Mantyger made Haniel collect her hammer and knife before they left. On the way to the skirbit apothecary, Haniel slurred through the tales of several warriors who had fought their best battles drunk, and suggested that what she actually needed was another bottle of brandy. Mantyger listened benignly while a cackling skirbit hopped around behind a counter, mixing a concoction of foul smelling herbs. Haniel blinked as he crushed up three pickled eyeballs (she was tempted to guess cat) and dumped them into the glass.
"Did you tell him I was a human, and not a dragar or a ghost?"
The creature cracked a salamander egg on the side of the glass and dumped in the lump of flame, causing the potion to bubble and glow. He slid it to Haniel.
"Down the hatch, like a good little girl," said Mantyger.
"What I was saying, was I don't think this is necessary, and you know, if I get a meal and some brandy, or grain spirits, that would be even…"
"Of course, Hanny dear, you're perfectly right. We'll do that: brandy and steaks, but first you have to drink your drink before it gets cold. I bet you can't put it all down at once."
"Of course I could, all the gods." She tossed back the glass.
It was not the first time that Haniel's friends had fed her a swamp potion against her will, but every time she managed to forget exactly how bad they tasted—something like old milk, but unpleasantly spicy. Haniel retched, swore, and cried for a solid minute, and then turned around to strangle Mantyger, but Mantyger, knowing her friend, had already retreated behind the counter, out of her reach.
The result of this potion could not exactly be called "sobriety." Food and drink, which she had craved before, seemed repulsive now. Her limbs seemed lighter than ever, and her thoughts were suddenly clear, but agitated and rapid. Whenever she stopped to think about it she would realize that she had been silently working her jaws, as if chewing on a tough and invisible piece of meat. She set to work counting the scales on a pickled lizard in a jar.
Mantyger dragged her out of the apothecary after 146 scales, and by the time they got to the weapon shop, Haniel was calm enough that it only took several minutes for Mantyger to convince the shop owner that it was safe to let her in.
"What do you want a sword for, anyway?" Haniel asked.
"Because we're going to be in a fight, remember, dear?"
"No, cut it out, I remember that. But have you ever used one?"
"Well, no, is it very hard?"
"All the gods, tell me that our plan doesn't hinge on you winning a sword fight?"
"No, that's what you're for. I just thought I should have a sword too, in case."
"When dwarves got too fat and lazy to learn how to fight, they invented the crossbow."
There was an archery range behind the shop, and a shopkeeper's assistant helped them carry out a selection of crossbows. Until a bolt was loaded in a weapon he would ogle their breasts, and then he would keep an eye on the nearest thing to jump behind, until they fired at the target.
Haniel wondered why he was worried: Mantyger did most of the shooting and did not appear to be a natural markswoman, or anything resembling one. However, after she hit the target with three consecutive shots she determined that she was a master, and had to be talked out of buying a repeating or double crossbow.
"I still don't know how to load it very well, so those would be best."
"Yes, but you don't know how to shoot it very well either: you're going to get one shot, and you'll have to make it count. Those ones are bulky, and if they get snagged on something you'll have to fix it, and you also don't know how to do that."
She left with a medium-sized crossbow, a pistol crossbow, a handful of bolts for both of them, and an eight-inch dagger. She had a second crossbow and bolts sent over by messenger to the house where she had sent Bronzino. She paid in gold.
"I knew it paid better as a wizard, but all the gods," said Haniel, eyeing Mantyger's bulging purse.
Mantyger smiled. "It turns out there is an enormous amount of money to be made in Puppets."
"But it's so revolting!"
"Oh, I could not be more opposed to the practice, and swear I will never engage in it, no matter how much I'm offered. I learned where Lupica hid all the gold he made doing it, so I don't need to."
They walked into a rich, quite human neighborhood, off of a direct road to the tower. The buildings were mostly elegant, one-family houses, spacious and comfortable, but not anywhere near as large as the capital estates of the greatest lords and wealthiest merchants. While this area was home to several medium-successful merchants and artisans, Haniel knew it as the area where the wizards of the Order tended to house their lovers.
The neighborhood consisted of about a half a dozen blocks surrounding a small street of shops. Mantyger stopped at a doll maker's shop, closed for the night, and tried the door.
The door would not open. The street was deserted. Mantyger bashed in a pane of glass with the butt of the larger crossbow and they walked in.
"What is this place?"
"Crane's. He's owned it for many years."
Mantyger wrestled with her crossbows until she had them loaded. She fired a bolt at a doll's head and hit a stuffed dragon.
"Don't," said Haniel, after Mantyger had reloaded and was preparing to fire again. "It's no good for the bowstring, and it won't do any good if it's unloaded and someone comes in."
Mantyger sighed.
"Why are we here?"
"So Crane can try to kill me. If he can't, he'll know that it will be easier to give me what I want."
"That's sort of what I meant: why are we here, when we know he'll try to kill us?"
"Because we want him to know that he can't, so he'll give me what I want. He needs to try: I just shut down the ring, so if I get stabbed to death tonight, everyone will think it was just the outside end of the Puppet ring, avenging Lupica. It's a perfect excuse; I don't blame him for taking advantage."
Haniel unwrapped the hammer and knife, wondering if it was the swamp potion or if Mantyger might have gone out of her mind. Haniel searched the shop: she located the back door and put a table and some other junk in front of it, so that anyone coming in that way would at least be unable to do so quietly. She went back to the main room and told Mantyger to stand out of sight of the windows.
"They know we're here."
"It won't help us any for them to know exactly where we are."
Haniel watched the street, pressed against the wall by the front window. Presently a large dragar holding a big club appeared. He stood in the shadow of a building, leaned on the club, and watched the street. A moment later two humans, each wearing a sword, came from another direction, made eye contact with the dragar and waited.
"Toss me the bow," said Haniel; Mantyger did.
A third human, armed with a small axe, came from the direction that the dragar had come and conversed with him for a moment. After a while, the dragar waved to the other two humans and the two pairs of beings began to walk toward the shop. Haniel stepped into the window that Mantyger had knocked out and raised the bow. The four approaching men saw her, and began to rush toward the store.
The dragar seemed to be the leader, so Haniel took aim at him. As scornful as she had been of Mantyger's efforts with the weapon, she was not an expert herself, and when the dragar was twenty feet away Haniel put a bolt into the dragar's side. He howled in pain, but did not slow down.
She tossed the bow back in Mantyger's direction and it crashed into the wall. Mantyger had her eyes closed. Haniel turned back to the street and saw one of the men suddenly turn around and run in the exact opposite direction, even faster. He struck a building that he did not seem to see with such force that the whole structure shuddered, and then fell to the ground unconscious.
By that time, other things were happening. Haniel knocked a table full of toys in front of the door. The man with the axe demolished the door with a few quick strokes and then started to climb over the table; Haniel swung the hammer on the cha
in at him, and dropped him with a blow to the skull.
The dragar was next, and he simply kicked the table at Haniel, who had to step out of the way. She swung the hammer at him and he let the chain wrap around his club. He pulled on the club, and the chain yanked Haniel towards him, into the path of the last man, who was stepping through the door with a drawn sword. Haniel swung the knife in her left hand to deflect the sword, but was too late and he had a clear path to her heart.
Mantyger stopped trying to reload the crossbow. The man with the sword vomited black blood and fell to the ground convulsing. Mantyger's laugh sounded unreal over the man's sobs.
The dragar kept pulling Haniel towards him, and punched her in the face just as a crash behind her let her know that someone was coming in through the back door. Haniel slumped, and only kept herself from falling with her grip on the chain.
The dragar closed to hit her again, and she let go of her grip on the chain with her right hand and grabbed the arrow sticking out of his side and pushed it further in. With her left hand she slashed at the dragar with her knife. He was able to take the first three blows on his arm, and while the deep cuts bled, they did little damage. Haniel kept pushing and twisting on the arrow with her right hand, until he took the bloody arm that had been blocking the knife, wrapped his hand around her face, and tried to push her away.
She felt his fingers crush her skull, but now the blows from the knife were finding the dragar's neck and body, and presently his grip on her face lessened. She felt warm blood splashing all over her. The dragar fell and she pushed his arm away from her face to see a man advancing with a drawn dagger on Mantyger.
The end of the chain with the hammer was still wrapped around the dragar's club. Haniel threw herself at the man, leading with the knife, the chain dragging behind her. He turned to face her and parried her slash with his dagger. Haniel kept going forward, they crashed into each other, and both fell to the ground.
Haniel felt something sting in her shoulder, assumed her opponent had stabbed her, and kept fighting, rolling on the ground. With her first wrapped in the chain, she struck her opponent again and again in the face, until she felt fresh blood splatter onto her own face, along with a splinter of something that she guessed was a tooth. He went limp enough that she was able to roll out from under him, wrap the chain around his neck, and pull in both directions. He grew weaker and weaker. She climbed on top of him, wedged her knee into the small of his back and continued to strangle him. The pain in her shoulder grew worse.
As the man underneath her stopped breathing she became aware of two calm voices talking in the background. Looking up she saw that Mantyger was speaking evenly with Crane, a short, thin old man with a bald head and a cheerful smile. When the man she was fighting finally passed out, they turned and looked at her briefly, and went back to their conversation. Haniel leaned backwards, against the wall, and something stung her. She put her hand to her shoulder and felt the bolt from Mantyger's pistol crossbow. She laughed, twisted around so that she could lean on the wall without poking the bolt sticking out of her shoulder, and drifted into a painful daze.
At some point Crane addressed her. She looked up into a pleasant, round face, his eyes twinkling under bushy eyebrows.
"And, in exchange for your silence, you will be content with promotion, and placement under Mantyger in Forbidden Magicks? I am acquainted with many of the wizards in Discipline, and they would give their eyeteeth for a pupil with your talents." He beamed at the room of dead and injured bodies.
Haniel did not actually know what she tried to mumble to him, but he seemed pleased with it, and turned back to Mantyger.
A little later he was gone, and Mantyger was kneeling over Haniel, wiping the blood off of her face with a damp cloth.
"I am soo sorry I shot you, dear Hanny," Mantyger said.
"It turned out all right, though?"
"Oh, yes, he said it will take a few months, but he'll do everything that we ask."
Mantyger helped her up and they walked outside, where two carriages were waiting. Crane and a driver were loading the bodies of their assailants into one of them, and Mantyger helped Haniel into the other.
"Why's there a carriage for us?"
"He brought it, in case we prevailed, he always knew that we might."
"Shit on the gods…"
"You've been so wonderful, dear Hanny." Mantyger kissed her on her forehead. "You've earned yourself lots and lots to drink, you know, whatever you like. We'll get it on the way over to Bronzino, but first we just have to get that quarrel out of you…all the gods, I feel like such a fool."
They woke up a surgeon, who grudgingly went to work on Haniel, while Mantyger went to get food and drink. The bolt came out cleanly, if painfully, and the wound got a poultice, and Haniel got a big cup of brandy, and then was made to drink a potion that tasted only slightly less vile than the one she had earlier, that was meant to help with her various other injuries. She was allowed to wash this down with a second cup of brandy, and then Mantyger came back in the carriage with a bottle of gin, two bottles of berry cider, and two meat pies. Mantyger mixed Haniel a drink of cider and gin for the ride over to her boyfriend's, and made Haniel rest her head in Mantyger's lap while they rode, stroking her hair with one hand, and holding the reins in the other.
"If it comes up, you're another scribe and you got beat up over a gambling debt, which is why you are staying with me," Mantyger said as they walked to the door.
Mantyger's acquaintance was named Roddick, and he was a carpenter from the provinces, well-muscled, stupid, and friendly. He lived in a small apartment with a sitting room and a bedroom on the second floor of a large wood building. He and Bronzino were both awake when the women walked in.
Mantyger, laughing, launched into a series of stories about her made-up life, while they poured drinks and passed around slices of pie, occasionally turning to Bronzino and Haniel for confirmation of some event that had never happened. After not very long, Mantyger and Roddick retreated to the bedroom.
There was a couch and a comfortable chair in the sitting room. It was two or three hours before dawn, and Bronzino offered Haniel the couch.
She smiled. "Don't you want to know what happened?"
"You're alive, so I guess you won. You look like you've been through twelve hells, and you have to work tomorrow."
"Mantyger's been feeding me potions, I don't think I could sleep." Haniel poured more gin into her glass. "She might be a once in a generation wizard, but she has no aim: bitch shot me."
"All the gods…"
Haniel shrugged. "I think this will make wizards of us, although I'm damned if I can make any sense out of it. I guess that figures." She told Bronzino about her night and drank gin while he asked her questions, until the rays of dawn began to sneak across the sky.
Someone banged on the door. Bronzino looked at the crossbow Mantyger had sent over earlier, still loaded on the table.
"Hell with it," said Haniel, "I am beat to hell and very drunk. If it's the Order or Crane they win, I won't fight them." She filled her cup with gin and knocked it back.
Bronzino opened the door.
A pretty woman with long golden curls walked into the room. "Who the hell are you?" she demanded.
"Uh…Mantyger's cousin, I believe."
"And who the hell is Mantyger?"
"Roddick's girl friend?"
"The hell she is! I'm Roddick's wife!"
With that the woman stormed into the bedroom, while Bronzino and Haniel burst into laughter. Screams and crashes came from behind the door, and after a moment the woman with the golden curls opened the door, snatched the crossbow off of the table, and went back in. Haniel and Bronzino followed her to the doorway to the bedroom: through the window they could see Mantyger trying to climb over a fence and put her dress on. Mrs. Roddick leaned out the window and fired the crossbow at her, missing by several feet. Bronzino and Haniel exchanged looks and then ran out of the apartment, down the stairs, an
d out of the building as fast as they could.
They stopped running after several blocks and made their way to the tower. Haniel went to her room with the useless books. She opened one of them, stared for a moment at it and then laughed. Then she moved around the piles of books on the floor until she had built a little nest, which she climbed into, curled up in, and went to sleep.
19
The bleat of the dragon shook the needles on the pines.
Joti clamped down on his bladder to keep it from releasing. Overhead, the beast flexed its wings, soaring above over the trees. The birches seemed to glow, Joti's sense of sight becoming so intense it felt like he could see beyond the edge of the earth.
Weapons. He needed them. He dashed back to the crevice and grabbed his bow and sword. He ran from the nook, then skidded to a stop in the snow. He could barely think: should he run? Try to find Shain? Gather the others to him?
Whoever had wailed and alerted Joti to the dragon did so again. The sound was too warped for him to know who was making it. All he knew was that one of his friends was in danger and that he had his weapons in his hand. He sprinted toward the scream.
Somewhere behind him, Shain called out, then blew on her whistle. Joti ran on. Two hundred yards ahead, a dark shape the size of a cabin smashed through the branches and thudded to the ground, landing on all four feet. Across from the monster, the young boy looked pathetically small.
Fear surged up Joti's chest. Stronger than anything he'd felt in his life, it should have drowned him in panic. Yet something held his head above the black waters of terror. Since the day he'd joined the Half Soldiers, he'd trained for years to be able to face this moment.
The boy turned and ran from the dragon, heading toward Joti. The terror-warped face was Tull's; he was taking gasping, whinnying breaths. Joti drew an arrow and shot it at the dragon. The arrow struck it on the shoulder and deflected away. Without so much as flinching, the dragon loped after Tull. Its scales were white, striped with sinuous black lines, a close match for the birches around it. Wide plates protected its belly and the underside of its neck. From snout to tail, it was forty feet long.
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