At some point, she thought she heard Wen shouting and her mind had filled with the worst sort of imaginings. Then there had been footsteps and a gunshot. Now, without any sense of Perception, she had no idea if her sister-in-law was still alive. She’d assumed that the barukan had captured them as leverage against No Peak. She’d counted on the possibility of using her position as Weather Man to negotiate for Wen’s life, but no one had come into the bare room to see her in many hours.
She grew heavy-headed and fell unconscious for indeterminable periods of time. After what she guessed to be over a full day, the door opened and two men came into the room: a short, mean-looking man in cargo pants and a skull pendant of bluffer’s jade, and a young man with a tattoo on the side of his neck. The short man, who seemed to be the leader, said, mockingly, “You must be getting bored, Kaul Shaelinsan.”
The younger man went behind the chair and untied the gag. Shae moved her sore jaw and tried to force saliva into her dry throat. “Did you kill my sister-in-law?”
The barukan leader smirked at the torment he knew she must be feeling. “On the contrary, she’s on her way home right now,” he said. “Your brother loves his wife very much and paid the full ransom for her safe return.”
Shae wished desperately she had her jade and the Perception to discern if the man was lying. She couldn’t help but clutch at the hope that he was telling the truth, that Wen was indeed free. She kept her voice carefully neutral. “If that’s true, then there’s a lot more we could talk about. You know who I am and how much jade and money I control. I’m sure we can come to some sort of deal.”
“I’m sure we can,” said the barukan leader in his accented Kekonese, his lips rising in a way that made Shae distinctly uneasy. “After all, the most valuable thing that the Weather Man of a clan possesses isn’t jade or money. It’s information.”
He stepped forward directly in front of her, fixing Shae with his bulging eyes. “Your clan came into Shotar by making friends with the police and the government. You give them information from your spies. Two months ago, federal agents busted a shipment of sweet flour worth two and a half million sepas—there’s no way they could’ve known about that deal unless there was a rat in the Matyos.”
Shae shook her head slowly. “You’re not Matyos.” Due to No Peak’s spy network in Shotar and its cooperation with Shotarian law enforcement, she was aware of who the main leaders of the Matyos were, and these men were not among them.
“Fuck the Matyos,” the man snapped. “They bring the goods through Oortoko, but they lean on us to move and guard the product, so it’s Faltas who end up dead or in prison and the Matyos blame us for the lost dope, when it’s No Peak rats who are to blame.” He leaned so close she could smell his strangely sweet cologne mingling with his sour breath. “Two weeks after that bust, the No Peak clan received business permits and liquor licenses for four properties it had recently acquired in Leyolo City. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I don’t believe in coincidences. Who was your rat?”
Shae said, “I’m the Weather Man. I’m not involved in handling White Rats. The Horn’s side of the clan manages informers.” Ordinarily, that would be a plausible denial, but Shae had been personally involved in every aspect of the clan’s risky expansion into Shotar. She’d worked with Lott and Hejo. She’d seen the names.
“You must think that we don’t know how to use our jade, that we can’t tell you’re lying,” said the Faltas captain, sounding insulted. “Perhaps you don’t understand: No one is going to rescue you. Your brother has his wife back safe and sound and is pulling your clan’s Green Bones out of the country. If you give us what we want, you can have a pleasant stay with us and go home as well. If not, it will be over a week before they start hunting for your body. I don’t want to have to do that to a woman.”
As the leader spoke, another man came into the room with coils of rope and chains. Shae’s mouth went drier than dirt. The men lashed her ankles and wrists, then untied her from the chair and wound rope and chains around her torso and legs, securing them with padlocks, until she was entirely immobilized, like an escape artist about to be lowered into a closed container only to astound everyone with a feat of magic. Except that Shae had no such trick. Her heart was running like a jackhammer.
The younger man lifted her over his shoulder like a heavy sack of rice and carried her into a bathroom with a Shotarian-style soaking tub large enough for three or four people. Dudo was sitting in the dry tub, also securely bound and weighed down with chains. When the barukan placed Shae inside the tub across from him, the Fist raised his bowed head. Dudo’s face was badly bruised and his eyes were having difficulty focusing. The blow to the back of his head had given him a concussion. “Kaul-jen,” he croaked. “I’m sorry I failed to protect you.”