The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (15 page)

"Why haven't the rest of the warlords done something similar? They have to hate being forced to depend on the territories on the outskirts of the city for food."

"One of them tried. To hear Jax tell it, the fool was barely more than started on the project when his digging brought one of the nearby buildings down."

I shook my head in amazement as she stepped back and studied her handiwork. "How did Brennan manage it?"

"He systematically pulled down all of the buildings bordering the shaft so that he could build the wall around the compound. Don't ask me how he knew where to build this one. Apparently he's just that smart. Well, dear, would you like to see how you look?"

I nodded hesitantly, and then stood and walked over to the bathroom. The mirror wasn't long enough for me to see my entire body at once, but it sufficed to let me see the results of her handiwork.

I'd known that she was emphasizing my breasts, and I'd been expecting the pants to be just as flattering, but I was still surprised by the results. For the first time in my life I looked like an actual woman rather than a teenage girl who was too busy with training to worry about what other people thought of her.

I slowly allowed my eyes to drift upwards. Ironically it was my hair that I first noticed. For years I'd pulled it back into a simple ponytail—more than once I'd contemplated cutting it short. It would have made things a lot easier, but I'd never quite managed to convince myself to do it. Apparently I was more vain than I'd realized.

The messy knot at the back of my head looked both effortless and elegant in ways I wouldn't have believed possible. When combined with the startling shade of red she'd applied to my lips and the darkened eyelids that made my eyes much bigger than normal, I very much looked the part I'd agreed to play.

"What do you think?"

I turned and gave her a slow smile. "Would you be willing to teach me how to do this?"

Her grin made me feel like we were co-conspirators. "I'm sure we could work out a trade."

"In that case, I think I better get on my way or Jax and Brennan are going to have something to say to both of us."

I grabbed the rifle that I'd just finished shooting for the first time less than an hour before and slung it over my shoulder with the barrel pointing down the way I'd seen Jax and the others carry theirs. A few seconds later I'd filled the appropriate pockets in the vest with fresh magazines, and was following Lexis out the door.

Brennan and Jax rounded the corner before we'd taken our second step. Seeing the two of them, especially Brennan, pull up short—obviously shocked by the transformation I'd undergone—was surprisingly satisfying.

They'd obviously been on their way to find out what was taking so long, but rather than the dressing down I'd been expecting, Brennan gave me a smile and Jax simply nodded in approval. Two of Jax's men carried Lexis' cart up the flights of stairs, and minutes later we were jogging through the busy streets of the compound.

I'd been expecting Jax to ride me over some supposed infraction or another the entire way, but now that we were outside of the secure underground floors, he was completely focused on our surroundings. He and the other five guards spread out to form a circle around Brennan and me, each focused on a specific arc, scanning both high and low to make sure that we weren't surprised by any threats.

Everyone else had their weapons out and ready for action, but I remembered Jax's warning and kept mine pointed at the ground, carefully matching Brennan's pace.

As we exited the wall around the compound and entered the rest of Brennan's territory, I stumbled and Brennan reached out and steadied me, grabbing my arm with surprising strength. "We're making up for lost time right now, but Jax will have to slow down once we hit the boundary between our territory and Piter's territory. It's bad enough for us to move like this inside an area that is supposed to be secure. It won't matter how late we are—once we hit their territory we'll slow down."

"I'm sorry about that. We were trying to hurry—"

He shook his head. "You don't need to be sorry. Lexis is a talker, we knew that, which is why we stressed that she couldn't be late. I think it comes from spending so many years unable to say what she was really thinking. Now that she feels safe she sometimes has a hard time staying silent."

I looked around at the team of bodyguards running in a cordon around us and was suddenly struck by just how lethal they were. I'd seen plenty of military personnel during my training back home, but that had somehow been different. Most of the people I'd interacted with had been newly-franchised trainees who were even younger than I was. The few experienced individuals had all been instructors, and I'd never seen more than one or two of them in the same place at the same time.

Inside the barrier nobody carried anything heavier than a stun baton, and even when I'd been loaded into the plane for the drop into the city, there had been a different feel to everything. Pilots were a different breed. They fought and sometimes died, but they delivered death from miles away. Jax and the others were used to facing death from close range without flinching. This was the price of power here among the grubbers.

"Is she?"

"Is she what?"

"Safe. Is Lexis really safe?"

Brennan caught my eyes and something passed behind them that I couldn't identify. "She's as safe as any of the rest of us, Skye. We live in a dangerous, violent world. I take steps every day to try and secure the safety of my people—the ones inside the compound and the ones on the outside alike—but I'd be lying if I said that I had every base covered as well as I would like to."

We arrived at the southern barricade before I could respond, and Jax slowed us down to nothing more than a walk. I looked at the soldiers on our side of the makeshift wall, and was struck by the difference between them and the six guards with us.

The men along the barricade were well-trained and disciplined, but they didn't have the same air of deadliness that Brennan's personal guards had. They were soldiers, but they weren't hardened killers yet, not like the enforcers waiting on the other side of the opened gate, not like Jax and the others.

I'd taken down one of these soldiers while suffering from a broken leg. I wouldn't have had such an easy time of things if I'd been up against Jax. I was faster and stronger than any of the men and women around me, but I'd hesitated when I came up against the guard who'd tried to stop me after I'd jumped out of the building. I'd failed to kill him, and in doing so burned my only other face. If things went badly in Brennan's territory I wasn't going to be able to just change my face and start over—all because I'd been unwilling to kill someone who'd just been doing their job.

"Are you sure you want me over there with you? I kept my head down while I was in Piter's territory, but that doesn't mean—"

That drew another smile out of Brennan. "Relax, Skye. Trust me when I say that he's not going to recognize you—not given how you look right now. Just try to look a little nervous and stand a little too close to me—like you're aware that your safety depends on my goodwill."

Nervous was easy. Standing close to him was something else altogether. Brennan was the threat that I'd been sent to make sure didn't cause the Society long-term problems. I should have been tallying up his strengths and weaknesses, should have been keeping track of the sidearm strapped to his right leg so that I could make sure he didn't get the drop on me. Instead, I found myself repetitively scanning my surroundings as though keeping him alive was just as much my job as it was Jax's.

We made it to the open gate, and a massive enforcer with a shaved head and crude tattoos looked us over.

"I was told you were only allowed to bring six guards."

Brennan didn't say anything. He just looked at me and then stared expectantly at Piter's man. After only a few seconds the enforcer cleared his throat.

"I suppose you can go through. Piter has been waiting for you."

There were a lot more enforcers waiting for us than I'd been expecting, and the situation only got worse with each step we took past the barricade. Only a few of them had firearms of any kind, and those were mostly ancient weapons that looked like they were just as likely to explode as actually fire a bullet, but it was still nerve-racking to look around and see the better part of a hundred people with clubs, knives, swords and axes lining the streets ahead of us.

I didn't realize I was shaking until Brennan reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. When he spoke his voice was the next best thing to inaudible.

"He's making a show of force precisely because he knows that he's so badly outmatched. Jax and the others could easily wipe out dozens of these bullies in the course of just a few seconds. Don't worry though, we won't be going very far into his territory. We're just headed to that building right up there. The idea is that we'll go in through the door on our side, and meet him in the room right there on the ground floor."

I nodded as I finally realized the reason the guards on the wall had been sporting field glasses. "You'll station someone at the window and if things go south the guards on the wall will sortie out to save us."

Brennan didn't answer for a second, but it wasn't until I looked over and saw his raised eyebrow that I realized I was using words that the average grubber wouldn't know. I was still debating how to cover my lapse when Brennan shook himself and nodded.

"That's right. It's not perfect, but it gives Piter the illusion of control, and that matters quite a lot. Our forces could mow his men here down in short order, but this is less than a third of his men. If he really wanted to make things difficult, he would attack under cover of darkness when we don't have the guards on our side of the border bumped up to nearly twice their normal strength. The more concessions I give, the stronger he feels and the less likely he is to push for the stuff that really matters."

I nodded. What Brennan was really saying was that he was less worried about Piter attacking by himself than he was about the possibility Piter would choose to attack in concert with one or more of the other warlords surrounding our territory.

We arrived at the door Brennan had pointed out, and Jax and one of his other men threw it open as they glided inside the building, weapons at the ready in case this was all just one huge trap.

"Clear."

I followed Brennan inside, followed in turn by the rest of the bodyguards, and then I was looking at a scene out of some kind of medieval hell. Piter was there, top hat and all, and the room behind him was packed with enforcers.

It was hard to tear my eyes away from the dirty, threatening mass of heavily-armed individuals, but I knew I needed to take in the entire scene before I got fixated on one particular threat. The chair that Piter was using could more properly have been called a throne. It was set on a makeshift platform that made sure that he wouldn't have to look too far up in order to meet the eyes of anyone in the room.

The back of the chair was only inches from the ceiling, and the arms were massive platforms that were more than big enough to each support a person, which was exactly what they were doing. A pair of girls with big brown eyes and long dark hair were sitting on either side of Piter, bodies pressed up against him. That would have been bad enough all by itself, but they were obviously even younger than I was, scared, and wearing thin—almost sheer—dresses that left them shivering in the autumn chill.

They were terrified, and he was enjoying their fear. I'd known that many of the warlords were terrible men, but somehow after meeting Brennan the contrast was all the more shocking.

While I was still staring at Piter, the warlord stood and stepped towards us. "I was ready to order my man at the gate whipped for letting you through with too many guards, but I can see that this one's not a guard. I have to admit you almost had me convinced, Brennan. For months now you've maintained this front, it's nice to finally see the real you."

Brennan placed a hand on my arm as though to make sure that I wouldn't throw myself at Piter. "I don't like what you're insinuating. Skye is a member of my guards in good standing. You will please treat her as such."

Piter shrugged. "I couldn't care less what you call her. Now, are you going to sit down and have a drink with me or not?"

Brennan smiled broadly and stepped forward to meet Piter as the other man set his hat on his throne and then waved for some of his men to bring a small table and matching chairs forward.

"I thought you were never going to ask."

Piter poured some kind of milky-white liquid into a pair of earthen mugs, and then the two of them tossed back the contents of their respective cups.

"I'm guessing that it's a bad sign that you came here with nothing more than guards on a day that you were supposed to be bringing over a shipment of rifles."

Brennan leaned back in his chair. "I'm afraid so. We had an accident inside of our foundry. One of the regulators on the arcs that melt the metal gave way and we had an unregulated burst of heat that nearly killed several of my people. I'm going to spend at least the next week or two trying to get the foundry back up and running. Hopefully getting the secondary generator back online won't take weeks more in addition to that."

Piter belched. "That's what my spies said as well. It's a good thing, too; if you'd shown up empty-handed and my spies had been telling me that things were running smoothly over there, I would have been forced to assume you were running some kind of game on me. I need those weapons to keep the rabble on this side of the barricade down in the dirt where they belong."

Brennan waved the words away. "You know me better than that. The last thing I want is to be a bad neighbor. You'll have your guns—I'm just going to be behind schedule a little more than we'd discussed. Honestly, you should just create an inner compound like I've done—it does wonders when it comes to keeping the riffraff in their place."

"That's the thing that I like most about you, Brennan. You've been unnaturally celibate the entire time I've known you, but at least you don't have any illusions when it comes to the natural order of things. I hear about the recruitment speeches your man Tyrell rattles off, and I get reports about the motivational speeches you give the workers inside your compound, but in the end, you're just as much of a blasted pirate as I am."