Purna was clearly elated, but praise whoever listens that she held her tongue and bowed to the old windbag. It was queer as a devil’s smile, seeing the kin he’d given up for dead so long ago, but queerest of all was that rather than feeling relief or joy he was just pissed off that Da was already being such a fucker, and his nephew was clearly harboring some hard thoughts toward him. All he could do was be righteous and hope for the best.
“Da, Sullen, I figure you already know the Crowned Eagle, since she led us here,” he said. “And the rest of my crew’s getting stitched up, but yeah, this here is Choi. She’s wildborn, same as you, Sullen.”
Sullen tensed up, maybe on account of his being able to pass better than the prong-horned Immaculate and riled that Maroto would out him so casually. The boy had grown into his huge, bestial eyes, so unless you were looking you might not even notice he wasn’t strictly human. Choi came forward and offered a sharp, curt bow.
“Choi Bo-yung, Martial Guard to General Ji-hyeon,” she said, her sharp little teeth clicking in that way Maroto was getting seriously into.
“Ain’t wild,” said Sullen defensively, though he had the sense to curtsy back. “No offense, yeah, but I’m shaman blood, not wild-what-have-you. Ji-hyeon, she speaks proud of you, ma’am. Honored to bow to you.”
“You’ve spoken with the general?” said Maroto, wondering just what these two savages had told Ji-hyeon… and just what they were doing here in the first place, far as obvious questions went.
“Oh, they’re right cozy,” said Da. “Though the hours he’s out, don’t reckon there’s a lot of talk involved, am I right, laddie? If that general was as serious about leading this army as she is about wooing him, then—”
And just like that, easy as skipping a stone, Choi’s sword appeared in her hand. Sullen’s jaw fell loose, the boy paralyzed with mortification. Chevaleresse Sasamaso stepped right up, too, the head of her glaive swishing down to point at Da’s sneering face. The Crowned Eagle knight said, “I told you the last time, old wolf, what would happen if you disrespected our future queen.”
“Last time?” said Choi, and that tore it, right there—you didn’t say Ji-hyeon’s chamberpot smelled of anything but fresh-baked cakes around Choi, not if you valued your vitals. Before Da could open his evil mouth again, though, another voice spoke, one that filled Maroto with relief. He was dreaming, was all, and since none of this was real there was nothing to be concerned with. Should’ve known, soon as the ghosts of his father and nephew appeared. Might as well enjoy it before he woke up, and he turned to her as she casually insulted him.
“A Maroto family reunion? I’d heard there were destinies worse than death, and now I know there’s truth in the old sayings.”
Usually when he dreamt Zosia, she was as he’d last seen her, young and hale, if haggard around the eyes by the long campaign to take Diadem, and then the harder campaign to rule the Empire after she’d won the Crimson Throne. In dreams her hair shone like its namesake, as dark a blue as the waters of the Bitter Sea crashing into the Noreast fjords, and she usually appeared in a similar garment to the chainmail kit her successor actually wore… if not significantly less. Choplicker rarely made an appearance in his dreams, thankfully.
Now, though, he dreamt Zosia as she’d probably be if none of the badness had ever happened—older and sharper, her hair molten silver instead of cobalt, those delicate lines around her eyes now spread down to the corners of her mouth. A simple hauberk, much like those she’d favored in the early days, hung from her broad shoulders, baggy woolen trousers in the Raniputri style bunched over her thick legs. And looking not a day older than the last time they’d met, Choplicker stood at her knee, offering a good-natured bark and then rushing him.
“Zosia.” He breathed her name as a prayer to stay asleep a little longer, and dimly realized that Purna, Choi, and Sasamaso were all taking a knee at the invocation of her name, only Sullen too stupid to bow before her. It felt so good, he said it again. “Zosia.”
She shrugged, her barely contained grin now sloshing out at either side of her mouth. Reflexively, his hands went down to push the snuffling devil away from his crotch, as though Choplicker were a real dog, and that was when it sunk in—the devil’s nose was cold as the grave against his palm, the slobber that greased his fingers warm as a beating heart. He felt it, he felt everything. No dream, not even one bought from a centipede dealer, could be this real.
“You going to play with that fiend all day or are you going to give me a hug?” Zosia asked, that perfect smile that had become so rare in the last few years of her life now splitting her mouth wide. She stomped over to him in her heavy boots, instead of gliding above the hard-packed earth. Not a dream. Not a ghost. Zosia. She raised her arms, palms up in a What are ya gonna do? expression, and Maroto took a breath, something he hadn’t done since hearing her voice for the first time in twenty years. “You look like shit, old man, if I didn’t—”
Maroto seized her in his arms, dipped her low, and kissed her full upon the mouth, the way he’d always meant to. She tasted of whatever curried lunch she’d had, of stale kaldi and stale tubāq. She tasted alive, and he kissed her harder, hands squeezing her as firmly as he dared, savoring this delicious moment of surprise before her tongue unlocked itself and kissed him back, kissed him the way she’d always wanted to…
Instead, she bit his tongue, jerked her head away, and kneed him viciously in the crotch.
CHAPTER
14
Devildamn Maroto to the worst hell, and devildamn Zosia for thinking fondly of him, even once! She laid the lecherous bastard out on the ground, returning his saliva to him in a glob that spattered into a freshly scarred ear. He stared up at her, wide-eyed and stupid as ever at her response to his most unwelcome advances. She would have kicked his teeth in if a short girl with an awfully big flintlock pistol hadn’t scrambled to her feet and pointed her weapon at her.
“You ever touch me again and I’ll kill you, Maroto,” growled Zosia, ignoring the gun-toting tot. “By the six devils I bound, I mean it.”
Was he… was he crying? Maroto turned his eyes to the ground before she could be sure. On closer inspection he did look in a bad way, worse by far than any of the other Villains in general, and freshly torn up around the leg, arm, and face. Maybe she’d really hurt him…
Whatever, that was a long time coming.
“You didn’t need to lay him out!” said the girl with the gun. “He’s just happy to see you!”
“That excuse might work for Choplicker humping your leg, but I expect a sight more from anyone who walks on two legs,” said Zosia, and let out a big breath as Choplicker growled at her suggestion. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d stayed up all night planning out tactics; back in the Dominions they’d done their plotting by daylight, as chevaleresses deemed it dishonorable to do so at any other time. Glaring down at her old Villain, she saw he was still inspecting the dirt at her boots instead of apologizing. “Same old fucking Maroto, eh? Devils keep us.”
“Captain,” said one of the guards Ji-hyeon had assigned Zosia, “if I might show you to your tent now, I believe Maroto and Captain Choi need to report in with the general.”
“Sure,” said Zosia, sizing up Maroto’s people. That stern Noreast kid from Ji-hyeon’s tent was there, wearing a mean-faced old man like a backpack. There was another Flintlander, this one a chevaleresse in banded plate, and a po-faced broad with hair paler than Zosia’s, and small black horns to boot. This last was giving Zosia the devil eye, an easy enough trick when you’ve got red eyes by birth. None of them said shit, though. Returning the wildborn’s stare, she said, “You’re Choi, then? On behalf of my fellow Villains I apologize for any harassment you had to endure from this creep whilst patrolling.”
“Unnecessary,” the woman said, her pointed teeth looking as sharp as her tone.
Well, all you can do is try to be nice. Zosia turned her back on them, Choplicker falling in with her and the guards. A cool
cot in a dark tent was sounding even nicer than it had before.
“Captain Zosia?” she overheard the Ugrakari girl mutter as she helped Maroto up. “Devils keep us.”
Zosia knew better than to nap for more than a few hours. Between the position of the sun and the pounding in her skull when Choplicker roused her with a sticky lick to the cheek, she supposed he was actually honoring her requests for a change. Well, he might be in a good mood; the monster had eaten more over the last year than he had in the previous twenty, and with war imminent, he’d be feasting plenty more in the days to come. She’d barely finished getting up and packing a bowl before the guard outside called:
“A visitor for you, Captain.”
“Care to place a bet on which one?” Zosia asked Choplicker. “You’re not acting the piddly puppy, so it can’t be Hoartrap. Maroto will need to have a proper drunk on before he shows his face again, so that leaves Singh looking to see why I was in the general’s tent all night, or Fennec eager to learn the same. Hmmm. Coming!”
Yet, parting the flap, she saw it was none of the Villains, but that Ugrakari pal of Maroto’s. The guard handled the introduction, since the fiery-eyed sprat didn’t seem inclined. “Tapai Purna to see you, Captain.”
“Royalty, to see a lowly captain?” Zosia winked at the girl. “Let’s see a salute, Your Highness, and you can come on in.”
Tapai Purna stiffly raised a fist beside her freshly washed face, and Zosia held open the tent for her. As rich kids went she looked ground pretty sharp, a poorly tanned horned wolf hide wrapped around her shoulders, the rest of her kit a motley, well-worn assortment of ringmail and spider lace, bronze caps and leather straps that probably passed for fashionable in this brave new world. She looked less like a tapai playing soldier and more like a soldier playing tapai. Nice legs, too, emerging from the bottom of her pelt—Maroto had an eye for quality, give the old dog his due. “To what do I owe the pleasure, friend?”
“I hope it will be a pleasure,” said the girl, making straight for Zosia’s table and plunking down a flask she’d had up her sleeve. “I’ve brought Immaculate peatfire and Madros sticks, if you’d care to break cork and wrapper with me.”
“Quickest way to my good graces,” said Zosia. “I can guess why Maroto sent you, so—”
“Maroto doesn’t know I’m here,” said the tapai, offering Zosia a cigar and flicking the end off her own with the blade of an enormous kakuri. Zosia was almost impressed—this generation of adventurers seemed harder than hers had ever been. Then again, they had stellar examples to follow. “He’ll be even more ashamed than he already is, if he knows I came on his behalf. So unless you’re an even bigger, sloppier asshole than everybody already thinks, you’ll keep this between us.”
“You’re a real charmer, Tapai,” said Zosia, putting her full pipe down on the table and accepting the cigar.
“Purna,” said the girl. “Tapai’s my mother, or my brothers. I’m just Purna to you, Captain. I didn’t buy my way into this army, I earned it. Same as you.”
“Same as me?”
“Those Raniputri who just arrived are yours, right? We’ve been watching you off and on for weeks, coming through the mountains. Assumed you were a mercenary vanguard of the Imperials you were ahead of, but I guess they were just chasing you?”
“That’s the shape of it, but I wouldn’t call the Raniputri mine. If anything goes cockeyed, they’ll side with Singh over me.”
“I wondered if that old knight was her.” Purna opened the door in the hanging lantern and lit her cigar. As Zosia followed suit, Purna said, “So that means the only missing Villain is Kang-ho. Quite the reunion.”
“I’d say his daughter fills in just fine,” said Zosia, doing her best to downplay how fucking rapturous it felt to have a genuine Madros cigar back between her teeth. The strong, earthy black wrapper tasted like coming home. “She makes a better general than he ever would, that’s for damn sure. Don’t tell me you grew up on the songs of Cold Cobalt, too.”
“Can sing them in three different dialects,” said Purna, and there at the perimeter of the girl’s hard-ass act was a quick flash of excitement, eagerness. “It’s warm in here, mind if I shed my skin?”
“Sure,” said Zosia, taking the girl’s hood and slinging in onto her cot. Purna was boyish enough to give Zosia a nice little tingle, but nice little tingles quickly turned into queasy guilt as she thought of Leib. Tried to remember the sensation of his hands, really feel them… and found that like so much else about him, she was losing that, too. He’d never begrudge her a fling, of course, not now that he couldn’t help relieve her tension himself. He would want her to have some fun, forget her burdens for an hour or two, but knowing that only made her miss him more. Besides, the last person to give her a nice little tingle had stolen her pipe, the only thing of Leib’s she’d had left, and now she was stuck with Maroto’s discarded briar, and a cigar from Maroto’s little friend. “What do you want, Purna? I’m a busy woman.”
Purna laughed. It sounded almost real. “Anything I want, I take. You probably think I’m sniffing around for gossip. How’s the Cobalt Queen still alive? Why are all the Villains back together? Are we on the cusp of another golden age?”
“And you’re not a little curious?” Zosia opened the girl’s flask, and when a glance at Choplicker provoked no warning bark, she took a deep swig. Like he’d told her the last time she’d been poisoned. Ah, smoky cigars and smokier peatfire for breakfast. Just like old times, right enough.
“Woman, I couldn’t give a bad vindaloo shit,” said Purna. “It’s all very exciting, of course, but I didn’t come here to listen to you gloat about past glories, or promise me new ones. I came here to talk about Maroto.”
“Look, girl, I don’t know what he’s whispered in your ear—”
“He hasn’t whispered anything in my ear,” snapped Purna, taking a puff to calm herself and then blowing a perfect smoke ring right at Zosia. “We talk. As friends. Comrades. And I can’t say why you crawled out of whatever hole you’ve been hiding in, and I can’t guess why so many of the Villains have assembled, but I know exactly why Maroto’s here: because of you.”
“Is that what he told you?” Zosia passed the flask over and idled back over to her cot, sitting down with a grunt at the twinges in her knees and back. “It’s bullshit, Purna. Nobody in this camp knew I was alive until I rode in last night.”
“Exactly,” said Purna, taking a pull and swishing it around her mouth before continuing. “We were way the fuck out in no-one’s-land, past the Panteran Wastes, when he heard some bartalk that you were back from the dead and raising hell in the Empire. He fell for the same line most everyone has, thinking General Ji-hyeon was the dread Zosia returned. So Maroto led me and my friends on a tour of the whole fucking Star trying to find you, only to end up more miserable than ever when we finally caught up to the Cobalt Company a month or so back. Broke his heart all over again, and he only stuck around because he didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I wanted to see what the mercenary life was all about.”
“So?” Zosia looked up at the naïve girl. “Am I supposed to be touched?”
“So he’s probably the only one in this camp who’s actually happy to see you,” said Purna, which put a run in Zosia’s cigar, all right. “The others might be overjoyed to have a living legend roll into camp, because its good for morale and all that shit, but do you think anyone else cares about you? He’s loved you since before I was out of short trousers, and when he finally sees you again he gets carried away, and you punk him in front of everyone!”
“Damn right, and I’d do it again without thinking twice,” said Zosia, wondering how in all the Usban names for hell this runt had actually made her feel a stab of guilt for what was clearly a justified reaction. “Maybe he’s changed in every other way a person can, but from where I sit he’s an even bigger asshole than ever. I offered him a hug, as I’m sure you noticed.”
“Hugging’s nice,” said Purna, coming
over and sitting down beside Zosia on the cot. Close enough to make a hard-up widow wonder, then looking sidelong at Zosia in a way that took a lot of the wonder out of the equation. “You’ve never got carried away, wanted something so much you didn’t care who might be watching?”
Zosia glanced at Choplicker, who had the courtesy to totter off to a corner and sit down facing the wall of the tent. Damn, but Purna wasn’t wasting any time—that was a welcome change of pace. If they were still talking about Maroto then Zosia was a devil’s auntie. And if she was reading this wrong, better to get it cleared up now, lest she be strung along the way she had with Bang. Tossing her cigar on the dirt floor of her tent, she patted the girl on a convenient break in her armor between kneepad and mail skirt. Her flesh felt warm as the peatfire.
“Zosia,” Purna said, her bangs falling in front of her eyes as she slowly leaned forward, tossing her own cigar onto the floor. “I didn’t come here to…”
“We can have it any way you want, Purna,” said Zosia, feeling her heart start to gallop as she caught a whiff of the girl’s fresh sweat mixed with the smoky fragrances of Madros and the Isles. “I can talk for hours about what a bastard Maroto was, always with a smart word about my body, constantly trying to talk me into a pity-fuck, or you and me could pass the time some other way, maybe.”
“You…” Something she’d said had snagged Purna just off the edge, and the girl took a swig off the flask instead of Zosia. Wiping her mouth, she sat up a little straighter. Away from Zosia. What the devils had she said wrong? “I mean, obviously, you and Maroto… you had something, once. Right? Even if you don’t want to anymore?”
“So you would rather talk about him,” said Zosia, wondering, hoping, praying, and doubting that by clearing the air where that pervert was concerned they could get back to whatever had almost happened. “Sure, we had something once—we were friends. Then he decided he wanted to fuck me more than he cared about most anything else, as far as I could tell. Hells, maybe we were never even really friends.”
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