by Jen Williams
Fulcor landed as softly as falling snow. Tyranny, Okaar and Jhef were points of movement in the distance, mostly hidden in the shadows.
‘Stay behind me, Eri.’ She spoke, barely moving her lips, her eyes trained on the movement through the trees ahead of them. There was just enough moonlight here to catch the shining flanks of their horses. ‘We will go quietly, surprise them.’
The boy nodded, and cautiously they left the bat behind. Vintage had already cocked her crossbow in readiness, the weight of the extra bolts reassuring at her hip even as her ankle cramped with pain. If Nanthema had been around, if she’d been able to find the woman, she could have been limping into this fight with an ally instead of a frightened boy. She was just raising the crossbow, intending to keep it trained on the back of Tyranny’s head while she shouted at them to stop, when she became aware of two things at once: one of the figures on the horses looked too tall to be either Tyranny or Okaar . . . and the wind in the trees was suddenly too solid somehow.
She whirled around in time to see Okaar dropping from the branches above like a cat. He had a long knife in one hand, and in an instant he had snatched up Eri and had the blade at the boy’s throat. Jerking in surprise, Vintage felt her hand squeeze the trigger before she even knew where she was aiming, and Okaar abruptly flew backwards, three inches of steel bolt poking up from just below his collarbone. Eri scampered back, his hands to his neck, and Vintage was already preparing another bolt while the horses ahead wheeled around.
‘Come any closer and he’s dead!’ With some difficulty she slammed the new bolt home and aimed at Okaar’s chest. ‘And if I miss, well, it’s still a very long and horrible way to die, a bolt to the guts. I’ve heard that you can smell your own shit as you die, my dear, and I would not wish that on you.’
Okaar was as still under her attention as a trapped mouse, his dark eyes betraying no emotion. Tyranny rode forward, her hood thrown back now to reveal her closely shorn head. Her cheeks were flushed.
‘What makes you think I would care, old woman?’
‘Oh please. An assassin this skilled? It would cost you a fortune to replace him. And I suspect his little sister would have something to say about it.’ The girl Jhef was on her own horse, and her face was not quite as expressionless as her brother’s; a flicker of unease twitched at the corner of her mouth, and she held herself too straight. The figure on the third horse was wearing a deep hood, and was keeping back from the others. ‘Let’s have a talk, shall we, my dear? I believe you have some things that belong to us.’
‘Have I?’ Tyranny smiled. ‘I don’t think you know quite as much as you think, Lady de Grazon.’ She turned to address the hooded figure. ‘Come forward, friend.’
No one moved. Vintage watched the flash of anger that passed over the young woman’s face with some alarm. There were depths to her she had not glimpsed, and they appeared to be dangerous ones.
‘You will come forward now, or we will bloody well leave you here, regardless of your help.’ The hooded figure urged their horse forward, until it was level with Tyranny, and then, after a moment’s clear hesitation, pulled down the hood. It was Nanthema.
‘I did not agree to this,’ she said, as though they spoke of borrowing books or which wine to drink with lunch. ‘I wanted to leave quietly.’
‘Nan? Nan, what have you done?’
‘Lady de Grazon,’ said Tyranny, cutting over her smoothly, ‘wouldn’t you agree that the war-beasts are a part of Ebora? That’s what you told the Yuron-Kai, I believe.’
‘I don’t . . .’
‘And surely such important Eboran relics belong to – well, they belong to Eborans. Like this Eboran woman. Not, for example, this posh woman from the vine forests.’
For a second, Vintage was so angry that she considered shooting Okaar in the throat anyway.
‘All we’re doing really is helping Nanthema with her birthright. And some other bits and bobs.’
‘Other bits and bobs? You mean the journal of Micanal the Clearsighted, which rightfully belongs to Eri here? Or the blood you took from Helcate, what of that?’ She shook her head, dismissing the cheek of the woman. ‘Nan, what were you thinking? These people nearly burned down the palace! You would take the pods away from their siblings? Where, by Sarn’s blessed bones, do you expect to go?’
Although it was a chilly night, a steady line of sweat was trickling down Vintage’s back. It was hard to keep an eye on both Okaar, who remained on the ground next to her, and the figures on horseback. Her ankle ached steadily.
‘It doesn’t matter!’ Nanthema shook her head lightly, half smiling. ‘Anywhere but here. That’s all I wanted, to go away, but you wouldn’t listen. You’re so caught up in this . . . whatever this is.’
‘It’s the Ninth Rain, Nan.’ Vintage adjusted her grip on the crossbow. ‘You know very bloody well what it is.’
‘Well, I missed twenty years of my life, Vin. And I’m just supposed to hang around Ebora, waiting to die? No.’ She pressed her lips into a thin line. ‘Tyranny can get me over the mountains, and across the plains. To Jarlsbad, if I want. Or Reidn.’
‘And if the worm people come?’
‘Then I will watch them from a distance.’ For the first time she looked afraid. ‘I thought they were long dead. That it was safe to poke around their old ruins. But they’re not, and it’s not. I’m not staying here to watch your half-made war-beasts die.’
‘So, there you have it,’ said Tyranny. ‘I hope that’s all you really need to say, because I’m getting bored.’ Snake-quick, she reached across and grabbed Nanthema by the hair, yanking the taller woman’s head down to meet hers, while her other hand became a fist of green fire. Winnowflames lit up the night, turning everything a sickly shade of blue-green.
Vintage took an involuntary step backwards. ‘You’re a fell-witch?!’
‘I like you, Vintage, so I’m going to assume your new fondness for stating the obvious is the result of you taking a knock to the head or something. Back off, drop that clever little crossbow, or I will roast the face off this one here.’
Nanthema protested, pulling back, but Tyranny brought the fist of flame around to dance perilously close to her long black hair. The tall Eboran woman immediately stopped moving.
‘I know you are strong, lady, but strong doesn’t make much difference to fire. That’s one of the things I learned in Mushenska.’
‘So everything you told me about who you are – that was a lie?’ Vintage kept herself very still. She had not lowered her crossbow, and Okaar still lay on the ground, his shirt dark with blood. She needed time to think, and she was remembering how talkative Tyranny had been while they had eaten dinner together in their caravan.
The young woman smiled, and it looked genuine enough. ‘Not at all. That story was completely true, it’s just that I . . . told it from a different angle.’ She grinned. ‘I tell it pretty well, don’t I?’
‘You were the leader of the Salts? You were O’Keefe, the woman who burned people in her pit?’
Tyranny inclined her head, even as she kept a firm grip on Nanthema’s hair.
‘Someone in your gang ratted you out, and you ended up in the Winnowry. Did you escape? Where is the tattoo?’
Tyranny snorted. ‘They decided I was a special case. If you want to hide something, you don’t put a bloody great sign on it telling everyone what it is. Do you really think all their agents fly around on giant bats with big wings printed on their heads? Speaking of which—’
A huge indistinct shape dropped from the sky, and suddenly Vintage was off her feet and face down in the dirt. She scrambled up, looking for Eri; instead she saw two enormous bats, both with Winnowry agent riders. One was a thin white woman with a sour face, and the other was a woman with brown skin and black hair held back by a scarf. She glanced at Vintage once and then dismissed her, turning to Tyranny with an aggrieved expression.
‘What’s all this? Do you have what you came for?’
There was no sign of Eri. With a
bit of luck the boy had run off. Vintage was just lifting the crossbow again, when a pair of arms snaked around her throat, holding her still with an impressive show of strength.
‘Do not move,’ said Okaar. Vintage could smell his blood. He shifted slightly, then added, ‘Sorry.’
‘Shit.’
Tyranny and the Winnowry agent were engaged in a mild sort of argument. Vintage could see from the set of the agent’s mouth that she was not pleased to see an Eboran with them, while the other agent had climbed down from her bat and was busily inspecting the large packs tied to the two spare horses. Seeing them, and knowing that the war-beast pods must be in there, Vintage felt her chest growing hot and tight.
‘You weren’t supposed to bring anyone out with you,’ said the agent with the scarf. ‘We want Eboran artefacts, not actual bloodsuckers.’
‘She made it easier for us, so we drew up a deal.’ Tyranny had doused her own flames and released Nanthema. She leaned back in her saddle, as if they were discussing the price of wine. ‘There’s no need to put your outraged face on, Maritza, I’ve got everything you wanted – blood samples, artwork, a fancy book. And three war-beast pods.’ She grinned fiercely, although there was no humour in her eyes. ‘You should be congratulating me. Us. For a job well done.’
Agent Maritza blew air between her teeth. ‘And yet I turn up to find you arguing with a stranger, with an extra passenger for us and your pet assassin wounded. Perhaps our definitions of success aren’t in alignment.’
Tyranny shook her head and looked away – a pointed dismissal. ‘Whatever. I’ll kill these two, and then you can take the goods away. We’ll make the rest of the journey over land.’
‘Two? What do you mean, these two? I thought you’d made a deal with this Eboran woman.’
Vintage stiffened in Okaar’s grip. Tyranny had failed to notice Eri’s absence.
‘The kid. Where’s he gone? There was a pasty little kid here . . .’
‘Pasty?’ said Vintage. ‘You’ve got a cheek. Agent Maritza, my dear, can I ask what the Winnowry are thinking by committing an act of war against Ebora? Stealing their sacred property and murdering their citizens?’
‘Ignore her,’ snapped Tyranny. ‘Jhef, go and fetch the kid, he’ll be skulking around the trees here somewhere, I reckon. I don’t think he has the balls to go running back to the palace in the dark.’
The girl slipped down from her horse silently, but by then Vintage had caught another noise on the breeze. She looked up, ignoring how Tyranny summoned her winnowfire into a fiery glove.
‘I’ll kill the old one first,’ she said, and to Vintage’s wonder there was a noticeable touch of regret in her voice. ‘You should have just let us leave, Lady de Grazon. Contrary to what you might think, I don’t actually like killing people – not clever people, anyway. Okaar, step away.’
Vintage felt the man hesitate. She lifted her chin, still half listening for the noise she had heard before.
‘Then why not get your man here to do it? If he’s an assassin, I reckon he has a hundred different ways to kill me painlessly. But you want to burn me alive, don’t you?’ She put on her sunniest smile. ‘Kill me, if you must, but don’t pretend you aren’t some kind of worm-spat monster, Tyranny O’Keefe.’
Nanthema’s face was a mask of shock, white and almost unseeing inside its frame of black hair. Tyranny opened her mouth to reply to that, when abruptly a stream of something that looked like water blasted the side of her, splashing over her right arm, leg and part of her throat. She jumped back in surprise, and then started screaming as a thin white smoke began to rise from her clothes and skin. The horse, which had also been splashed by the substance, shook its head and began to buck convulsively.
‘What is happening?’ demanded Agent Maritza. ‘What are you doing, Fell-Tyranny?’
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
The war-beast appeared above them, great wings keeping him hovering just under the treeline. In the darkness and the moonlight, he was an alarming sight, a shifting, strange thing – not griffin, not dragon. Something else. He opened his mouth, and a stream of fluid shot forth again, this time hitting the second Winnowry agent straight in the face. She went down bellowing with pain.
For a time, all was chaos. Okaar was immediately gone, and just as swiftly Vintage could not see the girl Jhef; they seemed to have vanished into the darkness. Agent Maritza scrambled down from her bat and swept a barrage of fireballs into the air, which caused Helcate to rise back up above the canopy. Vintage limped rapidly over to where Nanthema sat, watching everything with a slack expression on her face.
‘Vintage, I didn’t think . . . I thought we would just be stealing and running . . .’
‘Shut up. Which bags have the pods in?’
‘There are two pods on the black horse, one on the other.’
Vintage reached for the bags on the nearest horse and pulled loose several straps, only to see Okaar running out of the dark towards her. He had a short blade in each hand, and Vintage scrambled to get her crossbow up and aimed at him in time. She fired, too high, and he easily ducked it before coming on, barely slowing up at all.
‘Shit!’
There was a roar from Helcate and the war-beast dropped down from above them, partially landing on the assassin and knocking him heavily into the dirt. Amazingly, Okaar slashed at the war-beast with one of his blades, but Helcate spat forth more acid in a strange hiccupping movement, and Okaar was writhing on the ground, white smoke rising from his skin and clothes. Belatedly, Vintage realised that Eri was sitting on Helcate’s back, his fists deep in the war-beast’s fur.
‘Stop it!’ It was Tyranny. She had detached herself from her horse and was approaching them with a pair of fiery spheres hovering over her outstretched hands. Her neck looked like it had been badly scalded, and already there were fat, yellowish blisters puckering her skin. Agent Maritza came along behind her, her eyes wide with shock. ‘Leave him alone!’
‘My dear, are you out of your fucking mind?’ Vintage turned the crossbow on them, newly loaded, but before she could get a shot off, a huge blossom of green fire billowed towards her. Vintage dived towards the horses in time to see Nanthema riding off on one of them. The bags she had managed to loosen had fallen onto the ground, and Vintage began to wriggle towards them before realising that the tail of her jacket was on fire. Gasping with horror – the compound, the fire, it’s all happening again – she turned and rolled herself in the dirt. Helcate was advancing on the two fell-witches, hissing and snorting.
‘I would have been happy with blood, but I can take a war-beast body back too!’ shouted Tyranny, and she released another of the huge fireballs. Helcate leapt up into the air, beating once with his great wings, and although Vintage caught the sharp scent of burning hair, the fireball did not reach him. He hissed again, making the strange hiccupping motion, while, on his back, Eri looked stricken.
Whatever that is he is spitting, he has run out. Sarn’s bones, our bastard luck!
Vintage raised her crossbow again, steadying it by resting her elbows on her knees, and fired. Tyranny staggered back from the shot, which had landed deep in the meat of her thigh. The fire she had been building winked out of existence, but Agent Maritza stepped up to take her place.
‘Enough of this,’ she said tersely. ‘What a bloody mess.’
She raised her arms to put an end to them all, when Fulcor swept down out of the sky. She took hold of the agent with her flexible back feet and swept her up and into the trees, where Vintage could hear the woman shrieking with outrage. After a moment, a blossom of green fire belched out of the canopy, and parts of it started to burn.
‘Fulcor!’
There was no time. Vintage limped over to where Tyranny lay on the floor, and struck her between the eyes with the butt of her crossbow. The woman did not go down cleanly; blood burst from the skin there and her eyes rolled back into her head, but she groaned and struggled in the dirt.
‘Oh, bloody stay d
own, if you know what’s good for you.’
Vintage looked around. Okaar was unconscious in the dirt, Nanthema had fled. The second Winnowry agent lay where she had fallen, possibly dead – Vintage did not like to think what happened if you got that acid in your eyes, or if you swallowed any of it – and Helcate and Eri waited nearby, the war-beast breathing heavily, his blue eyes oddly silver in the poor light. He was bleeding from the shallow wound Okaar had given him, and as she watched, he staggered, going to his knees in the mud.
‘He’s so tired,’ said Eri mournfully, who also sounded as though he might pass out at any moment. ‘Everything is heavy.’
‘I know dear, I know, I just—’ The trees above were burning merrily, and there was no sign of the Winnowry agent. ‘Fulcor? Fulcor!’
There was a high-pitched trill, and Fulcor swept back down towards them. She had black marks on her white fur and her ear looked a little ragged, but she came over and nosed at Vintage’s pockets.
‘Yes, my darling, just a moment . . .’
The small shape shot out of the dark much as her brother had done, and Jhef leapt up onto the horse still carrying the last war-beast pod. Seeing Vintage distracted, Tyranny scrambled up and threw herself at another of the horses, suddenly moving very swiftly for a stunned woman. Without a second look at her prone sibling, Jhef kicked at her mount and the two of them were away, Tyranny leaning over her saddle. In moments they were lost to sight.
Sighing heavily, Vintage rooted around in her pockets and removed a string of dried meat, which she passed to a grateful Fulcor.
‘I will be honest with you, this hasn’t been my best day.’
By the time they had gathered what they could – they had saved two of the three war-beast pods, and happily Micanal’s journal had been in one of the fallen bags – the sky was a dirty, rusty pink. Vintage could not bring herself to check whether Okaar was alive or not, and reasoned that if he was, he would be more likely to go after his sister than go back to Ebora. The Winnowry agent was certainly dead; from the purple hue of her face and the thickness of her neck, Vintage guessed that the acid had swollen her throat shut. Of the other Winnowry agent, there was no sign, and she was happy enough not to look for her. Their bats had flown off when the fighting had started, but if Agent Maritza was still alive, she would be able to summon them back.