“Who have you brought?” Miles asked, sounding unimpressed. “They won’t arrive quickly enough.” He paused. Waxillium rolled his head to the side and saw the sudden horror in Miles’s face. He had seen it, finally: a shimmering border nearby, a slight difference in the air. Like the distortion caused by heat rising from a hot street.
A speed bubble.
Miles spun on Marasi. Then he ran for the bubble’s border, away from the light. Trying to escape.
The light at the other end of the tunnel became bright, and a group of blurs moved down it, so quickly it was impossible to distinguish what was causing them.
Marasi dropped her bubble. The sunlight of full day streamed in from the distant pit, and filling the tunnel—right outside where the bubble had been—was a force of over a hundred constables in uniform. Wayne stood at their head, grinning, wearing a constable’s uniform and hat, a false mustache on his face.
“Get ’im, boys!” he said, pointing.
They moved in with clubs, not bothering with guns. Miles screamed in denial, trying to dodge past the first few, then punching at the group that laid hands on him. He wasn’t fast enough, and there were far too many of them. In minutes, they had him held down against the ground and were wrapping ropes around his arms.
Waxillium sat up with care, one eye swelling closed, lip bleeding, side aching. Marasi knelt beside him, anxious.
“You shouldn’t have confronted him,” Waxillium said, tasting blood. “If he’d knocked you out, that would have been the end of it.”
“Oh, hush,” she said. “You aren’t the only one who can take risks.”
The backup plan had been straightforward, if difficult. It had begun with eliminating all of Miles’s lackeys. Even one of them, left alive, could have noticed what the speed bubble meant and shot Waxillium and Marasi from the outside. There wouldn’t have been anything they could have done to prevent it.
But if the lackeys were gone, and if Miles could be distracted long enough while the bubble was up, Wayne could go to gather a large force to surround Miles while he was helpless. He’d never have let it happen if he’d suspected. But within the speed bubble …
“No!” Miles screamed. “Unhand me. I defy your oppression!”
“You are a fool,” Waxillium said to him, then spat blood to the side. “You let yourself get isolated and distracted, Miles. You forgot the first rule of the Roughs.”
Miles screamed, one of the constables pulling a gag over his mouth as he was tied tightly.
“The more alone you are,” Waxillium said softly, “the more important it is to have someone you can rely upon.”
20
“The constable-general has decided not to charge your associate for impersonating an officer of the law,” Reddi said.
Waxillium dabbed at his lip with the handkerchief. He sat in the precinct office nearest the Vanisher lair. He felt like slag, with broken ribs and half his body wrapped in bandages. He’d have scars from this.
“The constable-general,” Marasi said, voice hard, “should be glad for Lord Waxillium’s aid—in fact, he should have begged for Lord Waxillium’s help all along.” She sat beside him on the bench, hovering protectively.
“He actually does seem glad,” Reddi said. Now that Waxillium paid closer attention, he noticed how the constable kept glancing through the precinct room toward Brettin, the constable-general. Reddi’s eyes narrowed slightly, lips turning down. He was baffled by his superior’s calm reaction to events.
Waxillium was too exhausted at the moment to bother with the anomaly. In fact, it was nice to hear of something happening in his favor.
Reddi was called over by one of the other constables, and he left. Marasi laid a hand on Waxillium’s good arm. He could practically feel her concern for him physically in the way she hesitated, the way her brow wrinkled.
“You did well,” Waxillium said. “Miles was your catch, Lady Marasi.”
“I’m not the one who had to be beaten bloody.”
“Wounds heal,” Waxillium said, “even on an old horse like me. Watching him attack me and doing nothing … I’ll bet that was excruciating. I don’t think I could have stood it, if our places had been reversed.”
“You’d have done it. You’re like that. You’re every bit the man I thought you might be, yet somehow more real at the same time.” She looked at him, eyes wide, lips pursed. As if she wanted to say more. He could read her intent in those eyes.
“This isn’t going to work, Lady Marasi,” he said gently. “I’m thankful for your aid. Very thankful. But the thing you wish between us is not viable. I’m sorry.”
Not unexpectedly, she blushed. “Of course. I wasn’t implying such a thing.” She forced a laugh. “Why would you think—I mean, it’s silly!”
“I apologize, then,” he said. Though, of course, they both knew what the exchange had meant. He felt a deep regret. If I were ten years younger …
It wasn’t the age per se. It was what those years had done to him. When you watched a woman you loved die by your own gunshot, when you saw an old colleague and respected lawkeeper turn bad, it did things to you. Ripped you up inside. And those wounds, they didn’t heal nearly as easily as the bodily ones.
This woman was young, full of life. She didn’t deserve someone who was basically all scars wrapped up in a thick skin of sun-dried leather.
Eventually, Constable-General Brettin walked over to them. He was as stiff-backed as before, constable’s hat carried under his arm. “Lord Waxillium,” he said in a monotone.