Legends and Liars

by Julia Knight

  You are weakness.

  Petri may have been, but this new man knew nothing of that. All he knew was pain and hatred and the sweet temptation of revenge on everyone who had wronged him. Petri was dead, but this new man wasn’t weak, and he wasn’t good and noble either because that had brought him nothing but pain. And he was going to make everyone pay for that pain.

  He clamped his teeth shut on the scream as the knife came again.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: Kevin Fitzpatrick

  JULIA KNIGHT is married with two children, and lives with the world’s daftest dog that is shamelessly ruled by the writer’s obligatory three cats. She lives in Sussex, UK, and when not writing she likes motorbikes, watching wrestling or rugby, killing pixels in MMOs and is incapable of being serious for more than five minutes in a row.

  Find out more about Julia Knight and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  SWORDS AND SCOUNDRELS,

  look out for

  WARLORDS AND WASTRELS

  The Duelists Trilogy: Book 3

  by Julia Knight

  The freezing rain driving into his face made Petri Egimont’s empty eye socket burn behind the sodden mask that hid it, but that was the least of his worries. Night came early as autumn span on into winter, and with it came a blazing cold that threatened every bit of him that was exposed. If he wasn’t careful, an eye and the use of a hand weren’t all he’d be without.

  The road drowned in freezing mud, ankle-deep and more, dragging at bones that were so weary they felt made of glass. His cloak, such as it was, was no real protection against the rain that found every crevice and wriggled its bitter way onto his skin. He barely even knew why he was on this particular road, except that it felt like he’d tried every other, and had yet to find a place where he was welcome. He’d traded every fine thing he’d had on him when he escaped the city, every trinket, every polished button, even his boots, until all he had left was a shirt, his breeches, the holed shoes he’d traded for the boots and a threadbare cloak that was no match for his old one. Traded them all for a bite to eat, a place to stay. For a disreputable surgeon who was so far gone on rum his hands wouldn’t stay still, the only surgeon he’d been able to afford, to cut out the infection that had settled into the wounds on Petri’s face, and a mask to cover what was left when he was done. Even with that mask, there was no hiding the ruin of it, or hiding from the reaction it got, which meant sleeping under a lot of hedgerows, in a lot of stables. Weeks spent reeking of mud and horse piss, and grinding his teeth.

  Reyes mountains in the coming winter were no place for a man with nothing, not even a pot to piss in. But the plains were full of people, villages, farms, fields and hedges that people owned and didn’t want him in. Not a man whose face scared the horses, whose right hand was now useless, who was still learning to use his left, who couldn’t do much of work to pay his way. A man who dare not say his name because he’d betrayed the prelate, sent him mad, helped plunge the whole country into war. Who was dead, so the newssheets said, and was in any case dead inside.

  The mountains were all that were left to him, no matter the stories of robbers and cutthroats and highwaymen, and even that thought brought a sharp pain to his chest.

  Two ponies trudged past, heads down against the weather, a man bundled up in furs on one, a woman on the other. Petri’s heart gave a lurch, but it wasn’t her. Not Kass. Couldn’t be. Besides, her horse was a deadlier beast than either of those two ponies and doubtless would have taken a chunk out of his leg on the way past. If it had been her, what would he have done? Slunk off into the shadows like the coward he used to be, or taken out his newly forged rage on her? The old Petri was dead, but he hadn’t discovered who the new one was yet, except he seemed to boil with anger, and that hadn’t helped him much down on the plains either.

  The ponies passing him and taking a tiny side-track that wound around a sharp fold in the land did show him one thing. If he squinted with his one eye through the rain, past a stand of trees, there was a light. Several lights in fact. What might be a village and maybe, if he was lucky, an inn. One or two innkeepers had taken pity on him down on the plains, mistaking him for a man wounded in the battle with Ikaras in the summer, whispering with their patrons at his scars, at the accent that marked him. Not pity for long, or for much, but they’d let him sleep in a clean bed, had given him the few jobs they had that he could do to repay them rather than take their charity. Other payments once or twice that he shuddered to recall, dark and sweating and furtive, giving the last, only thing he had to give, leaving him shamed and shameful, torn and tearful, but alive to know it.

  But an inn was a good bet–and was out of this freezing rain, where he’d die if he stayed much longer. He’d find something to trade, find some job he could do in return for something to eat, a dry place to sleep. Even the stables would be better than this. Maybe up here in the mountains, things would be different.

  He turned his numb feet in the holed shoes towards the lights and lurched through the mud after the ponies, hoping only for a warm place.

  Light and warmth and the glorious, half-forgotten smell of cooking food, of the meaty smell of stew, the yeast of new bread, stopped Petri dead as he stumbled in the inn door. He stood there, dripping freezing rain from his sodden cloak, and savoured it for half a heartbeat.

  All he was allowed. The room didn’t go silent, but it did fall to sudden whispers punctuated by the loud laugh of a drunkard in the corner who hadn’t seen him yet. He gritted his teeth against the stares, shook out his cloak one-handed–that action grew a whole new set of whispers as they saw what was left of the other hand–shook the rain from his hair that was now just growing back, long enough for it to be curled over his shoulder in the way that would mark him as a man of means. Long enough, but he left it wild because he was a man of means no more. The soaked mask had slipped and he hurried to get it back into place, but the fabric was ruined and with a pang he ripped it off.

  In his head, he strode serenely towards the bar, ignoring the muttered comments of “poor bastard” and “God’s cogs, that’s ugly” and “I feel sick” and “should be ashamed to be out in public”. But numb feet betrayed him, made him stagger his way, and the need to tell them all to go fuck themselves burned behind clenched teeth.

  He curled what was left of a lip at the nearest, a heavyset man dressed in a thick smock and loose breeches above mud-caked boots, who flinched back and fell into his chair. Petri didn’t blame him–he’d looked in a mirror once down on the plains, and had no wish to look again. His old face was dead, like the old him.

  The lump of a man behind the makeshift bar gave him an appraising look from under a heavy brow, but shrugged. “As long as you’ve got coin I don’t give a crap about your face,” the shrug said, which was an improvement on the whispers behind Petri.

  “Battle of the Red Brook,” someone said in voice loud enough to carry and was soon shushed. Red Brook, or as it had been before so many were slaughtered in it, the Smith Brook that fed the Soot Town waterwheels. That battle had been hard fought not two months ago during the war for Reyes as a regiment of clockwork gods had fought off the Ikarans at the front gate of the city. Yet there had still been other battles to fight, and people to fight them. Ikarans had assaulted the brook hoping to breach the walls by Soot Town and Reyen guards and duellists had defended, even as red-hot blood had fallen from the sky, burning skin and hair and eyes of Reyens and Ikarans alike. Many had died on both sides so that even the ground was stained red now, so they said, and most of those that survived had scars like Petri’s.

  He’d been nowhere near Red Brook, though at times he thought it had to have been better than where he had been. Most of the survivors had been Ikaran; almost all the Reyens who’d lived had been deserters, and that was where he came unstuck. But up here, so close to the b
order, where families were Ikaran or Reyen almost by accident, maybe he’d get away with the pretence if he kept his mouth shut, kept his accent behind clenched teeth. He’d always thought more than he spoke, but that had changed, along with a lot else. Down on the plains talk was looser, and angrier, and no matter how he told himself to keep quiet, someone would say some bullshit about Eneko, or Bakar, or Kass even, and his once even temper would explode, for all the good that did him. But up here on the edges of the mountains that had so lately been a bone of contention between Reyes and Ikaras, where laws were something you kept to if you felt like it, things were kept closer to the chest. Maybe he’d get away with it.

  Until–“Petri? Petri Egimont, is that you?” from behind him.

  “Of course it’s him, Berrie, you idiot. Petri? Petri!”

  They approached on his good side, from a corner where they’d been drunkenly oblivious to his entrance. Now they moved towards him in a flurry of powder and faded silks, hair curled over their shoulders like they were still nobles and ruled Reyes. The whispers about Petri stopped, to be replaced by other words.

  “Fucking nobles, ex-nobles more like,” a man said. “More money than brains, and less use than a custard truss. Came up here because they was too scared to fight for Reyes, and now they’re stuck. I’d give ’em coin to bugger off, if I had any.”

  Berrie didn’t hear, or maybe pretended not to–he’d always had a talent for that. He swooped down on Petri like a pigeon after scraps, with Flashy close behind. Petri caught a whiff of fear about their movements. Too sharp, too jerky for these two, who’d raised indolence to an art form. Stuck, the man had said, and it was certain they didn’t fit here in this rough inn in the middle of nowhere, with no one of their own imaginary stature. Maybe they’d run out of people to borrow money from.

  “Petri, old boy, how the hell are—?”

  Petri turned to face him with what passed for a smile on his ruined mouth. Berrie blanched and staggered backwards with a very uncharacteristic word. Flashy waved a handkerchief in front of suddenly white lips and swallowed hard.

  Nothing for it now. No hope of escaping without talking, revealing what he was, that these scars were not the scars of a hero but more likely that of a Reyen deserter. He could protest he’d been nowhere near the brook, but he’d tried that down on the plain and no one had believed him. So he cranked the smile up a notch and felt the ropes of scar tissue that ended where bare bone began bend and twist.

  “About as well as could be expected,” he said. “Under the circumstances.”

  A hiss of indrawn breath from behind; a startled curse from further off. Petri had tried, but couldn’t get rid of the accent that gave away who he was, or rather what he had once been. Rich, noble, privileged. Hated by all the men and women who’d risen up against the king and his favoured few two decades ago. Time changed many things, but not hatred, Petri was beginning to understand. Battle of Red Brook or not–and with this accent it would be quite clear not–he was noble and up here in the mountains things were different. Very different.

  A glass smashed behind him, and another. Something metal clonged heavily against wood. Flashy keeled over backwards before anyone had even made a move towards him, while Berrie clutched his clinking but skinny money purse to him.

  “Them tosspots been up here a while,” the voice behind said slowly. “Throwing around their cash like confetti, acting like they was still lord of the manor, giving people all the more reason to hate ’em. Didn’t peg you for one of them though, not in that getup. So are you?”

  Petri shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “And the Battle of Red Brook?”

  Another shrug.

  “Here, isn’t Petri the name of that bloke in the newspapers? Didn’t he poison the prelate?”

  With that, a bottle flew end over end and smashed on the unconscious form of Flashy. Something shiny slashed at Petri’s good side but he managed to dodge, barely. It wasn’t going to stay that easy, not with only half his vision and half his hands working. He whipped around and got his back to a wall–at least he cut off one avenue of attack that way. Berrie screamed like a child as a rugged set of fists slammed into his face.

  “Petri,” he gasped when he could. “Petri, help me.”

  Petri grabbed up a bowl of hot soup and flung it in the face of the nearest man. Berrie would have to fight his own battles, because Petri had his hands full with his own.

  The evening descended, as it so often did when they saw what was left of his face, heard his voice, into fists and chaos. It was a miracle he wasn’t dead already, but while people down on the plains seemed eager for him to bugger off out of their nice village, they drew the line at killing him. He sometimes wished they’d get over their morals and do it.

  It looked like he might get that wish here, in mountains known for their scant regard for the finer points of law. This wasn’t just bar-room brawling, not just thrown pint pots and brass knuckles and the cracked ribs that seemed to follow him wherever he went across the plains. This was the mountains, and the people in this inn were as hard as the rock underneath them, and had knives and swords and even a clockwork gun or two.

  Down on the plains, Petri hadn’t fought back. What could he do against men and women burly from farming, and brave from numbers? Not much, except give way, live and loathe himself for doing it. He hadn’t fought anyone since he lost the use of his right hand, not drawn a sword he no longer had or thrown a punch with a left hand he was still unsure of using. Now the swords came out, the knives glinted under tables, guns clicked as they were wound and it was fight or die.

  He tried to punch the burly man advancing on him with a knife in each hand, but his left hand was too slow, the punch erratic and weak. Someone else’s hand grabbed his useless right wrist, squeezed hard enough to make him gasp, then twisted so that Petri ended on his knees with nothing to look forward to but the knives advancing on him. An image flashed in his mind of a hot knife coming for his eye, of a voice telling him he was weak, Petri Egimont, weaker than bad steel, softer than lead before the blade had taken his eye.

  That voice, that memory, had him lunging forward, trying to break free of the hold on him, trying to escape that knife coming for his face. All it got him was a cracking sound in his wrist and a boot in the back that sent him sprawling, leaving him open to the knife that glittered above him.

  Weakness. You are weakness, Petri Egimont.

  It was true, and he wanted–more than he wanted his eye back, or his face back, more than he wanted to hold a sword again in a good hand, or to see Kacha just one more time–he wanted that not to be true.

  He kicked out, got the man a good one on the knee that staggered him and then Petri was up off the floor, back to the wall, wrestling for one of the knives. A knee to the man’s gut and he had one, wobbling in a weak hand, but he had a knife and no compunctions whatsoever about using it. Let them all come, every last one, and he’d show them what was pent up in his head, let them taste it through the knife.

  He stabbed forwards with it just as a blow connected with his cheek, leaving him reeling, with a dying man falling off the end of the knife and another ready to kill him.

  A sudden silence rippled out from the doorway and the man set on killing him backed away. Petri, unable to see what had caused the cease of fighting, took the opportunity to shove the dead man off the long knife and grip it harder, keeping himself ready in a modified duelling stance. Sod Ruffelo’s gentleperson’s rules for duelling, now it was kill or die, and with his back to the wall it became suddenly clear in his head–he had no intention of dying, not here, not like this. If he had to, he’d kill every last one in the place before he died.

  Slow clicking boots across the flagstone floor from Petri’s blindside, a general shuffling backwards and lowering of weapons from the mob, Berrie quietly sobbing somewhere. He turned towards the steps so that his one eye could see and came face to face with the woman whose entrance had caused such a stir.

/>   She was tall, half a hand taller than Petri, with corded muscles showing at cuffs and collar. Her fingers were criss-crossed with old scars, perhaps from the long knife that sat easily at her hip, or the sword, no duellist’s blade but solid nonetheless, at the other side. She looked Petri up and down, cocked her head at the mess of his eye and cheek, and never even flinched. Maybe she’d never flinched in her whole life–he’d believe it of that face, with its thin sharp nose and jutting chin, a face like a hatchet ready to split wood, with its own puckered scar that ran from lip through to hairline.

  He let out a breath when her glance went to Berrie where he sobbed under a table, one hand to a nose that was leaking blood all over his fine clothes, the other hand clutching his now empty purse.

  “Well now,” the woman said in a cracked, husky voice like morning crows. “It looks like we’ve got a problem, doesn’t it? These two,” one hand lazily indicated the sobbing Berrie and the prostrate Flashy, who appeared to have lost his boots, “are the ones I’ve come for. I told you to leave them be until I got here and then we could all have a share. That’s the deal.”

  Everyone looked to the lump of a man behind the bar, who still had a large chunk of wood in one hand, which he hastily put away when the woman looked his way with a questioning eyebrow.

  Given the man looked like he could bend steel with his teeth, the contrite “Yes, m’m” he came out with was the last thing Petri expected. “Well, not the one with no face, m’m.”

  The woman looked Petri’s way again, and a cold shiver itched across his back at the appraising nature of her gaze, as though assessing the value of everything he wore, and him too. She turned back, dismissing him from her thoughts, and speared the barman with a look.