The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(2)
It was not the Special Forces. They would be trumpeting the news to all Di Shang if it were. It was not the Mancers either – the Cra were not being banished, they were being killed, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in large groups. Their numbers were dwindling and fewer and fewer among them were crossing over for fear of this new, mysterious enemy. The Cra had demanded that Abimbola, with the vast resources he commanded, discover who was hunting them down and put a stop to it. It was an ultimatum – until he found and destroyed their enemy, business as usual would not resume. Abimbola had a number of high-stakes deals hanging in the balance at the moment and could not afford to make any decisions without the information only the Cra could provide. He had been stalling for weeks now and had uncovered nothing. He had only the terrified rumours that were spreading among the Cra to go on. Some believed it was a bereft mother whose grief had transmogrified her into a vengeful witch. Some said she rode a giant raptor. Others said it was a dragon; still others said a gryphon. It was whispered that she had a dagger carved from the claw of a dragon, but Abimbola discounted this outright, knowing full well that dragon claws, being harder than any other substance in the worlds and also impervious to heat, could not be carved. Some claimed it was the Shang Sorceress, but others insisted that they had delivered this very girl into the hands of the Xia Sorceress more than two years ago and that, in any case, she had been but a powerless child.
Abimbola’s stomach rumbled and he remembered that he should eat. He turned away from the window and went to his desk to pick up the phone and call the maid. As he did so, a shadow stepped out of the opposite wall and said a single word in a strange language.
He tried to scream. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. He tried to reach for his phone and found he could not move. Abimbola Broom had never before in his life had cause to feel truly afraid, but he was afraid now.
“You should be happy, aye,” said a young, female voice. “You were just wondering how you would find me and here I am.”
She came closer. He could see her face now, a brown, beaky little face under a mass of disorderly curls. Why, she was not even a grown-up! She was a girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen. Her hair and clothes were wet, as if she had recently been out in the rain. She was dressed quite ordinarily for a girl her age, in a pair of slim trousers, laced black boots and a long winter coat, perhaps dark green, although it was difficult to tell in the unlit room. She wore a shard of white crystal around her neck. She did not appear frightening until she reached into the coat and drew out a dark blade the length of her forearm.
“You’re wrong that it’s impossible to carve something from a dragon’s claw, by the way,” she said. “There are mystical ways of moulding even something as hard as this, if you know a great deal about Magic and a great deal about dragons. I dinnay know much about either, as it happens, but I know someone who does.”
Abimbola could not breathe or think. His mind was a roaring black cavern. He was going to be murdered, he understood that perfectly, and had not imagined himself capable of the terror he was now experiencing.
“I’m nay going to kill you,” the girl said impatiently. “Though you dinnay deserve any better. But Di Shang has its own kind of justice for men like you. I’m going to hand you over.”
Free of the fear of death and given a moment to recover from it, Abimbola’s mind began to race. There was nothing that could be proved against him, nothing at all.
“Lah, you’re wrong there,” said the girl, circling him with her awful black blade pointing towards him at all times. “You may be able to mix a messy little potion of invisibility and creep around unseen to your meetings with the Cra, but there are more kinds of Seeing than you can imagine. You dinnay know much about Magic, of course, so I’ll share a few facts with you. For example, did you know that I could touch your coat and discover its entire history? Everywhere you’ve been, everything you’ve done while wearing that coat – I can find out about it with a simple spell. I could do the same thing with your shoes or your briefcase or your wife’s diamond necklace. Then there’s the Vindensphere, which you’ve never heard of, but which could be used to show a judge everything you’ve been up to for the last eight or nine years. Of course, I’m nay going to go marching into a court of law to testify against you. I think one of the Emmisariae of the Mancers would be better suited for that, lah. Nobody would question what a Mancer said. And yes, the Mancers know about you, and yes, they want to see you prosecuted and convicted for the murder of innocent children, and yes, I am the one who has been hunting down the Cra. My name is Eliza.”
Abimbola Broom was dizzy. Whatever invisible force had been holding him immobile lifted suddenly and his knees folded beneath him. He crashed to the floor and found his voice.
“My children,” he managed to say. “I have two daughters. Without me, what will become of them?”
Eliza’s face clouded over. “I dinnay know. I’m very sorry that they will grow up without a father and that they will have to be so ashamed of you. But I cannay undo the things you’ve done.”
“I beg of you,” he said, “I will find a way to...atone. I have given a great deal of money to charities, you can see the receipts in my desk, thousands of –”
Eliza interrupted him with a brief command and once again his voice was gone.
“I cannay listen to you,” she said, disgusted. She put away her dagger and unlooped a coil of slender brown rope from her belt. She uttered brief commands and as she did so he found himself getting to his feet and putting his hands behind his back for her to bind. She bound his feet as well. The cord did not feel tight and it did not look strong but he could not move his limbs where it bound him.