The Immortal Crown

  “Man,” he said, tossing his coat to the floor. “Am I glad to see you. You will not believe the fucked-up night I just had.”

  He noticed then that she was fully covered in her Cloistered get- up, which was also weird since she wasn’t obligated to wear it around their guesthouse, especially in his room. Putting the rest of his ruminations on hold, he walked around to face her, growing increasingly troubled by her stillness and odd behavior.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, kneeling in front of her. “What’s going on?”

  She said and did nothing for several moments, and then slowly, almost nervously, she removed the opaque veil from her face—a face that wasn’t Mae’s. It was Carl’s young concubine, the one who’d been beaten and reprimanded. Justin stared at her dumbfounded, suddenly remembering a story Mae had told him about Hannah asking if one of the Gemmans could impregnate her.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Where’s Mae?”

  “I am Mae,” said Hannah simply. “At least for the rest of your trip

  I am.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Act of Faith

  Sneaking out of Carl’s compound during dinnertime wasn’t that much more difficult than when Mae had done it late at night. He’d upped his security since that incident, sinking the bulk of it into when darkness fell. With the sun still lingering in the sky and the family up and active, the patrolling security guards were few and far between. The only edge they had was better visibility, so Mae had to be extra conscientious of their positioning when she climbed the tree and swung out over the fence. Returning would’ve been a much more complicated matter . . . if she’d planned on coming back.

  No one bothered her once she was on the road, walking toward the salon in ill-fitting men’s clothing. Seeing as Justin had ruined his wide- brimmed hat, Mae had “borrowed” Lucian’s from his room, hoping he wouldn’t mind. Honestly, once he and the others saw what she’d left behind, the hat would be the least of anyone’s worries.

  Even now, resolved with this course of action, Mae couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt for what she was doing to the others. On the surface, the transgression was obvious: she was violating orders and abandoning her mission. That would’ve been wrong in any situation, let alone one that required her presence for extra security. She’d left those who needed her protection and possibly endangered them further by creating a sticky political situation. The Arcadians wouldn’t take kindly to discovering that one of their Gemman guests had disappeared, and Mae could only hope her attempt at damage control would work.

  The knife’s vision had left her no alternatives. She had needed to act and act fast. Using Hannah had been a stroke of brilliance, though Mae regretted the girl’s unfortunate circumstances had led her to that point. Val had told Mae earlier that Hannah had been beaten again that morning, severely enough that she was out of commission for dinner. So, while the others ate, Mae had crept to the other guesthouse and given the young Arcadian woman a chance at freedom. Both of them were supposed to be Cloistered for the duration of the Gemman trip and were of close-enough heights that they were indistinguishable when fully wrapped up. Mae’s only gamble had been whether the girl would accept the deal.

  Hannah had, with equal parts vehemence and fear. She’d come back to the Gemman guesthouse—after first ransacking her own room to make it look like she’d packed in haste—and accepted Mae’s assurances that the other Gemmans would help her once her identity was known. Mae didn’t actually know that for sure but had to believe it was true. Once they discovered she was gone, it would be in their best interests to leave with as many women as they’d come in with. They’d cover for Hannah, who would hopefully be able to pass as Mae by staying Cloistered until the border. From what Mae had learned, runaway wives and concubines were rare, but surely it was rarer still for one to try to slip out of the country pretending to be a foreigner. So long as no one thought to lift Hannah’s veil, she’d be okay, and the RUNA would give her refugee status once she was on their soil.

  Mae’s own fate was less certain, but that was a problem for later. She studied her hand in the dusky light, wondering just how much trouble she’d gotten herself into. The mark from the knife was still there, a tangible reminder of her involvement in supernatural affairs. But she could hardly dismiss the knife’s powers when she turned down the rural side road and found a scene exactly as the vision had shown her. Crouching in the trees, Mae quickly assessed the situation. A large truck with an open flatbed was parked outside the salon, and men were loading up furniture—mostly beds and tables—into it. Near it was parked a large van, presumably what would be used to take the girls themselves. The knife had shown her immediate action was needed, and here the proof was, right before her eyes. If she’d waited one more day—or even until this evening, when Justin got back—her niece might have been gone forever.

  And not just her niece. When Mae had traveled to the salon in the knife’s vision, the goddess had spoken to her, that radiant voice echoing everywhere.

  Go and get the girl, and I will guide you to safety.

  I have to get all the girls, Mae had said. Not just my niece. I can’t take her and leave the rest to that fate.

  You have no responsibility to them, the goddess had reminded her.

  But Mae had been thinking the matter over for a while and was firm. Some are my countrymen. All are my sisters. One way or another, I have a human responsibility to them. Is it beyond your power to save the rest?

  Don’t try to coerce me into acting by playing to my vanity. That’s a human trick, one you don’t need to play on me. I can and will help you, so long as you are up to fulfilling your part.

  Yes, of course, Mae had thought bleakly. Justin told me there’d be a price. There always is. What will I owe you?

  Faith, the goddess had replied simply. Something you give very easily to your masters in your professional life but a commodity you rarely share personally. If you want this to succeed, you will have to put your faith in me to guide you and know that you will not always immediately have the answers to your questions as you undertake this task. But if you have faith, I will guide you home and help you to thwart your enemies. Do you accept?

  Faith had sounded like both an easy and terribly high cost, as no doubt it was intended to. But Mae had agreed, for better or for worse, and now there was no turning back.

  She watched the packing for a long time, something that grew more difficult as dusk fell and stole the remaining light. But by the end of her surveillance, she felt confident in her assessment of the situation. The two guards from her last visit were there, occasionally appearing outside for some task, though they weren’t responsible for the bulk of the packing. That fell on two other men who seemed to be hired laborers. A fifth, older man paced the property and barked orders to everyone. Someone referred to him as Pittsfield, the same name Carl’s sons had given to this salon’s owner. Mae instantly despised him. Aside from these men, the only other person Mae saw was the marked woman from the kitchen whom must indeed be a servant working for the salon, judging from the way she scurried about her tasks. None of the young girls, the actual merchandise, were visible.

  Probably locked away in their rooms, Mae thought. Pittsfield and his cronies wouldn’t have them on display with workers around, though something told Mae the girls probably never got outside, even without visitors. They were probably kept concealed at all times, with no sunlight or play, forced to listen to that horrendous religious rhetoric about how they were lesser beings only put on this earth to serve men.

  Anger began to kindle in Mae, and she forced it down. She needed a cool, collected head to pull this off.

  An hour later, the packers finished, and the moving truck left. Pittsfield and one of the guards went inside while the other remained on the porch. It was almost completely dark now, and Mae was able to move about the perimeter more freely. She wondered what the delay was until the marked girl brought the outside guard a plate. Dinnerti
me. It made sense, feeding the girls before a trip, and Mae realized it was something she too now wished she had done for herself. No matter. Praetorians might love their meals, but they were trained to go without and withstand harsh conditions.

  This was her last opportunity to plan. There was another car on the property, so most likely only some of the men would be accompanying the girls in the van. That didn’t mean all three might not see them off, and Mae needed to start evening her odds. Creeping into a dark thatch of woods near the property’s edge, she grabbed a large limb and struck it against a tree as hard as she could. The guard, illuminated on the porch, immediately set his plate down and aimed his gun in Mae’s direction. He took a few steps forward and peered around, but the darkness was against him. She could guess his thoughts. The noise had definitely been made by something living . . . but was it human or animal? The guard cast a hesitant glance back and then, to Mae’s relief, strode forward without seeking backup. He moved toward Mae’s hiding spot, and even when he took out a flashlight, the advantage was still hers. She waited until he’d almost walked past her and then sprang on him from behind, clamping a hand on his mouth to muffle his cries as she wrestled him to the ground and choked off his air. When he was still, she eased up and shone his flashlight on him, revealing him to be the same guard she’d struck the other night. Bad luck for him. Ripping off a piece of his shirt, she made a makeshift gag for him and then tied his hands up with his belt. In the event he came to before she was gone, that would slow him down.

  You could always kill him. The voice in her head was her own, not the goddess’s, and Mae hesitated. It was true that killing the man would be the ultimate act of incapacitating him. There was no telling what atrocities he’d committed and would continue to do. Shooting him would make too much noise and give her away. Slitting his throat with the knife was an option, but she’d already used it once to kill, and Mae didn’t want to link the blade to death again if she didn’t have to. The Morrigan had been all about death. If Mae was getting involved with another goddess, she wanted this relationship to be as much about life as possible. For now, he would live.

  She took his gun, his lighter, his coat, and the real treasure: a set of keys, which she was pleased to learn unlocked the van. A quick check of it showed no extra supplies, save a few jugs of water that suggested they were going farther than just down the street, though perhaps not across the country. A folded up map provided no clues to Pittsfield’s destination, though it did give her a much-needed sense of the roads in the areas. No one had noticed the guard’s absence yet, and she used the time to study their best escape route. Due west would lead her to the RUNA’s border in less than a day and was by far the fastest. That particular border was a river crossing. In fact, the Mississippi River made up a huge portion of the Gemman-Arcadian border. It was nearly impossible to avoid. The river became bigger the farther south it went, and Mae had no idea how she’d get a group of young girls over it. If she went northwest, she might have an easier time crossing where the river narrowed, but her best chance would be going straight north, to a point where the border turned east and was strictly on land. Those points had the greatest clusters of soldiers, on both sides, and meant a longer trip, but if she could get close enough to the Gemman border, their technology would pick up her chip and at least get her countrymen’s attention, if not their aid.

  It was the best shot she had at a plan. The rest would have to be faith.

  She stuffed the map in her coat pocket and then took the coat from the unconscious man over to the smaller parked car. Mae wasn’t overly familiar with the mechanics of gas-powered cars, but she understood the basic principles and figured out the rest by doing a quick survey of the vehicle. No one else had come to check on the missing guard, and she used her opportunity to twist and tear the stolen coat into a makeshift fuse leading into the gas tank. Satisfied with her work, Mae used the lighter to ignite the end of the cloth, and then she ran as fast as she could to the far side of the house’s property. She’d just ducked for cover when the car exploded spectacularly.

  It took a few moments, but the response she’d hoped for came. Pittsfield and the other guard came tearing out, both armed. They ran the opposite direction from Mae, staring openmouthed at the fiery wreckage. With their backs to her, Mae was able to run right past them into the house, slipping in without them noticing. The entryway was empty, but the marked girl hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, cringing when she saw Mae.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Mae said, realizing that probably didn’t seem convincing with her two guns. “Where’s the emergency exit?”

  Hannah had explained to her that many Arcadian homes, especially salons, had secret ways in and out similar to the tunnel Mae had used at Carl’s. Arcadian men were covetous of their women and wanted them secured, but they still needed fire exits and other emergency paths out.

  Mae’s hope was that a household servant like this girl would know where the house’s hidden exit was, and then Mae could smuggle the upstairs girls out while the men were distracted by the fire. It became immediately obvious that the girl wasn’t going to help, however, when she began screaming.

  “Shut up!” hissed Mae. The girl kept screaming, dashing any tentative attempt at secrecy. Desperate to regain some semblance of control, Mae leapt out at the girl and dealt her a blow to the head that rendered her unconscious. That brought a merciful return to silence, but Mae didn’t know if it was a little too late. That, and it had also silenced a potential source of information unless one of the girls knew about the house’s secret escape.

  As it turned out, danger came not from outside, but within. Mae had barely turned toward the stairs leading up when two unknown men came barreling down. Her implant, already on alert, surged to action, flooding her with adrenaline that made her act quickly and instinctively. She lashed out as the first assailant came at her, blocking his attack and flipping him over so that he landed hard on his back. At the same instant, she saw his partner draw a gun on her, and with no other means to dodge or attack the man directly, Mae deferred to her faster reflexes and shot him before he could shoot her. The man she’d knocked to the ground began to scramble toward her, and she shot him too.

  “Damn,” she muttered. If the men outside didn’t know something had happened earlier, they did now. She’d been foolish to think that just because she hadn’t seen more guards outside, there were none on the property. It made sense that Pittsfield would’ve had extra security after her previous visit, leaving those men directly with the girls while others ran errands outside. Done was done, and there was no point in beating herself up over the error. The question now was where she was going to make her stand.

  She chose a spot just up the stairs to launch her defense, one that afforded her an angle on the front door but mostly kept her out of sight. When the other guard—the one who’d had sex with the serving girl that night in the kitchen—came through, he had only the briefest of glimpses of Mae before she shot him. Even if she’d had time for remorse, she wouldn’t have spared it for him, not after seeing the earlier terror in the marked girl’s face. That girl’s entire life had been spent at the mercy of others, and he’d callously taken advantage of it.

  A creak on the stairs behind Mae explained why only one man had come through the door—and also revealed the location of the emergency exit. She spun around and saw Pittsfield launching himself down the stairs at her. The secret way he’d taken must have wound through another staircase hidden within the walls that went up to the second floor. That edge of surprise allowed him to literally get the jump on her, and the two of them tumbled down to the main floor, landing in a heap that left them both momentarily confused. Mae, burning with the implant’s chemical flood, recovered much more quickly, and its edge helped knock down whatever advantage his greater body size held, as did her youth and training. She soon gained the dominant position, disarming him and throwing him down on the floor again as she got to her feet. He started to
follow, but the sight of her gun pointed at him made him freeze. Slowly, he held up his hands in a warding gesture.

  “Let me go,” he begged. “Let me go, and you can have whatever you want. Take the girls. They’re worth a fortune in—” His mouth clamped shut, and his eyes bugged as he looked her over. “You . . . you’re a woman!”

  “Good catch.”

  He was still flabbergasted. “Wh . . . what are you doing?”

  ”I’m taking the girls.”

  “But . . . why?”

  It was incredible, Mae thought. A moment ago, when he’d thought she was a male thief, he’d tried to barter the girls for his safety. Now, he couldn’t even fathom why she’d want them.

  “To set them free.”

  The blank look he gave her told Mae he was still lost.

  “You kidnapped them,” she said through gritted teeth. “You took them from their homes so you could sell them into slavery and make a profit from it.”

  “Homes?” he spat. “I took them from heathen lands where women fornicate with demons and brought them here where they can live in Nehitimar’s salvation. I did them a favor.”

  “By locking them up and selling them to men twice their age?” Pittsfield’s eyes narrowed. “You’re one of them. One of those women. This is what happens when people stray from Nehitimar’s grace, when women aren’t taught their proper roles!” Emboldened, he tried to get to his feet. “I’ll show you right now how a woman needs to—”

  Mae pulled the trigger.

  It wasn’t entirely his irritating tirade that made her do it. Soldier or not, Mae didn’t like to kill wantonly. He had presented no immediate threat, true, but she couldn’t leave him here bound and gagged as she had the guard in the woods. He’d identified her as a woman and a foreigner, and when word of this got around, that might be too big a connection for someone not to pair with Hannah’s disappearance. And although Mae didn’t necessarily see herself as a dispenser of vengeance, there was no telling how many atrocities he’d been responsible for. She was only dealing with this crop of girls. How many had come before them? How many stolen and sold away? How many misused like the poor unconscious girl in the kitchen? He was no innocent, and while Mae would’ve liked to walk away from this mess with no bloodshed, she wasn’t going to lose much sleep over killing someone who profited from taking advantage of those who were weaker.