EARTH 18

His first mistake had been killing the empress.

His second had been kidnapping her daughter.

Though he'd like to argue that it wasn't "kidnapping" if the kid was essentially an orphan. Mother dead and father framed for her murder, never to see the light of day again. Who exactly had he been taking her from, when there was no next of kin?

Besides, orders were orders. He'd been paid to take her.

Paid to take her and deliver her to her new captors, but...things changed. Terms changed.

Feelings changed.

"How old is she again, anyway? Nine, ten?" One of the twins questioned, watching as one of Daud's whalers pulled the child empress - blindfolded, gagged, and struggling all the way - down the alley, towards the twins' carriage.

"Oh, who cares?" The other responded, flicking his hand dismissively. "What's that old saying? 'Old enough to bleed…'"

That was enough for Daud.

"Stop," he suddenly ordered and the whaler immediately complied, simply holding the empress roughly by the arm, mere feet from her original destination. Original being the keyword there. "Plan's changed. We're leaving. With the girl."

"What?" One of the twins - Custis? Honestly, Daud didn't give enough of a shit to tell the difference between the two, when they were basically conjoined at the hip anyway - exclaimed, jumping out of the carriage as he spoke. "What is the meaning of this? Hand over the girl."

"Tell your master I'll be in touch to discuss the terms of our agreement."

Probably-Custis was left sputtering into the wind, as Daud and the whalers vanished into clouds of black ash before he could get another word in edgewise.

"Why did you stop the exchange?"

Daud didn't even look up from the letter he was penning to reply to his second-in-command. "The terms changed. Burrows owes us after the fiasco with the Royal Protector."

"So the girl is a bargaining chip."

"Correct." Finished, Daud signed his name at the bottom of the letter and started to roll up the parchment, ready to tie it off and send out a whaler to deliver it. "We lost four good men. I expect adequate compensation."

If Lurk suspected there was more to Daud's decision to keep the girl, she didn't mention it. Instead, she said, "We aren't babysitters."

"No," Daud agreed, setting the now-tied letter down on his desk and leaning back slightly in his chair. "It's only temporary. Besides, it's not as if I expect you to take care of her for me."

At that, he got a chuckle out of Lurk. "You'd be better off asking Thomas to mother her."

"I'm well aware." Watching Lurk for a moment, Daud gestured toward the letter. "Deliver that for me. Directly to the Royal Spymaster."

"As you wish." Not at all unexpected, Lurk was quick to grab the letter and vanish with it.

He could've asked any of his whalers to do it. It wasn't a particularly difficult task, much as Burrows liked to pretend he was nigh untouchable. But he didn't need to see under Lurk's mask to know she'd been eying the letter. Wanted to read it, as trivial as it was.

She liked to think she was being surreptitious, but Daud knew she read every note he wrote. Listened to every audiograph. He wasn't an idiot. Didn't record anything he wasn't okay with her - or anyone else - snooping through.

Didn't really keep secrets from Lurk. Not when it came to business anyway. She was his second-in-command, and for a damn good reason. What point was there in hiding information on a contract?

And the secrets he did keep, they were personal. They were in the past. They weren't important. She knew not to ask.

Which was how he rationalized that it was okay to keep to himself the full extent of his reasoning behind holding onto Empress Emily Kaldwin.

He'd told Lurk the business side. Emily was a bargaining chip.

The personal side didn't matter. Not now. Maybe never.

But something had changed in him that day. The moment his blade plunged into the former empress. Broken, the moment he'd left her to bleed out on the ground and taken her daughter away, screaming and crying.

And Lurk would be the first to notice if there was anything different about Daud since then.

Lord Spymaster,

We had a specific agreement and I planned around it. The Royal Protector wasn't part of that agreement. You assured me that she and the girl would be alone. So the price of the job just went up. Send the coin to the alternate dead drop or you can be sure we'll come calling.

The girl stays with us until then.

- Daud

When they'd returned from the failed exchange, the whalers had put Emily in a small room with a single window and a door with a still-functioning lock. One whaler stood guard outside while another stood guard within. She might have been just a child, and completely powerless, but they weren't taking any chances. Daud would have their heads if she escaped and ran off into the Flooded District.

It wasn't long after Lurk had left to deliver his letter that Daud came by to check on his captive empress.

She was less than thrilled to see him.

"Murderer," she snapped at him, almost the moment he'd walked through the door. "You - you killed her! I hate you!"

Oh, but she certainly did have an attitude, didn't she? Even in the midst of her grief, a fire burned within her. He couldn't help but wonder, did she take more after her mother, the empress, or the man who was not-so-secretly her father, the royal protector? The man was Serkonan, as Daud himself was, so he would hardly be surprised if this was him coming out in her.

The whaler in the room with her had been lounging in the open window, its glass long since broken away, and he straightened up when Daud entered. "Orders, sir?" He asked.

Daud considered Emily. Though the room had a single, rickety chair in it, she was instead hunched in the corner behind it. "Get her something to eat and drink," he commanded, then gestured toward the floor, "a chamberpot, and a blanket and pillow. She'll be with us for at least another evening."

"Yes, sir." It was the whaler at the doorway who answered this time and was gone in a flash, off to hunt down the items Daud had requested.

Emily looked incensed at the mere mention of the tenure of her captivity.

Daud wondered if she understood what he'd saved her from. Had she overheard the Pendleton creeps? Had she grasped the gravity of their words? Their desires?

No, doubtful that she had. Too busy fighting his whalers tooth and nail to pay any attention to her surroundings.

Daud's morals were certainly suspect at best, but at the very least, he couldn't stand idly by and allow a child empress to be delivered to the likes of them. He already knew too much about their proclivities. The proclivities of a disgustingly large number of noble families. They were rotten, all of them, and they'd use the empress for their own purposes until all that was left was a shell of a girl. An easily controllable husk.

"Let me go!" Emily growled, suddenly throwing a small rock across the room. "You evil, rotten, bastard!"

It bounced off Daud's jacket harmlessly and he barely spared it a glance as it fell back to the ground. He wanted to ask her how, assuming he did let her go, she thought she might fare against the weepers that plagued the Flooded District, but thought better of it. Best to keep her as in the dark as possible on her current location, on the off-chance she did get away and managed to return to an authority who would use that information against him.

Instead, he simply said, "There's nowhere safer for you to be than here," and was gone before he could hear her scathing reply.