To Rule The Zones, 17/19. NC-17. (original) (raw)

Title: To Rule The Zones (Edge of Dawn Sequel)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: The Wizard of Oz belongs to Frank Baum and all of the modifications belong to SciFi.
Rating: NC-17 for language and lovingly rendered sex.
Pairing: DG/Cain, Azkadellia/OMCx2
Warnings: This takes place after the SciFi movie and after my story "The Edge of Dawn." This does refer to events occurring within that story, so you need to read that one first.
Summary: DG wanted to start a war with Lurlaine in the Mirror Zone. Little did she realize that it would lead to a war in the OZ as well...

Prior chapters can be found here.

When she came to, DG was tired and sore and entirely too disgruntled for words. She was lying on the floor, her wrists and ankles bound, a gag in her mouth. For a moment, she thought she was glowing, which made no sense at all, and thought perhaps it was because of the blow to her head when she was swung about.

Fuck.

It all came back with startling clarity. She had been approached by not-Glitch, who then attacked her. And it was probably the spy in the castle, or the one working with the spy in the castle. She wouldn't be harmed seriously, then, because Siba would need her alive for whatever it was that he was planning. That was hardly a comfort; she knew all too well that there were plenty of things that could be done that didn't involve her death.

Still, she grit her teeth around the gag. She had magic. She could throw a good punch, even the captain of the guard had said so. DG didn't intend to go down fighting, and she would claw the bastard's eyes out if she had to.

That fuzzy glow beneath her skin grew in intensity; now she knew she was glowing, and that was just freaking weird.

But the ropes and their complicated knots were gone, and she could easily push herself up to a sitting position to remove the gag. She didn't feel as sore as she had even a moment ago, and she could take better stock of the situation.

DG was in some kind of room with a dirt floor and dirt walls. The ceiling consisted of boards, with some straw poking through. She assumed she was in the dirt cellar of a cottage, though she couldn't recall if any cottages like this existed within the city walls. She had done a brief tour of the countryside, but hadn't gone into the really dingy neighborhoods within Central City. The castle guards and all of the Tin Men had resisted the idea when she first posed it, scandalized that their precious princess would want to see such lowly places.

She kicked at the wall, lips compressed in unhappiness. Stupid rules and stupid laws and stupid walls that kept her from seeing where she was. Dirt fell out of the wall in clumps, and DG remembered how the ice prison had been scuffed by her kick. She knew she felt out of sorts somehow, like all the pieces of her mind didn't quite slot into place. She assumed it was the blow to the head, that she had a concussion of some kind. She heard the guards talking about that, knew it could be a serious problem if left unattended.

She took a breath to steel herself. She had to pull herself together somehow, make the pieces fit back together where they should be. It was like pulling in the magic with in, keeping it close and under control the way Ine'che and Ataio had taught her. Just thinking of them calmed her, and she kept with her deep breathing. It helped her stay calm, and she thought that perhaps she was starting to pull it together a bit better. She was surprised, that was all. She was in this weird place with no way out. It wasn't a coffin, after all. She wasn't expected to be dead.

Hm. That reminded her.

DG looked up at the ceiling and carefully inspected it. It was a floor of some kind, but no one appeared to be actually standing or sitting on it. It didn't sound as if anyone was actually even in the house at the moment.

Pleased, DG began to create a ladder that would let her climb up and push the floorboards aside. Or blast them. She wasn't terribly picky about that.

If no one knew where she was to rescue her, she was damn well going to rescue herself.

***

The castle was in an uproar. Bad enough there was a traitor in the ranks somewhere, and he still hadn't been found. Or she, Cain amended to himself. DG would likely kick him in the shins if she thought he wasn't being fair. Women could be powerful and sneaky as well. The spy could very well be a woman, since sheer strength wouldn't be necessary. Still, Cain thought of the spy as a man, based on the description that White had given him. It didn't make sense for Siba to have a large network of spies within the castle; it was more likely that he had sent out a man or two in order to find any corrupt men and begin to make chinks in the castle defenses. That way, an arrogant Siba would find it easier to take over the crown.

Cain paced, ignoring the shouts in the hallways easily. It was rather like being back in the pens at Central City's main offices. Men shouted at each other, demanded new information and generally made nuisances of themselves for lack of anything better to do. There were a handful of guards he suspected, and White had been forthcoming about what to look for once his belly was full of food and his pockets lined with money. He was looking into each of their backgrounds carefully; it wouldn't do to openly charge a guard with treason if he didn't have to. Even if a man was innocent, that sort of thing clung to a record. Not to mention that it might instill resentment in an honest man, and any resentful man was more likely to turn a blind eye toward misdeeds.

This was why he initially resisted becoming one of DG's generals. It wasn't worth the headache in personnel and strategizing. Not to mention, he missed actually doing his damn job as a tin man, rather than waiting for bureaucratic nonsense.

"General Cain!" called a voice from down the hall.

Well, there was no putting off dealing with the men any longer. He would have to think about the castle guard spy later. Hopefully it would involve wrapping his hands around Siba's neck and breaking it, but he would likely have to have a full trial first.

Cain went into the gathering hall with the rest of the castle guards and the remnants of the army still in Central City. "Lieutenant," he acknowledged with a nod. "What is it?"

"The Princess is missing. We can't find her anywhere in the castle, and there's a missive specifically addressed to her from Gli- Advisor Ambrose."

Cain ignored the Lieutenant's slip of the tongue. Plenty of people still made that mistake because DG still called Ambrose by that name. He reached his hand out and took the missive in the Lieutenant's hands. "What do you mean she's missing?" he asked in a dangerously controlled voice. He was already agitated by the spy business; this was going to send him over the edge, he knew it.

"She isn't anywhere. We've searched her rooms, her audience chambers, all of the grand galleries, even looked into her sister's rooms... The Princess Azkadellia is missing as well, though we..." The Lieutenant had the grace to look uncomfortable with what she was about to say. "Our priority is for the Crown Princess, sir."

"As it should be. Azkadellia was moved to a more secure location," Cain lied. It was the first thing that came to mind, and he would have to remember to tell DG about it. "With this news about spies among our rank, we couldn't be sure of her safety."

The Lieutenant looked relieved. "Very good, sir. We have some of the other men looking in all the corridors of the palace, even in the servants' quarters. We haven't found the Crown Princess yet, and this doesn't bode well. Especially given there's a spy..."

The knot in Cain's stomach tightened. He had been hoping that DG was simply off somewhere, as she did sometimes. But the more the Lieutenant kept repeating that DG was missing, the more agitated she looked. And the more agitated she looked, the tighter the knot in Cain's stomach grew. DG going missing never was a good sign. Trouble followed in her wake, not always of her own doing, but disaster was looming.

Once this war was over, he was going to shake her until her teeth rattled. Or she saw sense. Whichever of the two came first.

Just as Cain was about to open his mouth to issue an order, one of the foot soldiers burst through the door into the hall. "Sir!" he called out to one of the junior lieutenants. "There's a body in one of the servants' hallways."

Cain tightened his jaw. "Take me to it," he said in clipped tones. The guards weren't trained investigators, and there was no time to find someone else at Central City's station that he trusted with DG's life.

He didn't recognize the servant pinned to the wall, but he let out a soft sigh of relief that it wasn't DG. He observed the placement, trying to remember if he had any cases resembling it. He looked to see if were any marks that might identify the killer, that might determine why she had been killed and placed in such an obvious location. She had been violated, but this was more than just murder to cover up a rape. That could be accomplished by more conventional means, and he had seen plenty of those in the darker corners of Central City.

"What do we know about this girl?" Cain asked one of his lieutenants.

"Just one of the kitchen staff. She went missing two days ago after being sent to fetch things back to the kitchens by the head cook."

More like a killing of opportunity. Cain carefully looked at all of the wounds on the poor girl's body, looking for anything at all that might identify the killer. Was it their castle spy? Had the poor girl stumbled across the guard they suspected in a compromising position?

Cain straightened and looked at his lieutenants. "Do we have any Viewers nearby? Perhaps they could find a memory of who did this."

"There aren't any in the castle, sir," one of his lieutenants said. "There's Raw, but he's to the south with the army defending the fields..."

He was with the Shadow Brigade. Cain hadn't thought of them, of the odd talents any of their number might have. Cain nodded at his lieutenant and pressed the charm that DG had made so that he could call on Tasi.

The Shadow Brigade general appeared not long after, becoming partially solid. Cain didn't know the Old Speech, and wouldn't have been able to speak with the general any other way. "You have need of assistance within the castle?" Tasi asked, surprised.

Cain nodded. "This girl was killed probably two days ago, and DG went missing earlier this morning. I'm not sure if that's connected. Perhaps the girl saw the spy we're trying to track down, perhaps this is unconnected. But I need to know if any of the Shadow Brigade would have Viewer skills. I need to know what happened to this girl."

Tasi smiled, something uncomfortable and full of teeth. "I could, perhaps. But you will not like how I will have to discover your answer."

"What do you mean?"

"I will need to become her to access her memories." At Cain's blank look, Tasi coughed delicately. "I will need to devour her and absorb her substance."

Surprise and disgust warred for Cain's response to this statement. "Whatever you need to do," he said finally. He couldn't allow tin men into the palace for this murder, and he couldn't allow anyone but the most trusted palace guards to know about the existence of a spy.

Cain cleared the area as Tasi took the girl down from the wall with care. The palace guards were only too glad to leave; they were used to crowd control duties and turning away unruly citizens, not investigating murder and mayhem.

Cain turned away as Tasi began to devour the body. He saw a flash of a dark shadow enveloping what was left of the girl, the skin sizzling as if it was being broken apart piece by piece and then digested. For all that he had been through, this was likely to give him nightmares.

He tried to corral his thoughts. They knew of Benton as a definite suspect, but that was on the word of a small street kid. There was no proof tying Benton to anything. There was even less to go on for Lisdel, Tolono and Kittredge. There had to be other ties somewhere, something he was missing because of the larger war that DG had waged.

"Sir?" came a soft voice behind him.

Cain turned and saw the servant girl standing there, open wounds in various places. Even as he watched, they closed themselves up and resealed, becoming whole and untouched skin. "Who are you?" he asked, brows furrowed.

"Sorai, sir," she said, bobbing a curtsey. "One of the kitchen maids."

"How are the memories, Tasi? Do you have the ones we need?"

The smile on the girl's face was sinister and discomfiting. "And many more, besides. We hadn't thought of using the kitchen staff as spies. They see all sorts of things the rest of us don't."

"All right. For the moment, just focus on the girl's death. Who was it?"

The description didn't match anyone that Cain knew of. He frowned and watched Tasi walk back and forth in Sorai's body. "That's... Disturbing," Cain said after a moment, shaking his head.

"He carried a strange knife," Tasi-Sorai commented, her mouth pulling down into a frown. "He used it to cut open my skirts. I hadn't seen anything like it before."

The description of that blade was only too familiar for Cain. "There are rival thieving gangs in the Sin District," Cain muttered. "That's the kind of blade one of those gangs use."

Tasi-Sorai frowned even more deeply. "Well, that's distressing. It isn't necessarily a spy issue..."

"No, it is. For one of those would-be thieves to wind up in the palace at the same time that DG goes missing? It's too much of a coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences at all. I'm thinking that one of those thieves managed to get himself hired on as a spy. And it's too much of a coincidence that White saw a similar blade kill Mannon at the West Gate."

Tasi reverted back to shadow form. "So this blade I remember now... This will be our link to the spy and to our lost Unseelie Queen?"

Cain nodded. "I think so. DG is too valuable to be killed, and they're thinking of how much gold they can get for her."

Tasi growled in anger. "Our Queen is not to be bought and sold like chattel."

"On that point, we agree. You look where you can for that knife, and I'll ask around my old Tin Min contacts. We'll find her, I'm sure of it."

Cain watched Tasi disappear into shadows, and then he headed out of the palace himself. He had to find DG before word got out she was missing. It would break the spirit of her people, and then it would give Siba all he needed to win the war.

Siba in charge didn't bear thinking about.

***

Those of the Vantage Club prized themselves on being opportunists of the first rank, as well as thieves and killers. They had showy, edged knives to mark them apart from the upstart Catseye Gang, who simply had little eye charms to wear. They were the two top rival thieves' guilds in the Sin District, each believing the other gang to be the nonentity threatening their domination of the District. The Catseye Gang tended to take on the smarter people, those known for a fair eye to get at the mark. The Vantage Club wasn't above incredibly flashy displays by those wanting to be members. Their members were more violent, and their territory was guarded jealously.

The members also tended to war amongst themselves.

Tasi slid along the floors and walls, just another shadow amongst many. It was easy enough to slide in amongst Vantage Club members; they were sloppy with security, sure that tales of their vicious deeds would keep all but the most stupid away from them. So Tasi was able to come in close, looking for the face that matched the man from Sorai's memories.

And he was standing to the side, arms crossed over his chest, glowering at a younger man that was daring to challenge his assessment of the Crown Princess' worth to Lord Siba. The two men had been hired on by Lord Siba prior to the nobleman's exit from Central City, and they were desperate to leave the Sin District. They had come from the Low Country – Sorai had been from there originally, and recognized the traces of accent – and were certain they could elevate themselves into something larger and greater. Noble greed would buy their way to this end, and they had no sense of loyalty to the Crown.

This angered Tasi more than anything else, and the Shadow Brigade General swept down and enveloped the two men. Dissolving them from the outside in was no work at all, and Tasi easily absorbed their distasteful memories.

The older thief had fondled the Crown Princess as she lay unconscious, wondering if he could get away with more. He hadn't known about her relationship with her General, and thought that she would fetch a larger sum if pure. The younger man wasn't interested in females, so the Crown Princess was safe from his attentions.

But when Tasi went to the hideout that the older thief had used, the floorboards were already disturbed, and the dirt basement was empty.

The Crown Princess was gone.

***

Cain had gone to visit his old Captain, who was not terribly impressed with the titles that had been heaped on his head. That was fine with him; Cain wasn't terribly impressed with them either. The two men were talking about developments in the Sin District in recent months when the shadows in the room grew thick and heavy. "I think that's our friend," Cain said.

One of the shadows half solidified into Tasi's familiar form. "Yes, General. The thieves that had stolen our Crown Princess have been neutralized. However, she has already gone missing from their hiding spot."

Cain rose to his feet. "Someone else kidnapped her?"

"No sign of that. It seemed more likely that she escaped herself."

Cain had to grin at that. "That's my girl," he said to himself. The Captain's eyebrow rose toward his hairline, but Cain wasn't about to clarify the statement. "So she'll turn up at the palace sooner or later. Your men have been looking for her, of course."

"Of course," Tasi said, a trifle irritated. "However, we can't find her."

"That makes no sense."

"What doesn't?"

Everyone in the office turned at the sound of DG's voice. She was standing there dressed in dirty, torn clothing and looking for all the world like another member of the Sin District that the Tin Men were trying to put into prison. She smiled at Cain's shock, blue eyes twinkling almost mischievously. "What? Did I overdo the disguise?"

Cain swept her up into his arms and kissed her thoroughly. Then he pulled back and grasped her shoulders. "Are you all right? Really all right?"

"Yeah," she said with a nod. "I got a big crack on the back of the head, but that's about it as far as I can tell. I figured I would just have to save myself."

"How, though? You were gone what? A day?"

DG lifted her palm and rolled her eyes at Cain as it glowed softly. "Magic."

"Well, the men involved are taken care of, Tasi says," Cain said. The shadow in question bowed generously in DG's direction.

"Benton was the contact for the elder thief. He will need to be apprehended right away. The younger had heard of Kittredge, but I'm not sure what capacity that was in."

DG stretched. "You know, after this recent mess? I don't really feel like doing things the way I should." She looked over at the confused Captain. "No offense."

The Captain was too nonplused to respond, so he merely nodded at her.

"I say we haul them all in for questioning. We have enough to get Benton on trial, maybe this Kittredge person. The other two might buckle under pressure. We don't know, but I'm not going to stand around anymore and just wait for shit to keep happening. I have enough going on right now and I really hate standing around doing nothing."

Tasi nodded. "Your wish is my command, my Queen."

The Captain looked even more confused by that, and Cain sighed at him. "Long story."

DG looked brightly at everyone. "So let's go catch our spies, shall we?"

It was easier said than done, of course. But the four suspected West Gate guards were rounded up for questioning under the Crown Princess' orders, each in a separate area to be questioned by those guards that were trusted by the Crown. Benton tried to bluff his way through, but his crimes had proof behind the claim. He surrendered his freedom without a further fight and was escorted to the dungeons to await trial. It was likely that he would eventually be executed for committing treason against the Crown.

Kittredge admitted to taking bribes from thieves to go in and out of the gates to evade capture by the Justicars, but otherwise denied treasonous actions. Lisdel denied everything he was asked, and didn't offer anything in questioning. Tolono refused to speak from the outset.

After nearly a week of this, DG was fed up. There was fighting in the outlying counties, the blockade continued with minor skirmishes within each county and the southern famlands continued to be safe. She just wanted this over, and finally let her frustration show to Cain and the other guards. "I'm going to question them. There has to be some kind of truth-telling spell I can cast on them to make them talk."

"That violates their rights, DG," Cain explained. "You can't just circumvent the law because it annoys you."

"I thought that was the point of being Queen?"

Cain resisted the urge to cover his face with his hands. This was just DG being DG, impetuous and unafraid. "No, the point of being Queen is to set down recommendations and policy, and then the legislature debates the policies before the actual decrees are crafted. Then you agree or disagree, and they become the law of the OZ that the Tin Men uphold. You don't just make it up as you go along."

"What are the rules regarding traitors, then?" she asked, voice a little more subdued. "Do they still have all of the same rights as citizens that do the right thing?"

"They're treated fairly until the trials have them declared a traitor. Then they're executed."

"So even if they want to kill me, if they want Siba on the throne, I can't do anything?"

"That's right." Cain pulled her into an embrace at the sight of her distraught expression. "We'll get to the bottom of this, Deeg. Trust me. It'll work. You have to trust that the system works, that this will get handled."

"It takes too long," DG whined.

DG also had too many things to worry about. Was Azkadellia all right? Were Raw and Glitch okay? Were the efforts at the blockade breaking the rebellion? Were the skirmishes more serious than the guards were telling her? Was the spy going to kill her outright? Was Ine'che all right? Did she make a decision? Was her mother going to put together the Wedding of Doom? Did she really have this princess thing down?

Cain kissed the center of her forehead. "You go to bed, all right? I'll send a guard to stand outside your rooms, just to be sure. I'll be up to join you as soon as I can."

DG snorted. "I wish their lives were as disrupted as mine is. Aren't they married, some of them? You'd think they'd want to go home and be with them again."

Family ties. It was the sort of thing that Cain hadn't considered. He had assumed that the four guards had all acted alone, or maybe with each other. He hadn't considered that maybe Lisdel and Tolono had nothing to say under questioning because it wasn't their own lives they were protecting, but someone else's. It was worth a shot.

Lisdel continued to deny everything, but Tolono had gone after Cain with a vengeance once the former Tin Man asked what his family members thought of his incarceration. Cain threw a vicious right hook at Tolono, catching the man in the nose and breaking it. Cain stood over the fallen guard's form. "Who is it? Who's the traitor you're protecting?"

"You filthy animal," Tolono spat, "Nothing but an upstart hanging off a Slipper's coattails. You don't know—"

A vicious kick silenced him, and Cain squatted beside Tolono, his gun cocked and ready to fire at the former guard. "I'll ask one more time. Who are you protecting?"

"You can't do this. You can't hurt me."

"Interrogations are tricky things, you know. Especially when the prisoners are so uncooperative," Cain said, a thin smile on his face. "You never know what desperate thing they'll try, if they'll hurt themselves, if they will attack the inquisitor and force the guard's hand..." Tolono paled at the implication. "So it pays to be cooperative."

"That's illegal."

"Well, this is your choice, still. Better than compulsion spells, don't you think?" Cain asked.

Tolono took in Cain's expression, the gun aimed at his head and the fact that there was no one else in the room and hadn't been for days. "I have a family..."

"And so does the Crown Princess," Cain replied coldly. "You dishonor your family if you turn traitor to the Crown."

"My daughter's sick," Tolono replied, licking his lips nervously. "And my wife is useless, can't do anything. So she hears that there might be money to be made at the West Gate. A few bribes here, some medicine, some information to barter... My daughter's sick," he repeated, his voice rising in panic when Cain pushed his gun into Tolono's forehead. "My daughter's sick and the noblemen had money! All I had to do was send letters! That's it!"

"What was in those letters?"

"Guard rotations, who could be bribed, where the regimens were moving to... I haven't been answered since the blockade. I don't know if they even got through," Tolono added desperately, shaking his head. "It was my wife's idea, you understand. She's the one that wrote them, she's the one that sent them out. She's the one that collected the money..."

Cain stood up and put the safety back on his pistol. "You will be tried and found guilty for treason. Your wife will be brought in for questioning, then tried and found guilty for treason. You will both be executed as traitors to the Crown. Is there next of kin to send your daughter to?" he asked, voice hard and edged.

"There's no one," Tolono said, turning his face away in shame. "She only has us."

His disgust for the fallen guard was palpable. "If you had told any one of us about your daughter, we would have helped. We would've been family. You dishonor the uniform."

Cain left the room and had Tolono's wife brought in. The daughter was no more than six, her legs crippled. She had weak lungs, but by her account was good with a needle and thread. It was easy enough to get her installed with the housekeeping staff making napkins and tablecloths and repairing tapestries. She was also going to be taught simple arithmetic and reading along with the other servant children. The girl would do well in the castle, away from the damp and drafty house that Tolono had been living in.

Cain sighed as he stood outside of the suite he shared with DG. He had gotten so caught up with tracking down Tolono's wife and getting the daughter situated, he never actually went to the suite to sleep. It was almost a full day since he had seen her, and he hadn't even asked about how she was doing. There simply hadn't been time.

DG was sprawled across the bed, her sketchbooks in hand and Ine'che sitting beside her. The wyvern had her hair up in some kind of knotted, intricate form that DG was sketching. The two of them were surrounded by sketches of wyverns. Apparently, DG had found a way to occupy herself while he was busy.

Both looked up as Cain came in. He was bone tired, and had told his lieutenants and Tasi not to wake him on pain of death.

"I can retire and return at a later time," Ine'che murmured. "These are all beautiful," she told DG, helping to collect all of the sketches. "Just the way I remember them."

DG grinned at Ine'che and put the sketches aside. "You never got to bed last night."

Cain didn't bother to strip off his uniform. "I'm going now," he said as he fell face first onto the bed. He let his eyes fall shut as DG began unbuckling and untying bits of the uniform. "We got him, though. The other spy. Lisdel was the only one not corrupt out of the four, but even that we're not entirely sure of. And we don't know if there's more."

DG sighed and curled up next to Cain on the bed. "Sure we can't run away somewhere, just you and me?" she asked wryly. "My mother can stay the Queen..."

"Then the war would last forever."

"Yeah. She's not too keen on making the kind of decisions we needed to make," DG agreed with a sigh. "But it'll be over soon, right?"

"The last thing is the blockade, really. Even the rebellions at the outer edges of the kingdom aren't as bad as they used to be. I suspect it should be over soon."

"Good," DG murmured, curling into his warmth. "I want to start the happy bits of our happily ever after."

He couldn't agree with her more.

***
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