by Julia Knight
“You heard about your father?” Scar said as she sat opposite.
Maitea glanced Petri’s way again before she answered. “He escaped.”
“Tried to kill me on his way too.” Scar cocked her head as though expecting something.
All she got was Maitea’s shrug. “Killing is all he does. You and Morro have shown me that.”
“And now you see that we were right. Morro says your magic is growing, that you’re an apt pupil.”
Another shrug, tense with some emotion Petri couldn’t guess at.
“Good,” Scar said. “Maybe you can use it to help us now. Time to repay what’s been done for you. He’ll still be out there–I think we can safely say he’ll not leave you behind. He wants to take you away from here, from your home. He’ll come back for Vocho too, no doubt. They’re old friends, and that tells you all you need to know about Vocho. We need to try to draw your father out. Funnel him to where we want him to be. Shadows are your magic, Morro says. So we use shadows against an assassin, who works in them.”
Finally Scar spared Petri a look that was hot and cold at the same time. “Petri, escort Maitea to her hut. Make it very plain to the guards that she’s now a prisoner like the others. And Maitea, when you get there, you wait in your shadows. Your father will come, and then we’ll have him.”
Maitea’s face pinched at that, but she nodded meekly and got up. Scar turned away, dismissing them both, and Petri followed Maitea from the hut.
She kept herself stiff and haughty, but Petri was no less so.
“You had a knife in that hut,” he said to her relentless face.
“I was going to kill him. Dom, I mean.”
“Your father, you mean.”
“Yes.” She stopped and turned to face him. Her gloves stayed on, he noted, and no hint of cooking blood stained the air. She was only talking to him, not trying to persuade him, manipulate him. “I… I kept asking him about my mother. Morro and Scar keep telling me what he is, but I wanted to be sure. He admitted he murdered her, in the end. So I was set to return the favour.”
She seemed very young in the darkness, and very sure of herself. Like her father, he thought again. So very self-possessed. “Not cutting his bonds to free him then?”
The look she gave him came from under sly lids. “When you found out your father was a slaver, did you want to free him from his? Or did you stand by while he was killed?”
A stab of something at that–he’d watched his father die and hadn’t felt more than a twinge. “Killed by a magician,” he said at last. “And that was just the start of their involvement in my life. I don’t trust Morro.”
A secret little smile from her. “And you’re wise not to. He’s got no love for you, but it might be too late. He’s got Scar under his paw, thinking as he wants. Being strong is all very well, Petri, but you need to be careful too.”
They reached her hut. “I spent my life being careful,” he said. “All it got me was this face and a home in these mountains. Now I intend to win.”
At last a smile from Maitea, a hand on his arm before she covered herself in shadows and went into the hut.
“I hope you win, Petri. I really do.”
Kass squinted at the bottle, sloshed the syrup about, said what the hells and took another slug. She was beginning to realise why Voch liked the stuff so much. It wasn’t that the pain went away, as such. She just didn’t give a crap about it, or anything else come to that.
“Up you get, miss.” Cospel got her to her feet at the top of the ravine. Kass tried not to look down because it made everything go spinny, and everything down there was a long way away. “And I think you’ve had enough.”
Cospel made a grab for the bottle, but she hung on. Dimly she was aware that it was helping with more than the physical pain. Even more dimly came the knowledge there was something she should be very unhappy about, more than one thing in fact, but she gave even less of a crap about them.
“This stuff’s bloody marvellous,” she said and took an extra slug.
Another hand grabbed for the bottle from the other side, and she was so surprised they managed to get it away from her.
“You had to get her drunk, didn’t you?” Danel said from behind her. “Great timing, given you’ve got a ruddy magician almost up your arse, and the snow’s about to get ten times worse before it gets better. All that, and you get her so she can’t hardly stand up.”
“She’s only had a bit! Don’t drink much as a rule, see? Expect it took her a bit harder than it does Vocho–he’s got used to it. She’d never have made it up there without it anyway.”
“No, well.” Danel took in Kass’s blood-soaked furs and muttered on some more. “Best we get going. Scar’s crew aren’t too far behind, and they’ve got climbing gear and that magician bloke. Thought it was bad enough lugging the rope all the way here; now we’ve got to lug her back as well.”
“She’ll sober up soon enough.”
Kass was having a bit of trouble remembering what they were supposed to be doing, but with Cospel’s help she managed to make her way up the slope while he argued with Danel. A cold wind scythed at them from the ravine, bringing new bombardments of snow with it. She barely noticed the cold and watched the pretty snowflakes as they danced about, until she had to stop because they were spinning so fast she almost fell over trying to follow them.
“Found a good gun,” Danel was saying. “Well, I say found, more like nicked from the dead body I had just created. They had a few gunmen up in the hills around the village, but this one, he weren’t very watchful. I managed to put the cat among the pigeons as well. Got them running about all over looking for me. Bunch of lowland eejits, couldn’t find a mountain man up here if I had a flashing light on my head. Saw young Vocho and a couple of the others. Shot a couple of the buggers holding them, but they’ve still got him, and the rest. One bloke did get free, but I never saw who or where he went.”
“So now they’re expecting trouble?” Cospel said. “Great timing yourself. Petri’s no fool. He’ll have guessed that I’m about at least, and now he’ll think he knows it, and he’ll be waiting for us.”
“Petri,” she said, stung into remembering even through the fug in her brain by the sound of his name. “Petri’s alive.”
Cospel stopped and turned her, wobbling, to face him. “Yes he is, miss. But he ain’t the Petri you remember; he’s all twisted in the head, and it ain’t a good sort of twist neither. He’s got Voch and the rest, and I don’t have no doubts at all he means to kill all of them. Vocho most of all though. And you, if he gets hold of you. We’ve got to be careful.”
“But Petri wouldn’t—”
Cospel shook her gently by the shoulders, so that the wound in her chest protested even through the haze. “Yes, he would. And he’s going to. Don’t hold on to any fancy notions otherwise, because they’d be a load of shit.”
She looked at his face, the way the eyebrows drooped as though in defeat, and tried to think. It was quite hard when she kept being distracted by snowflakes and hiccupping, but she managed in the end. Cospel was a thieving genius with scant regard for the law, or much of anything, but he was as straightforward as people came when it came to things like this. But this wasn’t–her and Petri and Vocho–straightforward at all. They were all tangled up in each other like old rope.
“I was going to save him,” she said, and watched Cospel’s face crumple as the words slurred out.
“Miss, you ain’t got no cause to be blaming yourself—”
“I was going to save him, and then I couldn’t because he was dead, but now he’s alive so I can. So I’m going to.”
Cospel turned away and pulled her on, making her stumble in the snow. “He don’t need saving, miss. Except maybe from himself. Got himself all tucked up nice, he has, shacked up with that Scar woman, nice and cosy. He knows what he’s doing, and what that is, is killing you and Voch if he can. Seen it on his face when they ambushed us. On his half a face, at least. He m
eans to have you two dead.”
“Made a start even,” Danel put in from the other side. “Him and Vocho were duelling, sort of. That’s why I got them all stirred up. Because it weren’t much of a contest what with Vocho not being able to walk properly. Old Skull, he kept sticking him–in the shoulder, in the leg–playing with him. Gearing up to run him through if I’m any judge. So I let off a few shots just to get him distracted. Worked too. Vocho’s still alive, even if he is mostly a lot of holes.”
A short silence as Cospel and Kass digested this.
“Fair enough, I suppose,” Cospel said. “Though it’s going to make life even harder than it already is. But see, miss, Petri don’t need saving. He needs bloody well stopping before he kills Vocho and the rest.”
By the time the light started to fade, the jollop had mostly worn off, leaving the pain to wreak havoc. Despite the cold Kass was sweating freely, her breath coming in hot little hitches. She didn’t miss the looks Danel and Cospel shared when they thought she wasn’t looking, but ignored them.
Kass and Vocho and Petri.
Like it or not, the three of them seemed to revolve around one another, irretrievably. All the spinning was starting to make her sick. She shook herself and tried to think properly through the haze that Vocho’s syrup had left in its wake.
Petri was alive, and the cramp in her chest wasn’t just from the bullet wound. He was alive but changed, inside. But the old Petri, her Petri, he was in there somewhere, she was sure of it. Behind the mess of his face, behind the terror of the Skull he’d become, was Petri, caught up in things beyond him, struggling to make sense of himself, wanting to do what was right. He had to be in there somewhere, had to be savable. She had to believe that or she’d go crazy. In the meantime, he wanted Vocho dead and had the means to do it.
But if anyone was going to kill the annoying bugger, it would be her. That might mean, probably would mean, facing Petri. Her sword hand throbbed, and she couldn’t be sure if she was itching to use it or desperate not to. What seems good to you. She’d thought she was getting to grips with that after a long time flailing, but now… When the choice seemed to be between saving your brother or the man you were once in love with, maybe still were, was any choice good?
Vocho staggered when a hand behind pushed him, only avoiding falling by the skin of his teeth. Something had happened, something that no one seemed very happy about, but he had no idea what it was. He was grateful to whoever had done it though, because he was fairly sure Petri would have happily skewered him any number of times before he got bored and killed him. They’d taken him back to the prison hut, where Dom was conspicuous by his absence, thanks to Maitea cutting his bonds. Escaped, Carrola said shortly when he asked, and three of Scar’s men shot. That had made him grin.
Now it was much later, almost sundown, and all his bruises had had the chance to come out and really make themselves felt. There seemed to be more bruise than skin in many places, in fact, except where he had a nice collection of holes and gashes. His cheek was promising to sport a very fine scar, eventually.
The hand pushed again, and this time he did fall, his hip twisting under him and dumping him on the snow-covered rock. A yank on his hair got him upright, and then he saw where they were going.
At least it was warm inside this new hut. It was larger than the rest and had no cracks between the planks to let the ever-present wind and snow in. A fire burned in a hearth to one side of the main room with a kettle of something bubbling over it that smelled pretty damned good to a starving Vocho. Through a half-open door he could spot a bed thickly strewn with furs and blankets. Too much to hope these were his new quarters, especially when he saw who was with him. Petri sat at a table, sword laid across his knees, his face, what was left of it, pinched and pale as though he was furious but trying not to show it. Scar watched from behind him, her eyes darting everywhere, piercing everything. There was something about her that shivered Vocho’s shoulder blades, an intensity that unsettled him.
Not half as much as seeing Eder on the floor in front of Petri, covered in blood.
“Glad you could join us,” Petri drawled to Vocho. “You,” he prodded Eder with a foot, “start again.”
Eder looked around, face grey and clammy with sweat. It was only when he tried to move and hissed in pain that Vocho noticed his leg, the rough splint on it.
“We fell. A long way. I landed on some bodies, Kass landed on me. My leg broke in the fall.”
“And Kass?” Petri and Vocho said together. Scar’s eyes lit up at that, and not in a good way. If Vocho was Petri he’d be very careful about her being behind him.
“I broke my leg, and her fall. She was well enough.”
“Was?” Vocho’s voice came out as a croak.
Eder glared up at him from under lowered brows, and again Vocho was reminded of a dog pushed beyond endurance into going for the throat. “Was. I shot her. In the chest. Someone else was there though–Cospel, I think. He hit me, tied me up. But she was bleeding like a stuck pig. Right in the chest. She’ll have bled to death long since.”
Vocho’s leg collapsed from under him, and he found himself on the floor next to Eder, with Petri’s nightmare face looming over them both, every muscle frozen. Scar laughed behind Petri, laid a hand on his shoulder. He twitched it off.
“How sure are you?” Petri said, and his voice was as husky as Vocho’s had been.
“Sure I shot her. Sure I got her in the chest, that all this blood is hers. She’s miles from anywhere where she can get medical attention. She’s dead, or dying, no matter who’s with her, unless they’re a first-rate doctor. Not many of those in these godforsaken mountains.”
Vocho sat and stared at him until his eyes burned with it. Scar’s voice snapped him back to now.
“We’ll find her body soon enough then, because my men are still tracking her. She’ll soon find out what it is to come across a magician on this mountain, a magician who can conjure snow and ice and wind, can melt it away to clear a path for himself and my men, who can call snow to fill it again afterwards when all she can do is flounder in the drifts. A magician who’s keen to find her.”
Vocho caught Petri’s eye, expecting to see gloating to match Scar’s voice, but there was something else entirely. Regret? Sorrow? He couldn’t be sure but found he didn’t care much either way. “If she is dead,” he said slowly, his eyes on Petri all the while, “then you know I’ll have to kill you too?”
Scar laughed again, and her foot shot out to catch Vocho on the shoulder, sending him sprawling. “Says the man who can’t walk properly. My Petri will fillet you. Might be a bit of fun at least. And another head to send to Bakar.”
Vocho didn’t miss that heavy my or the look of victory glowing in her scarred face. She thought she’d won a prize. Weirdly, Scar seemed to think Petri, one-handed, one-eyed, half-faced, pompous old back-stabbing blowhard Petri, was a prize.
Yet from the look on his face Petri wasn’t at all happy about being won.
Chapter Twenty-four
Scar had Vocho and Eder taken off to the hut that served as the prison, shooed all the rest out and turned on Petri, mouth hooked into a smile, eyes shining. She slid onto his lap and kissed him soundly, seemed not to notice or care that he didn’t kiss her back, as she hadn’t seemed to care when he’d started sleeping in the barn again. She leaped up and paced the floor by the fire. In the flickering yellow light she looked more like a lion in a cage than ever, bursting with the need to fight, to hunt.
“We did it,” she muttered, then louder, “We did it, Petri. Everyone will know our names now, know that Scar and Skull killed the guild master. No head to send back yet, more’s the pity, but there’s always Vocho’s. But no one is ever going to fuck with me again. With any of us.” She paused as though noticing him properly, and a frown shadowed some of her energy. “We’ll be famous, don’t you see? And safe. Who would dare take a knife to my face now? Or yours? When we took out the two most feared duellists in the
country. You’ve got your revenge; we’ve got a grand name for ourselves–made ourselves safe, and king and queen of our little domain, feared wherever we’re spoken of. Aren’t you happy she’s dead?”
She came to kneel in front of him, a tremor of excitement in her hand as she laid it on his shoulder. She’d sold him revenge, nursed his hatred, told him she’d loved him, wound him like a gun and aimed him. He blinked hard. Used him, like Bakar, like Sabates and Licio, like everyone had. Everyone except Kass, who’d abandoned him. Maybe he’d deserved that, he thought at last.
Scar’s hand tightened on his shoulder, and her mouth twitched at one side. “Aren’t you happy?” she repeated.
He didn’t know how to answer, didn’t trust his lips not to say the wrong thing, so he said nothing, only gently took her hand away, stood to put on his sword and said the only thing he thought he could be sure of: “She’s not dead.”
Scar looked at him sideways, gauging him. “Is that what you think, or what you want?”
He paused, did some gauging of his own and wondered if he even knew himself. “What I think. You know what I want.” Although Petri was beginning to have doubts he knew what it was that he did want.
She didn’t believe him, that was plain from the twitch of her lip, the way her eyes slid over him, cold all of a sudden, and he turned away to the door.
Her voice came out gravel rough behind him, and he knew he walked a knife-edge here. “Where are you going?”
His hand stopped on the latch. “To see if they’ve found the sniper. Or Dom. We aren’t safe yet. We’ve got Dom’s daughter under lock and key. We tried to kill Kass and took her brother hostage. We won’t be safe until both Dom and Kass are dead, and that’s not yet.”
She said nothing more as he went out into the frostbitten place that had become his home and now seemed utterly strange. Snow crunched under his boots as he made his way to the edge of the scarp that fell away sharply at one end of the valley. The dregs of the day were grey, swirled with white, like his mind had become.