hall.
The tall blur might have been Sade and the pale blur might have been the Samaritan. When the two speakers and their companions came to the base of the stairs, Kella could only see the wrinkled black trim of someone’s coat and the corner of a scuffed shoe, but she could hear them clearly.
“…the timer for twenty minutes. Soon this whole building will be one large insurance claim. And I don’t care what Barika told you,” Lady Sade said. “She is no longer in a position to give you instructions.”
“Because she wanted them dead?” asked the Samaritan.
“And I want them alive. I’m taking the girl to see the queen tomorrow. I had wanted you with me as well, but obviously that’s out of the question now that they’ve seen your face.” Sade sighed. “And where is Barika?”
“I don’t know. The telegram came from Port Chellah late last night.”
“Chellah? Who does she know in Chellah? I swear, if she ever shows her face here I will kill her myself. Sometimes I think she is trying to destroy me.”
“I got the impression she thought she was helping you by getting rid of the princess and her little entourage. She said the replacements would ruin everything, whatever that means.”
“She’s an incompetent cow,” said Sade. “Who cares if Valero sends a cat instead of an armadillo? Only Barika would panic at something so trivial. You’re the only one who hasn’t completely ruined this entire endeavor. The medical technicians are all dead. Medina will be on her way back to Espana later today. I will make sure that Merin is released before noon, and then I want him dead as soon as he is away from the police station. And while you’re there, take a quick look through the cells to make sure no one else on my payroll is in there, and if they are, get them out. Is that clear, Shifrah?”
“Yes.” The Samaritan sounded annoyed.
Kella mouthed name to herself: Shifrah.
“Good. We’ll be leaving on the evening train. You’ll arrive at the station alone and you won’t speak to us. Be prepared to submit to a thorough search of your person. The transit authority is up in arms over this mess in Tingis and every agent in the country is looking to make her next promotion by catching a terrorist on a boat, train, or airship. No knives.”
“Understood.”
“You’ll have to ride in the back of the train where the little princess and her diestro won’t see you. Once we’re underway…” The voices faded into vague noise as the stairs creaked on their slow climb back up to the ground floor.
Kella crouched against the curtain, straining to hear, squinting at the edges of the leather flap, but she caught nothing else that made sense. Settling back on her rear, she rested her head against a dirty wooden shelf and waited. A door upstairs banged. A distant mechanical puttering and hissing reverberated through the walls and the detective tried to guess how large the steam carriage was to be making so much noise that could penetrate so far underground.
At that same moment, the hall filled with the sounds of shuffling feet, male grunting, and the occasional thud of something large and heavy bumping against a wall. From her position at the crack in the closet curtain, Kella watched two shadowy figures struggle down the hall toward her, each carrying a cage or crate, the last one staggering more than the others. The stairs creaked and groaned again as they bore their loads upwards and a moment later the door banged again. The mechanical rhythms of the carriage continued to rumble down into the building, but then the cycling of the engine quickened and the noises swiftly faded away until the building was left in perfect silence. Kella counted to a hundred, just to be sure, and then stepped out into the hall.
Hearing nothing above her, she dashed around the corner and back to the laboratory door. It stood ajar, though only a little, and an eye-watering stench wafted out from the dark chamber. With one hand over her nose and mouth, she shouldered the heavy door open and entered. Yesterday, the cages and machines had been neatly arranged along the walls, half-hidden in the shadows, but now everything was scattered across the floor. Hulking machines and blocky little trolleys and heavy tables filled the space, but that was all. There was nothing small or lightweight left in the room, no lamps or chairs, no tools. The cages stood in disarray, some on their sides or leaning against the back wall. The animals lay still inside them.
The table in the center of the room was bare but it glistened with watery smears and specks of dried blood. Kella only glanced at it as she crossed the room to the stone slab projecting from the wall, upon which lay the body of a once beautiful serval, the great cat’s gold and black coat now dull, matted, and clotted with dirt and blood. It stared at her through clouded eyes. A thick black gash ran across its throat, almost from ear to ear, so that its head tilted back unnaturally far. At her feet, the detective saw the blood still dripping off the slab onto the floor. The bilious stench of fresh blood and scat stung her nose.
Kella studied the body, or what was left of it. The front legs were strapped to the slab, but the left paw had been removed at the wrist and the wound sewed shut with great care and precision. The right rear leg below the knee was similarly missing, though the remains of the leg were firmly tied down. Hints of metal glinted in the thin light coming through the open doorway. A copper disc embedded in the thigh, a strip of aluminum in the foreleg, a spidery tangle of wire across the chest muscles like worms beneath the skin. But the strangest and largest of them was the cylinder in the serval’s belly. It was nearly as wide as the body itself, and the flesh bulged around the sides to accommodate the intrusion. The top of the metal cylinder had a seam running straight down the middle, and Kella probed this seam with a hesitant finger. She set her nail in the gap and tugged. One half of the lid tilted up toward her, and the detective edged sideways and leaned closer to look inside.
It was empty. It was a metal drum, as wide and deep as the cat’s body, empty and dry, like a brass hat box thrust inside the animal.
Kella closed the lid and noticed the border of the serval’s pale skin against the bright metal. Some of its flesh had rippled into pink and white scars, and some had blistered into angry red infections, and some places were black and stank of pus.
It lived through this. It lived with this thing inside it for days, maybe even weeks.
She stepped back from the slab, still staring at the amalgam of flesh and machinery dripping thick blood on the floor. A dead wolf with glass lenses screwed into its skull. A dead bear cub with mechanical forelegs. The head of a dead hartebeest riddled with rubber tubes and hoses. A pair of dead flying foxes with wooden wheels mounted where their wings should have been. The sheer volume of it, the countless glassy eyes, the still bodies, the grotesque poses, the bizarre machinery, it all numbed her. She had seen nearly a hundred crime scenes, at least three hundred corpses, but they had not prepared her for this.
At least they’re dead now. It’s over now.
There was something else in the corner, something round and irregular, and not in a cage. She crept closer and saw it was the dead body of a strange creature. The huge shell on its back reminded her of a tortoise, but it had the head of a dog and a tail like an iron mace. Whatever it was, it lay in a pool of fresh blood seeping from a deep cut under its jaw. She backed away without touching it and turned to leave.
The Samaritan stood in the doorway watching her. The woman in white leaned against the door frame, her features completely lost in shadow as the lamp in the wall behind her cast a vague nimbus through her dark hair. She held a jug in her bandaged hand.
Kella took a breath and slipped her hands back into her pockets where they grabbed the first pointy things they found. A knife and a caltrop. “I thought you left with your mistress, Shifrah.” A faint whiff of kerosene cut through the humid vapors like a cold blade.
“And I thought I left you for the police. I guess your head is a little harder than I thought. But that job is over and now I need to get started on the next one.” She set the jug down as a stiletto appeared in her hand, and she threw it.
The detective felt a strange mixture of pressure and pain as her left arm seized up at the shoulder. Her vision shuddered, threatening to vanish entirely into a sea of white. Struggling to ignore the blade buried under her collar bone, she clenched her teeth and focused on Shifrah, who was drawing another knife. Kella yanked her right hand free of her pocket and hurled a fistful of caltrops. Some glanced off the wall, some tumbled off the white coat, but one struck the Samaritan’s face, tearing a long thin mark across her cheek.
Shifrah dashed into the room and the detective had less than an instant to steel herself against the onslaught of punches to her stomach and face. The second stiletto was at work as well, slicing at her clothes and flesh so swiftly that Kella couldn’t feel the cuts until several seconds after they were made. She threw up her arms, trying to focus on the Samaritan’s eyes and the knife at the same time, trying to keep the blade from her head and belly, but
