At sundown Chel stormed the RKC offices on the Square’s eastern edge. She led the charge with Tay by her side, but it was Zip who threw a trash can through the building’s front window. Glass showered onto the tile floor and glittered like cutting frost.
They ran through the empty foyer past a reception desk, froth on a human wave. If they stopped running they’d be trampled by those behind, ground into the glass. Not that Chel wanted to stop. Night after night standing guard, pacing through the camp, all that over in an afternoon. She ran, and offices broke behind her.
The charge spent itself down side passages and up stairs. Wood splintered and drywall burst and shattered pipes sprayed precious water onto bathroom floors. The Major’s people did most of the damage, hunting trophies, stripping the office accoutrements with which the King in Red’s contractors defaced this ancient temple. Holes in drywall bared carved stone beneath.
Chel ran through galleries and past open workspaces, and her red-arms followed.
“I don’t see the door,” Tay shouted.
“It’s here.” She was barely breathing hard. “The Kemals said—There.” Left through the break room to the office cafeteria, windowless and ghostlit green, past empty tables into an unlit kitchen. Pans and colanders hung from the ceiling, and knives on the wall. She smelled disinfectant and char, dish soap and grease. Behind the kitchen they found the stockroom, piled with boxed onions and potatoes. A steel door took up most of the wall. It closed down, like the door to a garage.
Tay tried the latch first. “Locked.”
Chel slipped a sharp-toothed key from her jacket pocket. “The Kemals used to cater here.” The key fit, and the lock popped open. The door drifted up. A sliver of sunset shimmered on the stockroom floor like molten gold.
“What now?” Zip asked. “We run for the docks?”
“No. We don’t know how long this siege will last, and the Kemals don’t have enough food for the camp. They can bring supplies through here.”
“The Wardens will catch on.”
“Which is why we have to be careful.” She addressed the whole room of red-arms. “You hold this storeroom. If anyone goes out that door, we’ll tip the Wardens off before we’re ready. If we’re smart and wait ’til sundown, we can get a few supply runs through before anyone notices. If we’re dumb, we get nothing. Got it?” Nods all around. “I’ll tell the Kemals.”
“I’ll come with you,” Tay said, and they left together.
He held himself tense until they reached the cube farm. Then he laughed. “I thought for sure everyone would run right out those doors.”
“That’ll come later.”
“Why not now? You saw those witch-walls up on Crow. The Wardens are angry. This won’t end well.”
“We stay because we can help people. Don’t worry. I’ll run when time comes.”
“When’s that?”
From the front hall, she heard screams.
“Now,” she said.
* * *
Six men and two women knelt on broken tiles—three Quechal, five pale-skinned Old-Worlder types, Camlaander or Iskari blood, Chel couldn’t tell the difference. They were desk jobbers: faces and hands soft, smooth. They wore office clothes, creased wools and ironed cotton, ties and jackets, and every one had showered this morning. Most of the men carried a luxury of extra weight in their hips and stomachs and jowls. One was gym-rat buff—his nose was broken and leaked blood, and he pressed a hand to probably broken ribs. Another man was crying.
The Major’s troops stood behind them, armed with lengths of pipe. The Major paced in front of the hostages, and pondered each in turn. He’d made it halfway down the line.
“For gods’ sake, Stan,” said the woman kneeling beside the crying man. Her back was straight, and her cheek bore a fresh bruise.
A circle of red-arms and protesters watched the Major, his men, and the captives. Chel abandoned Tay to shove through. She shouldered aside a larger man, and stormed to the Major. “Let them go.”
He turned slowly. His helmet bore the imprint of a fist. Behind the mask, his eyes shone with fervor. Temoc had looked like this during the sacrifice. “Red King Consolidated told employees at this office to stay home. It seems these did not receive the memo.”
The man with the broken nose spat blood onto the glass; one of the Major’s troops kicked him in the back.
“You want them as a bargaining chip.”
“Lives for lives. We return these innocents, and the King in Red sends us the murdering Warden for punishment.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Why not?”
Gods. Temoc asked her to keep the camp together. How could she do that? She dropped her voice, but the room was quiet, and everyone heard. “You hold these folk for ransom and the papers will make us out to be killers. We need sympathy more than leverage. We need food.” Which was as close as she could come in front of an audience to saying: you do this and the Kemals won’t work with you anymore. And they’re the ones with the corn. To put it more bluntly would force the Major’s hand. She’d fought enough dockside rats to know you never cornered one. “Our fight’s with the King in Red, not his drones.”
The crowd was an even mix of her people and his. His troops were armed and armored, but the fight wouldn’t be clean, or easy, and he couldn’t risk losing.
She hoped.
“We will take them,” he said, “to the camp. The Commission will decide what to do.”
She knew how that would go: back-and-forth, argument, sideline sniping, balance of power, nobody willing to agree. The captives would be safe, for now.
But she couldn’t smile, couldn’t make off like she’d won—or let it seem she’d lost, either, which would disappoint her supporters in the crowd.
Gods, was this how Temoc felt all the time?
“Let’s go,” she said.