Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  That nightmare grin again. The tip of the blade twisted and broke the skin, leaving a trickle of blood on Vocho’s cheek.

  “Your eye’s twitching,” Petri said, “and I think that tells me what I need to know.”

  Abruptly the sword was gone, for which Vocho was profoundly thankful. There had never been any love lost between the two of them, and Vocho wasn’t rating his chances of living through the night very highly.

  “You two,” Petri snapped out at the men hovering in the doorway. “I want four guards on this hut at all times. A couple of snipers watching too, and extra patrols. It wouldn’t surprise me if a one-man rescue party turned up. If it does, kill him.”

  He turned back to Vocho, who if he’d thought Petri couldn’t get any colder, had been wrong. “You might do well to remember that I need my hostages only alive. Not intact.” A mirthless laugh at that. “Think on that and be grateful I don’t have a hot knife to hand.”

  Petri shut the door into Scar’s hut behind him, threw the sword onto the table and sank into a chair. So close to just slitting the bastard’s throat and having done with him for good. He had half a mind to go back and do it. He stared at the sword, Dom’s sword, all duellist’s flash and glitter, but the finest blade beneath belying that. It wasn’t Vocho he wanted sitting there, not Vocho he wanted to rage at, demand answers from, though he’d do.

  Preening bastard was right though–Petri didn’t think Kass was dead either. Not yet at least. Maybe she was bleeding to death at the bottom of that ravine. Maybe she’d freeze in the night. Maybe she’d live. She hadn’t abandoned him, Vocho had said. Had come for him but not in time. A complex tumble of thoughts at that, ones he couldn’t untangle. But it was Vocho who’d said it, and so none of it to be trusted.

  Scar came in, stomping snow off her boots. She stooped to kiss the top of his head and started to shake her furs off. He watched her, the vital intensity of every movement, the quick, smiling glances she shared with him. So sure of everything when he was sure of nothing but a hollow pit of rage sitting in his stomach that made him colder than the wind whipping over the mountains.

  She sat opposite him at the table and reached for his hands, the good and the useless. Her thumb stroked at fingers that couldn’t feel it.

  “Talk to me, Petri. You’re the Skull, and they’re all afraid of you! Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  He looked at her, at the way she watched him, waiting for his answer, and wondered why it was he always felt so cold, even here by a fire. Like there was nothing left inside but the crack of ice.

  “Petri?”

  “Morro,” he said at last. “Has he… Is he using us?”

  Her hands slipped from his. “No, Petri, we’re using him to get what we wanted. This.”

  “He’s not tried his magic on you? Shown you his hands?”

  The briefest of hesitations. “No! And I wouldn’t look if he had–you’ve talked about it enough. I’m not stupid, I know the dangers.” But she wouldn’t look at him while she said it. Instead she got up and applied her energy to stoking the fire with unnecessary vigour. “I know what I’m doing. I’m using Morro to do what we wanted, that’s all. If you still want it?”

  Using him too, he thought now. The ice inside him cracked, but underneath there was nothing but hate, blinding him with its white-hot glare. “Yes. Yes, it’s what I wanted. What I still want.”

  But when she went to kiss him, he turned away, stood and made his way out into the cold, towards his place in the barn.

  Kass had spent a long time looking at the bodies that had broken their fall, poor shattered things with faces black from cold. She’d debated a long time, then said some prayers over them before she gathered up as many cloaks as she could, though she left some to cover those faces. She’d scraped out a sort of cave in the snow and piled it with cloaks, but the cold penetrated everything. Her fingers fumbled trying to light a fire, though there wasn’t much to burn except what other clothes she could find and a few cheap wooden scabbards that had fallen with their owners but were frozen and hard to light. In the end, under Eder’s sneering gaze, she gave up.

  It was, at least, slightly warmer in the little cave. Not much, but they might not freeze to death just yet. Water wasn’t a problem–she’d put some snow into her canteen and put it under her arm to melt–but food was going to be a problem very shortly, along with Eder.

  So was the fact she knew why she was thinking on those things, because it was keeping her mind from other more painful thoughts. Ones which Eder seemed intent on bringing to the surface, exactly where she didn’t want them.

  He shifted under the pile of cloaks she’d given him and grimaced at the movement. “Petri,” he said dryly. “Seems to me I’ve heard that name recently. And strange, I could have sworn your brother told everyone he was dead.”

  She didn’t answer, instead trying to arrange her own pile of cloaks better.

  “Which begs the question,” Eder went on. “How did Vocho not suspect that the Skull was him? Or maybe he did–he told Carrola he thought he might know who it was. Why didn’t he say anything to you?”

  “Why ask me?” she snapped. God’s cogs, she was going to murder Voch when she found him. If she found him. She didn’t want to be thinking what she was thinking. That Vocho had lied, once again. He’d told her that Petri was dead, that he knew that for sure. He’d told her that and, unusually for Vocho, had been careful with her ever since–he’d looked after the guild she was supposed to be running when she’d been staring out over the walls and remembering, trying to work out where it had all gone wrong. It had twisted in her gut, the thought that somehow, unknowingly, she’d pushed Petri into the course that had led him to Eneko’s room. And Vocho had been there to listen when she couldn’t keep that pent up any more, had reassured her, comforted her, been an actual brother to her.

  That should of course have been a dead giveaway that he was feeling guilty about something.

  If she’d known Petri was alive, she’d have… she’d have…

  What would she have done? Gutted that old fuck Eneko for doing that to Petri, for starters. Killed him like the animal he was, not let Vocho persuade her to leave it to the courts to find him guilty of all sorts and send his head bouncing over the cobbles. Maybe she’d have even got away with it, not ended on the block herself. Then she’d have found Petri, wherever he was. And then… and then she didn’t know. She didn’t know what she was going to do now. When she got out of this bloody ravine anyway.

  The words on a ragged scrap of paper came back to her. Remember everything, regret nothing.

  She wrenched at a cloak that wasn’t doing what she wanted, and was rewarded with the sound of ripping cloth.

  “I’m asking you,” Eder said when she’d settled down, “because your brother isn’t here. I’d love to be asking him. Preferably at the end of a sword.”

  That made her laugh, at least. “Yes, he does have that effect on people. I don’t know why he said nothing, except I suppose he was hoping it wouldn’t be true. I don’t know why he lied, apart from lying is what he does. The point is, he did, and now we’re stuck at the bottom of a very cold ravine with no food, no fire, and you have a broken leg. ‘Why’ is beside the very real point–we might die here.”

  A long silence broken only by the sound of Kass trying to stop her teeth from chattering. The cloaks weren’t going to be enough, especially with no fire to help keep them warm. Eder’s face looming towards her in the dark startled her.

  “I might. No need for you to.”

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He shuffled over with a hiss of pain, bringing his cloaks with him, so that they were shoulder to shoulder, and laid a cloak over both their shoulders so they were cocooned together. “Warmer this way. Don’t worry, I’m not likely to try to kiss you again. And I’m not being ridiculous. I’ve got a broken leg, as you point out. You haven’t. You can get out.”

  He was deadly serious, she could tell
that even in the dark. “No. No, I can’t, not without you. We’ll both get out.”

  “Guild arrogance again?”

  “Guild honour. The motto, you recall?”

  “Guild honour. Huh. Where was that for Petri when Eneko took his eye? Did Eneko ever have any? Or Vocho when he did all those things? I’d be surprised if he had morals, never mind honour. The guild almost took control of the city, tried to kill Bakar, fucked up Red Brook good and proper and didn’t even care about all the men and women who died there. And you talk about honour. The guild has outlived its usefulness. You’re stuck in the past, living on old glories. Fake old glories, in Vocho’s case.”

  “The guild defended Reyes too, saved Bakar. Why is it that you hate it so much?”

  She felt him tighten at that, his shoulder twitch against hers. “Who wouldn’t? Bunch of arrogant arseholes who think they know better than anyone. Well, they’re just as fallible as everyone else, they just won’t admit it.”

  He wouldn’t say any more, and she was struck once again by how like Petri he was. Even more so here in the dark. The curl of hair, tangled now, falling over his shoulder, the pent-up everything showing in the hunch of his shoulders, the burn of something behind his eyes that he wouldn’t, couldn’t say. Only he was a Petri who still had his face.

  He caught her watching him, maybe caught the wistful look that must be on her face because it was surely in her head. The whip of his voice killed those thoughts. “You called me Petri.”

  She couldn’t look at him any more, not at the hurt that twisted his face, made it worse even than Petri’s horror. “Yes, and I’m sorry for it too.”

  “Why?”

  She stared off into the swirling darkness of the night, shrugged the pain of it away, unable to answer in any truthful way that wouldn’t make things worse.

  “Because you wanted me to be him?” The question snaked out to stab her. “Is that it? You wanted me to be the man we came here to stop, who’s killed and robbed who knows how many people? Outlaw, murderer, betrayer. Was it a tragic disappointment when I wasn’t him?”

  The bitterness in his voice seemed hot enough to melt a mountain’s-worth of snow, and when she finally looked there was nothing in that face to remind her of Petri. There was no answer that wouldn’t twist the knife in him further, so she said nothing–and that was an answer in itself. He pushed himself away to the other side of the little cave, but she could feel the heat of his glare even so.

  They were silent for a long time, until at last his breathing slowed into sleep. The real Petri was out there somewhere, alive, and with a woman who’d been prepared to kill Kass for him. He’d moved on, and she’d stayed where she was, eaten with guilt, turning away other men even while wishing they were him. He was alive, but she wondered if he needed saving more than ever, or whether she needed saving from her own head. Whether she should move on too. She pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them and stared at Eder as he slept.

  By the time Eder shuddered awake, woken by trying to move his leg in his sleep, the gloom of night was starting to lighten into grey snow clouds above and she’d been hard at work for an hour.

  Eder eyed her suspiciously. “What’s that?”

  “This is how I’m going to get you out of here.”

  It wasn’t going to last long, but she hoped long enough. Scabbards strapped together with ripped-up strips of cloth and a short length of rope some unlucky faller had with him to serve as poles. Cloaks wrapped and tied around to form a sort of bed, the scabbards poking out so that she could drag it.

  Eder scrubbed a hand up his face, the scratch of his stubble loud in the snow-swept silence. “Kass—”

  She crouched down beside him and essayed a conciliatory hand that he shook off. “You are going to get on this thing, and we are going to get you out of here. You don’t have a bloody say in the matter, all right?”

  He frowned and laughed at the same time, setting her teeth on edge. “No.”

  “Yes, I think you’ll find.” She pulled together as many of the things she’d found that might be useful–rummaging in dead men’s frozen pockets of a dawn wasn’t her favourite way to start the day, she’d found–and made a bundle of them. A fire strike and stone in case they found something to burn, some travel rations she’d found crushed under a body, a couple of knives because you could never have too many, a gun and some bullets that she’d rather not use, all wrapped in the warmest cloaks she could salvage. She shoved the bundle onto the makeshift travois and headed for Eder.

  A night out in the freezing cold had done him no favours, but she suspected she looked little better. His hair was awry, the black curl over his shoulder tangled and wet with snow. Skin pale, eyes dark with pain, stubble on his chin surprisingly streaked with grey, which made him look a dozen years older than she’d supposed.

  “Don’t make me argue about it,” she said as he opened his mouth. “We need our energy for getting out of here and staying warm. It’s almost light, and when it is there’s going to be people coming down this ravine. Petri isn’t stupid, and he knows me. He’s got a load of men and women up there with him somewhere, and quite probably a magician. If he wants me dead, they’ll be coming down to make sure I am. If he doesn’t…” She took a deep breath because, what would that mean? What would either way mean? She shook her head. “If he doesn’t then there will still be people coming down here to check. They will have swords and bows and most likely guns. Do you really want to be here when that happens? Because he’s probably not going to give a shit if you’re alive or dead.”

  Eder stared up at the lip of the ravine, far above, where the sun was just starting to make its presence felt behind banks of grey clouds that promised more snow. She waited for him to think it through–she really didn’t want to have to wrestle the stupid sod if she could help it.

  After a time, when she couldn’t wait any more and it was say something or hit something, she said, “It’s not the guild I’m doing this for. Salve your conscience with that. It’s not the guild saving you, or even me saving you. It’s you and me, down here, both wanting to stay alive and needing each other to do it. I’m not leaving you to die. That’s it.”

  “All right,” he said at last. “All right. But help me up. If you have to drag me on that thing too far, you’ll be in no shape to do anything when they catch us up. And they will.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Usually after a bad night dawn was something to be looked forward to. Not so this bad night, Vocho thought, because the coming day looked set to get worse.

  To start with, he could see the true state of Dom. Vocho had always envied him his poise, his effortless way of being pristine even when surrounded by shit. Not today. Today Dom looked worse than Vocho felt, which was pretty bad.

  Dank light coming in through the cracks in the walls showed up everything–every grey hair in Dom’s beard, every stain on his now ragged clothes, every crack in his boots, every red thread in the whites of his eyes. Once Vocho would have gloated, just a bit, at the thought of being better presented than the immaculate Dom, but today he found he didn’t have the energy.

  He shifted his weight, remembered his seized-up hip a second too late and yelped.

  “What the hell happened to you?” they both said at the same time.

  Vocho tried a frozen grin. “You first. You look like shit.”

  “Feel it,” Dom said quietly. He stared down at his bound hands, which lay in his lap, opening and closing, opening and closing. “And every one of my years. Went looking for my daughter–you recall I was trying to find her?”

  “How could I forget? Your and the, er… what’s the word? Terrifying, yes, that’s it. Your and the terrifying Alicia’s daughter.”

  A soft plume of laughter filled with wistful wishing. “She wasn’t so terrifying once. She was young and so was I, and youth makes people stupid. Made me stupid anyway. But… but… a daughter. Esti managed to winkle out where Eneko had last seen her, and I went
to find her. Had it all worked out–what I was going to say, how I was going to tell her I’d never stopped thinking about her, never stopped trying to find her. I tracked her from that last place to where she was living. She looks like her mother. Just like her.”

  Vocho was mesmerised by Dom’s hands, open and closed, open and closed. Like he was trying to hold on to something but couldn’t keep his grip, his life slipping through his groping fingers.

  “And?” Vocho said when it looked like that was all he was going to get.

  Dom blinked hard and looked up as though only now remembering Vocho was there. “A magician was already there, though I didn’t know that’s what he was then. I think he’d worked out whose daughter she was, or at least that she likely had some magical ability. He’d had weeks to work on her, and he whispered in her ear, all poison about me. He wanted her help, I think, to escape the village.”

  “Escape the village? Couldn’t he just walk off?”

  “Not really. Even a magician like him would need bodies full of blood to get himself off the mountain in this snow. With an apprentice… Or maybe they were planning to slaughter the village for the blood they needed, I don’t know.”

  “So she didn’t believe you?”

  “Or didn’t want to. She–my daughter–her name was Maitea, did I say? She wasn’t easy to convince, but I was trying. I’d only been there a few days, you know, trying to be friendly, show I was worth knowing. So when the village decided a hunting party was in order, I volunteered to help. When we got back, Scar had raided the village, taken most of the stores. Maitea had stood up to her though. And Scar took her, kidnapped her. Just when I’d found her again.” A deep, harsh breath as though he was on the edge of an abyss and was trying not to fall in. “So, I thought, what good is it being trained as a bloody assassin if I can’t catch the person who did that? Rescue my own daughter? Then I made a mistake. Several actually. All that time I wasn’t thinking straight, couldn’t think straight. I tried to kill Scar, get back Maitea, thought she might look on me more favourably then. Didn’t realise Morro had already found her. Had a hell of a shock when I saw Petri. Not as much as he did when he realised Scar had picked up her own personal magician. So, all my plans failed, and me a prisoner. And now Maitea knows who killed her mother, and she’s as unforgiving as Alicia ever was, with as much cause.”