A moment later the dark figure flowed past the mouth of the alley, so quickly and quietly that Kella almost missed him, but she stepped out into the street and just managed to tap him on the shoulder.
The man in the black cloak whirled about, and though his face remained shadowed by his hood, the gun in his hand gleamed brightly. Kella grabbed the long barrel of the revolver in her left hand and then dealt the man a vicious punch to the throat with her fist wrapped around her folded knife. The man gasped and stumbled, but did not release the gun, and Kella felt the cylinder begin to turn beneath her fingers. She snapped the gun up and toward him, wrenching it free of his grip and then stepped back, brandishing both her unfolded knife and the gun. “Don’t move.”
The man fell still except for the one hand still massaging his throat. Then he broke into a run and vanished down the next alley. Kella sprinted after him, darting down the alley around discarded bits of broken furniture and piles of rags and wide dark puddles. Ahead, she saw the stranger reach the end of the alley and dash to the left down the street. Kella passed the corner a moment later, ducking as the man in black lunged at her, swinging his fist level with where the detective’s head should have been. Instead, his arm whirled through empty space and his wrist connected with the brick corner of the building, and he cried out. Kella snapped up from her crouch and threw two punches to the man’s stomach, and then kicked his legs out from beneath him.
The man fell to the ground on his rear, not so much moaning as growling through clenched teeth as he squeezed his injured wrist with his other hand. Kella knelt down beside him, leaning her knee against the man’s leg, pinning him in place. She shoved the gun in his face as she unfolded her knife blade. “I said don’t move.”
“I can see why she picked you. Even if you are old.” The man’s voice was strained as he tried not to make any more pained noises. “You’re pretty tough.”
“That makes one of us.” Kella pushed back the man’s hood with the tip of the open knife. An unremarkable male face stared up at her in the lamplight. An adult, but of any age. Neither handsome nor ugly. Nothing memorable about him at all. The perfect agent. “Do you have a name?”
“Not when I’m working.”
“Well, you’re not working anymore. Possession of a firearm and assaulting a police officer. You’re under arrest now, and probably will be for some time.” Kella poked inside the man’s coat with the barrel of the gun, but found no other weapons. “You were going to shoot me? In the street? Seems like a good way to attract a lot of attention. Not very assassin-like. You’d wake people up, they’d coming running to see what the fuss was about. You’d only have a few moments to get away or hide.”
“My orders were very specific.”
“Orders? From Lady Sade?” Kella frowned and nodded to herself. “So were you just lurking around the house waiting for someone to kill, or did she have to send out for you?”
The man merely winced as he continued rubbing his wrist.
“No, I didn’t think you’d want to talk about her.” Kella straightened up and glanced around the empty street. “Not to worry. That’s what cells are for.”
The man managed a wheezy laugh. “I won’t talk in a cell, either.”
“Then you can just rot in one. Either way works for me. Come on, up on your feet.” The detective pulled the man up, wrapped her fingers around the sturdy fabric of his collar, and shoved the muzzle of the gun into the small of his back. “All right, let’s take a walk.”
They set out down the street in single file. The man in black tilted his head back with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in making some sort of deal?”
“Only if you and all of your little friends feel like testifying against Sade before a high court.”
The man snorted. “I was thinking of a different sort of deal. As in, you let me go and I tell you where another of my little friends is right now.”
Kella jerked her prisoner to a halt under a streetlamp. “Where?”
“Let me go first.”
Kella slammed the man into the lamppost. “Where?”
He grunted. “I don’t think you have time to play guessing games. We already wasted a lot of time meandering through this neighborhood. My little friend has quite a head start on you, and she’s very motivated to make a good showing tonight. So let me go and I’ll tell you who the target is.”
Kella shoved the man away, turning him so they stood face to face, and then she shoved the gun into his cheek. “Who is it?”
“Look, I know you’re an honest officer. Make the right call. Let me go. After all, I haven’t hurt anyone, and I’m unarmed. You saw to that.”
“Who is the target?”
The man squinted and pursed his lips. “Third district. Some sort of medical machine shop. One of the employees. A girl called Amadi.”
I never mentioned her name. Sade must have a list of the doctor’s employees. Kella tightened her grip on him. “It’s the middle of the night. She won’t be at the shop.”
“No.” The man smiled and took a small step back from the gun. “So my friend is no doubt running around town at this moment, trying to find where she lives. I got the easy job, killing you. I hate research. Questions. Talking. Boring.”
Kella grabbed the man’s shirt and yanked him forward, and brought the butt of the gun down on the top of his head. The assassin slumped against her, unconscious. She pulled out her manacles and hastily shackled the limp body to the lamppost, and dashed away into the city. All the way back to the third district! Kella glared at the road flying by underfoot. At least she knew the target’s name, the whole name. Jedira Amadi. But she didn’t have an address. Yet.
She pounded up block after block through the fifth district, darting around corners, narrowly avoiding two collisions with young couples walking arm in arm in the dark. As she crossed the avenue that marked the edge of the third district, Kella bent her course east, angling not toward the prosthetics shop but toward the police station. She burst through the heavy doors, drawing stares from the handful of officers still leaning over the papers on their desks, and ran to the records room. The narrow room was little more than a long path for walking between two rows of massive filing cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling. The detective scanned the drawer labels, then yanked open the city directory. Amadi, Amadi… Jedira Amadi. The address. Five blocks away.
Kella strode back into the main room and pointed at the officers at their desks. “You over there, get down to High Street in the fifth district. You’ll find a man shackled to a lamppost near Carter’s Square. Bring him in. Attempted murder with a firearm. The rest of you need to sweep the streets right now for a lone killer, female, possibly armed with a revolver. Stop and search anyone you find out there. Usem, you’re with me.”
The room leapt to life as officers grabbed their jackets and clubs and lanterns and rushed out into the street. The one officer loped away to the right and Kella led the others to the left into the third district. They jogged through the darkness and puddles of light around the lampposts, crossing streets and squares and alleys. In ones and twos, the officers dashed away in every direction until only Usem was still with her. Finally, Kella pointed out the small door next to a bakery bearing Amadi’s address. The door was locked.
“Jedira Amadi!” Kella pounded on the door. “This is Detective Massi, from earlier. Jedira! Miss Amadi! Open up! Hello? Hello!”
The detective paused as a distant strain of music caught her ear. Someone was whistling a single clear melody echoing faintly down the street. She turned and saw a figure in a white coat in the middle of the road sauntering toward them. A woman, she guessed by the way she walked, and as the seconds passed she saw that the woman was staring at them. The tune warbling out of her pursed lips was a nursery rhyme, a lullaby that had the oddly disturbing sort of lyrics typical of all lullabies, softly bribing the child to be quiet and go to sleep, or else a monster might appear. Kella hated lullabies. She knocked on the door again, but kept her eyes on the woman in white.