Page 27 of The Grip of Death
I stalked out of the alley, and like clockwork, there came Reza’s footsteps and flabbergasted huffing, right behind me. He liked to talk a big game, but the leather jacket, the tough guy act, even the smoke — all smoke and mirrors in the end. SEER might have done some sketchy things in its past, but Reza was the right person to take it in a new direction. The right direction. We had our differences, but Reza Arshad always did the right thing.
The cobblestones seemed more cracked, the potholes more prominent as we reached Giuseppe’s part of town. A cloud of doubt almost settled on me, seeing the conditions that the old artificer lived in. We could have left Giuseppe well enough alone and none of this would have ever happened.
Maybe Reza was right. Why would Old Giuseppe, of all people, ever want to hurt Xander? Or maybe Xander had never been the target of his ire. Maybe this was about hurting me, his own way of getting back at the Prydes. Was it a grudge against my parents? I had to know.
Reza never stopped interjecting the whole way there, enough that I’d suddenly developed the ability to block out his ranting. We reached Giuseppe’s door. My fist hovered halfway from it as I poised my knuckles to knock. The numbers on the front — they weren’t this shiny the first time Preston and I came to visit.
I remembered Giuseppe’s face when he’d agreed to work with us, a smile so bright it was like the rust over his heart had flaked off, the cobwebs cleared away for the first time in too many years. He’d polished the numbers. He was a happier man these days. Who was I to harass him?
No. Just a nagging moment of doubt. I had to do this. It had to be done. Now or never. I rapped my knuckles against the door.
Reza walked up onto the doorstep alongside me, still frowning, his arms crossed. “I just hope you don’t regret this, Jackson.”
I shook my head and sighed. “I hope I don’t regret it, either.”
The door opened a crack. Giuseppe peered out, his eyes lighting up, then far too quickly dimming at the sight of me. “Jackson. It’s you.” His eyes flitted to my right. His face wrinkled with sudden despair. My heart sank. Gods above and below. Maybe this had been the wrong move after all.
Even the most extreme of the Black Market’s shut-ins would know a SEER enforcer when they saw one. There was something about the way they carried themselves, Reza most of all. The leather jacket, the boots, the overconfident swagger were one thing. Slap a pair of aviator lenses on his face — his favored style of sunglasses, incidentally — and Reza would look right at home in a cheesy buddy cop TV show.
“Jackson,” the old man started meekly. “Is he here to arrest me?”
I could have burst into tears.
“No, no, that’s not it at all,” I stammered, somehow immediately convinced of his innocence. I wanted nothing more than to run away from Giuseppe’s front door and hide under the covers next to Xander. “I just — I had a few questions about what happened back at the Halls of Making.Wehad a few questions, that is.”
Reza said nothing, only answering my look of puppy-eyed pleading with a death-glare stony enough to rival Medusa herself. I was on my own, then.
“Look, Giuseppe, I’m so sorry to bother you like this, but I just needed to make sure again. You’re absolutely certain that you’ve never worked on any version of the arcane engine before, is that correct?”
His forehead wrinkled. “I already told you back at the guild grounds, Jackson. If I’d fiddled with anything even remotely similar to the engine, I wouldn’t have carried on working on it like we did. Why in the world would I willingly do something so dangerous?”
“Why indeed?” Reza asked, his brows never darker nor bushier as they met in the center of his forehead, his eyes burning into me like steaming-hot coals.
“Sorry, Giuseppe. I’m just trying to work out where we could have gone wrong. It’s just that — something like this never should have happened, you know?”
Except that it did. Twice now, in fact, and because of the same family of artificers. Maybe history didn’t repeat, but it sure as hell echoed. The original blast from before had happened so many years ago. Who could have guessed that we would still hear its reverberations today?
“Octavian and Luciana were some of the guild’s most brilliant artificers,” Giuseppe said. “Truly. But even the greatest of artificers isn’t without fault. Accidents happen, Jackson. I’monly glad that it didn’t end in any casualties. But how is Xander doing? The poor boy. Has he regained consciousness yet?”
All my bullshit, all my bravado, and all Giuseppe even cared about was Xander’s wellness. I’d never felt like a bigger piece of shit in my life. I deserved to melt away right there, like rancid butter on the hot cobblestones. I deserved to dribble into the dirt like the slime that I was.
“He’s fine,” Reza answered, his voice so much gentler now that he was talking to Giuseppe. “He’s just resting at the moment, or so I’ve been told. I was actually on my way to visit him when Jackson here insisted that we had some pressing business to attend to. Xander should be waking up soon.”
“Goodness gracious,” said a kindly voice behind us. “Is Xander Wright unwell?”
I could tell from the sweetness and warmth of the words alone that it was Gertrude Goodness. I felt myself flushing even as I turned to greet her, finding her standing there in one of her frilly outfits. She was carrying a basket of something that smelled delicious, the baked goods protected by a square of checkered cloth that matched her dress. I forced a sheepish smile. Gertrude Goodness beamed back.
Her sudden appearance made me feel even more awkward about this ill-conceived confrontation. Where was all that courage I’d mustered from before? Desperately confronting an innocent old man over zero evidence? That was something only a fool did. A fool, or a coward.
I would have given anything to slink away and disappear through one of the Black Market’s many alleys. Maybe it was her motherly nature, how she felt like she could be everybody’s sweet old grandmother. Growing up eating Mother Dough’s pastries, I certainly felt that way, seeing her smiling face on the side of the box.
“Master Gertrude,” Reza said, greeting her with a hand on his chest and a bow of his head.
Gertrude flushed from the formality of it all. “Oh, please, no need for titles and such. Gertrude will do just fine. But I’m afraid I have to repeat myself. Is everything quite all right with Xander?”
Reza and I exchanged looks, and the stilted noises from the doorway told me that Giuseppe was shuffling from one foot to the other. This probably wasn’t the time nor the place, even though I knew I would feel comfortable telling Gertrude, of all people, just what had happened at the guild.
“Let me take that off your hands, Gertrude,” Giuseppe said, piercing the silence. Reza and I both exhaled, temporarily relieved of the burden of having to explain something so convoluted to Master Gertrude. And worse, having to do it in front of Giuseppe.
