Vocho picked up what could, for want of a better word, be called a sword – if only because of its shape. It sagged in the middle and the hilt turned his hand black. “I’ve seen better cutlery.” Which cheered him up a bit, because defending against a bunch of idiots with swords made out of what might generously be called metal wasn’t going to add to his reputation anyway.
Kass frowned at the ‘sword’ and wiped a slick of sweat out of one eye. “This smells a bit off, doesn’t it?”
“We are quite close to the docks.”
“Not that sort of smell, you plank. Look, Sustro hired us, best duellists in the guild, right?”
Vocho puffed himself up and struck a pose. “Bloody right.”
Kass’s eyes crossed. “And he told everyone he was doing it. It even says so on the sign outside – ‘Under Guild Protection’. So why would half a dozen dock rats with crap swords even try? They can’t have been that stupid. You don’t live even to their tender age by being stupid, on the docks.”
The pile of thieves were a pathetic sight – half starved, all knees and elbows and sharp cheeks. Most of them looked about twelve, and while it wasn’t impossible to be a damned good fighter at twelve – Vocho, naturally, had been merely brilliant – it wasn’t likely that any dock rat that age would have any experience with swords, crap or otherwise. Knives, yes. Knuckledusters, blackjacks, coshes, garrottes and that old favourite, a sharpened screwdriver, of course. They’d have had much experience with all of those things, even at twelve. But swords? He doubted they knew anyone who could afford one, even one that bent in the middle.
“The swords don’t make any sense,” he said. “They’d have been better off sticking to what they knew. They’d still have lost, but it might not have been quite so one sided.”
“Ah, but if their swords were any good, or they were, I’d not have gone easy on them and they would be dead.” Kass frowned, deep in thought – he could tell because the rest of her was still. There was always some part of her in motion and if it wasn’t her hands, it was her brain. “Don’t suppose any of them could read the sign, either.”
“So it could be just them getting the wrong house?”
“Voch, they’re likely illiterate, but not stupid. They didn’t need to read the sign to know whose house this is. And Sustro’s been telling everyone who he’s hired to guard his things. And everyone knows we’re not cheap. Looks to me they might have thought that whatever it is we’re guarding would be worth a shot at trying us on. Or, because I still don’t think they were as stupid as to think six of them armed like that could beat even one of us, they were set up.”
Vocho paced around the unconscious heap, considering. “I say we open the boxes.”
“Voch!” It wasn’t often he could shock his sister, but he always felt a twang of satisfaction when he managed it. Guild rules meant no digging into whatever they’d been paid to protect, except on the explicit instructions of their employer. Anything else was ‘conduct unbecoming a duellist’, which meant a one way trip out of the guild and into ignominy and disgrace. Considering the time and effort he’d spent working up his reputation as Vocho the Great, he wouldn’t throw it away lightly. Still, there were always ways around the rules.
“I bet you any money you like that what’s in those boxes will tell us what these dock rats are doing crumpled on the floor, besides the fact they met you. No one will know, will they? Our employer is off gallivanting up at the palace with the prelate, and all his workers are tucked up in their innocent beds. The only other people here are unconscious, and I don’t suppose they’d tell anyway. Go on, I dare you. Besides,” he said slyly, playing his trump card, “it could be for the good of Reyes as well, couldn’t it? The right thing, to find out who wanted these boys dead, and why.”
It wouldn’t fail – it never did. They’d sworn, when they’d taken their master’s oath and joined the guild properly, to protect the city-state of Reyes with their lives, and to do the good thing. There had been interminable lessons before that on how to decide what was the good thing, though Vocho had used them for napping. Kass took it all far too seriously to his way of thinking. Besides, a mystery was one thing she couldn’t stand. If it was knowable, then she had to know it. Which meant getting her to open the boxes was easy.
“Fine,” she said now, with a scowl for him. “You take that end.”
Between the two of them, they levered open the first crate. Vocho peered in – straw, and dust. He rummaged a bit, carefully, because who knew?
“You got anything your end?” Kass asked.
“Nothing but mouse droppings. You?”
“Same.”
She frowned into the empty box, and tried another with the same result. By the time the chimes of the clocks all across the city were tolling eleven, all in a ragged row that echoed down the streets, they had every box open with nothing to find.
“Well, that’s just stupid,” Kass said at last. “Why pay us a small fortune to guard some perfectly good, but utterly worthless boxes?”
“A decoy? Our employer, bless his wallet, has used us as a distraction from where his real cargo is. He’s been shouting about it all around the city. These poor sods believed the hype. What was it supposed to be, anyway?”
“Hmm? Oh, herbs like you said. Medicinal ones. Only you know what it’s like, they never tell you the truth about what’s in the box in case we want to steal it, guild honour or not.”
He was just considering that when Cospel, their ever present servant cum conspirator, shot in the door and slammed it behind him, waggling his eyebrows in an intricate code that Vocho had never quite managed to decipher.
“It might have got complicated,” he said by way of translation. “Bunch of prelate’s guards coming this way. Not happy. Very not happy. Very vocal about not being happy.”
“So?” Kass and Vocho said together. They were on official guild business, paid for and notarised. The prelate’s guards shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
“So, well, you got half a dozen crumpled people at your feet for a start. And what looks like a load of empty boxes what were supposed to have some very valuable stuff in, but currently don’t. You had to open the boxes, didn’t you?”
“Well—” Vocho began, but Cospel carried on before he could make his excuses.
“Looks like that Slippery Simno has been a bit of a devil up at the palace, or someone has anyway. Nicked the key to the Clockwork God right out from under the prelate’s nose. They’s searching everywhere.”
“I bet they are.” Kass was at the door before Vocho had even started moving, peering out into the street beyond. “A bloody decoy,” she said. “Else we’d have been up at the palace, wouldn’t we? And we wouldn’t have thought much of it either, if we hadn’t opened the boxes. Cospel, you hear anything about Sustro?”
“Of course, miss.” He looked affronted that she should ask. “Though not much. New to the city, see. Seems respectable enough, pays his workers a decent wage, and pays them on time. Deals in this and that, whatever’s handy, nothing illegal that I could find out about. Not clockwork though. Never deals in clockwork. Mind, he’s Ikaran so what can you expect?”
“What indeed. Looks like we know who our Slippery Simno is. Now we just need to find him.”
They watched the prelate’s men go past, checking every building. A quick word with Kass, that the two of them were protecting the building and no, they hadn’t seen anyone untoward, and the guards went on their way, intent and angry.
“This bastard’s got one over on us, and I for one am not happy about it. We’ll be a laughing stock if anyone finds out. What we need is proof,” she said when they’d gone. “And for that we need to find him”
*
Ten minutes later found them outside the palace. It was lit up like a defiance of darkness, lamps in every one of a hundred windows. The light glinted on the giant orrery that clanked its way through its motions in what had once been a formal garden but was now a devotional
to the clockwork universe the prelate said ruled everyone.
“How do you propose we find him?” Vocho asked. “If he’s even still there, that is. Are you going to knock on the door and ask?”
“I’m not, Cospel is. We know what he looks like, right? The prelate is probably unaware that his new friend is also Simno, just as we were until a few minutes ago. If he’s undiscovered, why run? Especially when guards are scouring the streets? Even more especially if he’s stashed the key somewhere in case he’s searched, so he can come back for it later. He’s not a hothead like you, Voch. This guy is a planner. Off you go, Cospel.”
Cospel went, muttering under his breath.
“We could tell the guards . . .” Vocho said.
“What, and lose all the glory we’ll get from catching him? Are you feeling quite well?”
“You have a very good point.”
“I always do. Look, anyone finds out he outsmarted us, your precious reputation is in tatters. They’ll be giggling from here down to Ikaras. Unless we can present the city with the thief that’s been plaguing them for the last few months and has just stolen the key to the Clockwork God. We do that, we can gloss over how we came to be guarding a warehouse full of nothing.”
Cospel was back in double quick time. “He ain’t left yet. Prelate’s having a shitfit, naturally, and no one’s been allowed out until they’s been searched.”
“Excellent,” Kacha said. “How brazen are you feeling, Voch?”
“Me? I’m always brazen, and shameless with it. Let’s go.”
The gate was out – the guards and the guild were not exactly bosom friends at the best of times, and if they had a hint that Vocho and Kacha knew who had stirred the palace up like an ant’s nest, they’d be wanting all that glory for themselves. Instead, a boost from Cospel saw them over the wall in a quiet corner near the stables. Vocho helped Cospel over afterwards, and they stood in the shadows to consider, while watching people run about the reception room on the first floor. They scattered like panicky chickens, grouped together, scattered again with frowning guards working their way along, emptying pockets and peering into purses. Fans fluttered, swords rattled in scabbards, handkerchiefs wafted under noses, and one woman strategically fainted after a guard found something untoward in her pretty silk purse. At the far wall, tall double doors led out into the rest of the palace, but a phalanx of guards now barred the way.
“If he’s still in there, he’s got cogs of steel,” Kass said. “But we have an advantage.”
“We do?”
“He thinks no one knows who he is, he thinks he can just hide the key and wait it out. We know different. If one of us were to walk in and see him, it might shake him up. If we were to point him out as the likely thief, he might panic. If he does, then we’ve got him.”
“If he doesn’t?”
“Then it might get tricky, especially if we’re wrong. But I don’t think we’re wrong. There’s not many places he can run after he gets through those doors, not many places he’d want to run to in the palace anyway. He’ll try to get out, as soon as he can. Voch, you go around the back, in case he runs. The door that leads to the orrery. Cospel, you take the front, the doors leading onto the courtyard. I shall walk in and try to scare the bugger.”
Vocho was about to disagree – he had a very good swagger and he wanted to use it – when he considered that if the bugger ran, and he would, then he, Vocho, would be best placed to grab every last bit of glory. He went.
He watched from the clanking haven of the orrery, one eye on the door, the other watching people moving in the reception room. He could tell when Kass walked in. A guilds master turning up, especially one so renowned, had a singular effect on all the posh nobs likely to be at a reception held by the prelate. There was a telltale hush, a pause in all the twitterings and scatterings before they started up again, worse than before. The Prelate, gracious as ever, moved towards Kass with a frazzled and quizzical smile.
They didn’t get any further than that. Simno, Sustro, whatever his bloody name was, didn’t bother with doors. He didn’t bother about opening the window either but dove straight through, bold as brass, scattering shards of glass onto the orrery, leaving a wake of gasps behind him. He was pretty good, too, landing like a duellist, rolling with it and up on his feet in a flash.
Vocho just had time for a smug grin up at his furious looking sister as she ran to the broken window before he was off, following the shadow of the man who’d stolen the key to the Clockwork God, the key to the heart of Reyes. Kass was too far behind and Cospel was on the other side of the palace. The glory was going to be his, all his.
*
Vocho clambered out of a window and from there it was a short jump to a lower rooftop, after Simno as he scampered like a monkey above the streets of Reyes. Vocho followed, though he felt rather less monkey-like, not to mention he felt naked without Kass on his flank, making sure his back was covered as he did the same for her.
Bells rang the third quarter, starting with the Great Clock in the square outside the Shrive, the clock they said ran all the clockwork of the city. Its great booming toll was imperfectly echoed all across the city so that peals of bells chased each other down winding streets, the clocks haphazardly informing everyone that heard them that it was fifteen minutes until the change o’ the clock. Time to batten down the hatches and douse the torches before the city changed its configuration in one giant clockwork movement, but it looked like Vocho wouldn’t have the luxury of any of that.
Ahead, Simno swung from a drainpipe to land in the dark of some alley that radiated a foetid smell even to the rooftops. Vocho held his breath and followed.
The bastard was fit, Vocho had to give him that, and quick too. He came to the end of the alley and paused for breath. The alley led out into a tortuous street that, on this change, led to the Clockwork God outside the duelling guild, and home. Fifteen minutes from now, after all the clockwork had run its course, it would lead to Bescan Square and the night market. Vocho heaved air into his lungs and looked for movement among the shadows.
Difficult when half the street’s buildings were artificiers and clockers, all drenching their forges ready for the change. Smoke billowed out of almost every doorway, obscuring the street and anyone on it. He took a chance and went left, towards the God, for now anyway.
He came out of the smoke and steam on the other side, scarf up over his nose to stop him from choking, and came to where the street opened out to encompass a green space. There, there was the bastard, half way across the grass, dodging between the shadows of stunted trees that were blackened with soot. Vocho put on an extra spurt of speed and closed on him.
One last extra push, a reach with his sword to snag the man’s breeches, and he was on the floor, Vocho following hard. Oh he was well named, Slippery Simno; he wriggled out of Vocho’s grip and to his feet, Vocho half a second behind, his overhand slash stopping Simno from running again. For now.
Footsteps to one side, and Cospel appeared, armed with nothing that would get him arrested again – a dented pewter tankard that in its way was as good a weapon as any. Up on the wall of a clocker’s factory, with a clank of mechanisms doing what they should, a dial showed three minutes to midnight.
“Too late to run now,” Vocho said, moving a step closer. “No running in the change, if you want to keep your feet.”
“Never too late,” the man snarled, and a sword flashed in the dim moonlight that sliced through gaps in the curling smoke.
Vocho grinned to himself. A chance to gain a sterling bit of glory, and all to himself too because the perfect Kass was nowhere to be seen. Excellent.
He started as he always did, using Ruffelo’s duelling rules for gentlefolk. A sporting chance for the opponent. A thrust, a parry, a riposte that he knocked off line. Ruffelo lasted right up until Simno raked his blade a scant inch in front of Vocho’s face.
“You fight like a girl,” Simno said with a wheezing laugh.
Vocho
dodged the overhand blow, threw the blade off centre with a swirl of his cloak and returned the favour, lunging at a delicate area the gentle Ruffelo would never have approved of. “Actually, I’ve been fighting like a gentleman. But I can fight like the girls I know, if you like.”
With that he lowered his blade a touch, leaving a clear opening that the fool went for. Vocho grabbed the front of Simno’s tunic with his off hand and planted his forehead squarely on the git’s nose, forever changing its shape. Simno staggered back, his nose gurgling, and Vocho pressed the advantage – a vicious cut to the sword arm that bit deep and had Simno drop his blade, swiftly followed by a boot to the stomach and then, when the poor sap bent forward with a whoosh of expelled breath, a knee to further ruin the nose.
The man sagged slowly, but not quietly, to the ground.
“See now,” Vocho said to his unresponsive back, “all the girls that I know think Ruffelo’s rules are for idiots, and that a good nose shot works wonders. I have to say I tend to agree, though I personally draw the line before we get to the stiletto to the heart, because it makes such a mess and you have to explain yourself afterwards. However, I have blood on my breeches now and I’m holding you personally responsible.”
A pained gurgle was his only answer.
“He’s a bit of a mess, Voch.” Kass appeared from out of nowhere, cat like and disapproving all at once.
“Only because he was impugning your fighting skills. I felt called upon to defend your honour, and give him a demonstration.”
That got him a snort of a laugh. “I’m sure you did, Voch, I’m sure you did. But if you were really going for my style, you missed a bit. Right in the cogs. If you catch them by surprise, it works a treat.”
Vocho pulled himself into a pose that he imagined made him look haughty and put upon, but which only caused Cospel to choke on his own laughter. “Well, unlike some, I have standards. And a reputation for panache and dashing élan to keep up. And look what I did. Where’s the style in that? I fought like, well, like a brute, and got blood all over my breeches. For you, Kass.”
Fight Like A Girl Page 17