The Liar's Knot

by M. A. Carrick

  He’d seen dogfights and bear-baitings often enough to recognize the same bloodlust in the cries of the cuffs. He let a lifetime of resentment at their hypocrisy power his voice as he shouted, “Members of the Illius Praeteri, stand down and surrender yourselves to Iridet’s justice.”

  Inscribe under “words I never thought I’d say in my life.”

  But there was no time to savor the irony. Ripping one of the copper rods from the frame, Vargo surged forward and applied it to the back of the first set of knees in range. “In accordance with the”—his elbow smashed into Infassa Cleoter’s nose—“Charter for the Purification”—a knee in Ebrigotto Attravi’s groin—“of Heretical Numinatria.”

  The rod was a copper streak aimed at Sureggio Extaquium’s head, but the man ducked before it connected. And in the space left behind, Vargo spotted Ren—no, the Black Rose—slumped in the center of a fried numinat, leather armor and hair slick from the rain and skin paler than usual.

  Yelps and curses told him his people weren’t far behind, and he heard the familiar metallic clink of Varuni’s chain whip doing its work. As a punch came toward his face, he dropped to his knees and skidded across the tiles toward Ren, reaching for the rope that bound her ankles. If they’d killed her…

  One black-gloved hand batted at him when he reached for the rope. “I’ve got it,” Ren said, even if the weak rasp of her words put that into question. “Catch the others. Ghiscolo’s not here.”

  Sedge dropped to his knees next to Vargo, a flash of lightning illuminating a face bleached with fear. “I’ve got her. You—watch out!”

  A boot crashed into Vargo’s hip, sending a flare of pain up his back. He rolled and came to his feet—

  And found himself facing Diomen.

  You’ll do, Vargo thought grimly. It looked like some of the Praeteri were escaping via another exit, but his people had corralled most of them. They’d be quick enough to sell each other out; street knots had ten times the loyalty of cuffs looking to save their own asses. And if Ghiscolo wasn’t here, that meant Vargo didn’t have to split his attention.

  He palmed two knives. Iridet could just deal with not having the Pontifex alive to prosecute.

  But he never got close. As he leapt, Diomen brought his hands together. Vargo had a heartbeat to see two semicircular pieces of a numinat in his grip, before they joined into a whole—and the world blew away.

  Vargo was in midair, the rain frozen around him while everything else slid past. That’s odd, he thought… before his perspective righted itself. The world wasn’t moving, he was; Vargo was flying backward off the roof, and fuck fuck fuck—

  He hit the tiles and slid toward the low railing that guarded the edge. Not low enough: His body went right under. His desperate snatch wrapped his fingers around one of the bars, but only for a moment; his weight was too much, the metal slicked by rain, and he couldn’t hold on.

  Vargo fell.

  For half an instant, before he stopped with a sudden wrench of his shoulder. Another pained grunt overlaid his. Slitting his eyes against sheeting water that stung like ice, Vargo looked up… into a hood that held only shadows where a face should be.

  The Rook.

  Isla Extaquium, Eastbridge: Canilun 17

  The Rook should have followed Vargo’s people.

  But he’d believed that up the side of Extaquium Manor would be faster than shoving through the party inside… and he’d been reluctant to follow along like another minion. Unfortunately, a renovation had removed the decrepit balcony he had planned to use as a waypoint, and by the time he found a new path to the roof, the chaos was in full blast.

  Vargo’s people fighting. Praeteri escaping. Ren curled on her side, and Sedge hunched over her.

  He knew which of those places he needed to be—right up until the moment Vargo got blasted off the roof.

  He stared down at the man he’d caught, dangling like a baited hook over the rain-flooded plaza several stories below. He’d lunged for Vargo on reflex. Now he had to make a choice.

  It’s possible the fall won’t kill him.

  Vargo’s free hand wrapped around his rescuer’s forearm, but the Rook’s silk sleeve was too loose to provide a secure grip. And the lip of the rooftop jutted out too far to offer a foothold.

  The shouting behind him didn’t drown out the unsteadiness of Vargo’s voice—nerves, fatigue, a breath of laughter at something that wasn’t the least bit funny. “This is all very dramatic, but if that’s the only reason you’re not pulling me up…”

  “I’m trying to find a reason I should.”

  For the first time in weeks, the Rook was nowhere in Grey’s thoughts. It was only him, looking down at the man who’d… not murdered Kolya, not on purpose, but he’d orchestrated the explosion. The fact that Vargo had saved Grey’s life didn’t make up for that.

  A cry lodged in his throat, all the things he’d lost because of this kinless bastard’s greed and carelessness. The wound in his heart didn’t fucking care if it was all to take down Indestor, the Praeteri, the same things Grey despised and the Rook fought against. It didn’t care if Vargo hadn’t intended for anyone to get hurt.

  An accident: like Vargo slipping from the roof. He might not die. Let pattern and gravity decide his fate. In the absence of any adjustment, Grey’s hold was slipping, his arm straining under the weight. Eyes wide with fear, Vargo tried to grab the rooftop edge with his free hand, only for his fine eelskin glove to slip like it was greased.

  “The Rook doesn’t kill.” His whisper was almost lost in the fall of the rain.

  “No,” Grey said. “But if I remove this hood… I’m just a man.” One who’s dreamed of this moment for far too long.

  The Rook would abandon him if he let Vargo fall. Ren would abandon him. Two new wounds in his heart, to replace the one he wanted so desperately to heal with the balm of revenge.

  But that wouldn’t heal anything. And as much as Grey would hate himself for not avenging Kolya… he would hate himself more if he did.

  Grey caught Vargo’s flailing hand, dragging the man high enough that he could hook one leg over the edge. Vargo hauled himself up to sprawl on his stomach as though embracing safety.

  He expected to feel hollow inside. Bitter. He’d had his chance, and he’d given it up.

  Instead he felt like he’d had his chance… and he’d taken it.

  “That’s for Serrado,” he said, and left Vargo to wonder over what he meant. Turning away, he crossed the terrace in search of the Rose.

  The chaos had ended. The man he assumed was the Pontifex was nowhere to be seen, but Vargo’s people had the remainder well in hand, and Ren stood a little distance apart, watching him.

  “I couldn’t get to you in time,” he said in a low voice as he drew near.

  She touched his arm. The black lace of her mask didn’t hide her mouth, and the trace of relief there. “It’s all right. I’m fine… and you were where you needed to be.”

  23

  Two Roads Cross

  Eastbridge, Upper Bank: Canilun 18

  Grey thought, when he headed across the river to Eastbridge with Beldipassi in tow, that the hardest part of this meeting would be facing Vargo.

  Not because of any turmoil in his heart. That moment on the rooftop had brought him unexpected peace; he’d dreamed of Kolya last night, and for the first time since his brother’s death, it hadn’t hurt. No, he just didn’t know how to behave around Vargo now. Whether to fake a rage that had faded, just to keep the man from wondering at its absence.

  But when he walked into Vargo’s study, the real challenge turned out to be not smiling at Ren like the new lover he was. They hadn’t publicly met in these personas since the Traementis adoption ball, and so much had changed since then.

  Letting the others see their newfound intimacy would spark noble gossip, though. Not to mention they didn’t want Vargo thinking too hard about the partnership between Renata Viraudax and the recently ex-captain Grey Serrado. That man had
an inconveniently sharp mind. So Grey gave Renata what he hoped looked like a sufficiently polite and distant nod… and then he gave another to the Rook.

  There was something deeply peculiar about seeing the hood and those shadows from the outside, when he was so used to wearing them. As with Dockwall, though, the easiest way to convince someone there was no link between himself and the Rook was to put them both in view at the same time. And he hadn’t needed to plead nearly as hard as he expected to convince Ryvček to join them. She said it was because she couldn’t pass up the chance to see one of the medallions destroyed, even if all the hard work of making it happen was done by other people, and Grey had no doubt that was true.

  But there was another truth they didn’t voice. Ryvček was worried about him. And Grey couldn’t say she was wrong.

  At his side, Beldipassi bobbed an actual bow to the Rook, as if Nadežra’s most notorious outlaw held a seat in the Cinquerat. Tanaquis was already there, apparently having erred regarding punctuality in the other direction for once. From her mutters, she was of two minds about trying to destroy an ancient numinatrian artifact, torn between outrage at the idea and curiosity as to how it could be done. The fact that the artifact called on a Primordial didn’t seem to bother her at all.

  It bothered Grey, more deeply than he wanted to think about. Even with Ryvček in the hood, he felt a skin-crawling mix of horror and rage as Beldipassi hesitantly took the silk-wrapped bundle from his pocket and unwrapped it to reveal the gold disc of Illi-zero.

  “The Rook told me you could remove the Prim—The… influence… once it was destroyed?” Beldipassi’s voice was as unsteady as his hand as his gaze flicked hopefully between Tanaquis and Vargo.

  The look the two inscriptors traded was less than encouraging. “The curse, yes,” Tanaquis said, bending over Beldipassi’s hand like a courting suitor. Her nose was a breath away from brushing the medallion as she examined it, and Grey had to clamp his arms at his sides to keep from dragging her to a safer distance—as if there were such a thing. “But Vargo and I have been discussing what’s known about Primordials, and his own experience with the effects. It likely isn’t possible to remove the influence A’ash has had on your mind.”

  Only Grey’s hand at Beldipassi’s back kept him from fainting or fleeing. Tanaquis blinked at the medallion now fallen to the floorboards. Vargo groaned and rubbed at his face.

  “What Tanaquis means,” he said, shooting a glare at her, “is that we believe a Primordial’s drive can only be increased, not removed, through the medallions. It isn’t in the nature of Primordials to be what they are not. We can only wait for that influence to fade with time.”

  “But it will fade?”

  Vargo stepped back to avoid Beldipassi grabbing his coat. “Yes. But it will take sincere effort on your part—you’ll have to change your behavior. Given the medallion you have, that would mean seeing things through to the end rather than always launching new ventures.”

  Grey bit back an amused snort. He could understand leveraging any chance to make Beldipassi water his behavior down.

  Tanaquis was taking the Rook’s presence in stride to a surprising degree—or perhaps not so surprising, when one considered her utter lack of interest in politics, crime, or anything farther than a book and closer than the distant reaches of the cosmos. She didn’t even look up as the Rook uncrossed his arms and said, “I’ve tried to destroy medallions in the past. With imbued chisels and hammers, with fire, with numinatria. But I suspect the sequence matters: What failed on, say, Quarat, might work on Illi-zero.” The hood nodded down at the golden circle. “It turned aside my sword without so much as taking a scratch, though, so let’s assume ordinary measures are a waste of time.”

  Ryvček was clearly doing her best to imitate Grey as the Rook, without her usual flamboyant poetry. He would catch hell for that later, his teacher complaining about how boring his approach was.

  “Agreed.” Vargo offered the hooded figure a polite, hesitant nod. Grey wondered if there had been a conversation before he arrived, and if so, what Ryvček had made of it. Probably not. Vargo didn’t seem like the type to say, Thank you for saving my life. “Tanaquis and I have a few different ideas for how to do this. I don’t have enough floor to try them all at once, so we’ll have to go one by one. It might take a while.”

  It did take a while, as the first method failed. And the second. And the third.

  Hours of chalking and erasing and more chalking, Beldipassi hovering close by to place the unaffected medallion where he was told and reclaim it as each effort came to nothing. The Rook remained an admirably motionless shadow in the corner; Grey suspected he was the only one who could read the tension thrumming there, the frustration of seeing a medallion and not being able to obliterate it. Vargo got more irritable as his theories died ignominious deaths, but Tanaquis only got more avid and determined. Vargo’s spider jumped from shoulder to desk to shelves, and judging by Vargo’s annoyed glares and Renata’s occasional stifled grin, Grey assumed Alsius Acrenix had many opinions to offer.

  Grey himself had nothing to offer. Anything useful that lay in the Rook’s memories, Ryvček could provide—and more safely than Grey could, right now. He and Renata bled off their nervous tension by brewing tea and coffee and fetching whatever tools the inscriptors pointed at.

  “I suppose it was too much to hope this would be easy,” Grey muttered as Vargo and Tanaquis debated whether it would make any difference if they had access to the Ninat medallion instead. Vargo said yes; Tanaquis insisted that if anything they would want Illi-ten, until the Rook shot that one down on the basis of personal experience.

  Maybe they needed both Illi medallions. Or his worst fear was right: They needed the whole set at once. If that was the case, this would never succeed.

  Renata’s hand twitched, as if she wanted to lay it on his arm. For an instant their eyes met, and Grey had the stupid urge to kiss her.

  He coughed; she let a tiny flicker of a grin through. Grey said, “I’ll… go fetch some fresh water.” And hopefully cool his head.

  He’d finished dumping the basin in the back canal and was looking for the communal pump when he heard a soft laugh. “We have drains, you know.”

  Varuni stood on the canal walk. Grey was surprised to see her; Vargo had indicated she’d be busy all day with Isarnah business. She hooked a thumb back at the kitchen door. “Pump, too, if you’re looking for it.”

  “Oh.” Out of habit, Grey glanced at her waist. No chain whips that he could see, which was a relief… until he looked up and caught her raised brow.

  Djek. The whips were something the Rook would be concerned about, not Grey.

  “Why are you here?” Varuni sauntered past him to stand in the doorway. Not quite an obstacle, but Grey suspected she would make herself one if she didn’t like his answer.

  It was a fair question. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been gut-punching her boss. “Eret Vargo is attempting some numinatria on behalf of Alta Renata.”

  “Again?” Turning her back on Grey with a muttered “asshole,” Varuni stalked into the house. “He better not kill himself like last time. Restarting his heart is not what I’m here for.”

  The wet basin slipped in Grey’s fingers and almost fell to the cobblestones.

  He secured his grip and hurried after her into the dim shelter of the kitchen. He’d seen enough of Varuni, in both of his guises, to know she wasn’t talkative. Maybe not an accomplished liar like some of the people gathered at Vargo’s house today, but she kept secrets by keeping her mouth shut.

  If she’d opened it now, it was for a reason.

  Grey didn’t try to catch her arm. He only asked, “What did you mean by that?”

  She pivoted to face him and poked his chest, her finger unerringly finding the spot where he’d been burned. “You’re a smart man. Put it together.”

  “I know he’s the one who saved me. But why would Vargo’s heart have stopped when—”

  V
aruni shrugged. “I’m not an inscriptor. But he did it on purpose. And he doesn’t take any risks he doesn’t think are necessary.”

  This time Grey didn’t follow as she went upstairs. He stayed in the kitchen, holding the empty basin, trying to think.

  He’d assumed the man had saved him as a favor to Ren. She’d told him about Vargo destroying the letter from Eret Viraudax, then defending her against Sostira Novrus in the Charterhouse. This might be more of the same. Buying forgiveness for his misdeeds with better ones later on.

  But it didn’t buy him anything if the beneficiary didn’t know about it.

  Whitesail, when he thought Ren wasn’t there. Saving Grey, then asking her not to tell him.

  And it was more than just a favor, a bit of emergency inscription on demand. Vargo had knowingly stopped his own heart. In order to save a man who wanted him dead.

  Footsteps on the stairs; he knew it was Ren even before she appeared in the archway. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  Grey’s thoughts were an absolute tangle—but this was neither the place nor the time to try and comb through them. Right now, what mattered wasn’t Vargo; it was the medallions. “I’m guessing there’s been no success.”

  “Tanaquis wants me to draw some cards,” Renata said. “Pattern was useful in removing the curse, so she thinks it might also help with this.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said reflexively. On consideration, though, he meant it: So far as he knew, the Rook had never attempted to use pattern for this purpose. Why should he? The medallions were ancient numinatria, not anything of Vraszan. But if the obvious things failed, maybe it was time to try the nonobvious.

  Anything that gets this Primordial poison out of my city, he thought, following her up the stairs. And out of Ren—before it’s too late.

  Eastbridge and the Pearls: Canilun 18

  “You’re certain it isn’t too…” Avaquis Fintenus plucked at the bodice of the muslin mockup, straining the basted seams with a held breath. If Tess took her measuring tape to the woman’s throat now, she’d survive minutes on a breath that deep. “Too loose?”