Shadow Bound (Unbound) (11 page)

Ian stepped out of reach in case the bald man woke up. A hint of a grin rode one corner of his mouth when he saw me gaping at him. “Why do you look so surprised?”

“Because I’m so surprised.” Jake didn’t know Ian could fight; if he had, he would have told me.

I considered that new information for a second, trying to decide how long I could get away with silence on the matter, while the man in front of me breathed shallowly in concession to the knife at his throat. “What’s your name?”

“John Smith,” he spat. And that was exactly the alias I’d expected—a generic fuck-you to the question no one with half a brain would ever voluntarily answer.

I slid the knife beneath the short left sleeve of John’s shirt and he flinched when I split the material with one upward stroke. The cotton flaps parted to reveal a single iron-colored ring. No surprise there. “How much is Cavazos offering for Holt?”

“Hundred grand, unharmed. Seventy-five, if he’s bruised or bleeding.”

I glanced at Ian over John’s shoulder, brows raised in appreciation. “Not bad. But he’ll go higher.” I stepped back from John and shoved him hard enough that he fell to his knees in front of me, facing Ian.

“What are you doing, Kori?” Ian said.

“Showing you what it feels like to suffer conflicting orders.” I squatted and slid the knife across the concrete, and Ian caught it beneath the sole of his boot. “And John’s going to help.” I circled John slowly, and he turned with me to keep me in sight. “To break an oath, you have to first be sealed into one. You give your word, and a Binder like Kenley seals it, with ink, blood or spoken promise. Or some combination of those. A verbal promise is the weakest. A blood binding is the strongest, whether sealed on paper, flesh or any other surface. John, here, has a blood binding sealed in his flesh by Ruben Cavazos.” I glanced pointedly at his exposed biceps. “He’s unSkilled muscle. And I mean unSkilled in every sense of the word,” I said, backing out of reach when John lunged for me.

“Bitch!” he snapped, as I started circling him again, and I could see his bad leg shake.

“Kori, I know what a binding is,” Ian said. “I grew up in the suburbs, not on Mars.”

“But your understanding is theoretical, right? Like how I understand that the better part of valor is discretion, but I can’t truly know what that feels like, since I’ve never tried it.”

“You’ve never tried valor?” Ian’s brows rose.

“No, discretion,” I said, and he looked like he wanted to laugh. “My point is that you can’t truly understand what you’ve never felt. But sometimes a good visual helps.” That, and I really needed to hit something and I wasn’t sure when I’d get another chance. “So watch closely.”

I turned back to John, who still favored his right leg and was edging toward the Dumpster, probably in search of something to use as a weapon.

“When you break your word, you send your body into self-destruct mode. And when you’re given conflicting orders, there’s no way to obey them both, thus there’s no way to avoid pain. First comes a real bitch of a headache.”

I feinted to the right, then slammed a left hook into John’s temple. He grunted and stumbled backward, and I followed while he was still off balance. “Next comes uncontrollable shaking and cramps. Then the loss of bowel and bladder control.” I kicked John low in the gut for emphasis. He hunched over the pain in his stomach and I was already circling again before he stood.

“Then your body begins to shut itself down one organ at a time. Starting with the kidneys, and everything else housed in your gut.” John lurched toward me, fists clenched, and I danced away from him on the balls of my feet. Before he could follow, I twisted into a midlevel kick, and my boot slammed into his right kidney.

John moaned, an inarticulate sound of pain, then fell to his knees.

“And in the case of conflicting orders, if one of them isn’t withdrawn, the breakdown of your body continues until you die in a pool of your own evacuated fluids.”

“Kori,” Ian said, with a glance at the man curled up on the ground. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” I grabbed a handful of John’s hair and pulled his head back, one knee pressed into his spine. “What were you gonna do after you took me down?” I demanded. “How were you going to stop me from coming after you? Knife to the chest?”

John shook his head, and several of his hairs popped loose in my hand. “Across the throat,” he gasped. “Then I was gonna throw your corpse facedown in the river and cash in on my bet.”

Ian scowled, but didn’t press his position.

I shoved John facedown on the concrete and put one foot on the back of his neck. “Tell Cavazos I consider this a personal insult. If he doesn’t make a serious effort next time, I’m shipping his men back in a series of small boxes.”

Then I stomped on John’s good hand, and his screams followed us as I knelt to pick up the knife I’d taken from them, then followed Ian onto the sidewalk.

The first of the resistance pain hit me as I folded the knife closed and slid it into my pocket—a flash of agony behind my eyes, accompanied by the glare of white light in the center of my field of vision. An instant migraine. And that was only the beginning.

“You okay?” Ian asked, when I staggered on the sidewalk, one hand pressed to my forehead, as if that could stop the pain.

“No.” I stopped to lean against the wall of a dry cleaner’s storefront and Ian stood in front of me, blocking me from view without being asked. If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I would have questioned that kind of instinct, coming from a systems analyst.

I slid my hand back into my pocket and felt the smooth edges of the pocketknife, amazed by how calm the feel of the weapon made me, even as pain threatened to split my skull in two.

I’d been forbidden to arm myself, a fact I’d forgotten in the afterglow of the scuffle in the alley—even that little bit of expended energy had helped release some of my bottled-up rage. Carrying John’s knife was an ongoing breach of the oath of obedience I’d sworn to Jake Tower, and I would hurt for the length of the breach—until I got rid of the knife, or my body shut itself down in protest.

Yet even knowing my life could end right there on the street, my undignified death witnessed by an endless parade of strangers—not to mention Ian Holt—I didn’t want to give up the knife. I’d won it in a fair fight. The knife was mine, and so were the skills needed to use it better than its original owner could ever have managed. Weapons were freedom. Power. Autonomy. And by denying me the right to arm myself, Jake had denied me all of those things, too. Intentionally.

I was still being punished.

While my head threatened to crack open like a pistachio seed, my hands began to tremble and my stomach started to cramp, and the pain was too severe to be hidden.

“Kori? What’s wrong?” Ian’s voice was tense with concern, and he glanced back and forth between me and the people passing us on the sidewalk, to see if anyone had noticed my weakened state. And that was all I could take, not physically, but logically.

Resistance pain weakened me and made me vulnerable, which made him vulnerable by extension. There were people—even my fellow syndicate members—who wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of that weakness, for any of a dozen reasons. And if I let Holt get hurt, Jake would kill me.

“Here. Take this.” I pulled the knife from my pocket, my grip shaky, and Ian only hesitated for a moment before taking it from me. The instant the metal left my hand, the shaking stopped. The stomach cramps eased, and slowly, the pain in my head began to recede.

Ian glanced at the knife, then slid it into his own pocket. Then he met my gaze, silently demanding an explanation. When that produced no results, he tried again, verbally. “What’s going on, Kori? Why can’t you hold the knife?”

I exhaled slowly, not surprised that he recognized resistance pain for what it was. Then I braced myself for more. “I’m not allowed to carry a weapon. At the moment.”

Another bolt of pain shot through my skull and into my brain—I wasn’t allowed to tell him that, either.

I squeezed my eyes shut as my hands curled into fists at my sides, like I could actually fight the agony. But I couldn’t. This pain was much stronger than the previous bout—literally blinding, for a moment—but shorter in duration, because telling Ian something I wasn’t supposed to tell him was a terminal breach of my oath to Jake. Over and done with quickly, as opposed to an ongoing breach, like carrying a weapon would have been.

Ian’s frown deepened. “Why not? What moment?
This
moment? Saturday morning specifically?”

“It’s less a Saturday-morning thing than an until-further-notice thing.” That one came with no additional pain—the breach was in the admission, not the details.

“How are you supposed to defend yourself?” he demanded, and I noticed that he didn’t ask how I was supposed to defend him, which underlined for me the fact that he didn’t need to be defended.

“Like I just did. I’m not untrained in unarmed combat, and I can use any weapons I gain. But I can’t carry them once the fight’s over.”

Ian scowled like he had more questions, but he wasn’t going to ask them, and I knew why. He didn’t want to force me to answer any more forbidden questions. I could see it in his eyes. In the way he watched me in pity and concern, and I had the sudden, irrational urge to punch him, just so I wouldn’t have to see either of them anymore.

I didn’t need his pity or his concern, and I didn’t want either. So I pushed off against the wall and started walking, and Ian fell into step behind me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” I snapped. “I’m not some delicate flower that’s going to dry up and blow away at the first sign of pain.”

“I never thought you were. In fact, you almost seem to be looking for a fight. Was all that really necessary, back in the alley?”

“That was a mercy,” I insisted. “If I’d reported the incident, Jake would have told me to kill them both. But then there would have been no one to deliver my message.”

“Your message daring Cavazos to bring his A game next time?”

“That’s the one.”

“And you really think throwing down the gauntlet was a smart move?”

I shrugged. “Couldn’t let him think those clowns were a challenge. What is a gauntlet, anyway?”

“It’s like a glove—” Ian shook his head, like he could jar loose all unnecessary thoughts. “That doesn’t matter. My point is—”

“
My
point is that Cavazos will do anything to get you, and he won’t be the only one. Why should we wear ourselves out swatting flies all day, so that we’re too tired to fight when the eagle finally lands? With any luck, that message will piss Cavazos off enough that he’ll skip the preliminaries and bring on the main event.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to report this to Tower? Aren’t you under some kind of contractual obligation to?”

“Nope. Jake’s doesn’t do much micromanaging through direct orders. Sometimes that comes back to bite him on the ass—those are my favorite times—but usually that approach avoids much bigger messes.”

“How’s that?”

“Each command given is like a string that can’t be broken. Give too many to one person, and you’re eventually just going to tie that person in knots, and when that happens, nothing gets done. And sometimes people get hurt.” Not that Jake gave a damn about hurting people. “Instead Jake saves direct orders for things he really, truly means, and everything else is guided by a set of standard expectations. For instance, I’m
expected
to report any trouble we run into. But I’m not obligated to. If I get caught, I’ll be in trouble, but I won’t suffer resistance pain from defying an expectation, whereas I would from defying a direct order. And if I don’t get caught…” I shrugged. “No harm, no foul.”