by Jim Butcher
Redmayne lay back against the dusty scree and closed his eyes. “Well, there’s a silver lining to everything, in’t there?”
Peacock chuckled.
“Glad someone’s finding humor in this,” Redmayne grumbled.
“So far, you’re the most amusing thing I’ve ever stolen. And you owe me a secret.”
“Yeah, I do. First I gotta ask, you work for Fiore voluntarily?”
“No. It was supposed to be one contract. It turned into . . . something else.”
Redmayne looked her over and tugged thoughtfully on one of his locs. “So, the thing is . . . I got this funny talent—”
“Artificer.”
“Not just that one,” he said, and held up two fingers.
“You’re bi-talented? Well, that’s not so rare that I’d call it ‘funny. . . .’” She trailed off as he shook his head.
“I’m a mimic,” he said. “It’s not something I want most people to know about. Jealous bunch, Talents. Don’t like other people borrowing their stuff.”
“How does it work? Clearly you don’t just touch somebody and get their powers.”
“Yeah, it’s not that simple. There’s got to be blood contact, see, and I only get a copy of the other person’s magic for a little while. But it’s still like having it full power, so I get the downsides just as hard. Magical Engineering doesn’t play well with some talents—’specially not death and destruction. It’s like coupling matter to antimatter.”
“That would suck. But you haven’t picked up mine, and we’ve certainly passed blood contact by now.”
“It don’t work here. No one changes in Hell—trust me, I tried. You can cast an illusion—”
“But they don’t work on ’spawn or lords.”
“So, you have talents.”
“Just the one—I can veil—but mostly I rely on my regular skills. Best in the business.”
Redmayne sat up and studied her. “A true veil, not just a light-bend?”
Peacock shrugged. “Sure. I can look like someone else or I can look like nothing at all, but it’d be a waste of energy here.”
“You act like it’s nothing,” he said, looking astonished. “Veil’s rare and can’t be duplicated in any sort of artifact.”
Just like an engineer—always thinking about the toys. She rolled her eyes, then glanced around and shifted her weight onto her feet again. “We’d better get moving. It’s a long way to the exit.”
“Something wrong?”
“Nothing specific, but you talk too much, and we’ve had too much grace.”
“Expecting the next shoe to drop, yeah?”
Peacock nodded. “Uh-huh.” She picked up a handful of incinerated stone and crumbled it. The dust stuck to her burned skin.
Redmayne winced at the sight as he crawled to his feet. “Whyn’t you wear gloves or something?”
“Can’t feel through gloves. Besides, all damage heals here. That’s how eternal torment works—you grow back together so they can take you apart over and over.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Peacock started forward without further comment.
After a few steps, Redmayne said, “With your talent, you could lose me anytime you like.”
She sighed. “Why would I come down here and pull you out of a pile of flesh-tearing hellhounds just to dump you?”
Redmayne offered a bitter smile. “It’s all about the torture, in’t it? And what’s worse than hope?”
That was almost amusing, and she let go of half a smile. “’Spawn can’t anchor a talent, so . . . what?” She drew the mental veil over herself, formless and reflective, and flickered out of view. He gaped, and she chuckled from within her illusion. “You think I’m a hell lord in disguise?”
A shadow moved over them with a thunderclap. Peacock let her talent fall away, and they both dove for cover as a lord descended. It was three or four meters tall, human in form, but winged and monstrous. The crown of Peacock’s head would have barely come to its sternum if they stood toe-to-toe. The lord’s incomplete black armor didn’t reflect the fiery sky, and its crimson drapery flowed in the air like blood in water.
“Fucking hell,” Redmayne cursed.
“Secondus,” Peacock said, and drew her baneforged knives. “Could be worse. Run diagonally from its line of attack and stay out of the way.”
She stood tall and faced the lord with both the eerie green blades held low. She wasn’t an assassin, but she’d picked up a few tricks.
“Fugitive souls,” the hell lord rumbled. It wheeled and folded its wings, rushing forward with the momentum of its fall.
Redmayne fled toward a nearby pile of rock.
Peacock ran toward the lord and ducked. She swept the blades outward as it passed over her. The knives jerked in her hands, and she dug in against the backward drag as blades cut moving flesh.
The hell lord roared and flipped a wingtip, pivoting to keep Peacock in sight as it landed. Ichor sprayed from its wounded backward knees, and it staggered left, its foot twisting a little. Got you! Peacock danced aside. The lord swiped at her, and she slashed. The creature jerked back a hair too late. A talon as long as her hand clattered to the iron ground and slid toward Redmayne. Not so fucking invincible against these, are you? The lord raised its sliced hand in surprise.
Peacock leapt at its weak side. She planted one foot hard on its injured knee and vaulted upward. She reversed the near blade and shoved it toward the lord’s armpit with a downward swing. The creature twisted and swept its elbow down, knocking Peacock aside.
She rolled across the searing ground as the hell lord screamed; then she flipped to her feet and faced it. Her blade stuck out below the mark, sunk only half its length into the lord’s side. Smoking ichor poured from the wound, but the monster was still on its feet.
Peacock’s cheek was blistered from the heat, and her remaining blade steamed with gore. She spotted Redmayne scuttling onto the burned earth to snatch up the severed claw. “Leave it, you idiot!” she yelled. Gonna be the hard way, I guess. “Back me!”
The lord turned toward Redmayne, and Peacock threw herself forward. The creature whirled around, snapping out a wing with taloned tips that raked across her chest and throat.
The blow spun Peacock into the air, and blood fanned from the slash across her neck. She hit the ground and sprawled onto her back in a twisted heap, carmine blood running across the black plain in wide swaths. The wounded hell lord bounded toward her. Redmayne started after it with the dismembered claw clutched in his hands.
Her memory was much more clear now: She had glanced over her shoulder as the roof edge loomed, and maybe it was the action or maybe it was the sight of familiar faces that had made her miscalculate the leap. . . .
But Peacock figured it was the bullet that had been shot into her back.
The lord bent unsteadily over Peacock, laughing in spite of its running wounds. It drew back its uninjured hand to strike.
Redmayne leapt onto its back and stabbed it with its own severed claw. The talon didn’t sink in deep, but it did pierce the lord’s armor, and a narrow stream of ichor squirted into the air. The lord shrieked and shook out its wings to dislodge Redmayne, sending a gust of hot air booming forth.
Peacock spasmed, her head lolling and wobbling as the wound in her throat began to close. She rolled to her knees and flipped her blade upward, then lunged, shoving it hilt-deep into the hell lord’s gut below the edge of its breastplate. She pushed with both hands until the pommel rang against the metal, then ripped sideways and down with the weight of her own falling body. The blade tore through the hell lord’s hide to the scarlet sash that wrapped the mailed kilt around its hips. The infernal creature collapsed as its guts spilled out onto the smoking field.
Peacock lay trapped under the dead hell lord, gasping and blinking. Damn, but it stin
ks.
Redmayne danced from one burning foot to the other as he shoved the creature aside. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said as Peacock wriggled free.
Her exposed skin was crisply blackened by the time she reached the nearest rocky ridge, and her leathers were badly singed. She flopped into the crumbling stone and coughed on pain and dust as her wounds closed and her skin resolved from ash to flesh. Redmayne hunched nearby with the hell lord’s claw in his hand. When she caught her breath, Peacock beckoned him to her.
Redmayne crept close and bent down, and Peacock punched him in the face. “You set me up.”
He landed on his back. “No!”
Peacock knelt over him. “Bullshit! You’re an artificer. You knew my drawing the veil would send out a ripple. A hell lord won’t attack another of its own kind without provocation. You really thought I was one of them! You figured that one would fly on by—”
“That’s a bloody-minded assumption you’re making, sunshine.”
“It was a lousy trick to pull on me, sunshine,” Peacock spat back. “I ought to leave you here to scream your guts out for the rest of eternity!”
Redmayne scowled. “Fiore wouldn’t like that.”
“Don’t you lecture me on what that scheming bastard would or wouldn’t— Oh . . . damn it all,” she added, winding down in disgust. “I need to get you out of here, or I’ll never get a shot at him.” She rested on her heels.
Redmayne struggled to sit up. “Who? Fiore? He’s betrayed you, hasn’t he? Bloody good at that, he is.”
She peered at him. “He screwed you over, too.”
Redmayne avoided her gaze. “Let’s say we didn’t part friends.”
She studied at him a minute or so longer and then sat down, crushing handfuls of fragile, baked stone and rubbing the dust into her oozing skin.
“Why d’you do that?” Redmayne asked as he watched her intently. He was less eviscerated, but still a bit flayed and gnawed.
“I don’t like to drip. And, crazy as it sounds, it seems to speed up healing. You could use a little yourself.”
“Should take some out of here with us, then,” he said, but he didn’t follow her example.
“It’s tricky getting native things out of Hell. You’re going to have to leave that.” She pointed at the claw.
“Hah! You barmy? This, my stealthy friend, is pure artifact gold and worth what it took to get it.” He waved the talon. “I’d rather stay here and dodge hellspawn than leave it behind.”
“Seriously?”
“I’d take my chances,” he replied, his expression grim.
“Why?”
He gave her an odd smile. “You ever seen one of these things in the breathing world?”
“No.”
“Useful, these are—at least if you’re someone like me. Almost indestructible out in the world, and, since it’s hellbound, it has a positive yen to return from whence it came, or send other things in its place.”
“Literally?” she asked. Redmayne nodded. Peacock glanced at the gutted hell lord and shuddered. “Good thing it’s dead.”
“Who says they stay dead?” Redmayne asked.
“I jammed a foot of baneforged steel into its guts. I’ve never seen anything get up from that.”
“How many lords have you killed?”
“That makes two—but I admit I didn’t stick around the last time.”
Redmayne’s smile was sly.
Peacock scowled at him and growled, “There goes my exit plan.”
“You really had one?”
“Of course. I never go in without having at least two exits. But neither of my escape routes accounted for bringing anything along besides you and me. Even my blades were gonna stay behind.”
“There’s other doors between the worlds, if we can find one down here.”
“It’ll have to be a wide one, which means the hellborn probably already know about it. I’ll have to check the map,” Peacock said, and dug into a pocket hidden under one of her scabbards. She drew out a wisp of gauze that gleamed with tiny points of colored light.
Redmayne gaped at her. “You have the Liminal Map?”
“I have part of the map. I stole it.”
“You’re a fly one.”
“I’m a thief.”
“Where’d you enter?”
“New Straitsville, Ohio. There’s a coal mine that’s been burning there for more than a hundred years. Closest superposition to where I found you. Easy in, but it’s a flesh lock on the way out. Now shut up and let me look—this thing’s hard to see.”
Redmayne put out his hand. “Let me.”
Peacock wasn’t sure she could trust him, but he couldn’t get far without her—and the hell lord’s clothes—so she handed over the bit of ethereal fabric.
“This looks familiar.” He glanced down at his still-ragged body. “That’ll do.” He laid the map against a strip of raw flesh on his chest. The map dissolved, and Redmayne sucked his breath through clenched teeth.
“What the—” Peacock started.
“Hang on,” he gasped. “It’s coming. . . .”
The map gleamed into sight as a tattoo of living silver sparked with tiny gems. It was as clear as printing, and when Redmayne moved, it adjusted its north by his position.
“Well, fuck me,” Peacock murmured.
“Likes a bit of flesh and blood, this thing.”
She grinned. “How’d you know?”
Redmayne cocked a sarcastic eyebrow. “Artificer. How’d you think?”
“You made this map?”
He scoffed. “Nah. Nobody made it. Compiled over centuries. Happens, though, that I did work on this bit right here,” he said, and poked one glittering portal marker. “Never used it, but should be a good door—unless a lot more has changed than I imagined.”
The broad portal was closer than Peacock had feared and less protected. The Netherworld was riddled with caves here, and she crouched with Redmayne in the mouth of one while studying the landscape.
“You sure this is right?” she asked.
“Course it’s right. The map can’t lie, and we’re”—he pushed aside the tunic they’d made from the dead lord’s blood-red draperies and pointed at the bright star that seemed to shine on his chest—“right here. Practically on top of it.”
Redmayne had bound his feet with more cloth and made a sort of pack from armor parts; he’d filled it with the lord’s claw and other things he deemed useful. While he’d never pass as a lord on visual inspection, he certainly smelled like Hell.
Peacock shook her head. “There’s no sign of a guard, aside from a couple of wandering ’spawn, or that the portal’s in use at all. I can’t even see it.”
“It’s there. Trust me.” He squinted in pain. “This little bugger burns.”
“It’s just . . . something’s funny. You’re certain?”
Redmayne heaved an exasperated sigh. “Look, mate, I want out of Hell as much as you do. I count m’self bloody lucky it’s you got sent to retrieve me, and I’m not gonna ditch you. I used to be on the side of the angels, and Fiore always thought whatever he did was justified if it kept the darkness back, but it’s not. Some things are evil, simple as that. It’s no accident I’m down here—I damned m’self. I did things and knew I’d end right here—”
Peacock raised a hand. “Hush! There, by that steam fissure in the hillside, there’s a gleam,” she whispered. “See where that ’spawn’s digging?”
“Yeah. That’s the liminal point. It’s a transverse.”
“A what?”
“Passes through Limbo and changes orientation. Nasty trip, but it’ll get us out in one piece, and the lower orders of hellborn can’t follow. Must be a bit of odd there.”
“Probably why that ’spawn’s so interested. Have to get rid of i
t before it attracts attention.” She checked position of all the ’spawn in view. “All right. You need to be close, so follow me until I turn, then wait.”
“Wait—” he started.
She ignored him and slipped out into the shadow.
She tucked tight and ran along the wall’s base. She avoided the hellspawn’s sight until she reached its blind spot. Then she turned sharply, keeping directly behind the creature, and dashed across the open space toward it and the crevice. She spotted a few more ’spawn wandering farther out on the plain where it flattened to hot iron. They might not see her, but they could hear and smell better than any dog. They’d come running if the hellspawn by the portal howled.
Peacock timed her leap and came down on the hellspawn’s back with one blade out, sweeping forward and under its elongated jaw. She sliced through its throat before it could make a sound and fell on top of it.
She breathed a long sigh of relief and glanced back. Redmayne was right where she’d told him to be. She waved him forward and turned her attention to the other ’spawn. They hadn’t turned toward the rock face. At least not yet.
Redmayne tiptoed a path to her side and crouched. She reached for the portal’s gleam, and he snatched her hand away. “No. We’re not done here.”
Peacock growled at him.
He released her hand. “Tried to tell you earlier. Soon’s we’re through that door, things change. You have to cut this bit of the map out of me chest first. It’ll want to stay there ever after otherwise, and I’d not like that.”
She was appalled. “You’re kidding.”
“Wish I were. Now, quick, before that lot takes note of us.”
“Have you got anything sharp and stabbity in that pack?” she asked.
“Whyn’t you use your knife?”
“Baneforged. Wounds don’t heal.”