Needle Rain by Cari Silverwood

knelt beside her. “You scared?” The girl said nothing. “Look, everything’s going to be okay. Alright?” Heloise reached out and took her hand, feeling the tremble in her tiny fingers. “What’s your name?”
    Still nothing but then in the quietest of voices: “Leonie. Is my dada going to be alright?”
    “Sure he is. Okay?” Please, let that be true. Drager might be scum for leaving the girl alone at night like he had and for getting himself as screwed up as he was, but this girl loved him.
    Leonie nodded. “Thank you.”
    Why did that bring a tear to her eye? Heloise sniffed and hugged the child against her chest. For the first time she doubted, and she wondered if this was what she really wanted to do, because it was eating at her soul.
     
    ****
     
    At the clinic, Samos made a not-so-surprising discovery. Nine hearts beat within its walls, five more than there should have been – assuming the servants had been sent away, and that was likely. Reinforcements. But, worst of all, he wasn’t sure if one of the hearts was Pela’s. He inhaled deeply and through the pungent stew of street grime – dog stink and feet and toilet wastes – he smelt a hint of her perfume mixed with the distinctive musk of her skin.
    This new sense of smell, this heightening of his senses and thought processes, it was proving useful.
    She was in there, somewhere.
    The extra men, he had expected them. Still, it made him pause. Kengshee might follow through on their deal, but he didn’t think so. This was an ambush. Training said, you never walked into an ambush – not unless you could ambush them back.
    Well, he was going to try.
     
    ****
     
    The first moon was out by the time he knocked on the door. He still felt the fire inside, the burning of the needles where they connected in some ethereal network inside him, but now he had red-rimmed eyes as well. He pulled the hood in closer.
    “Your sword,” said a swarthy man at the door. A little muscle twitched next to his thick moustache.
    Samos smiled thinly. Nerves – he could hear the man’s heart going at a hundred beats to the minute.
    “I have none.” He let the man pat him down. He hadn’t come armed with anything like that. Besides, he could always borrow someone else’s.
     
    ****
     
    “Someone’s gone in,” announced Finn.
    “Who?” Heloise hunched over, peering round Finn but unable discern anything in the darkness. The street below was illuminated by two lanterns and by a brighter trink light but the clinic itself was poorly lit.
    “A man with a burnoose. The hood’s over his head. Wait. Hold on. Now there’s no one at the front door and the upstairs sentry has gone too.”
     
    ****
     
    There were two men just inside the door. One right, one left. Samos felt his eyes move in miniscule jerks as he scanned them – noting weapons, armor, height, and strength. Like Kengshee, they had a trace of Sungese. The giveaway signs: Dark-hued skin or a tilt to their eyes or a fineness of nose or mouth.
    He nodded to them then passed on through the beaded curtain and down the corridor, where there were more men, and then on down the spiral stairs. All the while he listened, looked, and noted, the facts filing away into neat columns in his head. Those he passed fell in behind him, trailing in a long, nervous queue.
    He swung round the last turn of the stairs, planted his feet on the floor. Three men down here. Five behind him. Three surrounded Pela – his Pela, with those clear blue eyes and that intoxicating scent.
    He remembered wading ankle-deep in the warm waters of the inlet with her holding his hand. She had laughed when he tripped her into the water.
    These men held knives and swords to her heart and throat. One, Mr. Kengshee, had his hand round her waist, crushing her sea-green dress.
    He spared a long, aching gaze into her eyes, though he yearned to speak. He glared. Damn them all. And he mouthed words anyway, I love you . She nodded, carefully, her chin