by K. T. Davies
“I don’t… Aye, probably, if that’s where she abides, where’s your mother and father?” I was trying to keep my ear on the riders, which wasn’t easy with the kinch prattling. The narrow vee between her eyes deepened. “Mama gave her life when I was born. Papa died in a duel when I was small. Where are we going?”
She was persistent, I’d give her that. While talking to her, I’d lost track of the riders. They’d probably passed the camp, but I was twitchy and wise enough to trust my gut when it told me something was off. “Valen, the Midnight Court. They’ll look after you until they find your family. Now come on, we need to get back before they send a search party…which will probably get lost.”
At her behest, we’d gone further upstream than I wanted but she’d insisted, and it was a battle I chose not to fight. As it turned out, it was lucky that I’d given in for as we approached the camp, I caught the whiff of a familiar-yet-out-of-place scent. It took a moment to place it, but with a start, I realized it was Thero, and he was not alone. I put my finger to my lips and gestured for her to be quiet. Fear lit in her eyes; she began to tremble, but she did as she was bid and crouched.
“Stay here.” I mouthed, before creeping towards the camp. I had my sword, which was good, but I was wearing my armor, which was not. No matter how quietly I moved, the mail whispered its star steel song. I circled and made my approach from downwind, where I saw five urjac riding beasts munching on the local vegetation. The scaled, long-legged urux jacanta hybrids were neither as fleet nor as elegant as horses but neither were they as expensive. A confused, low-level commotion was boiling from the camp as the theatricals were herded towards the firepit. The sound of wagons being turned over— of plates being smashed and pots and pans being hurled provoked outraged cries, which were swiftly silenced by angry shouts and more tellingly, the rapport of a handcannon. Someone began to cry. I crept closer.
“Shut your mouth, bitch!” It was Ziphen, Thero’s four-armed partner. “All of you— get over here or so help me…”
“Thero, Ziph, we’re all friends here.” It was Cobb. He was trying to sound placatory. “There’s no need for this, come and have a drink.”
Another of Thero’s crew trained a handcannon on Hammerhand and the other stagehands.
The sensible thing to do would be to take the girl, leg it to Valen, and use her to parlay with the Midnight Court for help slotting Ludo. I’d give them Jing’s only living heir and demand that they give me leave to slot the old bastard. That was the sensible thing to do.
But no one ever accused me of doing the sensible thing, now did they?
I drew my sword and crawled towards the camp. Whatever noise I was making was masked by the sound of wanton destruction.
“Where’s the stuff, Cobb?”
“There is no ‘stuff’ you fucking morons. I told you.” Years in the theatre had taught Cobb how to project his voice, and his angry response rolled across the clearing like thunder. I kept crawling, kept ignoring the little voice of reason that was trying to get my attention.
There were five in Thero’s crew from what I could see. Two had barking irons; the other three bristled with a variety of nasty looking blades. With a concerted effort, the Company of the White Star could overpower them. A few would go down, but they’d surely overwhelm their attackers. Unfortunately for all of us, the players lacked the stomach for the fight and instead huddled together in a nice, easy to shoot clump. I inched closer. Thero was standing under Cobb’s awning. He had his hood up, and his clawed thumbs hooked in his grubby belt sash. Cobb was sitting with his breeches rolled up beside a cooling tub of water. Emma was behind him, gripping the back of his chair so hard the white peaks of her knuckles were visible through her fur.
Ziphen directed the ransack of Cobb’s wagon while Thero helped himself to the cold cuts on the table. They were going to be disappointed because the only thing the captain had taken from Jing was his granddaughter and she was—
“Look what I found!” The triumphant shout was accompanied by Sakura’s air-rattling shriek. Moments later, a thoasa emerged from the woods dragging the arrachid by her hair. “Stop fighting, you little shit.” He shook her and sent her spinning off-balance, both of her small hands grasping at his fist to stop him ripping her hair out at the roots.
Thero skewered another piece of meat, dropped it in his beak, and swallowed it in one. “Cobb, Cobb, Cobb. You’ve let Evard down, you’ve let me down, and you’ve let yourself down,” he cooed. Here was a cove who enjoyed his work.
“Fuck’s sake.” I muttered under my breath. Now I was going to have to kill them…somehow. The wind shifted. Ziphen sniffed, drew all four swords, and turned. Our eyes met. “Who the fuck are you?” She snarled, revealing a double row of sharp, white teeth.
I stood up. The atmosphere changed immediately. Smiles faded on some faces and lit upon others.
“Thero, Ziphen, meet Breed.” Cobb grinned hopefully, if not entirely relieved.
Thero gave Cobb and me a questioning look as he reloaded his handcannon. “And just who the fuck is Breed?”
“A little fucking half-breed is what it is.” The grey thoasa snarled, bared his fangs, and let his scent signature bloom. He smelled of mushrooms, tar, and burned hair. Having regained her equilibrium, the kinch raked her foreclaws down his shins drawing blood. Her defiance earned her a backhand across the face. She yelped and hung limp in his iron grasp.
“Easy, Tallackan,” Ziphen said as she cut lazy crescents in the air with her swords. “Evard wants her back in one piece.” She waved a couple of swords at me. “Get over here, Breed.”
“I’d be careful if I was you, Ziph,” Cobb warned while fixing me with an encouraging five-eyed stare. A twig snapped behind me, saving me the trouble of having to lie my way out of this particular pot of arsepickle. The noise had come from the left, so I took a deep step back to the right and ducked under a rusty cleaver that whistled over my head. I slapped the wielder in one of their faces with my unsheathed sword. They reeled, clutching a bloody nose, which gave me time to get behind them, and put my arm around their neck. The other head turned and spat at me. I put my sword across its throat, a task made more difficult by the proximity of the two heads.
“Drop the blade and don’t either of you try anything funny, or I will vent you, and I don’t want to do that because getting blood off this armor is a fucking nightmare.”
“What have you done to my sister?” the head without a broken nose yelled.
“Shush! This is awkward enough without you yammering in my ear.” I put the edge of the blade against the mouthy one’s neck and applied just enough pressure to let him know that I meant business. His eyes widened, but he shut up. The cleaver hit the ground with a solid thunk.
“Now, I’m going to back up,” I called to Thero. “So you good people can get on with your business.” I didn’t look at Cobb, or Emma, or the kinch. I focused the whole of my attention on Thero and the grey fucker with the four swords standing next to him. “I’ll let…sorry, what are your names…?”
“Fuck off,” mouthy said through gritted teeth.
“You broke my nose, you bastard,” said his sister.
“…I’ll let Fuck Off and You-Broke-My-Nose go when I’m safely down the road. Do we have an accord?”
There was a long pause from Thero and his crew. Cobb and Emma and the theatricals were less circumspect and began yelling and calling me a variety of nasty names. Again, I had to ignore them because so much was at stake, including my life. I was more than happy to throw it away, but at a time of my choosing. Indeed, I had tried to do so on more than one occasion, but no other fucker was taking it without my consent. The kinch came round, but the thoasa had knocked the fight out of her. She began to sob. I spared her the briefest glance and began to back up. Thero kept the handcannon trained on me, but he neither looked nor smelled like he was going to shoot. I continued to back away.
“If you hurt them, I will gut you,” Thero yelled. “I know your name, Breed. Do you hea
r me?”
“I take it we have a deal. Excellent! If you follow me, I’ll gut them, Thero. And mark me, my sense of smell is every bit as sharp as Wormy Four Arms and that ugly fucking lizard.”
“Evard will hunt you down,” You-Broke-My-Nose mumbled through the blood and snot.
“Shut up, Layla,” her brother hissed.
“Aye, Layla, do as your brother says.” I echoed. “I need to concentrate; you don’t want me to trip and accidentally cut your brother’s throat now do you? And as for Evard, if he has any brains, he’ll stay in Appleton rather than chase me back to Pharria.” I felt them tense when they thought I’d accidentally dropped a juicy piece of information. So far, so not dead.
They kept their mouths shut after that, and we backed awkwardly down the road. Sounds of the camp receded, leaving in its place the whip of wind, and the scuff of their boots on the road. I deemed four hundred yards a reasonable distance for a head start, and tied the unfortunate twins to a tree by the road with their own belt.
“Farewell,” I smiled. “And if you and your crew follow me, make no mistake, I’ll kill you first.”
“Evard will have your guts for this, half-breed,” Layla Fuck Off snarled before I gagged them and ran like hell for a bridge we’d crossed on the road from Appleton. Despite my injury, it wasn’t long before I reached the span that arched gently over the Silverlight. I glanced over my shoulder before jumping in and swimming upstream, which wasn’t easy in armor, even that made of star steel. My hope was that they would think I’d taken to the river in order to head downstream towards the Valen road, which eventually went to Pharria. It was reasonable given what I’d told the twins and something I might actually do if I didn’t have to rescue the kinch, or ‘my little introduction to the Midnight Court’ as I also liked to think of her.
I dived deep, focused my energies on not drowning. When it felt like my lungs were going to burst, I took a mouthful of air before diving again. Thankfully, out here in the wilds the Silverlight wasn’t as noxious as it became on its passage through Appleton. I kept swimming, passed three clumps of overhanging trees before trying to haul myself up on the fourth. Weary and weighed down by sodden clothes and chainmail, I struggled to get out of the water. Time was not my friend. After failing for the third time I had no choice but to cut the straps of my armour and let the beautiful, Annurashi maille fall into the drink.
“Consider it an offering,” I said to whatever spirits might dwell in the depths. Free of the expensive burden, I hooked onto a branch and clambered up the tree to the highest bough. The trunk’s slant didn’t afford me the best view of the road, but I could see the plume of dust that marked the passage of riders near to the company’s campfire smoke. It didn’t look like they’d torched the wagons, which probably meant that they’d left the players alive. It made sense, they were a rough crew, but they weren’t egregiously stupid. The performers weren’t handy, but there were too many of them to take down with a couple of handcannons and a few knives. If I was this Evard cove, I’d wait until the company returned to Appleton and then make an example of Cobb. The girl was the prize…for all of us.
7
The best way to hide anything is with magic. But then, as far as I was concerned, magic was the solution to every problem. Want to kill someone? Use magic. Want to fly? Magic. Sure, you might go insane, turn inside out, or burst if you overreach yourself, but otherwise it’s the dog’s bollocks.
And I couldn’t use it, and that vexed me.
I know this might sound ungrateful, but in saving me, I think Mother had wrecked my abilities. The loss of my arcane powers was a problem for another day. I had a kidnapping to attend to.
I didn’t expect Thero and his team to follow my false trail seeking vengeance, but if they swallowed it, they wouldn’t be on the lookout for me on their way back to Appleton. If I was going to ambush them, I’d have to disguise my scent, and if possible stay downwind. I hated hunting coves like me because neither precaution was a guarantee that I wouldn’t be discovered by those with keen senses. Given their recent win and their typically cocky, criminal attitude, I would have bet good money that they considered themselves the most dangerous crew on this stretch of road. I was more than happy for them to dwell in that particular delusion, given that I believed that title belonged to me.
I stripped down to my breeches and shirt and buried my scant possessions in a shallow grave, the position of which I marked on a tree with a Guild symbol. I’d worry about how I’d find it again if I survived the hunt. My dip in the river had washed away the smell of sweat, food, and campfire smoke, but being bright red did not lend itself to blending into woodland—a slaughterhouse perhaps, but not lush greenery. I slathered myself in soft, stinking riverbank mud before rubbing myself with loamy soil, young bracken, and finally, some droppings that belonged to a beast that had dined on shoots, leaves, and bark; a perfectly innocuous, harmless critter, unlike me. Thus painted in the musky shades of the forest, I checked which way the wind was blowing and headed back to the road.
After waiting patiently for less than an hour I was rewarded by the sound of laughter, easy conversation, and the steady clop of urjac hooves. I was on my belly, head pillowed in the dirt beneath a clumpy shrub. There would be a couple of uncomfortably risky moments during this game. Waiting for them to pass was one of them, but I wanted to see who was carrying what and try to glean any scrap of information about them that I could work to my advantage.
As the urjacs came closer, and the sound of voices grew louder, a pit of dread opened within. I was sorely out of practice and waited for the inevitable cry of alarm to undo me. As the hooves clopped closer, a fork-tailed millipede crawled up to my face, antenna twitching curiously. It was so close that even in the dark, I could see tiny, red mites climbing over its gleaming, segmented body. Unimpressed by my physog, it went about its business as four urjacs plodded into view. Thero was riding beside Ziphen. Behind them, astride a fat, swaybacked mount came Layla Broken Nose and brother Fuck Off. They were followed by Tallackan the thoasa. He was riding a huge, spirited beast that balked under his rough handling. The animal’s distress was felt by its fellows, and all of the beasts were fractious and fighting the bit. Bringing up the rear, my wagon was being driven by a humanish looking cove with a handcannon resting across his lap.
“Did you see his face?” Thero laughed like a crow.
Ziphen grinned. “The fat bastard turned so red I thought his head was going to burst.”
“It fucking will when he gets back to Appleton, Evard’ll see to that,” said Thero.
“Good. It’s about time the Octopus got taken down a peg. He thinks he’s better than the rest of us just because he worked for Jing.” Ziphen spat.
“He will, don’t you fucking worry. He’d already shit his holeful with Ev over the whiskey. Now he’s tried to pull this swifty, he’s going to get spanked good and proper,” Thero announced.
Ziphen shook her head—no easy feat with a noggin like an over-sized thumb with a face. “You should have done him today. He’s a silk-tongue on him.”
“We’d have had to do all of ‘em if we’d done for Cobb. You want that, eh?”
She didn’t answer.
“We should be going after that Pharrian bastard,” the female twin head added.
“We will, Layla, be assured. Evard won’t let that slight go unanswered.”
“Slight?” Layla canted her head.
“It’s just a turn of phrase…”
“I know, I just don’t think you’re using it the right way,” said Layla.
“I think you’ll find I am…”
The thoasa barged into them, cursing his urjac and riving on the enraged beast’s bridle like he was trying to saw its head in half.
The cove driving the wagon kept his own counsel, seemingly content to suck on a long-stemmed pipe. He was thickset with dark hair and a weary gaze. His jowly face was pitted with specks of silvery calthracite powder, and his handcannon was unadorned
, workmanlike. The tips of his fingers were, like his face, tattooed with the calth dust and specks of zanth crystal, marking him out as a professional cannoneer. The spare urjac was tethered to the door that had been tied shut.
When they passed, I stalked them from the trees, halting whenever the wind shifted direction. A little after midnight, they pulled into a clearing, which was bounded on the woodland side by the curve of a lively brook.
“Right. You’ve got an hour, then we’re moving out.” Thero declared as he dismounted. “Feed and water your jacs.”
“An hour? Come on, boss. What’s the rush? Evard’ll be well abed,” said the male twin.
“How about two hours?” his sister added. “Give us chance to stretch and have a bite, eh?
“I’ve not eaten all day...” said her twin.
“And the jacs are knackered,” Ziphen added and yawned.
The thoasa growled. “And I need a shit.”
Thero twisted in the saddle and gave him a questioning look. “You need two hours for a shit?”
The thoasa shrugged. “Not need, but I like to take my time.” His urjac tried to snap its head round and bite him, earning itself a hard slap on the snout.
“Fuck it. All right, all right.” Thero threw up his claws, defeated. “You’ve got two hours to eat, shit, and I don’t know… write poetry, but that’s it. I want to hand the baggage over to the boss and sleep in my own bed. And stop hitting the jac, Talli. Evard will be proper pissed if you kill his beast.”
I nestled into a covert of dense scrub as the quiet cannoneer unhitched the urux and tethered it to the picket that Thero had strung by the stream for the urjacs. The twins grumbled about collecting wood before lighting a fire. Rations were handed out, and the crew retreated to their own corner of the clearing to eat.
Ziphen took a flask from her saddlebag and vanished behind the wagon. A few minutes later, there was shouting, a scream, and the sound of a door slamming echoed around the clearing. The enforcer returned without the flask. Thero took a few paces out of the dell and pissed against a tree by the road, his back presenting an attractive target. Alas, not only could I not cast a spell, I didn’t even have a fucking bow. It occurred to me that I really wasn’t equipped to take this lot on. I thrust the thought aside before it could take root and put me off my game.