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“Playing the discordant music of your kind?”
He paused, and then shrugged. “Pretty much. She was kidnapped from one of these places, a small artificial island her father created, off of the Amalfi coast.”
“Was she unguarded at the time?”
“No. Her kidnappers plowed through her team, and about twenty concertgoers,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s been all over the news, something you’d know if you weren’t in hiding.”
“Dying,” I corrected him. But he was right, I hadn’t paidattention to anything else other than webbing my rooms for weeks.
“So far the story they’ve been telling people is that Sloane is too emotionally traumatized to appear in public, but she sends her fans her regards—in actuality, they’ve been getting ransom notes from the kidnappers, with increasingly erratic demands.”
“Is Arcus entertaining them?” I asked, and then I wondered about the length of the timeline.
“No—he refuses to pay until he knows who they are. I’ve talked to him personally, but he doesn’t want to set a precedent, or so he says.” Royce made a tight face that let me know what he thought of the wisdom of the apparently over-principled billionaire versus the ability of one small human woman to survive at the mercy of potentially many unknown kidnappers. “We’re helping him to work on that angle; he just hired us a day ago, but it’s been rough going.”
“So he’s just been sitting on his hands?” Royce wouldn’t need the translator to pick up on my mystified tone.
He shook his head strongly. “No. They’re two extraction teams down. And I’m talking full teams here, Nine. They were Shiranak’s.” Shiranak was the boss of some of our competitors; I had met him more than once before. He was massive, even for an orc, almost my same stature—and just as flamboyant as Royce was in his own way, choosing to wear cowboy hats, boots, and silver belt buckles the size of dinner plates. He ran full orc crews that might better be classified as mercenaries than bodyguards, depending on the local law enforcement’s definition at the time.
“That’s why the kidnappers are demanding more money. They don’t think Arcus is negotiating in good faith. And he doesn’t think they are, seeing as they’re not providing proof-of-life photos anymore.”
I groaned and shook my head. “A tragic situation, to be sure,” I granted. “But I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”
“I want to send you in. To get her.”
I shook my head gravely and put a fist to my chest. “I cannot be relied on. I could die at any moment—my time is near. I won’t let you put me in a position where my death could injure teammates.”
Royce licked his lips. “I...wasn’t going to send anyone else.” I blinked and reared back. “It’s almost a guaranteed suicide mission, Nine. And you could just be going in to bring back a corpse. But hey, I figured since you were already dying...”
His voice drifted as I understood his math. I hissed at him before continuing. “Here,” I said, using my arms to illustrate the surroundings. “The way I’m supposed to. Not in some firefight in a place that is not my own.”
“Ahh.” He leaned forward dramatically. “But they’re keeping her inside the Threadstone Mountains. Isn’t that where you came from or something?”
The Threadstone were Arachnaea’s ancestral homeland. “Nice to know you listened, once upon a time.”
“I pay attention more often than you think,” he said with a wicked grin. “Some of Shiranak’s drones got some footage out—they were two days’ travel deep.”
“That means nothing. The Threadstone...” I began, but my voice drifted. I’d never been “home” personally, but I remembered all of my mother’s tales from her childhood, before she’d been abducted and brought to “civilization” several centuries ago, to spin silk for wealthy individuals. She’d always said the system of caves and caverns was massive, that you could spend your entire life walking or climbing underground and still not come out on the other side.
I had no idea if she was telling the truth, or if those were just stories meant to entertain me, as a child.
“So?” Royce prompted. “Is there any chance you might consider going back there to die? Isn’t it more magical or something?” I clicked at him again and he blew me off. “Look, you can’t blame a guy for hoping when ten million dollars are on the line,” he said. “It’s not even the money, Nine. The money’s temporary. But having one of the richest men on the planet owe the Monster Security Agency? That shit’s worth a solid gold toilet.”
I looked him up and down. “You are but a fragile human. You couldn’t carry a solid gold toilet—why would you want one?”
He tried to read my face, his round eyes squinting. “I can’t tell whether or not you’re joking sometimes—it bugs me, no pun intended.”
“Iwasmaking a joke. And—none taken.”
That last part was a lie, however.
I’d lived in this city my entire life, after being raised by my mother until it was her turn to pass.
In all of that time, I’d never once fit in.
I had heard every bug joke and insect pun in existence—for some reason all the humans seemed to give my spider half more weight than the rest of me.
But perhaps this was my opportunity to do the same.
