Free Beauties of the Beast (The Yellow Hoods, #4): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale by Adam Dreece Page A

her hands clasped. “No! Please no! I cannot! I cannot build you a working one!”
    “Do I need to kill your son, here, in front of you, to motivate you enough?” asked Marcus, his white shirt and beige pants wet with blood. 
    “I cannot make the engine! I never made it. It was the part that was completely destroyed when I crashed. I know not how to make it, just how it made everything work. I built the body, not the heart.”
    Marcus waved away the camel-men. “Fine. Everything else you need, you will have. You have one year, after which, I make no promises about your boy.”
    “Riichi!” screamed Amami as he was bound and gagged.

    Since the Lady in Red ordered Richy to be taken away, he had lost track of time. There were scratches from his clawing hands made in the jail cell’s wall before he'd given up on escaping. Rich had been there at least a few weeks.
    He’d been trying to fall asleep in the hot, humid cell, but the rowdy guards down the hall were keeping him wide awake. The other three cells in the jail were empty, each equipped with the same straw mattress, stone walls and small windows at the back for air and light. Richy wondered if someone had made one jail design and copied it everywhere, because it looked exactly like the one in Minette.
    Three crank lanterns hung from the middle of the room, over a desk which was only used when the guards put down their mugs of ale before tormenting him. Sometimes they’d throw water at him, sometimes they’d just call him names, and a few times they’d poked him with his own shock-sticks. He’d almost grabbed one once, and would have been more than happy to show them it was a lot more than a simple metal stick.
    The door to the office never closed properly, and the day’s summer breeze was bringing their voices in all the more clearly.
    “In the morning, I’ve got a meeting with the new magistrate. I hear he might be open to selling the exotic kid to the Kaban ambassador,” said a deep, aggressive voice Richy knew all too well. Bernardo was a short, heavily-bearded man with a huge, twisted personality. Though the youngest of the half dozen guards of the town, he’d become the ring-leader in recent weeks, taking advantage of the chaos and darker side of human nature. Richy’d heard there was a red-hooded advisor accompanying the new magistrate everywhere he went. He wondered if the Red Hood was connected to the Lady in Red. If so, she was much more powerful than he’d imagined.
    Gunter scratched his old, tired face. He’d worked with Bernardo for years, and men just like him for decades. They played with fire until they got burned. “Bernardo, though you know well about such things, I think…”
    “Yes?” asked Bernardo, the giant awaiting the advice of the mouse.
    “Don’t you think that selling people is wrong? I mean, it’s slavery. We stopped that here in Laros a long, long time ago.” Gunter’s voice was laced with hopelessness, but the fragment of his noble soul that remained had to speak up. He’d always been the one to bring Richy a towel when they’d doused him with water, or give him the tray of food if Bernardo had left it just out of reach. 
    “I’m surprised at you, Gunter,” said Bernardo condescendingly. “Do you really think that’s what the Kaban do? It isn’t slavery at all. They just allow people an opportunity to have purpose and fulfillment, while they earn their way to citizenship in that paradise.”
    “But they have no freedom, no—”
    Bernardo gave Gunter a shove. “Do any of us really have freedom? You have a home with a leaking roof and mold on the walls, I’ve seen it. Where is your freedom to get rid of that? Others are getting rich every day out there. What if you could trade this boy for some of that? For a house that didn’t leak, for food on the table every night? He’s young, he’ll survive. If he doesn’t, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have died on his own?” 
    “I think—”
    Grabbing