“It has been a very, very long time since we have been surprised.” The witch’s voice was as altered as her eyes, but while those had turned black as the heart of a thunderhead her mellifluous accent was as light as cottony summer clouds. The smile of her puckered lips still looked nasty as a dead man’s butthole, though, and Purna didn’t much like what was coming out of them, either, even if it was in Modern Ugrakari instead of High Immaculate. “You cannot conceive of how happy you have made us.”
“Well, uh, that’s one you owe us?” Bad as the buggy witch had looked before, these changes intimidated Purna in ways she couldn’t understand; having this thing’s attention on her felt like being slowly lowered into a pit full of snakes.
“We owe you something, yes,” agreed the crone, but the way Prince whined and nuzzled Purna’s leg didn’t fill her with confidence. “Before you may be paid, however, you will help us. We summon you before the Vex Assembly, to tell us everything you know of the one who sent you assassins into our temple.”
“Assassins?” Purna tried to fake a laugh but it just wasn’t happening. “Look, you … you things came after us! You invaded our world! You’re trying to kill everybody, and you call us assassins?”
“Your world?” The ancient thing that definitely wasn’t just some super-old lady laughed. It was a jolly, tinkling, and very genuine sort of laugh. “This was never your world, little monkey, you were but its stewards. Poor stewards at that, but for all of your other faults you have performed a single task with admirable gusto—you have been fruitful. And now the time has come to lay down even that burden … but first you will tell us of your scheming master and all the petty snares you have set in our path.”
“I have no master,” said Purna, the strength of a good one-liner at last giving her the courage to jut her chin out and point her pistol in challenge. This monster might tear her apart by inches—centimeters, even—but she wasn’t spilling a single damn bean about nothing. She had done a lot of crummy things in her day, but that day was over … or something. Anyway, Purna wasn’t a damn blabbermouth—maybe the one decent lesson Maroto had taught her was that snitches deserved stitches.
“Oh, Purna—for a comrade of Maroto we expected you to be more forthcoming,” it said, which intrigued Purna even as it put the piss in her porridge—had it looked into her head to know about her relationship with the barbarian, or had he actually been here and encountered these creatures? “He was, and he answered every question we asked. He answered many questions we did not think to. He told us of all his old confederates, Purna, including yourself, told us every secret he knew. He pledged himself to our service in exchange for a reprieve from sacrifice, albeit temporary. Follow his example and perhaps—”
“You lie!” It wasn’t that Purna couldn’t believe it, she just really, really didn’t want to.
“We are incapable of such mortal follies, yet we can always smell them, when your kind attempts to deceive us.”
“You don’t even have to ask,” said Purna, mostly thinking out loud. “You can just … see what’s in our heads, so why ask at all?”
“Because your kind is far more skilled at lying to yourselves than you are at lying to others, and the waters grow muddy,” said the crone, or whatever was using her as a conduit. “Besides, we only deign to take that which is freely given.”
“Then I refuse!”
“You will answer our questions or your friends will be peeled apart in front of your eyes,” said the ancient. While the voice was even sweeter than before, Purna must have struck a nerve with her defiance, because every single one of the earwigs fell from the woman’s withered body and lay dying on the sweaty, pimpled ground. Purna gulped, not daring to look and see if Best was still holding her own against the other two, or if Keun-ju had pulled himself back out of the shallows. This was so fucked. She told herself she wasn’t really caving, that she had to stall for now to save her pals but when the time came she’d somehow find another way out without telling this monster a damn thing …
“So long … so long as my friends are unharmed we can talk,” Purna finally managed.
“Mortal lives are naught but harm,” it said, smiling wider and stepping closer, its bare feet crunching its dying raiment, its enormous black eyes filling Purna’s world. “If it is death that concerns you, little monkey, put it from your mind. None of you assassins are escaping that easily. Not until you tell us of your master. Maroto told us much but you will tell us more. We shall hear from your lips the details of every plot and scheme, every detail you can summon down to the last rumor or legend. You will tell us of the Betrayer of Jex Toth, our renegade brother whom you mortals call Hoartrap the Touch, and only then will we speak of such mercies as death.”
CHAPTER
23
Choplicker’s barking must have provided a decent distraction, because Zosia was halfway around the Gate before anyone noticed the old woman in an orange tabard ambling toward the queen. When they did, though, the whole militia massed behind the grand table where the People’s Pack presided over the square stormed forward, guards bellowing and delegates scrambling up in alarm. If she’d actually been after them she never would have gotten close, so it was a fine thing she wasn’t. Ignoring the panicked parliament, she raced along the curve of the Gate, the only person standing between her and Indsorith the executioner with the hammer. Her hammer.
Zosia didn’t break a sweat, even as the dog-masked man swung the sawn-off maul down to bash her head in. He might’ve been an ace at breaking the ankles of bound captives, but his swipe at a moving target was sloppy as hell. Under different circumstances Zosia would have felt bad cutting down someone she outmatched so hard, but all things considered it was a good feeling, slamming to a stop well out of reach of his premature swing and letting him stagger forward into her blade. She left the sword in his lung, relieving him of the hammer as the first of the charging militia crew reached her.
Sidestepping a spear, she crushed the woman’s chest, then careened in between two others before they could arrest her charge. As long as she stayed on the lip of the Gate they couldn’t surround her, and Indsorith was just ahead, a dozen paces away. A militiaman came between them but she bowled him over into the Gate, and then a second tried to do the same to her. The only thing for it was to grab his arm first, using her momentum to pull herself away from the Gate even as she sent him flying into it. She almost tripped over her own feet but found her balance, collapsing another guard’s kneecap before she’d even reoriented herself.
The stake where Indsorith was bound was only a few steps away now, but either the guards had moved faster than she expected or she had run slower, because they had managed to surround her after all, cutting her off from helping her friend. A hole opened in the lowered polearms and women with crossbows opened up on Zosia. They were too close to miss.
Choplicker must still be somewhere nearby, though, because all the shots went wide of their easy target, hitting more militia members instead. There was no time to catch her breath or plan an attack. It was that pure sport Zosia lived for, her body not only doing what it needed to do but outperforming all others. Then, blurry and frantic as the combat was, and skillfully as she’d been maneuvering through the mob to get to Indsorith, she saw it was too late. There were still too many heavies between them, and the bear-headed executioner with the sword had just nodded in the direction of the People’s Pack, bringing her ebon blade back for a swing.
Zosia bellowed at the masked killer, knowing even as she did that nothing could distract the woman from what looked to be a decapitating blow.
Except nothing is a foolish thing to say, for good intent or ill, because there is always something, as demonstrated by what did capture the executioner’s attention, making her forget her victim, at least for the moment: Hoartrap the Touch.
He floated up out of the Gate and stepped onto the flagstones of the square just in front of Indsorith and her executioner, who, quite reasonably, redirected her stri
ke at the new arrival. It is best practice to kill first and ask questions never with scary-looking creeps who materialize right on top of you. And while Hoartrap’s timing couldn’t have been better, distraction-wise, his delivery needed some work—he seemed totally caught off guard by the battle raging right in front of him, so much so that the ursine executioner hacked deep into his shoulder before he noticed her. But when he did it did not go so well for the woman. No, it did not.
At least that was what the noises implied, both the executioner’s and the aggrieved party’s. Despite Choplicker’s protection Zosia caught a big bash and a small gash across her shoulder as a polearm struck her, the ringmail shirt she’d borrowed from a castle guard popping a few links, and then she was back to worrying entirely about her own skin. Her shield came apart under a battle-ax, her forearm painfully shivering from the impact, and she side-armed her hammer into the thug’s head. The woman had been pedaling backward, and instead of braining her the maul grazed her cheek … which took her entire face off, a grotesque wound that confirmed for Zosia that this sainted steel hammer was in better hands now than it had been in the church. She’d see it got put to its proper use, and often.
Something sharp raked through her boot and across her shin and Zosia stumbled, out of breath and getting clumsy. Her devil must have been wearing down, too, because the next volley of bolts all connected. Only the one seemed to pierce her mail, and shallowly at that, but it stuck her fucking tit. That was just not on. Squinting through the pain, she dodged a spear and then parried a sword by breaking the hand of the man who swung it, and followed up by kicking his legs out from under him.
A gap in the mob opened around her, nobody wanting to get too close … which showed what amateurs they were. It would mean certain death for the first few who led the charge to dogpile her, yes, but they would have taken her by now, even with Choplicker’s aid. As it stood she’d dropped at least twenty of them and wasn’t down yet.
Even still, too many surrounded her, and Zosia was too fucking tired. It had looked like such a short distance before, but she’d become lost in the press of orange tabards, and with her eyes stinging from her sweat and their blood she couldn’t make out where Indsorith was anymore. Then a wall of them came screaming at her, which was what they should have tried from the first.
Instead of bracing for the wave that could only drown her Zosia staggered forward to meet them, hammer high … and blundered through them as she realized they posed her no threat. The lot of them were dropping their weapons and vainly trying to remove their bubbling armor, helms melting down faces as burning hair and scorching blood created an almost mechanical stench. On the other side of these poor bastards stood Hoartrap, looking good and fucking steamed himself. The right sleeve of his robe was torn and soaked as black as the Gate behind him, but of the executioner who had cut him there was no sign save for the dripping sword he held in his left hand. And just beside him, still chained to the stake, was Indsorith.
“Cut her free!” Zosia shouted, her ears ringing as she tripped over a body and staggered into the back of the stake. Now that they had merged the bubbles of space the wary militia had given them and Hoartrap was here to back her up, Zosia dropped the hammer at her feet, arm tingling. Resting her head against the wooden post, she closed her eyes as she panted, not wanting to open them again for fear of what they’d see. Indsorith had been poisoned from the first, or else caught a bolt or blade during the melee, or—
“Mmmm,” came from the front of the stake. “Mmm!”
Zosia opened her eyes. Saw Hoartrap shove a squirming rat into his mouth, then wave his bloodied hand and send corpses spinning off the ground and into the archers who had come to the front of the militia. The sorcerer clenched his hand into a fist, to the sound of wet explosions and an ensuing rain of gore.
Typical Touch.
Choplicker wagged his way over from the other side of the Gate, his entire pelt slick with blood, and two other red-spattered figures stumbled after him into the small clearing the guards afforded them: so it had been Sullen she’d seen, and one of Maroto’s fop friends.
More important than any of that, though, and just as incredible, was what she saw as she reached up with numb, shaking fingers to remove Indsorith’s gag and blindfold, tearing off the conical hat. The Crimson Queen was alive. Indsorith’s eyes were streaming but whether the tears were from pain or relief or just having been blinded for so long, Zosia didn’t know. She did know that as Indsorith smiled at her rescuer with her full lips, she had the sudden urge to kiss the fallen queen, and might have, too, if Hoartrap hadn’t spoiled the mood.
“You are such a treasure,” said the Touch, his mouth dripping rat blood. “I come here to tell you to raze the place and you’re already on it. You’re a real go-getter, Zosia, always liked that about you.”
“Are you all right?” Zosia asked Indsorith.
“My arms,” said Indsorith, wincing as she shifted, and Zosia cursed herself for a Maroto of the first water—kissing girls who couldn’t get away was the low-hanging fruit, but really now, the truth of it was not even he would be such a selfish shit as to try to suck face with a traumatized woman who was probably in a great deal of pain. But as Zosia apologized and straightened up to unclip Indsorith’s shackles, she came in close enough that Indsorith could have given her a peck on the lips … which she did.
Which was … What, now? Maybe that was just how friends greeted each other in Junius, some provinces had real affectionate customs like that, but just maybe—
Indsorith almost slipped all the way to the ground as her legs buckled, but Zosia caught her. Reminding herself to stay in the moment, here, she lowered the weak queen down to the base of the stake, Indsorith wincing as she dropped her arms. The younger woman looked up at Zosia, and she felt something she hadn’t in a very, very long time: she was blushing red as a Crimson Queen’s cape.
“Hoartrap?” panted Sullen. “Where’s Keun-ju? And Ji-hyeon?”
“And Purna?” asked the fop.
“Hold!” Hoartrap intoned in a sonorous voice, and punctuated this by making a mangled corpse go spiraling high into the air and then tumble down into the Gate behind them. “Next fucking archer I see follows him! Now! Let’s talk truce! Send out a representative to parley! Or I kill you all! With magic!” Turning to Zosia, he said, “That ought to buy us enough time to kill them all with magic.”
“Good to see you, too, Hoartrap,” said Zosia, tearing off her torn-up orange tabard and slinging it around Indsorith’s naked shoulders. “Let’s go, sooner we’re out of here the sooner I’m buying you a drink. Hell, I’m buying you the bar.”
“Hoartrap, for real …” said Sullen, leaning on his spear and giving Zosia the same nervous nod he always offered her, like she was some bully he was afraid of provoking with either an actual greeting or by outright ignoring her. He was trying real hard not to notice Choplicker sniffing around his spear, too—he better watch out or the devil might pee on it. “Where are our friends?”
“In mortal fucking danger,” snapped Hoartrap. “If they’re not dead already. Happy you asked?”
“What?” Neither Sullen nor the fop looked happy about that, and the bedraggled barbarian sounded all set to press the issue when Zosia looked up from helping Indsorith out of her ankle shackles.
“That’s something we’ve all got in common, then, because we need to get the fuck out of here. Catch us up on the song somewhere safe, but for now tell me where we’re going, and let’s go.” Seeing her devil exchanging a hard stare with Hoartrap, she said, “Chop, leave him alone—we’re all friends again. And it’s time for us to split.”
“Nowhere is safe,” said Hoartrap, sounding all bugged out as he spun around, his charm-and-trinket-studded yellow robes kicking up as he stepped over another body to get to Zosia. He knelt down as close as he could without brushing the bolt still sticking out of her aching chest, and in a low voice, so the others couldn’t hear, he said, “The Star is done, Zosia. Do
ne. We lost. Jex Toth won. And now we’re all going to fucking die. Everyone in every corner of the world.”
Hoartrap was a master of the half-truth and the not-quite-a-lie, as flighty with his words as he was with his friendship. So it wasn’t just what he said that put the spook on Zosia but how he said it, reporting with the same monotone directness he’d employed that night in his tent back in the Cobalt camp, when she had interrogated him at devil-point. Whether or not he was right, he was definitely telling her what he believed to be true. As her stomach sank Indsorith found Zosia’s hand, squeezing it hard, and that just made her feel all the queasier. She had finally been willing to let go of everything, to forgo vengeance and move on … but now there was nowhere to move on to.
“Unless …” said Hoartrap, and she was all set to hit him for selling it to her as completely hopeless, but looking up she saw no mischievous gleam in his eye, no ironic smile at whatever suicidal scheme they had to embark on. Instead Hoartrap the Touch looked … scared? “It’s the only way, Zosia. I knew from the first it was an option, but I prayed it wasn’t the only one, and you know I’m not one for church. Alas, it is our only hope, and we are almost out of time. But it will work, if you have the courage.”
Choplicker came over, smacking his lips at Hoartrap, but the warlock was too intent to be unnerved by her devil.
“Shit, Hoartrap, you know courage is all I’ve got in my head—lost my brains long ago,” said Zosia, realizing as she said it that she was trying to sound hard to impress Indsorith. Never too late in life for such foolishness, and always at the worst times. Looking down at the younger woman, who looked back up at her, she said, “Even if it costs my life, I’m willing to try anything to save this worthless fucking world full of worthless fucking people who’d kill me and everyone I care about for a handful of cold silver. Who knows, maybe third time’s the charm.”
A War in Crimson Embers Page 46