Swords and Scoundrels

by Julia Knight

  Beyond the gate a white gravel path shone faintly in the smoky dark. Her clothes were still wet, so she hooked a piece of her shirt over her mouth to help keep out the smoke, took a last look around for Petri and plunged on.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Petri lost sight of Kacha in the thickening smoke. What in seven hells did she think she was doing? Why rescue that little piss-stain Vocho, especially if it meant risking herself? If Petri could do one thing, it was stop her in this madness. Maybe he’d get himself out of trouble too, while he was at it, because he’d realised about Sabates, what he was truly capable of. He’d known from the start he wasn’t a good man, but it was only the events of the last few days that had shown him just how far from good he was. Petri was always too late to realise, first about the prelate, then about Kacha and how he felt, and now Licio and Sabates.

  He couldn’t see Kacha but knew where she was heading and he didn’t have to sneak. With a hand over his mouth, he ran for the front door as best he could over ground that tipped away at an alarming level.

  A figure loomed out of the darkness with something in its hand, but he gave it a quick shove, heard a muffled curse and ran on. He grabbed a sword from and knocked aside a guard who tried to stop him, warn him probably, as if his eyes couldn’t tell him the place was afire. The sword wasn’t anything like as good as his own, but it would do. Smoke curled about his ankles in the empty hallway and obscured the vast painting of Licio that dominated the far wall. It looked like it was coming from the small door hidden under the stairs that led down to the basement where Vocho was being held.

  She’d be here somewhere, had to be, but she wasn’t the woman he’d thought. Not honest, straightforward Kacha, always fidgeting, never still. No, she was all that and more. For whatever reasons that he could only guess at, she was, or had been, Eneko’s assassin. All that time, and he’d thought it was Vocho, that it was what made him preen so much, where all that money came from. He’d wanted it to be Vocho and let that blind him. So had Licio because that’s what Petri had told him.

  He kept as still as he could given the seep of smoke choking his throat in the shadows by the door that led where he knew she wanted to go. It wasn’t long before a hint of movement caught his eye. If he hadn’t been looking, he’d never have seen her. No sound of footfalls or creaking leather, just a moving shadow that separated from the rest, and there she was like one of the optical illusions the prelate’s artist loved so much. Now the shadow of a statue, now Kacha.

  He stepped forward and was instantly greeted with a drawn dagger. She wore the face of a woman who would not be crossed, and despite having a sword he held up his hands. It was speak or die, he knew that.

  “If there’s this much smoke up here, then down there’s an inferno,” he whispered, he didn’t know why. “Vocho’s dead or as good as. Why risk your life to save him?”

  A twist of her face, and the knife was hard up against his chest. “Because he’s my brother. Less fickle than you, for all his faults.”

  “Fickle? I—” The blade pressed further, and he’d learned not to push her when she wouldn’t be pushed. “He tried to kill you, you know that? That and more. And yet you want to save him and perhaps kill yourself in the process. Leave him! Leave the little shit to himself and live. With me.”

  The smile was pained but real enough. “Kill me? Ah, the trick that sent me into the river. And not all he did, not by the longest shot of any clockwork gun. I know, Petri. I always knew. I knew that our da beat seven shades of snot out of him, and I know why too. I know why Da loved me more, why I was always the perfect one, but I didn’t want to be. God’s cogs, no. I had to be perfect, and who is that? Still I try. I have to be the best because otherwise Da’d hate me too, and I couldn’t bear that, and I know it’s crazy wanting two opposite things at once. I know that Vocho hates me, but he loves me too, same as I hate and love him. He’s a lying son of a bastard but he never expected or wanted me to be perfect, just expected me to be me. For a time there I wanted to be perfect for you too, like I had to be perfect for Da, for Eneko. You and your bloody honour, and your lies. It was never you wanting me, was it? No, it was you poking around for the prelate or the king. It was all one big fucking lie from you, wasn’t it?”

  “No, Kacha, I swear—”

  “I told Eneko, you know, the morning after you gave me your ring, before I found Vocho and the dead priest. Told him I didn’t want to do his dark jobs any more, didn’t want to be his personal killer. I told Voch I didn’t like the killing part but truth was, I was sick of it. Sick of being who Eneko wanted me to be, of having to be perfect for him too. I’m finished with being perfect, you hear? I’m finished with being what everyone else wants me to be. So you can stick whatever it was you were about to say while I go and get my brother.”

  The dagger vanished from his chest, and Kacha disappeared.

  No sign of her in the smoke so he headed for the door under the stairs, not sure even as he did so what he was intending to do. He only knew that whatever it was, it would happen down there.

  The stairs were thick with smoke, and when he set a hand to the wall, the stones were warm to the touch. He had a sudden wild urge to run back up the stairs, out of the house, out of Reyes, out of the whole damned country. But he was an Egimont, however sullied that name, and that meant no going back once you’d chosen a course or given your word. His only problem was deciding which word he’d stick with.

  Voices echoed up the stairwell, distorted by distance, muffled by smoke. He couldn’t mistake Licio’s panicked squeak though.

  “Bakar’s behind this, he must be! Stopping the clockwork, who else could it be? He found out too soon. Those papers… This wretch –” a thud and a groan as though he’d kicked someone “– and his sister. You were supposed to be infallible. You promised me my throne, now do it!”

  And I swore myself to this infant. Why? Because he seemed better than the alternative. Maybe he even was until Sabates turned up.

  There was no mistaking Sabates’ oily voice as he started to reply, nor the sudden whumph! as something in the room caught fire, drowning his words. More smoke came, thick and black, choking. He’d have left then, no matter anything else – honour, promises, the thoughts of revenge and redemption that had driven him this far – if it hadn’t been for the soft sound of a footfall just ahead and the shadowed swirl of fair hair he recognised even through the smoke. In the last few hours he’d learned a lot about Kacha – that she’d been a pawn as much as he ever had, though a more deadly one – and now here she was, walking into a death trap to save a brother who was worth less than his piss.

  Below, Sabates said something Egimont couldn’t catch except “… now or not at all”. The smell of burned blood briefly overpowered everything else, making Egimont gag, and then it was gone.

  So was Kacha, and Egimont followed without thought.

  The room was a square box of stone, its floor once strewn with rank rushes and straw that smouldered sullenly where they hadn’t burned completely away. The one small window, which was more of a slit, had been masked by both curtains and shutters. The whumph! Egimont had heard was them catching fire. There was plenty else left to burn – papers, a couple of chairs. Vocho, chained to a wall, eyes squeezed shut, would probably burn well enough too.

  Egimont peered past the burning of his eyes and the choke in his throat, but he couldn’t see Sabates anywhere.

  He’d been going to save Kacha, from herself and from Vocho. From Licio and Sabates too, perhaps. It looked like he’d missed his chance. She had Licio by the front of his doublet, the dagger shoved up under his chin. The king gaped like the idiot he always had been, just that Egimont had been too stupid to see it.

  “Keys,” she hissed.

  Licio stuttered something, so scared he looked like he might piss himself, but a shadow moved behind her in the darkest corner and he suddenly regained some sort of coherence and a modicum of courage. “Unhand me at once!” If the situation
hadn’t been so dire, it would have been laughable, but it was pure Licio.

  The shadow resolved into Sabates, his dark hood melting into the darkness at his back. The patterns on his hands jumped and flared, wriggled and spun, turned into all manner of barbarous deaths that made Petri’s stomach roil, and the smell of burning blood filled the air.

  “Kacha!” Petri and Vocho shouted together.

  She didn’t miss a beat. Still holding Licio, she turned and threw the dagger all in one movement. A dagger was never going to be enough to kill a magician like Sabates. It dissolved in midflight, droplets of metal hissing as they fell to the smouldering rushes.

  Kacha swore under her breath as Petri fumbled for the blade he’d stolen upstairs. Even now he wasn’t sure he knew who he was going to use it on.

  A scalpel appeared in Sabates’ hand as Kacha stood nonplussed for half a heartbeat – half a heartbeat too long. A step forward, a slash of the scalpel along Vocho’s upstretched arm, and the smell of burning blood grew stronger, richer, more nauseating.

  The cuffs on Vocho’s chains dissolved as quickly as the dagger had, sending him sprawling. Kacha dumped Licio, leaving him to fall bonelessly to the floor, and was halfway to the magician armed with nothing but her bare hands and fury when Vocho got to his feet like a badly managed puppet and all but fell in front of her.

  “Looks like you were right, Vocho,” Sabates said. “She’ll never join Licio. So I’m afraid you’ll have to kill her.”

  The sizzle of blood was the loudest thing in the room.

  Interlude

  Three months earlier

  Vocho stared out of the window for a while, then paced up and down. The priest’s chanting in the next room stayed just loud enough to be annoying.

  He hoped Kacha would be back soon because he was bored stupid cooped up on his own playing nanny to a priest. He didn’t really expect her though – she’d gone out all wreathed in smiles because Petri bloody Egimont was taking her somewhere special for their last night for however long it was going to be.

  But he was going to be good and not sneak out. He’d been doing his best to be good for a while now, ever since Petri had made it clear he knew exactly what sort of person Vocho was. He’d tried, really tried, not to boast or crow to Kacha when he beat her sparring. He’d done his best to stop doing all the petty things that made him feel better than her, even if it was only briefly, but it came hard because it was a reflex now. He’d stopped running the books, betting against her in the courtyard when the masters practised. He hadn’t stopped betting though, and right now he wished he was in a certain little den of iniquity he knew with a certain lady he’d recently become friends with. Playing cards or dice, perhaps laying a bet on some ridiculousness, like the time the owner had brought in a box of frogs and they’d wagered on which one would hop out of the place quickest.

  He wanted to be there right now, even if his luck had run out these last weeks, catastrophically so. Not to worry – the pay from this job would put it right, even if he didn’t skim any extra, and he’d mostly stopped doing that as well. Mostly. This job also had the advantage that he’d be out of Reyes and away from his numerous creditors for the foreseeable future.

  A discreet tap on the door below caught his attention. He took a look out of the window and grinned. A certain lady was on the doorstep.

  He opened the door to her, and she wafted in like a summer breeze in silk and pearls.

  “Alicia.” He kissed the back of one delicate gloved hand.

  “Vocho. I missed you at the gaming table, then I recalled you had this dreary job so I thought I’d come and relieve the boredom for you.”

  Vocho led her through into the small sitting room he and Kacha had been using. The priest was still chanting upstairs, and Vocho kept half an ear open. Eneko had been very firm with his instructions, even if he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them much about the job. A delicate situation he’d called it. Apparently the priest was some sort of diplomat. Which meant they were probably going to Ikaras. The two countries had been squabbling over their mutual border – not to mention the rich seams of metal that ran under it – for years, and a fair few duellists had permanent jobs up there. By all accounts, things had been rumbling towards hostilities, perhaps even war, though Vocho wasn’t one for paying attention to all that when he could be enjoying himself.

  Alicia sat, cool and elegant, by the small fire that warmed the room against the foggy chill of late winter in Reyes.

  “Come sit by me, Vocho. Leave your silly priest to his chants.”

  Vocho didn’t hesitate. He and Alicia had been friends for a week or two now, and although he’d never figured out if she had anyone else – a lady as beautiful as Alicia wouldn’t have a shortage of offers, but she was coy about it – he’d been tempted lately to make it something a bit more. From the look on her face, Alicia was perhaps starting to think the same. Which would at least make the evening much less boring.

  She smiled up at him, and her gloved hand made for his knee. Oh, that looked promising. “I was wondering if you’d do me a little favour,” she said. “Just a little one.”

  “I’m sure I can manage,” he said, and then, “Ow! God’s cogs, what was that?”

  A scalpel, that’s what, drawing blood from his leg. Alicia looked up at him with a dreamy expression on her face. “Just a little bit. For now.”

  “What the hells do you—”

  Alicia peeled off her gloves and ran a finger through the blood dripping off his thigh. It sizzled as she touched it. That wasn’t what held his attention, but rather the smell of burned blood and the markings on her hands. They squirmed and moved like worms across her skin, looking now to be crossed swords, now a deck of cards fanned out, now a set of dice, now a woman falling in water and drowning, which made him shudder. He didn’t want to look but couldn’t pull his eyes away, and his head seemed fuzzy, as though the rest of the world had gone away and all that existed were him and those hands.

  So he wasn’t sure when the man came, never noticed much about him. Only an impression of dark eyes that made him shiver, a low, smooth voice, more patterned hands, the reek and sizzle of burned blood. The patterns showed a dagger dripping with gore.

  “Just a small favour,” he said into Vocho’s ear. “I need you to kill someone. That’s what duellists do, isn’t it?”

  “No! No… I… Well, if I have to, only…”

  “Don’t you want to be the greatest duellist who ever lived? This will have your name remembered through the ages. Or, I suppose, we could ask your sister. Perhaps she’d be a better bet anyway.”

  The patterns moved again, scrambling his brain. Now they were people cheering, and he could have sworn he heard them calling his name then the patterns twisted and it was Kacha’s name they were calling.

  “No. No, Kacha doesn’t like the killing part. Never has.”

  A soft little laugh made Vocho want to sick up everything he’d ever eaten. “So you it is then. A small favour. Yes? Or let Kacha take all the glory, like she always has?”

  Now her hands showed him the guillotine from that day when he’d been just a kid needing a pee, when he’d seen heads roll across the square, only this time he knew somehow one head was his.

  “Who?” It was an effort even to say that much.

  “The priest. Kill him, and your name will be known as the greatest duellist who ever lived.”

  That couldn’t be right, could it? He couldn’t seem to think clearly, but he’d promised to protect the priest, and the guild wouldn’t take it well if he betrayed that promise. Alicia said something in a murmur that he couldn’t catch except “… harder than we thought”.

  The man sighed. “This blood was hard to come by. I was hoping to save it, but needs must.”

  Then there was a blinding pain in Vocho’s back as something sliced into him. After that he didn’t recall much at all.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The pain in his back was excruciating. If he
wanted it to go away, he had to do what the voice asked, that was all he knew. A figure wavered in front of him. Smaller than he was and vaguely familiar. “Kill her,” the voice said, soft in his head. Kill first and worry about it later. Seemed sensible. Not like it’d be the first time, though hadn’t that ended badly? He couldn’t recall.

  He blinked away the sweat from his eyes, and he could see more clearly. Kacha, wasn’t that Kacha? The pain in his back twisted further, and a blade appeared in his hand. He had to kill her or… or… or something very dire would happen. “Kill her,” the voice said again. Hadn’t he tried to that time in the river? Didn’t his dark half dream of just that, her being out of the way and leaving him all the glory? All the adulation? Hadn’t he wanted it for as long as he could remember? To best her once and for all so he could say to Da, “Look at me, I’m the perfect one.”

  He could beat her, he knew that. He was stronger, had better reach, was less inclined to stick to the rules, which was his best advantage. He could beat her, but it was only his ego that told him it was his name they called. It never was, except when he paid them to. Always her. Even when she lost, even when he beat her fair and square, it was never him they called for.

  “Not so perfect now, is she?” the whisper said. “Even less perfect when she’s dead.”

  He rubbed at his eyes with his spare hand. She was just standing there, watching him. Waiting for him.

  He couldn’t. Oh, he wanted her to fail all right, he wanted her to stop being so fucking perfect, he wanted people to look at him and see something more than just her brother. But he was a guildsman through and through. Stupid though the rules were, there were some even he wouldn’t break, and she didn’t have a blade. Besides, she was his sister too, and he loved her when he remembered.

  The voice subsided but the pain grew, blinding bright, until he couldn’t see anything else. All he knew was there was someone in front of him, and he had to kill them if he wanted the pain to go away.