Red Tigress

1

Novo Mynsk reeked of death. 

It always had, but to Ramson Quicktongue, the city had also held the stench of power and corruption, of murder and survival, swirling together in an intoxicating redolence that corroded one’s soul. It was no different now, save for the eerie darkness and silent snow that blanketed it. 

Ramson navigated the narrow alleyways of his childhood haunts with quick, precise steps. The last time he’d been here had been with Anastacya Mikhailov during the Fyrva’snezh at his former master’s mansion. It had only been a little over one moon since the celebration of the First Snows, but now, that world felt almost utterly unrecognizable. 

In just four weeks, Novo Mynsk had transformed into a ghost town, abandoned by most of its residents as they sought to flee the new regime. Streets that had once shimmered with torchlight and writhed with bejeweled bodies and raucous revelers had been replaced by shuttered stores and empty windows. Bodies littered the streets in areas where gangs had scrapped over bits of food, and snow had blanketed them, leaving only glimpses of clothing or a protruding boot as macabre grave markers. 

It was not an unfamiliar sight over his travels from town to ravaged town with Ana. Since Morganya had ascended the throne, much of Northern Cyrilia had fallen to her control. From newspaper pieces and torn posters in abandoned villages, Ramson and Ana had learned of the Imperial Inquisition, a wide-scale hunt for non-Affinites who were accused of any affiliation with Affinite trafficking. Led by Affinites fiercely loyal to the Empress, it was a movement that had come to define Morganya’s regime. 

The south, though, remained free from the tightening grasp of Morganya’s rule. That included Goldwater Port. According to Ana, the Redcloaks had established their base there, as it remained one of the last standing free havens for Affinites and non-Affinites alike. It was there that Ana traveled to begin her resistance movement with the Redcloaks. 

And it was there, Ramson had slowly begun to think, he could fight for some semblance of a life again after all this was over. He’d once been the Portmaster; under his former master Alaric Kerlan’s rule, he’d built a city teeming with commerce and crime and underground networks, the kind of place he’d dreamt of calling his own one day. 

He hadn’t told Ana explicitly where he was going tonight, because it wasn’t explicitly a task for her--their--mission. Rather, Ramson had felt the silent call of this place as soon as he’d set foot in Novo Mynsk, the phantom pull of a connection he hadn’t quite managed to sever yet. 

He’d come to find out, for himself, what had happened to Alaric Kerlan and the Order of the Lily. And he’d come to bid the torn wreckages of his past good-bye, once and for all, as he turned down a new path. 

The tapping of his freshly sharpened misericord against his hip came to an abrupt stop when Ramson turned the last corner and slowed. He found that he was suddenly glad for the sharp knife at his waist. 

The Kerlan Estate stood alone in the middle of a snow-covered street, half-buried by the snow, its battered golden gates yawning wide. Gone were the rows of liveried guards; gone were the diamond-glass lamps spilling haloes of light onto lush lawns; gone were the brightly lit windows burning into the darkest nights. 

Ramson touched a leather-gloved hand on the broken railing of the gate and hesitated. 

Even now, the sight of the Kerlan Estate did not fail to elicit a muddy swirl of emotions in him. He’d known pain here--so much pain, still seared into his flesh in the shape of the brand of the Order of the Lily. He’d seen growth, sharpened by that hunger and fear and driven by the knowledge that he had to do whatever he needed to in order to survive. And he’d tasted happiness, fleeting as bursts of color in the Empire’s gray skies, in the blood trades he’d made and the honors he’d gained, paid for with the lives of other men as he upheld Alaric Kerlan’s rule. 

Ramson’s heart pounded in his throat as he hurried up the snow-covered path. When he reached the mansion, he saw that one handle of the giant mahogany double doors had broken; the other seemed to have been hacked clean off by a serrated blade of some sort. The wood creaked as he pushed them open and stepped inside, the mansion yawning wide like a dark, silent trap. 

The Kerlan Estate looked as though it had been mauled. The marble walls had been stripped of the gold-framed paintings, and the lapis lazuli vases had disappeared along with the many other items Kerlan had deemed “exotic.” Someone had shattered the glass ceiling overhead, and one of the crystal chandeliers had plunged into the middle of the banquet hall, creating a mess of glass and crystal that glinted in the moonlight. Drifts of snow carpeted the hallways, and Ramson’s breath plumed before him in the subzero temperature. 

When Ramson turned a corner and almost tripped over the dead man, his alertness pricked. 

The body was covered by the snow; he could only make out a sleeve and a blackened hand sticking out. Ramson knelt by the corpse, sweeping off the freshly fallen snow to unearth the man’s left arm. Just as he’d suspected, a tattoo of a lily of the valley was inked on the inside of the man’s left wrist. 

He had been a member of the Order. 

Instead of fear or grief or even pity, Ramson examined the frozen hand with a clinical curiosity. Skin, blackened evenly, suggested internal bleeding. Farther up, on the forearm, raised flesh--evidence of a rash. 

He had been poisoned. 

Ramson pushed away more snow, revealing the dead man’s face. 

It was twisted in pain, bruised to a hideous purple and sunken with time, yet perfectly preserved by the cold. Ramson studied the face for several more seconds before deciding it wasn’t a man he’d known in the Order. The corpse of a low-ranking grunt, a nobody, left to rot once winter swept its snows away. 

And though their common master was nowhere to be seen, his voice tided over Ramson in phantom echoes. 

I suppose you’ll die unknown and irrelevant, your unmarked body rotting along the sewage of the Dams. 

Ramson stood sharply to his feet, the whispers dissipating as his senses picked up on something else. 

In one motion, he drew his blade, swung his arm out, and pivoted. 

A startled cry; his blade connected with soft flesh, exposed throat. And . . . long, wavy hair. 

Ramson closed his fist around a handful of hair and pulled the intruder’s face into the moonlight. His apprehension turned to surprise. “Olyusha,” he said as the woman struggled against his grip. “Damn hells.”

“Let me go,” she gasped, but Ramson only drew her closer, angling the misericord against her delicate neck. 

“I don’t think so,” he said. Hells, he hadn’t been planning on running into anyone here--but as Ramson Quicktongue well knew, things rarely went according to plan. “Should’ve known this was your handiwork. Nightshade?” 

“Oleander,” she rasped. “You’ve gotten rusty, Quicktongue.” 

“Try anything and we’ll see just how rusty my skills are with a blade.” 

He’d first known of Olyusha as an Affinite working at the Playpen, specializing in poisons and needles tipped with toxins. And though she didn’t know this, he’d used her as a bargaining chip against Bogdan, the affable yet stupid Penmaster of the Playpen, the infamous club where Alaric Kerlan had run shows with indentured Affinites. 

That she was here, amid buried corpses showing signs of poisoning . . . Ramson had an inkling he was very close to sniffing out the truth of what had happened to the Order. 

Olyusha hissed, but he felt her swallow against his blade. “Then perhaps we’ll both join the corpses at our feet,” she sneered. “Let me go. I didn’t come here to kill you.” 

“So why are you here?” Ramson asked pleasantly, digging his blade into her skin in a way that he knew would be uncomfortable but would not cut.

“To warn you. Kerlan wants you dead, and he’s set a high price on your head. The whole Order’s probably out for your blood, Quicktongue.” She paused. “What’s left of them, anyway.” 

At that, he glanced up, a thread of caution tightening inside him. The hallways stretched empty in front of and behind them. “And why would you want to warn me? We’re cut from the same cloth, Olyusha, so spare me the ‘out of the goodness of your heart’ act.” 

“Because I need you.” The sharpness to her tone became tinged with desperation at her next words: “Bogdan is gone.” 

This was news to Ramson. “What do you mean?” 

The few times he’d run into Olyusha after her stint at the Playpen, she had been soft-spoken and doe-eyed, clinging to the gold-emblazoned sleeve of Bogdan. The Penmaster had rescued her from a lifetime of performances served under a forced contract--and he’d married her. It was Ramson who had helped cook Kerlan’s books so that Kerlan would never find out. 

“He’s missing. That’s why I came here to find you.” Olyusha’s throat bobbed against his blade. “Now, let me go, and I can explain.” 

So, there was something she needed from him. Ramson shifted tactic in an instant. “A Trade, then,” he said. “You know I never give without taking, Olyusha.” 

“Fine,” she said, and he stepped back, pushing her far enough from him so that he was out of range of any needles or sharp, poison-laced objects she might try on him. She straightened, massaging her throat, and he noticed that her hands shook as she swept back her tresses. She suddenly looked small, tucked into her coat, which had lost some of its sheen and was now covered in a layer of gray. Ramson had remembered her dressed in the finest of furs and silks, pearls glittering in her hair as she turned her head and laughed. 

Ramson tapped his misericord on the marble floor. It echoed hollowly. “You can start by telling me what happened to the Order,” he said. “What you mean by ‘what’s left of them.’ ” 

Olyusha sniffed. “I forget how long you’ve been out of it all, Quicktongue. After Morganya took the throne, Kerlan forced me to kill everyone associated with his trafficking business. He is intent on burying proof that it ever existed for fear of the Inquisition.” Her eyes flashed. “Then he left with a handful of top-ranking members. He’s decided to refocus his efforts on his new Trade with Bregon.” 

The name of Ramson’s birth kingdom sent a shock wave through him, even as his ears perked at the news. “What Trade? And why Bregon?” 

“He said it was a new development with Affinites. Besides that, I don’t know. Probably to escape the Imperial Inquisition and the new Empress’s purge on Affinite traffickers.” 

Ramson took a moment to digest this information. Morganya had hired Kerlan for a hit job--to kill the Crown Prince, Ana’s brother--before, but since her Coronation, she had turned with zealous fervor against Affinite traffickers. It was likely that Kerlan had caught wind of this two steps ahead, as always, and turned tail and fled. And now he was going to establish a new criminal empire . . . in Bregon.