by Julia Knight
Scar said nothing, but a chuckle behind Petri sent the hairs on the back of his neck tingling. Morro came into view on his blind side, and the scent of cooking blood curdled the air. The room went from not mattering to being so vividly clear that it seemed imprinted on his brain–the older woman who’d spoken, face redder than ever, cheeks glossy and wet. A younger woman, shrunk back in tangled horror. A tow-headed boy hiding under the table, looking at the leaking blood with wide eyes that seemed pinned to the trickle of it, following it as it moved across the floor to the older woman’s feet, where it puddled.
Scar turned aside, back to ordering her crew, telling them to gather what they had and go. Morro bent down and held a small glass vial to the blood that pooled at Petri’s feet. Blood that confused him–that had briefly sated what coiled inside him and yet had also fed it, made him stronger, colder.
“How very brave,” Morro murmured, “to kill an old man armed only with a knife. You must be proud. A true guildsman to be so brave.”
Petri opened his mouth, to tell him to shut up, to curse him out. But in his anger he lost his caution, let his eyes catch on Morro’s hands. On the marks there, writhing and dark.
“I defended myself,” he said through numb lips, frowning over his own words. “That was all.”
“Scar will be so appreciative, I’m sure. Her man being such a hero.”
Everything boiled to a point inside Petri at that, at this man, this magician, dripping venom all over him.
Morro raised a marked hand that stopped him. “Ah, ah. So easily led, aren’t you? First by Kacha of the guild, then by Sabates, now by Scar, telling you words you want to hear so that you’ll do what they want. Just a bleating sheep you are.”
Petri gritted his teeth but couldn’t see past the markings on the magician’s hands, now a sword, now a scar, now a slaughtered sheep.
“What does Scar want?” Morro whispered. “A crippled man who can take on an old one? She’s twenty crew who could do the same, who could and would do more than the coward I see in front of me. But she has me now to help her, and you’d do best not to cross me. Not while I have blood at my fingers. He was an old man and poorly armed, but he hated you and everything you stood for once. I understand why he’s dead. I wonder if you do.”
Petri turned on his heel and stalked outside, into fog that dripped copper on his tongue and draped him in watery magic. Morro was right behind him, his soft voice oddly intimate. Maitea watched, wreathed in shadows. Watching, listening. Learning how to be a magician.
“It felt good, though, didn’t it?” Morro said. “Even if it was just one old man, you enjoyed it, the brutality, the feeling of power for once in your miserable fucked-up life.”
Petri whipped round to face him, and found they were alone in the fog but for Maitea. Morro had his gloves off, and Petri strove not to look, not to look–if he looked he was lost–but there was nowhere else, nothing else to see but Morro and his hands.
“I can make it last longer than this scant winter, make it last a lifetime, that feeling. You can feel like that every day.”
Petri dragged his eye away from the hands, from the markings that writhed there, and bit his tongue in the effort to keep looking at Morro’s face. His voice came out strangled and strange, fell dead in the damp air. “What’s in it for you?”
Morro shrugged, dripped his voice like oil to soothe Petri’s troubled mind. “I’m like you, Petri. I’m hated everywhere, and I belong nowhere. Nowhere except here. I’m just doing the best I can for Scar. Like you.”
He reached out, and Petri couldn’t help but look, get caught up in pictures of swords, of scars, of pride and snow and victory.
“I could do so much for you too. If you’ll let me. I could make you king of this mountain.”
A stray breath of wind spun the fog into grey streamers that seemed to float inside his head as well as out. But… but no. He had been weak before, been seduced by black and red markings and the promises they seemed to bring. Every promise had brought with it lies and treachery, brought him misery and this face. He knocked the hand away, and a brief spark of something flared in him.
“Magicians die like anyone else,” he managed to growl out.
“So you say,” Morro said. “So you say, and I know that’s true. But I also know that you’ve never felt as full of purpose, as strong, as you did back in that room, with a sword in your good hand. How much would you give to keep on feeling that?”
Petri had no chance to answer because Morro turned on his heel and left, little drops of blood on the ground following him. Little drops of blood and seeds of doubt.
That raid had been the start of it–the start of the Scar and the Skull.
Now, some weeks later, Petri was starting to get used to the stares, the whispers, the panic when he appeared. Truth be told he was starting to enjoy it too, the frantic rumours about the Skull. That he was dead but still walking, some long-ago bandit so bad even death wouldn’t take him.
He rolled over and looked at Scar’s back in the growing light, ran a hand over one shoulder with a dark and convoluted mark upon it, like a tattoo, that he’d not noticed before. She stirred and rolled towards him, still asleep, and laid her head on his shoulder. It still surprised him that she didn’t care about any of it–the face, how that had happened, what he’d done to deserve it. There were times when he looked at her and couldn’t fathom what went on behind her eyes, and times when she appalled him with her casual and brutal violence, and yet… and yet he was only human and had been alone too long. Too long, and she loved him with a fierceness that kept him warm on long cold nights.
Scar stirred again and woke with a smile for him before she rose and strode, naked and gleaming, to the couple of planks balanced on rough logs that served as a washstand. She had a supreme confidence in herself that he envied. She never doubted herself, or what she did.
By the time the sun began to struggle its way down behind the mountains they were ready, and Scar led them towards the main road, a place they’d never dared go before. There were outposts here, patrols of Reyes men, a few from every councillor and the prelate, doing what they could in the inhospitable mountains to stem the tide of lawlessness.
Morro rode with Scar and Petri at the head of the crew, doing his work with blood saved from the last raid mixed with some of his own and some donated willingly from Kepa and others happy to sacrifice a bit of blood if it made their lives easier, and warmer. Morro did his work to thin the falling snow, to make a path for them, much as he would cover their tracks after them once they’d raided. He’d made raiding ten times easier, had been nothing but courteous, quiet, doing as Scar asked, but still, having him there made Petri itch. He rode silently, as was his habit, and watched Morro and Scar.
She’d sworn to him that Morro had never ungloved his hands in her presence, but Petri wasn’t sure that was enough. He caught little glances between them, a sly look from Morro back to him, an oily, smug smile before he turned forward again. Scar was oblivious, all fired up for her daring raid, not on a village but a proper town. Petri had his misgivings, but this was her crew and she had overruled him.
“What happened to survival?” he’d asked one night. “To feeding your own and keeping them safe, head down, subtle and alive?”
“This is survival,” she’d said from where she nestled on his shoulder. “We have to think bigger if we’re to feed everyone. We’re too many now. Morro’s right about that.”
“I wouldn’t look to him for advice.”
“Why not, if it seems like good advice? I’m as suspicious as you are, but he has a point. We’re too many now to feed just with the odd raid here and there. We need to think of bigger things, you and I. I always had ambition. Now I have the means to do something about it. We do. This is just a step up from what we’ve already been doing, and we need the food.”
“Is that all it is?”
“Of course it is, Petri. Now be quiet and kiss me.”
He saw th
e sense of that, but something niggled at the back of his mind nonetheless, more so when he saw how Morro looked at her when he thought no one was watching. Like a farmer weighing up a how much a cow was worth, what it could get him at market if he fattened it a little more. But Petri said nothing more, only watched and wondered because saying did no good.
The Scar and the Skull rode into Kastroa at nightfall like they owned it. It had a wall, but it was a poor thing and the gates weren’t guarded. Despite the snow and wind, the main square was busy–some sort of old-time festival to herald the turn of midwinter. Against the coming night a hundred lamps hung from windows and balconies, were carried at the end of long poles in the centre of the square next to a poor imitation of the Clockwork God draped in firs and berries, a huge bonfire and the smell of potatoes baking in it.
Scar used her pony to push through the meagre crowds and into the square. She pulled down the scarf that protected her from the wind, nodded at Petri to do the same as the crew came in behind, in dribs and drabs so as not to attract attention until they wanted it attracted.
He pulled down his scarf, flipped back the hood of his good new wolf cloak, and they had all the attention they needed. The fire lit the side of his face not covered by the mask, what was left of it. The man nearest grabbed his two young children and tried to cover their eyes; a different child whose parents were less quick screamed, and the whispers started. Always the whispers, all his life–that was one thing that hadn’t changed. Only what they said.
The “Did you see his face?” “God’s cogs, that’s ugly,” “Has he no shame?” that had followed him across the plains, driven him out of fat little villages and sleepy towns into the lawless reaches of the mountains had faded away. The new whisper–“The Skull, it’s the Skull!”–made his heart burn, and he couldn’t be sure if it was pride or shame. The Skull because he looked dead, and because, they said, he couldn’t die but had outwitted death himself. He grinned at them, and the grin stretched as people fell back before it. He had misgivings, but Morro was right about one thing: as the Skull he had power he’d never had before, and he liked it.
He nudged his pony further into the light from the fire. People scrambled away as he approached, dragged children out of the way or strained to see him and his face–from a safe distance. Scar’s pony jogged next to his, her own puckered scar flickering in the firelight, until they reached the centre of the square. Petri looked up at the god and slowly, deliberately thumbed his nose at it, to outraged gasps from around the square before they fell silent as Scar stood in her stirrups and addressed them, reins in one hand, sword nonchalant in the other. On her other side Morro sat, shrouded and shadowy, doing something Petri couldn’t quite see–and then all became clear as the snow stopped, seemed to hover above them like stars. The snow underfoot melted, and ran in little rivers across the muddy square.
“The Scar and the Skull are here,” Scar said. “You have a choice, as always. Hand over your money, your valuables and what food you can pack on our mules. No one will be harmed. Or refuse, and they will.”
Scar swung her sword, and Petri pulled his own, laying it across the neck of his pony with his one hand. Still clumsy with it, but a match for most any man here, he had no doubt. A certain amount of shuffling and whispered argument followed before a fat old man in a rich brocade coat trimmed with fur half walked, was half pushed forward.
“Sir, madam,” he began, and some of Scar’s crew behind them laughed at that, earning them a glare from the old man. “I’m mayor of this town. And you are nothing but brigands.” Scar’s sword rose, but he stayed her with an upstretched hand. “Your reputation precedes you for sure. But we won’t be giving you anything willingly.”
“Good,” came a shout from one of the crew, Kepa most likely. “I’ve been itching to use this good new sword. Your face would be a fine start.”
“I have to agree,” Scar said. The firelight sent orange flickers along her sword and picked out the twist of a scar that changed her face from handsome to indomitable. The mayor grinned, quick as a flash and gone, and stepped back smartly into the crowd.
Who were suddenly not just a crowd any more. Cloaks were swept back, swords out, swords no backwater woodsman or ragged trader could ever afford. Then a clockwork gun, another, and Petri knew.
Scar figured it out at the same time. “Prelate’s men!”
The night descended into chaos–gunshots and screams as bullets found homes, swords that glittered with blood. A tiny avalanche ripped from Morro on his pony towards the two men that threatened him, took their feet from under them and their breath as they landed hard on the cobbles. Maitea disappeared into a whirl of shadows. Kepa laid about him indiscriminately with his newly stolen sword, bellowing loud enough for a dozen men.
Three men charged Petri’s pony and sought to drag him off. His clumsy left hand might be good enough by now to beat farmers, but not trained men. A wild thrust that missed its target by a mile, a slash from one of them that he dodged only by digging his heels in and sending his pony surging forward, trailing prelate’s men behind it. Then one, two, had him, dragging him down off the pony and onto the cobbles of the square, smacking his head with enough force to blur his vision. One swung his sword down but was cut off when a blade thrust out of his stomach, washing Petri in the man’s blood so that his one eye was blind. When he swiped it clear, Scar was standing over him with two dead men at her feet and a third reeling from a blow that would leave him a scar to match her own.
Under a cart the fat old mayor cowered, hands over his ears to drown out the screams. He caught Petri’s eye, and his own went wide.
“Petri Egimont?”
Petri groped at his face and realised the mask that hid his recognisable side had been ripped off in the melee. He and the mayor stared at each other–he’d swear he didn’t know the man, but how many mayors had he seen when he was aide to the prelate? How many had come to beg for this or that from the prelate, and Petri standing at his right shoulder?
Scar dragged Petri to his feet and shoved his mask, ripped but still wearable, at him.
“He knows me,” Petri gasped. “Under the cart. I’ll be hanged for treason if they find me.”
They shared a look, and then she was shouting above the hubbub, “Fall back! Scar’s crew, fall back!’
They didn’t need telling twice. Scar grabbed at Kepa as he ran past, and between them they dragged the ashen and howling mayor from under the cart. “Bring him with us,” Scar said, and Kepa threw the fat old bastard over his shoulder, then slung him over his pony’s withers and mounted.
Scar and Petri were half a second behind, whirling their ponies and slashing about with their swords to try to prevent any of the prelate’s men following. But they would.
Morro paused, two of Scar’s men protecting him as he gathered blood from the fallen, face alight so that it turned Petri’s stomach. When he was done, he climbed onto his pony and had one of the men lead it as he did his best with blood and precious stolen parchment from their raid the last week. Snow fell behind them like a curtain, obscuring the town as they left it, obliterating their tracks. Maitea appeared again out of her shadows and made more whirl behind them, obscure them. Finally, Morro sagged in his saddle, almost fell but held on, grim and white-faced but nodding his approval to Maitea.
They regrouped in the prearranged place, a lone and dying tree on a trackless and windswept mountainside. Snow fell, thick and fast thanks to Morro, the flakes almost blinding Petri and making him dizzy, but he followed Scar, sure in the knowledge she knew where they were headed.
Of the forty that had started out the evening, six never made the tree. Another five had wounds serious enough to have them risk bleeding out, and of the rest a dozen had wounds of varying seriousness, including Scar, who’d taken a cut to the arm that was more ugly than dangerous, and Petri, whose dizziness wasn’t wholly from the whirling snow but also from the bang to the head as he’d landed on the cobbles.
Kepa
threw the fat old mayor down at the foot of the tree, where he gasped and shivered in the cold like a landed fish. Scar had Petri dismount and got one of the crew to check the lump on his head while she nudged her pony forward to tower over the mayor for the second time this evening.
“Up,” she snapped. “Up!’
He got up slowly at the end of four swords. “They won’t ransom me, you know,” he said querulously. “The prelate doesn’t deal in blackmail.”
“Well then, I shall have to think of something else,” Scar said and nodded at the four crew holding swords on him.
Before Petri could shout out or say a word, they’d grabbed him and held him as Scar lashed out with her sword and split the man balls to ribcage, sending his guts to spill, steaming, into the snow. “String him up. They’ll find him eventually, and a little message. We’ll need to be more careful from here on in.”
She looked over at Petri as he stared at the blood melting the snow by her pony’s feet. Scar, who shared his bed and helped him forget who Petri Egimont had even been.
“No one threatens my man.”
Petri sat and stared impassively and knew at last that Eneko had been right when he’d taken Petri’s eye, his face, his hand. Petri was weakness, soft as lead, weak as bad steel. Petri Egimont had no place here. Luckily Petri Egimont had died back there in that cell with all his weaknesses and memories, and now there was only the Skull.
Chapter Sixteen
Now