“I don’t think that will be a problem,” said Singh smugly.
“And why’s that?” demanded Ji-hyeon, having found her voice again.
“Because by now she’s escaped the stockade and gone her own way,” said the chevaleresse. “I did not ask where she intended to go, so that I would not be obliged to share that intelligence with my employer, but trust that Zosia can be a very hard woman to find. You would have better luck hunting a ghost.”
With her hood pulled low, Zosia slipped and slid her way through the desolate camp. The snow had picked up again, and the two guards kept a respectful silence. To most it would have seemed a somber march, the disgraced former captain of the Cobalt Company led to face her judgment by reluctant captors who knew her for the queen she had been, but Zosia felt better than she had all day. Sure, her wounds throbbed and the cold gusts that were picking up through the tents cut her to the bone, but she felt like she had finally bested a devil that had harried her ever since Kypck. Sneaking away before dawn would have been far safer, of course, but she was confident that she could talk the kid into letting her go, so long as she swore some cheesy oath to never turn against her, something like that. They both knew Zosia was far more valuable alive and contrite than dead and of any temperament.
“In here, my lady,” said the guard with the torch, though the tent they had reached was still a long way off from the one they’d met in that morning. Ji-hyeon relocated her tent on a semi-regular basis to forestall spies and assassins from having a definite idea of where to find her, so the placement alone wasn’t the problem. What flooded Zosia with dread was the realization that the general’s heavily armored bodyguards were nowhere to be seen, the dark path between the darker tents empty of anyone at all save her escorts.
Before she could do more than register the depth of the trouble she was in, the guard with the torch pulled back the entry flap of the unlit tent and the man behind her took a decidedly less respectful approach than he had previously demonstrated, shoving her bodily inside. She kept her feet, but just barely, pivoting into the dark interior as the guards stormed in after her. Her hands were in irons, yes, but there were only two of them, and if she kept her cool she could get past them, back outside where her legs could carry her—
Onto her back. Someone else had been hiding in the blackness of the tent, and they neatly swept her legs out from under her. She went buckwild, hurling herself into a roll that hopefully would take her to the edge of the now-torchlit tent and not a waiting boot…
No such luck.
The first kick was followed soon after by its identical twin, and then in the too-bright torchlight they had her, hands holding her down while others worked her over, and then her legs were bound as tight as her wrists, and a noose slid round her throat. She panicked, whistling for Choplicker before a hard slap to the face reminded her that she didn’t even have her devil anymore. The noose closed and began to tug her upward, and then the blob of hands and boots and contorted faces retreated enough for her to make out her three attackers—two women and one of the guards, meaning the other man was behind her, pulling the end of the noose over whatever makeshift gallows they’d erected in the dingy tent. Bad as they’d beaten her and tight as they’d tied her, she still managed to get to her knees as the noose pulled her upward, and then to her feet, and then onto the tips of her boots. The bare, frozen floor of the tent seemed to reel beneath her, and she almost fell before her toes found their balance.
“I don’t fuckin’ believe it,” said the older of the two women, vines of scar tissue marring her face just as it did those of the two guards. “Cold Cobalt.”
“You sure it’s her?” asked the younger woman, the only one of the four without marks on her face. She looked more nervous than the others, who seemed positively ecstatic.
“Oh, I’d never forget that face,” said the guard behind Zosia, tugging the noose a tiny bit more and then coming around for a better look at her. “Lucky for us the fucking monster’s forgotten ours, or we’d never’ve got her out the gaol.”
Without him holding the rope Zosia tried settling onto her aching heels, but there was no slack at all—he’d tied it to something, and if she slipped but an inch she’d be choked out in short order. Her heart was hammering so swiftly she felt like it might explode before they could hang her… and the worst of it was they were right, she had no fucking idea who any of them were.
“That right, Blue Witch?” said the older woman. “You really don’t remember Karilemin?”
Oh, Zosia remembered Karilemin all right—that fucking prison farm was the whole reason she’d finally abdicated the Crimson Throne. As soon as she learned of the atrocities being visited on the captured Juniusian rebels she had traveled there herself to shut the place down, but not before the damage was done… and shortly after she returned to Diadem, one of the camp’s survivors had paid her a visit in the throne room. Here was justice as ripe as anything a bard could invent, Zosia finally answering for the same crime Queen Indsorith had sought to avenge twenty-odd years before.
“I remember Karilemin, and I’m sorry. And I know it doesn’t change things, but it’s not what I wanted, not what I ordered…” Zosia was finding it hard to keep her balance while talking, and while it didn’t seem talking would do her much good anyway, she still wanted to explain, and to apologize. Something she had never given Indsorith.
“Not what you ordered?” sneered one of the guards; now that her eyes were filling with tears, Zosia was having a hard time telling them apart. “We were right there in front of you when you gave your little speech and passed out the whips!”
“When we joined up with this new outfit in hope of finally makin’ you pay for what you did, only to find it weren’t really you, I was grieved near to death,” said one of the women. “This lot wanted to desert straight ’way, but I says, nay, we come all this way and it’s easy coin—just like it was working for Cold Cobalt, ’fore she became queen and turned on us.”
Karilemin. Of course. Now she remembered these assholes, albeit vaguely.
“You were…” Zosia’s legs were tingling, and she almost slipped. “You weren’t Juniusian prisoners, you were the fucking Imperial guards who tortured them, starved them.”
“We interrogated them, you mean, to find any loot they had stashed before we locked ’em up and put ’em to honest work,” said one of the men.
“Loot we was gonna turn over to our beloved Crimson Queen,” said the other. “And keepin’ that many traitors in line takes stern discipline, otherwise they gets ideas about another revolt. Hungry folk take orders better than fat ones.”
“We was doin’ what was best for the Empire, but when you come down from your castle you wouldn’t listen to them who’d served you faithful,” said one of the women.
“Treated the fuckin’ enemy kinder than you did your sworn soldiers,” said the other.
Zosia remembered gagging at the sights, the smells that had met her in the flinty fields and repurposed barns of Karilemin, but also remembered blaming herself more than the Imperial soldiers who had worked so many Juniusians to death. Now that she knew who these assholes were she couldn’t fucking believe they actually harbored a grudge, considering her clemency—she’d become so sick of death and killing by that point that she had executed only the officers who had managed the work camp, sparing the grunts. “I showed you mercy, didn’t I? More mercy than you showed your wards.”
“Mercy?” cried one of the men. “You call lettin’ those fuckin’ Juniusian scum take the lash to us mercy!”
“Whipped by our own prisoners, on your orders,” said one of the women, “and banished like traitors.”
“But justice’ll be done, now that—”
“Justice? You want justice?” growled Zosia, because these justly forgotten monsters could take her life but they couldn’t make her listen to their self-righteous mewling another moment longer. “Justice would be my old devil eating you fuckers alive, but guess what?” Zos
ia whistled for Choplicker again to prove her point. “Justice doesn’t exist.” She whistled a third time, just to make sure. “There’s your justice, you fucking crybabies, a whistle in the dark.”
“Hey, you can’t talk to us like—” one of the women began but Zosia was done. What a shitty end to a shitty day in a shitty life.
“See you in hell, losers,” she told them, and dropped her heels to the floor as hard as she could.
CHAPTER
16
Zosia’s feet hovered off the ground as the noose cut into her throat and the tear-filtered torchlight sputtered and flared. She closed her eyes so her last sight wouldn’t be a pack of blurry cutthroats who’d been lucky she’d let them off with a whipping way back when, and focused on keeping her treacherous feet from instinctively finding footing on the icy earth floor. She couldn’t shut her ears, unfortunately, and as her mind tipped and slipped into darkness, she heard their jeering voices, and louder now, their heavy panting, and their shrill shrieks and guttural gasps, and the crackling and ripping and snapping and growling and—
The slap of the cold floor against her cheek told her she’d failed in this, the last venture of her whole life—the dirty bastards had untied or cut the rope before she could hang herself, depriving her of even that small agency. Either the torch had gone out or her eyes had, the blackness of the tent absolute, and all she could hear was that thick, humid panting. Then something wet rustled through her hair, pressing into the back of her neck, and with a tug the noose was pulled loose from her windpipe and she gasped in spite of her commitment to dying. The air was no longer cold and still, but pulsed with a hot tide of fetid odor, a stench that was so familiar it might have been… dog breath?
Nails clicked on the frozen ground beside her, and a furry head bumped hers with a plaintive whine. Zosia raised her hands to stroke his coat, and as she did the manacles clicked open and fell from her wrists. He felt warm under her fingers, but also thin, his bones protruding from his hide, patches of his mangy coat tarred and foul. Her hands reached the back of his head, and she scratched him weakly behind the ears. He responded by scratching her cheek with his dried-out tongue, and she pushed him away with a groan.
“Thanks, buddy,” she rasped, slowly sitting up. She couldn’t see a damn thing—
Then she saw too much, the extinguished torch bursting into flames on the ground beside her. She shielded her eyes until they readjusted, too exhausted—and relieved—to be unnerved by such minor deviltry. No, what got under her skin was the sight of the empty tent, the armor and gear of the four who had tried to murder her strewn in greasy tatters around the room. Nothing remained of the mortals save their befouled trappings, even the metal gear warped and ruined by whatever it was Choplicker had done.
More startling than the state of the tent was that of her devil. He looked more dead than alive, and from the night she’d first bound him she had never seen him so bad. What remained of his coat was white and thin, pale boils and weeping scabs showing on his exposed hide…
“Oh, Chop,” Zosia whispered, her voice thick with unexpected grief to see him in such a state, and relief to see him again at all. Whether they deserved to be or not, they were both still here. Gently stroking his heavy head, she said, “Where’ve you been, you old devil? And what’ve you gotten yourself into?”
He barked happily, and despite his decrepitude he almost sounded like his old self again. Then he began hawking like a cat coughing up a hairball, and a bulge moved up his throat. She would have been worried as well as disgusted, but recognized the ugly sight from the old days when he would swallow rare treasures he found on the battlefield, carrying them back to his mistress in his swollen belly and then regurgitating them at her feet. His method of delivery took a lot of the fun out of receiving the gifts, as did the creepiness in knowing he could somehow fit whole pieces of plate armor into his narrow form.
Now he produced a sizable hunk of metal, along with a frothy grey spray. Through the film it sparkled with red glass or gems, and then she recognized it, and gasped. It was bent near to breaking, perhaps smashed beneath a hammer, but to the woman who had once worn it there could be no mistaking the raiment. After their interrogation of Hoartrap the night before, she had told Choplicker to claim any prize he wished in all the Star, so long as it harmed no mortal, and he had brought her the Carnelian Crown of the Crimson Queen.
But why? And how had it become so damaged? Had something happened to Indsorith, and if so, was it Choplicker’s doing? By retrieving the buckled crown he must be trying to tell his mistress something important, but as was usual with her devil, he’d given her nothing but more questions.
“Damn,” she said, gingerly lifting the warm, slimy metal in her shaky fingers and looking in wonder at Choplicker. “Looks like we’ve both had one devil of a busy day.”
“The busiest,” Ji-hyeon replied as Keun-ju helped unwrap the bandages on her hand. It was so nice to just be alone with him, though watching Sullen quickly excuse himself along with the rest of her captains at the end of the meeting had filled her with longing. And guilt, plenty of guilt, too. “I’m not sure I can remember a stupider day, either, for that matter. Give me a big battle over politicking every time.”
“What would you have done with Zosia, if she hadn’t fled the camp?” Keun-ju asked, then hissed as he saw the fresh damage to her hand. The cauterized stumps where her pinky and finger used to be were cracked and oozing, and the entire back of her hand had bruised a deep purple.
“Assuming Singh was telling the truth and she’s really gone, you mean?” said Ji-hyeon, stroking Fellwing with her other hand as the little devil crawled over the stained bandages to get at the injuries, pulling herself along with her hooked wings in that cute way she did. The owlbat looked much better after a day’s rest in the tent, but her fur was still bleached a sickly yellow instead of its former black after her overexertion in protecting her mistress. “I hadn’t made up my mind what I was going to do, exactly… or still might, if I have her tracked down and brought back. But…” She yawned. “We can worry about that tomorrow. A snowy night on the run will do some good to cool her down.”
“Would you… execute her?” Keun-ju sounded upset by the prospect, and despite her fatigue Ji-hyeon perked up a little. He had barely said two words about his long journey with Zosia, and both of those had involved the deplorable conditions and her worse manners. But after spending months together traversing the Star by foot, ship, and horse, it was hardly surprising that Keun-ju and Zosia had bonded a little.
“Don’t you think I should, after she tried to push me through a Gate?” Ji-hyeon was far too tuckered to be mad about anything, even his concern for the crazy beldam who had smashed in his lover’s beautiful face. Well, okay, if not beautiful Ji-hyeon had at least been kind of cute, and now she was as mashed up as a good beef bowl.
“I… I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve it, after betraying you so, but…” Keun-ju trailed off, and following his eyes, she saw Fellwing had crawled over to the seared meat at the end of her hand. The devil stretched her beak out toward the finger stumps, and Ji-hyeon tried to stop her arm from shaking as the devil’s blue tongue brushed the wound. It didn’t hurt as much as she’d expected; on the contrary, each stroke of the tiny tongue soothed the inflammation.
Averting his gaze from the spectacle, Keun-ju leaned over the table and poured them both a dram of peatfire. He used to hate the stuff the time or two they’d gotten into Kang-ho’s liquor cabinet back on Hwabun, but must have acquired a taste while Star-trotting with Zosia—she wondered if the silver-maned dame had converted him to any other indulgences.
“But what, Keun-ju? What should I do? I’m not being facetious, I really want to know what you think.” She shuddered as Fellwing nestled in close against her hand, the devil’s hooked beak gingerly prying at the charred scab of her bottom knuckle. “Do I just pretend it never happened?”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” said Keun-ju, and even with his
veil riding higher than usual she made out the blush spreading to the tops of his cheekbones. “And if she truly regrets her mistake—sorry!”
In passing her the peatfire his trembling fingers lost their hold of the porcelain bowl, and he upended the smoke-scented liquor all over her chest. This was her last clean housecoat, too, but she couldn’t be bothered to care, yawning again as Keun-ju frantically apologized and dabbed at her damp bosom with a napkin. It was the queerest thing, that fucked-up as she was physically, on account of her wounds, and mentally, on account of the bugs she’d taken for the pain, she felt a familiar itch come upon her as he delicately leaned over her, his rapid breaths making his veil pulse as he pressed the cloth into her chest.
She lowered her head to his ear, and whispered, “If you want to touch them, Keun-ju, you don’t have to create such an elaborate ruse.”
His palm froze, along with the rest of him, and she kissed him softly on the earlobe, her free hand rising to untie the shoulder flap of her coat and her left pulsing with a pleasant hum as Fellwing chipped away at her wounds. Before she’d felt far too roughed up to even think about cuddling, let alone something more vigorous, but now all she wanted was to have him again—the night before the big battle they had had the best sex, and she wanted more.
She nibbled on his ear as the tie on her coat came loose, and she thanked all the devils of chance that her lover had returned to her after so long apart… and considerate soul that he was, he’d even brought her their favorite toy, an elegantly curved shaft of lacquered princess wood inlaid with mother of pearl peonies and chrysanthemums. She had forgotten to take it with her, in her haste to escape Hwabun, and there was something disgustingly romantic about her dear little poet risking life and limb as he crossed the Star to find her, and all the while carrying along her long-missed dildo. The surrogates she’d acquired on campaign had been nice enough, the pleasure artisans of the Raniputri Dominions creating marvelous devices of bronze and rosewood, but you never quite get over your first. When they had finally been reunited in her bed and Keun-ju had shyly produced their old playmate and its shark leather harness she had almost gotten off at the mere sight of it. Now, as her fingers rose from her coat to wrestle with the obstinate ties of his and she moved her lips from his ear down to the fine, dark hairs on his neck, Ji-hyeon knew they were in for an even better night, the best of their whole fucking lives, and—
A Blade of Black Steel Page 19