Arrowmask: Godkillers of the Shrouded Vast

by John Ruch

  “The real thing looks even better,” Rinka said smoothly, striding up to stand between the men. “But this is all you’re gonna get.”

  The unsexy fact that it was her time of the half-month, her boobs sore and unhappy about being crammed into these casings, she kept to herself.

  She savored their discomfort for a moment and took advantage of the chance to read them. Alfie’s moustache was askew as he bit his tongue about something. Arrowmask held a determined stance, arms folded, leaning back on the low wall at the roof’s edge.

  “Where did you find that armor, anyhow? Did some mud-wrestling at the Incendium and forgot to wash it off before it hardened?” Arrowmask cracked.

  “Born wearing it, I expect,” Alfie said dryly with a little comedic cough.

  “Born to wear it,” Rinka returned, spreading her seductress’s grin. Her lipstick was purple today.

  Quite a difference from the first time Mieux saw her armor-clad—the harsh barking-pug laughter about how “it’s totally crazy to wear clothes that make you look naked!” And then listening intently as Rinka explained Vollach’s cultural tradition of women warlords, following up with a blizzard of questions: “Did you ever eat too much and it didn’t fit anymore! Where did you dig up the emerald jewel! Do the baby drakes have names!” She had giggled in delight at learning the drakes were called Zmajic and Boljë. “You look very pretty in it,” Mieux had concluded formally with a stiff salute that had made Rinka laugh.

  But the men? A sculpture of her ass cheeks simply made them sex-stupid and set off their flirty jokes pretending it didn’t. “They’re like their own beloved codpieces—showing off the dangling bits and also hiding them,” she thought. It had been years since she had spent any time with boys. She had forgotten what simple, shy little beasts they are.

  Not that she lacked other kinds of respect for them. She had seen Alfie’s capabilities firsthand; he likely could turn her armor into clay lingerie if he so chose. But more than that, beneath the jowls and moustaches and today’s ridiculous pink-and-gold paisley robe, there was a soul tanned and tempered by a lifetime in the Greenarch sun. He didn’t talk about those days much—which meant it had been tough enough that talking wouldn’t help.

  And Arrowmask…Arrowmask was “a fragile flower of perennial adolescence blooming in all its insolence, irresponsibility and easily bruised egomania. His name even sounds like a thorny species of rose.” Or so Alfie put it so well in a little private chat last night.

  But he was no kid. Undoubtedly, old people frowned on the rogue with secret envy and screwed-up women fell for him with a regularity that surprised him. He had stolen the Star of Monksbane Glen. He had handled the bullying of the Thousand Leaguers exactly the way she would have, and he alone understood the message she had written them in blood and fire.

  It remained to be seen how the slippery, skinny harbor eel would perform on the dry land of the Vast. And she was sure he’d become her little fucktoy in a heartbeat with a quick bending over for a proper pegging. But for now, she was content to let him lead—better known as dealing with the boring shit—and half-trusted him to do it, too. “Anyone who asked for a beating like the Thousand Leaguers dished out liked it at least a little,” she thought, “and pain-lovers often have spirits of iron. Often stronger than the pain-givers.”

  Proud though she was of her boys, they were easy to see through all the same. Arrowmask had wisely decided to drop the questions about her prison breakout, and Alfie was grumpy over it. “Let him grump,” she thought. “If he had something real to throw in my face, he would have already.”

  Rinka leaned a hip on the railing at the roof’s edge and glanced around the garden as if it belonged to someone else. She didn’t go on nature hikes, and spring flowers made her sneeze. All the lovely trellises and vines and dwarf fruit trees were Pesh’s work. Rinka’s appreciation was for its strategic location, with the neighbors’ rooftops well below. A languid red lizard clung to a date palm frond over Arrowmask’s shoulder. She wondered idly how high he would jump if it fell on him.

  Alfie donned a polite smile from the antique wardrobe of his manners and excused himself with mutterings about a brandy and a shopping list, those supreme fetishes of the Blue Weàlae. Arrowmask took a drag on his cubeb and exhaled, the smoke riding over the rooftops on the sea breeze. He was almost handsome in this emerald-tinted garden light, with his aquiline nose and unmanaged hair and shoulder cape. She motioned for him to give her a cubeb. As she held it to her lips and lit it with the smoldering tip of Arrowmask’s smoke, he looked up at her. It always gave her a little thrill when people had to do that—tilting their heads back to look up from their proper place.

  “Calm before the storm, huh?” she said, exhaling a bluish stream like the long-dead Murmur.

  Arrowmask made a sound of agreement. “We’ll see what kind of storm it is. Raining gold or raining steel.”

  “You hardly ever see one without the other.”

  He gave a tiny smile and fidgeted with the cubeb, examining the tip as the hidden heat ate it away. He wore black buckskin gloves all the time now after skinning his palms in the Thousand Leagues spat. They were all armoring up in their own ways.

  “You even gonna be able to climb into a wagon after that beating?” she asked.

  “I’ve had hangovers that were worse.”

  Oh, my tough guy! May I give you a blowjob? she guessed she supposed to be thinking in response. She fought to keep her eyes from rolling.

  “Did the counsel have anything to say about the Thousand Leagues?” she asked instead. They had agreed that Arrowmask should send him a note about the Leagues’ caravan plot. Whether it was a warning that surprised him or an alert that they were onto a conspiracy involving him, the announcement helped them either way.

  Rinka observed that he flushed ever so slightly at mention of the counsel. Still embarrassed that he had pussied out on needling their boss and seeing if any truth bled out of him about this whole dubious plan. She didn’t think it was that big a deal, since anyone who made counsel must be a stone-cold liar and champion horseshit-shoveler anyhow. But it was interesting that it still bothered Arrowmask.

  The smuggler nodded in answer. “He’s not going to recall the other caravans, but he wasn’t thrilled to learn about the loose lips at the Citadel. He’ll do a security review, etcetera. As for us—he awarded the Thousand Leagues a rich contract to dredge the Oakdrift Channel in the eastern harbor.”

  “A friendly gesture to keep them too busy to kill us—for now. Smart Check move.” The cartel already had miscalculated with its failed kidnapping of members of the University and two temples, which in turn potentially put the City Watch and the Sally Anns into play as well. Rinka loathed leaving Asvelt and Pesh behind, but they should be safe enough at the Incendium. Arrowmask had some pencil-pushing sister attached to the Waveriders, a minor member of a cartel union that would provide her some security. As for their own safety, Rinka had given the Thousand Leagues a way out of revenge, and Regulus had just made it more expensive to kill them. In her experience, cartels were built for rape and pillage, ultimately and inevitably. But if you couldn’t kill a beast right away, you could build some fences and throw it some bones.

  Mieux and Alfie didn’t have any family around to worry about. But Rinka wasn’t worried about her people, either. Danger was funny that way, what you ended up setting aside and what kept coming to mind. Asvelt could take of herself and Pesh, too. It was that sad-sack Brenda she kept thinking of. One of these nights, she’d come crawling back into the Incendium and there wouldn’t be anyone there to dish out the punishment. Or no one as good, anyhow. Am I really becoming sentimental? Maybe I’ll just miss having someone to smack around on the road.

  “The counsel had me play Check with him,” Arrowmask said with faint amusement.

  “Did he kick your ass?”

  “No. I scared him into quitting.”

  “Well, that’s encouraging. A counsel who rolls over and pisses o
n the rug in a tight spot. Glad to know he’s watching our backs.”

  Ashton considered the length of ash on his cubeb and knocked if off into one of the planters, which might have pissed off someone who gave a fuck about their garden.

  “When we’re out there, I need you to do something for me,” he said.

  So this is where he buys my loyalty and keeps me at heel by offering me a “special job” or a “secret assignment.” She puffed on her smoke to disguise a smirk. The transparency of the little power play disgusted her.

  “I don’t do windows.”

  “And I don’t serve in the Imperial Army. I don’t speak its language. But we’re going to have four criminal troops out there with us—ex-officers. You’ve led soldiers. I need you to be their sergeant or captain or whatever it is, keep them disciplined.”

  “I’ve led Vollach troops against Imperial pigs. I don’t speak in their oinks, either. You’re the boss. Why give me the command?”

  “Because you can do it. And because I can command the rest of the group not to ask exactly when and where you did all that fighting—or lots of other questions you don’t seem to want to answer.”

  Now that actually is a power play. “I do it my way, my rules.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  A personal bodyguard or a gaggle of insolent Imperial pain-pigs to slap around. Either way, there are worse jobs. She looked down on him with a genuine smile and they shook on it.

  Before striding away, she flicked her cubeb away and hit the palm frond. The slumbering lizard tumbled onto Arrowmask’s shoulder. He hopped on his tiptoes and brushed it off into the shrubs with a quick cursing.

  Only jumped a couple inches, she said to herself with a grin. Not bad, Arrowmask. Not bad at all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No assassins met them on the road to Gallatine’s, the Imperial wainwright. The biggest challenge was fitting Alfie into the rather cramped cab they had splurged on, piloted by a trusted driver Rinka knew from the Incendium. Ashton sank back in the seat and pretended to be relaxed, though he tapped his foot nervously. He casually surveyed his companions. Alfie had his nose buried in his shopping list, checking it over while musing aloud in such exclamations as, “Probably don’t need fire tongs. Still, better safe than sorry!”

  Rinka, clad in her obscene armor, flipped through a copy of Face Girl!—a beauty and fashion magazine for teenagers, her perusal of which explained a lot. On her lap beneath the magazine lay a dagger, because for Rinka, a “trusted driver” was one you nonetheless threatened to stab through the cab wall if they screwed up. He felt satisfied with how he’d played someone that paranoid, offering her the command of the caravan guards.

  Mieux hung out the window, giggling at shop signs shaped like bulgy-eyed, blunt-snouted foxes and puppies in the modern style, and occasionally decrying outfits that broke the apparently complicated fashion laws of the “four kings of the Tetragate.” Ashton doubted that the paladins paid attention to such things, but then, he’d seen his share of far stranger decrees. This whole trip was one of them.

  Ashton realized the cab ride was a little appetizer for the caravan journey to come, and pondered the strange lot he’d fallen in with. It struck him that they were like a family, though he wasn’t sure who was in which role. Except Mieux’s basically the kid, I guess.

  At that moment, the equilibrique slowly turned her glossy-haired head and stared at him unnervingly with those huge eyes. He shot her a little frown. She can’t possibly have known what I’m thinking. He glanced to Alfie in the unlikely event that he would spontaneously offer some equilibrique lore to confirm that.

  Mieux sprang frog-like next to Ashton, raising a puff of dust from the cushions.

  “You must see a play with me sometime!” she demanded.

  “What play?” he said reflexively, as a duelist would raise a buckler against a thrust.

  “I don’t know what they will show in other cities! But I am prepared!” She produced an already tattered copy of the latest Merrykin’s Digest and began spewing out titles like a theatrical volcano. “Seven Against the Bees! The Dehydrated Hydra! Into the Mounds of Madness!”

  “That’s a good one,” Rinka murmured.

  Ashton closed his eyes a moment. “How about some juggling?” he suggested. Mieux complied instantly, juggling her blocks solemnly. Ashton relaxed again.

  “That’s pretty fucking cool,” Rinka said silkily. “Ever try it with knives?”

  “No, but that would be no problem!” Mieux cried. They commenced chatting about the thrills of irresponsible weapon-handling.

  Infuriation flamed again in Ashton over how easily Rinka got all of Mieux’s attention, even though that was exactly what he wanted her to do at the moment. What was so charming about a murderous Volanian bitch drenched in necromagica? Why didn’t the meditative equilibrique see he was the one with the sensitive, creative soul? Furthermore, it was irritating how every time Rinka swore, it made him so horny he wanted to screw the furniture. And how he’d probably never get the chance to seduce her and dump her vengefully, because she was too good for him—shit, her armor was too good for him. He sulked the rest of the way.

  The wainwright workshops of the Gallatines sprawled across acres of the central city, composed of a dozen or more warehouses with mutual walls knocked out or stitched together with wooden corridors and bridges. On the lichen-spackled roof, an Imperial coat of arms flowed on a banner sixty feet long, undulating in the breeze with a thrum that could be heard all the way on the ground, surrounded by ten more flags bearing the arms of each outlying province.

  In the yard, wood shavings were piled here, rusting headlamp covers there, amid a profusion of wagons ranging from gleaming new purple-and-black mail coaches to broken-down two-seat cabs and horsecarts.

  The air pulled Ashton’s nose toward the building with the aromas of fresh cedar and axle grease, then slapped him away with the pungent odors of hot iron and tanning liquor. A combined clangor of sawing, smithing, and less identifiable squeaks and cracks emanated from within.

  There was no sign, no clear front door, just freight entrances standing open, broken roof tiles scattered in the yard, and paint curling off the walls like dehydrated worms caught in the sun. Even if Ashton hadn’t known the place had the Imperial seal of approval, he would have been impressed. Shops that looked like palaces usually were like cheap ale with a fancy label, and you’d be paying for the decoration on the bill besides. Places looked like dumps when masters were more focused on work than show. No sign meant no need to advertise.

  On the other hand, masters were usually assholes. Ashton suddenly felt the way he did walking into the lute shop that time he was going to buy an instrument to impress Violet. Dread over not knowing wagon jargon and being laughed out of the place by professional snobs filled him. His always tricky sense of self-confidence, already shaken by Rinka’s unknowing humiliations in the cab, crumpled. He suddenly felt acutely aware of his crew’s freakishness—Mieux giggling over a wood chip she had gathered, Rinka in her pornographic armor, Alfie snorting snuff out of a clamshell case.

  “We should have bought some genuine caravan gear to wear first,” he thought forlornly. He had no idea what it caravan gear actually was, just that it would make them look like part of the club.

  He led the way—which is to say, allowed himself to be pushed by the group’s momentum as he dreamed up procrastination methods—into the cavernous factory. Skylights admitted cloud-softened sunlight onto rows of freshly painted mail coaches. The odor of paint was like the substance, lying thickly on the air. Children hefting buckets of square-sided nails bustled underfoot. On the other side of a thin wall to the right came a construction cacophony of sawing, hammering, and cursing. Apparently, that was where wagons where born, and this was their nursery.

  Amid the din, a curious sound emerged, a distinctive blend of hoof-clops and a metallic crunching as if garden shears decided to munch sunflower seeds. At the far end of the factor
y, a strange little chariot rounded a corner and headed toward them. Pulled by a dwarf donkey a yard tall at the shoulder, it consisted of little more than a simple wooden chair upholstered in black leather set upon iron wheels. A wiry old man with a shock of white hair brushed back dramatically perched upon it, clad in a labor-scarred leather workman’s apron that contrasted with jewels flashing on his fingers and neck. As the contraption drew nearer, Ashton could see its wheels were linked to a complex set of gears that allowed it to turn sharply with stability as it rounded the sun-drying coaches and dodged the nail-delivery laborers. The vehicle pulled up perpendicularly to Ashton, the wheel close enough that he had to shuffle backward. From this angle, he could see that the donkey’s loins were swaddled in a dark cloth diaper emblazoned with a golden calligraphic Gallatine “G.”

  The old man gripped the armrests and glowered up at Ashton. “See something funny, young man!” he barked in a hammer-clang of a voice.

  All of the anxiety in his belly transformed into hilarity. He sucked in his cheeks and furrowed his brow, inhaling deeply in an effort to contain the mad spirit of absurdity. A man with some sense of discipline, propriety and/or maturity might’ve pulled it off.

  “Oh, gods, yes,” he confessed, his face exploding into a gasping laugh.

  The old man’s fiercely arched white eyebrows and clamped frown unfurled as well. “Ha!” he cried with a slap on the armrest. “Good, good! Have a good laugh! If you can’t have some fun with a ride, don’t bother taking it!”

  The man was, of course, Gallatine himself. Amid more creaky joshing—“Will this do? You don’t mind sitting in each other’s laps all the way to the Vast?”—they exchanged introductions. Alfie gave a firm handshake, Rinka a wary nod. Mieux waved her left hand formally, but her eyes tracked the donkey until, respect paid, she darted chipmunk-like to its side, demanding to know its name and whether she could ride it.