The Justice in Revenge

by Ryan Van Loan

  I hoped it would be enough.

  * * *

  “You did good, Eld,” I told him, as we slipped through one of the sewers beneath the streets. Luckily, this being on the edge of several of the finer Quartos, it wasn’t overused. If we walked on either side of the mud-brown stream that ran through the center, we could stay relatively clean, though I could have done without the smell.

  “Thanks,” Eld said, pulling his grey coat tighter about him to keep from touching the wall. “I had help.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised the Parliamentarian is truly in bed with the Sin Eaters,” I said, pausing as we reached a crossroads. “Sin?” A map appeared in my mind, as sharp as if I held it before me. It was still half-sketched thanks to the Doga’s recalcitrance, but I could intuit where likely passageways would lead to the canals or streets or dead ends. I gestured left.

  “If I did such a good job, why are we down here instead of up there,” Eld gestured, “staking them out?”

  “How many days did you say you spent watching them?” I asked as a ladder came into view. Luckily it was on my side of the shit stream. It should lead up to the street.

  “Half a dozen or so, off and on,” Eld said, grimacing before he leapt over to my side.

  “Uh-huh.” I grabbed the first rung and pulled myself up. “That’s long enough to have overstayed your welcome, Eld. Like as not”—I eyed the ceiling, where a faint brush of light highlighted the edges of the round door—“they realized someone was keeping too close an eye on them and have been lying in wait. It’s what I’d do.”

  “Uh, Buc—”

  “Hush, I’m being brilliant.” I drew one of my blackened stilettos. “This should bring us out in the alleyway behind the one you hid in and if I’m right, we’ll find someone waiting there who will have answers for us.”

  “Buc—”

  I gave him a toothy grin before biting down gently on the blade so I had both hands free. “Could ’e ’In Eaters o’ cloaked ’hadows,” I said, speaking around the steel. “’E ready.”

  “Buc!” Eld cried hoarsely, half shouting, half whispering.

  I grasped the door’s long, thin handle and took a breath.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Eld’s voice chased after me. My arm burned with Sin’s magic and I slammed the door open, breaking off several years of rust. It flew up and I burst out. “Sin Eaters were waiting for me!”

  Right into the middle of a street battle. The Sin Eaters were fighting feverishly, in a storm of blades, against monstrous beasts that looked all too human. Fuck.

  “I killed one!” Eld called from below.

  “Now you tell me,” I muttered, half-in, half-out of the hole in the gutter. Double fuck.

  A man-goat-thing with impossibly bright, curved, steel horns bawled in rage as it charged toward me from across the street and I felt something I wasn’t used to: fear.

  All the fucks.

  38

  The creature’s mad bawling filled my ears. Sin’s equally desperate cries filled my mind. I’d faced a Veneficus before. That one had horns, too, and the human-beast creature had nearly spiked Eld and me before I put a silver bullet through its nose and sent it running, tears in its eyes. I hadn’t been expecting to run into a giant bull with steel horns that day, but I was today, so I levered myself out of the hole and felt Sin’s magic tingling through my legs as I landed, feet spread wide on either side of the sewer gate.

  Throw stiletto.

  “Steel won’t slow that thing down!” Sin shouted.

  “I know.”

  Throw stiletto. Distraction. Left hand to slingshot, right to pouch. Silver in second opening.

  “Faster!” Sin’s voice was low, heated.

  “Slow time down.”

  “C-can’t. You haven’t eaten much of anything these past few days. Used up a lot with that cloak-wearing bastard.”

  “And you need the rest for the fight?” I asked.

  “Aye.”

  Throw stiletto. Distraction—

  “Fuck it,” I snapped, throwing the stiletto underhanded at the massive, curly-horned goat beast a bare dozen paces away.

  It dropped its head, protecting its chest, and met the blade with a twist of its horns that sent my stiletto clattering harmlessly off the cobblestones. It sucked in a throaty breath and leapt for me.

  I was already moving.

  Dropping into a crouch, I leapt up so hard that I felt something in my knee give, but with Sin’s magic coursing through me, I didn’t feel a damned thing. Wind whistling through my braids, I found the special blade I kept tucked beneath my belt in the small of my back, and whipped it out just as the goat Veneficus landed in front of where I’d been standing. I slashed out, but as fast as I was, the beast was nearly as fast, and instead of blinding an eye, my arm reverberated from the impact of silver on steel. The force knocked me backward, but I turned my leap-cum-fall into a backflip and landed a dozen paces from where I’d started.

  The Veneficus stomped a front hoof, sending sparks up, drew in a deep breath, and screamed in rage. One of its horns smoked, blackened from its brush with my silver blade. I could feel the pressure of its scream in my chest, a cacophony that threatened to drown out my ragged breathing. Sin’s magic was burning through my meager reserves and all I’d done was piss the bastard horned thing off.

  Switching the blade to my left hand, I waved the Veneficus forward while my right hand dug into my pouch for a ball of silver.

  “C’mon, you blood-swilling bastard,” I choked through my scarf, which had gotten pulled high and tight around my face. Spitting wool out of my mouth, I added, “Try me.”

  The Veneficus slammed its hoof on the ground again, sending more sparks into the air. I saw its muscles bunch and coil beneath its thin grey fur. My fingers found the ball and I drew it out as the creature sank into a crouch, its all-too-human eyes glaring murder at me.

  BOOM!

  A plume of fire and smoke leapt out of the open sewer gate—the one the Veneficus stood astride.

  The goat disappeared in the gunsmoke, save for its bright steel horns, but its high-pitched scream told me Eld’s shot had been true. As the smoke cleared, the creature was revealed, leaning against the alley wall, twisting and jerking, the popping and cracking of its limbs nearly as loud as Eld’s shot had been.

  Eld appeared as if by command, climbing out of the hole, one hand over his ear, the other holding a shaky pistole in his fist, trained on the Veneficus.

  “Ulfren!” An old woman raced toward the Veneficus—I recognized her as the priestess from the Dead Gods’ cathedral. Moving quickly, she fended off a young Sin Eater’s blade. The lad’s cheeks were still full of fatty youth, made scary by the angry rictus they were contorted into. He swung a curved blade so quickly that without Sin feeding me a small bite of magic, I’d not have been able to follow the blow and counterblow.

  One moment the Eldest was in front of the Sin Eater, blocking his strikes with steel-lined gloves that threw sparks, and the next her hands were locked around his knife arm. Before the lad could blink, she’d brought the arm and the curved dagger up and across. The Sin Eater’s lifeblood followed in a vermillion torrent that steamed in the air. After a moment of stillness, the woman twisted away, carefully avoiding the knife in a way that told me it was silver. The blade clattered against the pavement and the Sin Eater’s body followed a heartbeat later, twitching uncontrollably.

  Wiping her hands ostentatiously, she turned back to her acolyte, thin white braids bright against her black skin.

  “Ulfren,” she repeated. “You’ve no vials left. Past time you were gone.”

  In the aftermath of the explosion of violence, it was her quiet, even tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The buckshot spray of blood across her bone-white robe from opening the Sin Eater’s throat didn’t help matters. The mountain goat had disappeared and in its place, looking small even though he was taller than Eld, was the Ven
eficus Ulfren, who’d wanted to drink our blood and discern our truths last we met. He was even paler than I remembered, blond hair the color of corn silk, and completely naked. Blood streamed from the wound in his side despite his attempt to hold it closed.

  “Cold out, isn’t it?” I called. His glare shifted to embarrassment when he saw where my gaze was resting. Eld snorted. “Run along now, Ulfren. Let your betters clean up the mess,” I said, taking in the gory scene sprawling through the alleyway. Two Sin Eaters lay beyond the one the Eldest had just killed. Here, a face was smashed into pulp; there, a torso was twisted at an impossible angle. Stockinged legs, one foot missing a heeled boot, lay in the mouth of the back alley where Eld had done his watching.

  “Eldest?” Ulfren’s voice was tight with pain.

  “I’ll follow soon,” she said. “Return to Baol.”

  “I’ll tell the others,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He stumbled off, stooping briefly—and nearly falling over—to grab a scrap of a cloak from the ground and wrap it around his naked waist, tight against the wound, before turning a corner.

  “You’ll have to teach me that trick,” I said.

  “What trick is that, Sin Eater?”

  I looked at the Eldest and smiled. “The one where you tell a man what to do and he actually listens.”

  “Do you have a century to learn? Men are stubborn.”

  “Steady now,” Eld said. “One’s standing right here.”

  “As whales,” I agreed with the woman.

  “Mules where I am from, but the principle holds,” she agreed. She drew herself up. “I’ve killed a brace of you already this morn, not counting the boy,” she said, nodding behind her. “Do you two wish to add to it?”

  “We’re not Sin Eaters,” Eld said.

  “Why lie?”

  “He’s not lying,” I said, pulling down my scarf so she could see my face.

  “You,” she hissed.

  “Me,” I agreed. “I came here expecting to find Sin Eaters lying in wait, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it was you lot after all.”

  “Just like last time,” Eld added.

  “So you do know what happened to our brother,” the Eldest growled. “Sicarii said she would deliver you to us, but I thought her a liar as well. A rare day when I’m wrong more than once, rarer still that I’m rewarded for it.”

  “Sicarii?” Lightning shot through me that had nothing to do with Sin’s magic.

  “Better yet, we’ll have no need to dance to her tune after I bleed you both dry and see your truth for myself,” she mused, her voice the sound of bones rubbing together. “Ulfren thinks she’ll hand us the Doga, but I’m not so sure.”

  “The woman’s clearly got you twisted, sister,” I told her.

  “Oh, but you see, girl?” the Eldest lowered her head, thin white eyebrows arching as she studied us from beneath hooded eyes. “I’m never wrong thrice.” She upended a vial then, and when she looked back at us, blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She licked her lips and smiled.

  Then she attacked.

  I’d been expecting it, but even so, the old woman moved like a flash of lantern light across a dark room. One moment she was on the opposite side of the street, the next she was between Eld and me, close enough that neither of us was able to do much for fear of wounding the other.

  Stepping in, I brought my dagger up hard, driving for the Eldest’s stomach, but her hands locked on either side of my wrist before Sin could intervene. She shifted her hands on my arm, something clicked in my wrist, and the dagger fell from my numb hand. The Veneficus caught it before it hit the ground and now it was my turn to twist away, my boots clicking on the cobblestone as the blade bit the air where I’d been a moment before. Still twisting, I came around and trapped her arm against her side, pulling her away from Eld.

  “Sin, could use some feeling right about now.”

  “Working on it,” he muttered.

  My hands began to burn and tingle as Sin’s magic coursed through me. My laughter was cut short when the Veneficus’s hard braids slapped me in the face. The woman cried out as her body distorted, changing into whatever form the blood she’d swallowed called forth.

  Sin’s power allowed me to rip the blade from her gloved hand, but we overdid it and lost the blade, which flew back over my shoulder. Her eyes widened in horror as she realized she wasn’t fighting any ordinary human—she was wrong thrice after all—as I caught both her hands in mine. She roared, a lion’s scream of defiance, but with Sin’s magic burning brightly in me, I held her fast. We were eye to eye, hers turning from dark to gold, my muscles beginning to scream.

  Silver flashed past the shaved side of my head and the Veneficus’s call turned into a throaty gurgle. Eld pulled the blade free and plunged it into her chest, finding her heart, and then it was all over save for the dying.

  “U-Ulfren will see,” she gasped.

  “See what?”

  “The truth. In my blood.”

  “Not if I bleed you dry,” I whispered.

  “Won’t matter. B-blood calls to blood.”

  The golden light faded from her eyes. She stared at me as she went, that hard bitch, and blood sprayed my face when she breathed her last.

  For a moment nothing moved or made noise save for the strained sound of Eld’s breathing, loud in my Sin-enhanced ears. Then I let her go and she fell in a ragged heap to the cobblestones, landing with a jangling thud. Eld, shaking slightly from the aftereffects of adrenaline, sank down beside her and pulled the blade free, avoiding her eyes as he wiped it clean.

  “Blood calls to blood,” I muttered.

  Adjusting my maroon scarf—I’d chosen that color for a reason—I stumbled away, weak from Sin’s magic. Something exploded behind me, the heat buffeting my back. Spinning, I saw Eld’s arms up to protect his face, nearly tripping in his haste to move back as the Veneficus went up in a torrent of flame and inky-black smoke. A warm, rich, spice scent filled the air, cloying beside the acrid smell of gunpowder and the stomach-turning stench of burning hair.

  “Gods’ breath!”

  “They can’t see anything if there’s nothing left to see,” Eld said calmly, tucking the silver blade behind his belt.

  “Sicarii’s grenado?”

  He shrugged. “It just came to me in the moment.”

  “Good thought,” I admitted. “Save I had plans for that thing.”

  “Oh.”

  I shakily waved him away. “It’s done now. ’Sides, I think I may have figured out how to find Sicarii.”

  “I thought that’s what this was,” Eld said, gesturing around. “Finding Sicarii.”

  “Aye, so did I,” I admitted. I need food, but first … I glanced at the burning corpse and felt something hot flash through me as well. “I was wrong, Eld. The Gods aren’t running Sicarii.”

  “They’re not?”

  “No,” I muttered. “She’s running them.”

  39

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because my theory is proving out.”

  “Care to share?”

  “And deprive you of the chance to learn?” I shook my head and shivered at the wind against my freshly shaved skin. Maybe I should look into those broad-brimmed hats some of the women are wearing. No different than a tricorne, really. “What did all of our visits this morning have in common?”

  “A lot less death,” he said.

  “Besides that.”

  “They were all up and down the damned Quarto,” Eld muttered. “I’m hungry,” he added.

  “We’ll eat in a moment,” I assured him. We probably should have eaten after the fight with the Veneficus, but realizing that Sicarii wasn’t a tool, but the hand directing said tools—plural—had galvanized me into action. When I stopped to think about it, I felt more than a little nauseous, truth be told.

  “That’s because you aren’t listening to me,” Sin growled. “We’re going to start to eat your body from the inside out if you d
on’t find nourishment soon.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Buc—”

  “First,” Eld said, cutting Sin off, “there was the resin refinery, which I thought the foulest smelling place I’d been to until we went to that quicklime apothecary, which cleared out my head in ways that didn’t need clearing.” That had been when my nausea had really kicked in.

  He scratched his jaw, glanced down the lane between the warehouses, and pointed. “There’s a pasty cart down there, if memory serves.”

  “Near where our old friend Salazar’s place was, before that mage blew his brains out and set us on the path we’re still treading.” I shook my braids. “He might have a friend or two that still remembers. Besides, you don’t want the meat in those pasties.” Eld arched an eyebrow. “Rats at best.”

  “Gods,” he breathed, wrinkling his nose. “Next,” he said, returning to the matter at hand, “was a saltpeterist and just now, the old tallow maker.”

  “Aye, and what did they all have in common?”

  “None had the amount of supply you asked for?”

  “Go on,” I said, nodding.

  “I feel like you’re having a go at me,” Eld muttered, giving me a healthy dose of side-eye.

  “I’m not, I swear.”

  “Hmm. They all remarked on how busy they were for the time of year,” he said slowly, scrunching his nose up like he always did when concentrating hard. “They were all old men … and the Doga was a repeat customer?”

  “Well done,” I said, motioning for him to follow me out into the main thoroughfare. Now that the sun was nearing its zenith the road was packed full of all types. Most had enough coin for thicker jackets and were clean, too, so the dockworkers stood out for their stains. I shouldered one lass aside and pulled Eld close.

  “Two out of three isn’t bad,” I said, scanning the crowd. Here and there children darted about, laughing as they played whatever games they could have in the Mercarto Quarto.

  “What’d I miss?”

  “That they were old men was just happenstance,” I said, waving it away with my hand. “And it wasn’t just those specific shops, either—their neighbors looked just as busy. The Doga’s been making a lot of purchases … or someone else has, in her name.”