me ghastly good at sniffing out liars.” He seems to disdain his schooling, but he leans back till he’s a shadow version of me. Shoulders slouched, legs out, a perfect replica. “You, my dear, have a dishonest face, so it’s easy to tell when you’re telling the truth.”
“So you believe me?”
“I do.”
I hesitate. “Then I can go?”
“What a pleasant world that would be. Although you were ignorant in your crime against me, it was, as you know, also a crime against the Queen herself. So I’m afraid you don’t just walk away from this.” He smiles sympathetically. “I’m the sort of man who would let you go if it was just between us. I see how frightened I’ve made you. To be honest, that’s often punishment enough. But I fear this isn’t just between us any longer. Others know. The Duke of Hands has been made into a fool. I can’t have that.” He leans across the table, a vein pulsing in his temple. “Can’t have that at all. In words of Old Stoneside, ‘Mercy emboldens evil men.’ You and I have the misfortune of floating amongst a sea of evil men. A debt is owed. A debt must be paid.”
I can’t even think of anything to say. The ramifications of his words cause a spike of fear to go straight into my chest. They’re going to hurt me, badly.
“Please, don’t fret. It won’t be anything inequitable. If you’d crossed the Duke of Legs, you’d be wobbling around on those grafted metal prosthetics the rest of your life. And if you insulted the Duke of Tongues, you’d be gibbering like one of those Lost City blackteeth—he is much crueler than the last one. But I’ll only take your least favorite hand.” He smiles as Gorgo slips forward. “Promise.”
Now comes the garrote. A thin wire looped around my throat from behind by Gorgo, not enough to break the skin or trachea, but enough to let me know they will if they need to. It immobilizes me. “Which hand will it be?” the Duke asks. “You owe me a debt. Choose.” I rear back against the garrote, but Gorgo’s fingers are the size of potatoes. “Choose.”
Sense abandons me. My mouth is dry, my body shaking.
“The…left,” I manage as they ease off the wire.
The Duke nods to his thugs and they grab my left arm. I stare in horror as he picks up his bonesaw and turns it on. The razor-sharp sawteeth vibrate. Sheer panic grips me now. The memory of flesh peeled from muscle, how the fat separates from bone, and the screams of friends. I watched, once, and all I thought was, Thank Jove it isn’t happening to me. The guilt returns. The sound of my friends shouting to each other in a bombed-out Endymion building. “Don’t rat! Don’t rat!” The fear and sight to come of metal teeth gnawing through my body. The grisly, butcher-shop look of naked muscle. I search frantically for something to haggle with, but there’s nothing I have that he wants. I feel a desperate, pitiful sob building in my chest that I don’t let out. The Duke lowers the bonesaw toward my wrist. The teeth buzz like insect wings. I grit my teeth and close my eyes.
“There is a way to keep this hand,” he whispers. “Tell me where the sword is.”
“I don’t know! I sold it to my broker already.”
“Tell me his name.”
“I…can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I told you. I don’t rat,” I say coldly. The way it comes out of my mouth soothes me. I’m less afraid, because I have a reason now to let them take the hand. A conviction.
Forgot what that felt like.
“I could carve through your ribs.” He twirls the bonesaw. “Take your manhood. Carve off your toes. Turn your eyes to jelly. You’d tell me then, if I really wanted to find your broker.” He’s going to do it now. Gorgo’s cologne fills my nostrils. “Tell me who he is!”
I glare up at the Duke. “Get to it, asshole.”
He stares down at me, then laughs. “Gorgo, I believe you owe me a diamond.” He turns off the bonesaw. The garrote around my neck disappears. I look up to see the Obsidian shuffle forward, rummage through an alligator skin billfold and pull out a teardrop diamond that he sets in the Duke’s hand. The Duke slips the diamond into his pocket and smiles down at me as the Obsidian eases away. “I’ve been tearing Luna apart for someone like you, Mr. Horn. A man with a code.”
“What?” The adrenaline floods out of my body, leaving me as limp as empty clothes. “What are you talking about?”
“Oslo said you were bright. Odd. A White prone to exaggeration.”
I blink dumbly. I didn’t say his name.