by Jon Hollins
All she has left is her name, her story, and the weapon she used to carved both.
Vengeance is its own reward.
ONE
Hightower
Everyone loved a good execution.
From the walls of Imperial Cathama to the farthest reach of the Revolution, there was no citizen of the Scar who could think of a finer way to spend an afternoon than watching the walls get painted with bits of dissidents. And behind the walls of Revolutionary Hightower that day, there was an electricity in the air felt by every citizen.
The people gathered in crowds to watch the dirt, still damp from yesterday’s execution, be swept away from the stake. The firing squad sat nearby, polishing their gunpikes and placing bets on who would hit the heart of the poor asshole that got tied up today. Merchants barked nearby, selling everything from refreshment to souvenir so people could remember this day when everyone got off work for a few short hours to see another enemy of the Revolution strung up and gunned down.
Not like there was a hell of a lot else to do in Hightower lately.
For her part, Governor-Militant Tretta Stern did her best to ignore all of it: the crowds gathering beneath her window outside the prison, their voices crowing for blood; the wailing children; and the laughing men. She kept her focus on the image in the mirror as she straightened the blue coat of her uniform. Civilians could be excused such craven bloodlust. Officers of the Revolution answered a higher call.
Her black hair, severely short-cropped and oiled against her head, was befitting of an officer. Jacket cinched tight, trousers pressed and belted, saber at her hip, all without a trace of dust, lint, or rust. And most crucially, the stare that had sent a hundred foes to the grave with a word stared back at her, unflinching.
One might wonder what the point in getting dressed up for an execution was; after all, it wasn’t like the criminal scum who would be buried in a shallow grave in six hours would give a shit. But being an officer of the Revolution meant upholding certain standards. And Tretta hadn’t earned her post by being slack.
She took a moment to adjust the medals on her lapel before leaving her quarters. Two guards fired off crisp salutes before straightening their gunpikes and marching exactly three rigid paces behind her. Morning sunlight poured in through the windows as they marched down the stairs to Cadre command. Guards and officers alike called to attention at her passing, raising arms as they saluted. She offered a cursory nod in response, bidding them at ease as she made her way to the farthest door of the room.
The guard stationed there glanced up. “Governor-Militant,” he acknowledged, saluting.
“Sergeant,” Tretta replied. “How have you found the prisoner?”
“Recalcitrant and disrespectful,” he said. “The prisoner began the morning by hurling the assigned porridge at the guard detail, spewed several obscenities, and made forceful suggestions as to the professional and personal conduct of the guard’s mother.” He sniffed, lip curling. “In summation, more or less what we’d expect from a Vagrant.”
Tretta spared an impressed look. Considering the situation, she had expected much worse.
She made a gesture. The guard complied, unlocking the massive iron door and pushing it open. She and her escorts descended into the darkness of Hightower’s prison, and the silence of empty cells greeted her.
Like all Revolutionary outposts, Hightower had been built to accommodate prisoners: Imperium aggressors, counterrevolutionaries, bandit outlaws, and even the occasional Vagrant. Unlike most Revolutionary outposts, Hightower was far away from any battleground in the Scar and didn’t see much use for its cells. Any captive outlaw tended to be executed in fairly short order for crimes against the Revolution, as the civilians tended to become restless without the entertainment.
In all her time stationed at Hightower, Tretta had visited the prison exactly twice, including today. The first time had been to offer an Imperium spy posing as a bandit clemency in exchange for information. Thirty minutes later, she put him in front of the firing squad. Up until then, he’d been the longest-serving captive in Hightower.
Thus far, her current prisoner had broken the record by two days.
The interrogation room lay at the very end of the row of cells, another iron door flanked by two guards. Both fired off a salute as they pulled open the door, its hinges groaning.
Twenty feet by twenty feet, possessed of nothing more than a table with two chairs and a narrow slit of a window by which to cast a beam of light, the interrogation room was little more than a slightly larger cell with a slightly nicer door. The window, set high up near the ceiling, afforded no ventilation and the room was stifling hot.
Not that you’d know it from looking at the prisoner.
A woman—perhaps in her late twenties, Tretta suspected—sat at one end of the table. Dressed in dirty trousers and boots to match, the sleeves and hem of her white shirt cut to bare tattoos racing down her forearms and scars mapping her midsection; about the sort of garish garb you’d expect to find on a Vagrant. Her hair, Imperial white, was shorn roughly on the sides and tied back in an unruly tail. And despite the suffocating heat, she was as calm, serene, and pale as ice.
There was nothing about this woman that Tretta didn’t despise.
She didn’t look up as the Governor-Militant entered, paid no heed to the pair of armed men trailing behind her. Her hands, manacled together, rested patiently atop the table. Even when Tretta took a seat across from her, she hardly seemed to notice. The prisoner’s eyes, pale and blue as shallow water, seemed to be looking somewhere else. Her face, thin and sharp and marred by a pair of jagged scars beneath her left eye, seemed unperturbed by her imminent gruesome death.
That galled Tretta more than she would have liked to admit.
The Governor-Militant leaned forward, steepling her fingers in front of her, giving the woman a chance to realize what a world of shit she was in. But after a minute of silence, she merely held out one hand. A sheaf of papers appeared there a moment later, thrust forward by one of her guards. She laid it out before her and idly flipped through it.
“I won’t tell you that you can save yourself,” she said, after a time. “An officer of the Revolution speaks only truths.” She glanced up at the woman, who did not react. “Within six hours, you’ll be executed for crimes against the Glorious Revolution of the Fist and Flame. Nothing you can say can change this fact. You deserve to die for your crimes.” She narrowed her eyes. “And you will.”
The woman, at last, reacted. Her manacles rattled a little as she reached up and scratched at the scars on her face. Tretta sneered and continued.
“What you can change,” she said, “is how quickly it goes. The Revolution is not beyond mercy.” She flipped to a page, held it up before her. “In exchange for information regarding the events of the week of Masens eleventh through twentieth, up to and including the massacre of the township of Stark’s Mutter, the destruction of the freehold of Lowstaff, and the disappearance of Revolutionary Low Sergeant Cavric Proud, I am willing to guarantee on behalf of the Cadre a swift and humane death.”
She set the paper aside, leaned forward. The woman stared just to the left of Tretta’s gaze.
“A lot of people are dead because of you,” Tretta said. “One of our soldiers is missing because of you. Before these six hours are up and you’re dead and buried, two things are going to happen: I’m going to find out precisely what happened and you’re going to decide whether you go by a single bullet or a hundred blades.” She laid her hands flat on the table. “What you say next will determine how much blood we see today. Think very carefully before you speak.”
At this, the woman finally looked into Tretta’s eyes. No fear there, she looked calm and placid as ever. And when she spoke, it was weakly.
“May I,” she said, “have a drink?”
Tretta blinked. “A drink.”
The woman smiled softly at her manacled hands. “It’s hot.”
Tretta narrowed her e
yes, but made a gesture all the same. One of her guards slipped out the door, returning a moment later with a jug and a glass. He filled it, slid it over to the prisoner. She took it up and sipped at it, smacked her lips, then looked down at the glass.
“The fuck is this?” she asked.
Tretta furrowed her brow. “Water. What else would it be?”
“I was figuring gin or something,” she said.
“You asked for water.”
“I asked for a drink,” the woman shot back. “With all the fuss you’re making about how you’re going to kill me, I thought you’d at least send me out with something decent. Don’t I get a final request?”
Tretta’s face screwed up in offense. “No.”
The woman made a pouting face. “I would in Cathama.”
“You’re not in Cathama,” Tretta snarled in response. “You’re not anywhere near the Imperium and the only imperialist scum within a thousand miles are all buried in graves beside the one I intend to put you in.”
“Yeah, you’ve been pretty clear on that,” the woman replied, making a flippant gesture. “Crimes against the Revolution and so on. Not that I’d ever call you a liar, madame, but are you sure you’ve got the right girl? There’s plenty of scum in the Scar that must have offended you worse than me.”
“I am certain.” Tretta seized the papers, flipped to a page toward the front. “Prisoner number fifteen-fifteen-five, alias”—she glared over the paper at the woman—“Sal the Cacophony.”
Sal’s lip curled into a crooked grin. She made as elegant a bow as one could when manacled and sitting in a chair.
“Madame.”
“Real identity unknown, place of birth unknown, hometown unknown,” Tretta continued, reading from the paper. “Professed occupation: bounty hunter.”
“I prefer ‘manhunter.’ Sounds more dramatic.”
“Convicted—recently—of murder in twelve townships, arson in three freeholds, unlawful possession of Revolutionary Relics, heresy against Haven, petty larceny—”
“There was nothing petty about that larceny.” She reached forward. “Let me see that sheet.”
“—blasphemy, illegal use of magic, kidnapping, extortion, and so on and so on and so fucking on.” Tretta slammed the paper down against the table. “In short, everything I would expect from a common Vagrant. And like a common Vagrant, I expect not a damn soul in the Scar is going to shed a tear over what puts you in the ground. But what makes you different is that you’ve got the chance to do something vaguely good before you die, which is a sight fucking more than what your fellow scum get before the birds pick their corpses clean.” She clenched her jaw, spat her next words. “So, if you’ve got any decency left to your name, however fake it might be, you’ll tell me what happened. In Stark’s Mutter, in Lowstaff, and to my soldier, Cavric Proud.”
Sal pursed her lips, regarded Tretta through an ice water stare. She stiffened in her chair and Tretta matched her poise. The two women stared each other down for a moment, as though either of them expected the other to tear out a blade and start swinging.
As it was, Tretta nearly did just that when Sal finally broke the silence.
“Have you seen many Vagrants dead, madame?” she asked, unhurried.
“Many,” Tretta replied, terse.
“When they died, what did they say?”
Tretta narrowed her eyes. “Curses, mostly. Cursing the Imperium they served, cursing the luck that sent them to me, cursing me for sending them back to the hell that spawned them.”
“I guess no one ever knows what their last words will be.” Sal traced a finger across the scars on her cheek, her eyes fixed on some distant spot beyond the walls of the interrogation room. “But I know mine won’t be curses.” She clicked her tongue. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, madame, about Lowstaff, about Cavric, everything. I’ll give you everything you want and you can put a bullet in my head or cut it off or have me torn apart by birds. I won’t protest. All I ask is one thing.”
Tretta tensed and reached for her saber as Sal leaned across the table. And a grin as long and sharp as a blade etched itself across her face.
“Remember my last words.”
Tretta didn’t achieve her rank by indulging prisoners, let alone ones as vile as a Vagrant. She achieved it through the support and respect of the men and women who saluted her every morning. And she didn’t get that by letting their fates go unknown.
And so, for the sake of them and the Revolution she served, she nodded. And the Vagrant leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
“It started,” she said softly, “with the last rain.”
TWO
Rin’s Sump
You ever want to know what a man is made of, you do three things.
First, you see what he does when the weather turns nasty.
When it rains in Cathama, the pampered Imperials crowd beneath the awnings in their cafés and wait for their mages to change the skies. When it snows in Haven, they file right into church and thank their lord for it. And when it gets hot in Weiless, as you know, they ascribe the sun to an Imperial plot and vow to redouble their revolutionary efforts.
But in the Scar? When it pours down rain and thunder so hard that you swim through the streets and can’t hear yourself drown? Well, they just pull their cloaks tighter and keep going.
And that’s just what I was doing that night when I got into this whole mess.
Rin’s Sump, as you can guess by the name, was the sort of town where rain didn’t bother people much. Even when lightning flashed so bright you’d swear it was day, life in the Scar was hard enough that a little apocalyptic weather wouldn’t hinder anyone. And as the streets turned to mud underfoot and the roofs shook beneath the weight of the downpour, the people of the township just tucked their chins into their coats, pulled their hats down low, and kept going about their business.
Just like I was doing. One more shapeless, sexless figure in the streets, hidden beneath a cloak and a scarf pulled around her head. No one raised a brow at my white hair, looked at me like they were guessing what I had under my cloak, or even so much as glanced at me. They had their own shit to deal with that night.
Which was fine by me. So did I. And the kind of shit I got into, I could always use fewer eyes on me.
Every other house in Rin’s Sump was dark as night, but the tavern—a dingy little two-story shack at the center of town—was lit up. Light shone bright enough to illuminate the dirt on the windows, the stripped paint on the front, and the ugly sign swinging on squeaky hinges: Ralp’s Last Resort.
Apt name.
And it proved even more apt when I pushed the door open and took a glance inside.
Standing there, sopping wet, water dripping off me to form a small ocean around my boots, I imagined I looked a little like a dead cat hauled out of an outhouse. And I still looked a damn sight better than the inside of that bar.
A fine layer of dust tried nobly to obscure a much-less-fine layer of splinters over the ill-tended-to chairs and tables lining the common hall. A stage that probably once had hosted a variety of bad acts now stood dark; a single voccaphone stood in their place, playing a tune that was popular back when the guy who wrote it was still alive. Rooms upstairs had probably once held a few prostitutes, if there ever were prostitutes luckless enough to work a township like this. I’d have called the place a mausoleum if it weren’t for the people, but they looked like they might have found a crypt a little cozier.
There were a few kids—two boys, a girl—in the back, sipping on whatever bottle of swill they could afford and staring at the table. Laborers, I wagered; some young punks the locals used for cheap jobs with cheap pay to buy cheap liquor. And behind the bar was a large man in dirty clothes, idly rubbing a glass with a cloth.
He set that glass down as I approached. The cloth he had been using had likely been used to polish something else, if the grime around the glass were any evidence.
No matter. I wouldn’t
need to be here long.
Ralp—I assumed—didn’t bother asking me what I wanted. In the Scar, you’re lucky if they give you a choice between two drinks. And if you had any luck at all, you didn’t wind up in a place called Rin’s Sump.
He reached for a cask behind the bar, but stopped as I cleared my throat and shot him a warning glare. With a nod, he held up a bottle of whiskey—Avonin & Sons, by the look of the black label—and looked at me for approval. I nodded, tossed a silver knuckle on the counter. He didn’t start pouring until he picked it up, made sure it was real, and pocketed it.
“Passing through?” he asked with the kind of tone that suggested habit more than interest.
“Does anyone ever stay?” I asked back, taking a sip of bitter brown.
“Only if they make enough mistakes.” Ralp shot a glance to the youths drinking in the corner. “Your first was stopping in here instead of moving on. Roads are going to be mud for days after this. No one’s getting out without a bird.”
“I’ve got a mount,” I said, grinning over my glass. “And here I thought you’d be happy for a little extra money.”
“Won’t turn down metal,” Ralp said. He eyed me over, raised a brow as it seemed to suddenly dawn on him that I was a woman under all that wet, stinking leather. “But if you really want to make me happy—”
“I’ll tell you what.” I held up a finger. “Finishing that thought might make you happy in the short-term, but keeping it to yourself will make you not get punched in the mouth in the long-term.” I smiled sweetly as a woman with my kinds of scars could. “A simple pleasure, sir, but a lasting one.”
Ralp glanced me over again, rubbed his mouth thoughtfully, and bobbed his head. “Yeah, I’d say you’re right about that.”
“But I do have something just as good.” I tossed another three knuckles onto the bar. As he reached for them, I slammed something else in front of him. “That is, assuming you can make me happy.”