Swords and Scoundrels

by Julia Knight

  Vocho padded silently over the grass but Petri surprised him without turning. “I knew you’d come at some point, so let’s get it over with, shall we?”

  “Why not?” Vocho agreed.

  There’d always been something odd about Petri to Vocho’s mind. A little too smooth, a touch too silent, and when he did speak, his accent was an infuriating mix of arrogance and pomposity. Always watching Kass too, and now not just watching.

  Petri turned and stood easily, looking down his long nose at Vocho like he was some sort of bug. Like he was still a noble and Vocho was still a dock rat, instead of Petri actually being a pathetic little clerk for the prelate and he the most renowned duellist the guild had ever seen.

  “Kacha,” Vocho said. “I want you to leave her be.”

  “Really?” Petri raised a cool eyebrow. “And what’s it to do with you?”

  “She’s my sister; it’s everything to do with me. I’ve seen you, always watching her. You do it even when you think she’s not looking. Not like other men look at her either. You look at her like she’s an interesting specimen and you want to dissect her.”

  The smile almost fooled Vocho but it was too damned slick. “Dissecting wasn’t what I had in mind, I have to say. And that’s not what’s really bothering you, is it?”

  Vocho whipped his sword out and held it to Petri’s cheek, the tip just touching skin. “Leave my sister alone. She can do better than some deposed little lordling like you, so leave her be.”

  “Or what? Or you’ll push me into the river, like you did her?”

  Vocho swallowed a violent urge to be sick, and his blade dropped to his side. “She tripped, that was all.” He meant it too, had repeated the lie over and over to himself until he near enough believed it.

  Petri’s smile broadened, sure his thrust had hit home, that all that was left was to provide the finishing stroke. “That’s what she thinks too, though she says she doesn’t remember much. We know better, don’t we?”

  Vocho had no answer for that, none at all.

  “I admire your sister and always have. Admire her very much. So much energy, so much enthusiasm for everything, so dedicated. You—” Petri snorted derisively. “You always wanted it all given to you on a platter. Never wanted to work at it. Never did anything to deserve what you’ve got. She had to work every step of the way, fight for everything against those who laughed at her for her efforts. The guild lets in women, trains them, pays lip service to all things being equal, but only because that ancient clockwork marionette in the courtyard is a woman and the guild follows its traditions, because the Clockwork God has spoken. But how many women ever get their master’s? Five perhaps in the last ten years? How many are allowed to try even? They trot out all the excuses they can, and people believe it. They laughed at her behind her back, ‘let’ her win, made bets on when she’d fail, and I know you ran at least one book on that, dear, concerned, brotherly Vocho. Showed them, though, didn’t she? Showed you too, and I bet it hurt when Eneko took her on as his apprentice. When she got her master’s before you, not because she was as good as the rest but because she was better. Did you think about pushing her into the river again? Or maybe off the walls? Just so you could be the golden one? Is that why you started pushing the rules in the arena? Is that why you started fixing duels? Oh yes, I know all about that, and the books you run on them, and paying men to lose and skimming off the top on jobs as well, taking credit for work that’s not yours, paying people to make up songs about you just to rub it in that you’re better. So perhaps you’d like to fuck off, brother dearest, and let me court your sister without your petulant face in the background. And then perhaps I won’t tell her about how she really ended up in that river, or how much money you lost betting against her in duels, or any of the rest of it. Perhaps I won’t tell her what a shit of a brother she looks to, loves, defends, for god’s sake. What do you say?”

  Vocho gaped like a ten-pint drunk asked a simple question. He wanted to say it was all lies, that he was a good brother, like he always told himself. Lied to himself. And he was a good brother, sometimes. It’s just that other times he wasn’t himself. Other times he seemed to watch himself from outside, banging on the window and telling himself not to do those things. And when he came back to himself, he promised never to do them again, lied to himself that it wasn’t that bad, he wasn’t that bad…

  “I’ll take that as agreement then,” Petri said, sounding a thousand miles away. “Do have a good day.”

  Vocho stood for a good long while, not noticing the sun come up or the other duellists staring at him as he watched the water flow under the bridge.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Petri tried to let nothing show on his face, but he wasn’t sure he managed it. Sabates’ gaze was unnerving him, along with the news. Kacha was in the Shrive by good or ill luck, and only now did he see exactly what he’d signed up to, just how far Licio was prepared to go – and expect him to go.

  The king sat at his grand desk in his Reyes house. The Ikaran banker, a grey hunched sort of man here to see his investment rewarded, blinked in the dim light from a smoking lamp. Alicia was here too, ice cold in silver grey but with mischief in her twitch of a smile. And Sabates, always Petri’s eyes came back to Sabates, sitting in a dark corner watching. All Petri could think of was his father, of the way he’d come apart as though made of dry sand. And a magician did it. Had he deserved it? Had any of it been true? Those were the thoughts that had begun to plague him – that every man and woman was false, that the only truth he had was what he’d experienced, and even then he couldn’t be sure.

  “Well, that saves us the trouble of finding her,” Licio was saying, rubbing his hands together. “With her to use, we’ll get Vocho doing what we want in no time.”

  “I thought the tattoo—” Petri said.

  “Has its limits,” Sabates interjected smoothly. “I can use it to overpower his own better instincts for ten, maybe twelve minutes, though his instincts tend to run in our direction if you’re right about him being Eneko’s assassin. Any longer than that, it’ll burn him to a husk, though he might prove useful in the future if only as a scapegoat. The tattoo’s too powerful rather than not powerful enough. So he’ll do what I want, whether he likes it or not, when I need him to, but I have to get him to where he can do it first, and without bloodshed or we’ll be discovered. For that we need persuasion, and there are only two things Vocho cares about – notoriety and his sister. Offer him one and threaten the other. He’ll see sense soon enough.”

  “And after?”

  Sabates smiled, and Petri didn’t like the look of that smile in the least. “Then we kill her. She knows more than is good for her health. So does Vocho, but I can manage that. DUELLIST KILLED BY GUARDS AFTER ASSASSINATING PRELATE. Maybe she can be his co-conspirator.”

  “You could put a tattoo on her?” Licio said.

  Petri was sure Sabates could see right into his heart, that the thought of that made him shudder.

  “Sadly, it takes a vast amount of power, and blood, to perform the initial spell, and it has to be a certain kind for this particular tattoo. I drained four magicians for the one that Vocho wears. Do you see four magicians anywhere?”

  Licio stood up and strode over to Petri. He looked more regal than ever, yet boyish and golden in the dim light, but even so there was something about his eyes that told Petri he was utterly determined to do this and maybe a little bit mad too.

  “I’m sure this won’t be a problem for our ever-loyal Egimont. Will it? I mean, you only used her for information about her brother. It wasn’t serious. Was it?”

  Petri stared straight ahead, afraid that any move would give him away, afraid that if it did he’d end up as his father had done. “It won’t be a problem.” He thought he could feel the heat of Sabates’ gaze on him, which was ridiculous but unnerving nonetheless.

  “I can kill them both, if you like,” Alicia purred from the corner. “Dom, as he styles himself now, is a
n old friend. More than a friend.”

  “And he’s still alive?” Sabates asked with a flick of an amused eyebrow. “You surprise me.”

  She flipped a fan out of one copious sleeve and wafted it next to her pale-marble face. “We all make mistakes. That won’t be one I’ll repeat. It would be my pleasure to kill him, as you well know.”

  Petri stared at her, at the face that looked carved from angels, and thought he saw the heart that beat beneath the pretty dress, the heart that was as black as she was pale. He thought too of Vocho asking him if he would do it. Would he kill Kacha, if he had to? No, no, a hundred times no, but he couldn’t say that here. Sabates would see only weakness in that, and Sabates was the man to beware of. Petri wasn’t as indispensable as all that.

  If it seems good to you. The motto he’d been brought up on, that lived, always, inside him, guiding everything he’d done. Each individual thing had seemed good to him: joining the king against the prelate, the thought of a new, fair society. Falling for Kacha when he was supposed to be using her, and all the rest – the lying and thieving, the betrayals, the killing when he’d had to – they had all seemed good, or for a good cause at least, but had led him here, to agreeing that killing the woman he’d been in love with wouldn’t be a problem in order to save his own neck.

  A choice then. He still believed the prelate needed to go, and his Clockwork God with him. He still believed that life didn’t run on any rails, that he could change it if he wanted to. He still wanted the guild to be back among them, to lead them and have Eneko’s head on a pike. Against that, Kacha, who’d opened his eyes and made the clockwork fall from his head. The choice wasn’t hard at all.

  “Well then,” Licio said. “Let’s not waste any more time. Egimont, go and get Kacha, bring her to her beloved brother, and let’s get started. I’ll have the guards fire up the brazier. I don’t think it’ll take much to break Vocho, do you?”

  Petri wasn’t so sure – Vocho was a contrary bastard at the best of times – but Licio’s words made his choice for him. He left with a glance at Sabates, at the marks and patterns that swirled on his hands, that pulled his eyes in. Of crowns and stags and crossed swords. He looked and found he didn’t care.

  He went to bring Kacha, but not to Licio.

  Chapter Twenty

  It didn’t take long for Kacha to be a dozen turns away from her cell, heart skittering in her throat, but by then other problems were starting to worry her. She had to get to wherever they might be holding Vocho, but first she had to get out, and that was going to be a problem.

  The Shrive was old and massive and full of twists and turns that probably took years to learn. Some corridors were wide and well lit, and she avoided those. Others were dark and cramped, and she wanted to avoid those more for the groans and shrieks that came from some of them, but dark was her friend until she worked out how in hells to escape. They said there were two ways out of the Shrive, and both of them involved being dead.

  The sound of guards, of grumbling and swearing and jangling armour, came from the left, so she went right, headed further into the guts of the prison. The walls here were dank and slimy, and the air was tangy with the scent of the river. She tried not to contemplate the thought of a long swim too closely. For all she was a dock rat by birth, she’d never got the knack of swimming more than a few yards, and the incident where she’d fallen in the Reyes river while sparring with Vocho and damn near drowned was both blurred by panic and crystal-clear with utter terror. Even training at the guild – masters were supposed to be prepared for any eventuality – hadn’t changed that much.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t, more that she’d rather go out the front gates and risk the guards because it would scare her just that little bit less. Because while splashing about in a backwater was easy enough, even if it did make her knock-kneed with a fright she’d never dared to show, the Reyes river was a cold and heartless mistress. It might be warm spring in Reyes, but up in the mountains the melt was in full swing and the water would be close to freezing. Add to that the currents, which made it a treacherous way to travel even on a boat, worse around the islet that supported one end of the Shrive and… and she didn’t want to go that way.

  She tried hard to ignore a flapping white hand that came through a grille as she passed, to ignore the pleading croak. The Shrive seemed just as full as it ever had been in the days before the prelate, and worse, she was sure she’d helped put people here on her little jobs for Eneko, those she hadn’t killed. And those… She wouldn’t think on it now, but later she was going to recall who he’d had her kill. She hadn’t wanted to question him, which was the thing. She’d put Eneko on a pedestal, loved him and made herself blind to everything but his praise, and now he’d shown he was just like all the others.

  She hurried on, telling herself she’d come back, let these poor bastards out, all of them, and worried that it was an empty promise, that she was just as bad as Eneko, as Petri. Worse even.

  The walls grew darker with damp until she was splashing through puddles. The last few corridors had been ominously silent. Down here was as deep as the Shrive seemed to go. Silent except for the rushing of water beyond the wall to her right hand and the faintest of ticking noises. The waterwheels that ran the city, that powered the gears, the mechanical duellist in the guild, the clock in the square outside the Shrive. That powered the change o’ the clock.

  Today was First Threeday. She’d vaguely heard some chimes go off not long before, putting the time at eleven at night. At midnight the whole city would change. At the moment the king’s Reyes house was across the city, the other side of the guild and the Clockwork God. When the gears ran, when the cogs engaged, the whole city would move except the two buildings that preceded even the Castans, that came from the days before. The guild and the Shrive. And on Second Oneday that whole street and the king’s Reyes house would be just to the north of the Shrive, almost within spitting distance. It would also be close enough to the prelate’s palace to make getting in and giving him the papers a whole lot easier.

  Or it would be as long at the change went smoothly. If it didn’t, if she timed it right and shoved something in the works, the king’s house would be stuck halfway. Not here, or there. Vulnerable, and likely with its guards having a collective fit rather than keeping an eye out for people sneaking about. Might make it easier getting into the palace after too.

  Vulnerable but still too dangerous. Screw it. She was fed up with being the sensible one. Time to bring out the other Kacha, the one Eneko had trained to a sharp, hard point with assurances she was doing a good thing, but most of all with lots of practice running the roofs during a change when everyone was vulnerable.

  Her eyes got used to the dark after a time, enough to make her way without falling over herself, and all those lessons from Eneko came flooding back, the lessons that not everyone got. How to move silently, how to use the shadows, how to balance on a point smaller than the point of her toe. She’d not seen any guards since the last lamp but that was no reason to take chances, especially as she could hear something going on up above – someone was shouting like he wanted the world to know about it, and there was a general mumble of footsteps on stone. It seemed she was being hunted.

  This corridor ended not in a door but blank stone, dripping wet, set with a small, rusted grille. The oily sound of large amounts of water sliding across rock was loud, and the chill of the river flowed through the holes. When she peered through the grille she could make out moonlight far away, almost as though in another time. Closer, the water was slick and black as it rushed through the channel except for little slashes of white, the tips of waves.

  The grille wouldn’t present too much of a problem, she thought – she had Eneko’s knife, and the damp had made the mortar holding the grille soft and easy to prise away. The gap was small, but she’d squeezed through worse.

  No, getting through wasn’t going to be too much of a problem. It was wanting to. Every time she looked at
the water – cold and black – she remembered – can’t breathe – the last time in the river – don’t inhale – how close she’d been to drowning – just stop struggling – before Vocho’s hand had found her. Even thinking about it was making her hold her breath till spots ran in front of her eyes. No one here to save her now. Only the sudden flare of a lamp far back past twists and turns. The echo of Eneko’s voice far away.

  She shut her eyes and tried to drag up some courage, but it was in short supply. Odd half-remembered sounds came back to her, of words heard through water as she sank. The feel of a hand on hers, dragging her back, up into light and air.

  OK, Vocho, you annoying little bastard. I owe you. And you might be a preening, lying little snot rag, but you’re my brother and you’re all I’ve got left. At least I know when you’re lying because your lips move.

  She twisted her way through the gap, wriggling her shoulders to get them through. On the other side she dangled from the lip and took a deep breath. The waterwheels were under there somewhere, along with all the gears and cogs that led from them. She just hoped she found them before they chewed her to bits or she drowned, whichever came first.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  For Egimont entry into the Shrive was easy enough, and he didn’t have to worry overmuch about how to get out again – he was still the prelate’s man, still wore the little badge in his lapel and the coloured flash on his tunic. At the gate he was given a guard to escort him to where Kacha was being held.