The Justice in Revenge

by Ryan Van Loan

  “Aye, save what would happen if we stayed,” I reminded him. So we ran, and I thought. What would Eld say when I told him of the Artificer? Was the man playing me? What would Sin say? What if I said nothing at all? So many questions and no magic to slow me down, no kan to cloud my mind, no worry over what Eld would think. It should have felt freeing, but it felt like a trap.

  One I couldn’t escape.

  45

  “The manufactory is fucked,” the Poisoned Eel said. She went by Mistress amongst her underlings and liked to play that she was a brothel runner, but it’d be a while before her hair grew back long enough to make anyone think her a mistress. One side of her head was wrapped in linen bandages and the other had been shorn of her usual thick, long braids. She sat on the chair in her shirtsleeves, one ash-streaked arm in a sling. Her pose was casual, as if nearly being burned to death like the other two gang leaders had been a lark. Her kan-whitened smile looked out of place beneath eyes that still seemed startled at having lost their eyebrows.

  “Lucky the gunpowder didn’t go up with the rest and bring this whole damned place down around our ears.” Laughter shook her chest harder than was needed, meant to draw the eye.

  “Luck?” Sicarii’s voice was the rasp of a blade against the whetting stone. Or against bone. She almost admired the other woman’s commitment, but there was only space enough in the tunnels for one actor. And you aren’t it. “You let the girl discover us, let her destroy my manufactory, let her kill two of my lieutenants and half a dozen others.

  “Let them both escape,” Sicarii continued. “Let her escape. And you call that luck?”

  The woman’s laughter cut off and she leaned forward, letting her shirt sag open enough to reveal her breasts. Once, Sicarii would have found the Poisoned Eel attractive, but no longer. Sicarii had changed, something this rabble seemed to grasp slowly and reluctantly. Perhaps they’re in need of a reminder.

  “Aye, that was all unlucky—but consider if those barrels had gone up.” The woman pulled a cinquedea from her belt with her good hand and began picking away the dead skin on her burned limb. “That’d have been real unlucky, Sicarii. We’d all have died and taken your dream with it.”

  An example needs to be made. The thought was stuck in the bit of her mind that wasn’t quite right, never would be quite right, given what it had lost. Once a thought stuck there it never went away. Until I start cutting.

  “She’s right about the manufactory,” the Artificer said, the stolid man breaking his silence and drawing her eye. He flinched, as he always did, when he met her good eye and its burning twin. “You’ve enough Serpent’s Flame to burn Servenza twice over, Sicarii. That’s not to say we can’t make more, given enough labor and materials and time and so forth.” He dry-washed his thin hands. “Just that you’ve no need of it yet.”

  Yet.

  Sicarii considered the word. Buc wasn’t dead. Yet. She wasn’t hurting. Not really. Yet. That will change soon. The girl was too smart, too daring. After hearing her report to the Doga, Sicarii had sped up her plans. She’d thought she was letting the final pieces to the puzzle dry before inserting them into the board; meanwhile, Buc had smashed the board apart.

  “Yet,” Sicarii repeated.

  “I—I’m sorry we failed you,” the Poisoned Eel maestra said, her voice tense enough to pull Sicarii back to the moment. The other woman’s tanned face had gone pale and drawn and Sicarii realized she’d been glaring at her the entire time. “I beg your … mercy.”

  Wise to hesitate. Reflecting further, that Buc had escaped from them when she’d already escaped from Sicarii herself, was inconsequential. Her penchant for doing so was nothing short of magic. Magic. Sicarii hissed, the breath catching in her lungs.

  If luck had run with the gangs and they’d killed Buc or burned the girl alive, it would have ruined everything. Death was too easy, now. Too kind, in a way. I need you under my blade first, Buc. No, first the memento I left for you. Then the knife. Then I’ll take from you, piece by piece, and then you’ll understand what it is to lose. You’ll know that feeling better before the night’s through.

  Sicarii chuckled at the thought, her tortured vocal cords making a sound that snapped the Poisoned Eel’s taut composure. The woman dropped from the chair to her knees and began pleading. Sicarii’s mind remained on what she’d already put into motion. Buc was too damned smart, but that was her weakness as well. Let her win and she’d take it as her due. Make her fight hard and barely win and she’d relax on the other side, confident in victory. That’s the moment. When she paused to draw breath to shout, Sicarii would land her body blow. Then she would finally have Buc right where she wanted. Reeling. Unsteady. Beneath my knife.

  “Sicarii, are you all right?”

  Realizing the Artificer had been talking for some time, Sicarii gathered herself mentally and wiped the tears from her good eye. He was staring at her as if she were a sea serpent and he in a mere rowboat. There’s one who doesn’t need reminding.

  “Never better,” she growled. “Buc’s learning a lesson tonight, one that I’ve been trying to teach her for weeks. Once she absorbs that … the real classwork begins.”

  Sicarii flicked her hand against her side, triggering the gearwork backpack strapped beneath her loose jacket. Bladed tentacles shot out, hanging over her like an eight-tailed scorpion waiting to strike. Though dried blood dulled their sheen, the blades almost glowed in the lantern light. Wriggling her fingers in the special glove she wore caused the blades to move in deliciously threatening ways. She took a step forward and the Poisoned Eel woman recoiled with a startled yelp.

  “You may go, Artificer,” Sicarii told him, her eye on the woman kneeling before her. “I’m in a scholarly mood today and this one needs a lesson as well, aye?”

  The man squeaked a reply and practically ran from the room.

  “Don’t worry, Mistress,” she told the Poisoned Eel, a grin prising her mouth apart. “I won’t kill you.” With the audience gone, Sicarii dropped the fake laughter and extended her arms. The blades moved with them.

  “If you’re lucky.”

  46

  “I thought you wanted a revolution,” Eld said, limping as he walked, not bothering to hide the pistole in his fist despite the odd looks he drew from the few upper class we passed. Given the tenor in the city, he didn’t draw as many glares as he once would have. The sun was beginning to drop below the buildings, the lamplighters had just finished plying their trade, and there was a bite to the air that told of an impending storm.

  “I do,” I said, letting Sin’s returned magic course through my eyes as we approached the gate to our palazzo. “One guided, carefully, by my hand. I’ve a feeling, whatever I’ve in mind, Sicarii’s revolution will be far bloodier.”

  “What does she want, do you think?” Eld asked.

  “She told me she wanted what I want,” I said slowly. “I thought she meant power. That’s what most seem to think I must crave.”

  “Which isn’t untrue.”

  “I want power so I can change the world,” I said, shooting him a hard look, “not control it.”

  “I’m not sure if those are different for you,” Eld said after a moment.

  “I’m beginning to wonder,” I said, ignoring him, “if she meant overthrowing the Gods and all the rest of it, too.”

  Eld whistled. “She could almost be an ally, then.”

  “If she weren’t trying to murder us, aye.”

  “There’s that,” he admitted ruefully as we reached the palazzo.

  The gate was just barely ajar, but I’d locked it when we’d left that morning. I pulled my jacket tighter until the hilts of my blades pressed against my sides, and slipped the edgeless blade from my wrist into the palm of my hand.

  “I don’t trust any of this, including the Artificer,” Sin whispered, anger flaring. He’d been pissed to discover the man had been able to knock him out of my mind and more pissed when he realized I wasn’t sharing everything with h
im. “None of this is going to plan.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You thought the Gods were running things, but they aren’t. You thought the gangs were fighting one another, but they aren’t,” he pointed out.

  “Aye, but that was this morning. Before I discovered the Gods were being played, before I spoke with the Artificer, and before I knew how infatuated Sicarii was with me. Bastard is insane.”

  “So is he for serving her. You know you can’t trust the man,” Sin growled.

  “You really hate that he was able to knock you out, don’t you?”

  “It shouldn’t be possible,” he muttered. “That it is implies magic. Blood magic.”

  “We thought Serpent’s Flame was magic at first,” I reminded him. “He’s just a good inventor. Ciris can’t own all the inventions.”

  “Tell Her that.”

  “Say,” Eld said, his voice dropping, “why is the gate open?” He drew up beside the wall that surrounded the palazzo. I stopped beside him.

  “I gave the servants the day off, sent them out with Glori to take in a double play at the theater.”

  He shot me a curious look. “I didn’t know you did that,” he said. “Why, Buc? What’s going on?” His face was hidden in shadow, but I could tell from his voice it was wrinkled in confusion.

  “Remember, I told you the house was being watched. I figured if I gave them an opportunity to do more than watch, they would.”

  “Would what?”

  “Snoop around, lie in wait, I don’t know, whatever they were being ordered to do by the Gods or Sicarii or by Sicarii through the Gods.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Eld asked, voice breaking.

  “What? Now you want to know everything I’m thinking?” I asked him. “When did that breeze change?”

  He jumped up, grabbed the lip of the wall, and pulled himself up to peer over. “The front door’s open,” he growled, dropping back down. “And someone’s lying there!”

  “Careful, Eld,” I said, grabbing his arm before he could launch himself through the wrought-iron gate. I tried to ignore my growing sense of unease. “I laid a few traps for our uninvited guests. Seems like one of them walked right into it.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you, Buc,” Eld whispered.

  “So tell me as we walk.” I showed him the blade in the palm of my hand and nodded to the pistole in his. I forced a smile. “We’re just coming back from a stroll is all.”

  “A stroll?”

  “In case we’re being watched.” I threaded my arm through his and felt his muscles trembling beneath his jacket. We walked through the gate, both of us moving too quickly to be “strolling” as we marched down the path between the dead flowers. He wasn’t this scared when we faced the Veneficus or Sicarii’s gangs.

  “There’s a body,” he whispered, as if saying it would make it untrue.

  “I know,” I told him, shifting the blade in my hand. The patio and foyer were dark and the pillars flanking the entrance cast long shadows over the doorway, obscuring whatever or whomever had fallen. I pulled him to a stop, stood on tiptoe, and he bent down until my lips were beside his ear. “Keep watch.”

  I let go of his arm, ran the last dozen paces, and dropped to my knees beside the corpse. A nightmare stared back at me: Marin. The thin trip wire I’d rigged was torn and I could see the feathered end of one of the half-dozen darts I’d set to release when the wire was triggered buried in the top of her shoulder. Darts whose tips I’d soaked with the venom of the Antiguous jellyfish. The dose had been enough to incapacitate whoever tripped it, too small a dose to kill. Or so I’d calculated. Oh, Marin.

  Her ebony skin looked ashy and waxen in the dusky light. Her uniform was torn to shreds, the scraps plastered to her skin by her lifeblood. Gaping wounds crisscrossed her body; her intestines poked through rents in her flesh. The bitter stench from her bowels punched me in the face, making me gag involuntarily and threatening to empty my stomach. I forced a shallow breath through my mouth.

  Blood and gore framed Marin’s terrified face in a macabre halo. She looked as if she’d died screaming, was screaming still. I couldn’t hear her last words, but I could see them writ large in her cloudy eyes: You.

  I did this.

  “No, you didn’t,” Sin said.

  “We did. Killed her.”

  “Buc, we did no such thing,” he said firmly. “Someone with a dozen razor blades and an ax did this. Or”—he sighed— “gearwork-powered weaponry did it. A dozen blades from a dozen directions at once. We’d be hard-pressed to stop that many and we’ve Ciris’s power. Without that? Marin never had a chance.”

  “That wasn’t the point.”

  “Aye,” he agreed. “Someone wanted to send a message. We both know who that is.”

  “Sicarii.” The word lit a fire in my chest.

  “Sicarii. Not us.”

  “We let it happen.”

  “She wasn’t supposed to be here,” Sin reminded me. “No one was.”

  “Gods!” Eld crouched beside me.

  “It’s Marin,” I said, “Glori’s granddaughter.”

  Eld cursed and sagged against the nearby pillar.

  “Poor lass just wanted me to teach her to read.” I pushed myself up, ignoring the dead girl at my feet. Sometimes, the way to win money at dice is to lose something small at first. I hadn’t meant to wager Marin, but someone had cashed her chip in and I’d see it back in my hand before it was through. Small good it will do her. “This is my fault.”

  “Yours?”

  “Aye.” I frowned at Eld. I pointed at the feathered end of the dart in her shoulder, white against her skin. “I wanted the chance to question one of these bastards so I laid a trap to knock them out, not … this. Marin sprang the trap and whoever did this had free reign of the palazzo.”

  “Godsdamn it.” Eld shouted—“Govanti”—and catapulted himself off the pillar, knocking the door open wide. He sprinted into the palazzo, heading for the only visible light, in the drawing room.

  “Govanti? What—Careful, Eld!” I leapt over Marin’s body, made a mental note to clean her up before Glori and the rest of the servants returned in the next bell or so, and chased after Eld.

  “I think we’re too late,” Sin murmured.

  “I hope not,” I panted, racing through the parlor, steeling myself for whatever horrors Sicarii had left for us.

  “Buc! Help me!”

  Eld was crouched over Govanti’s still form, on the floor of the drawing room. I couldn’t see any of the blood I was expecting on his white undershirt, but the boy’s pale skin was even more pallid than usual and a familiar scent I couldn’t quite place overrode the smell of his cologne. The small room reeked like a cheap brothel and suddenly Marin’s sneaking off from the theater made sense. Young love. Eld looked up, hair hanging down over his face, eyes wild.

  “I can feel a heartbeat, but it’s faint and he won’t wake up.” He put his head to Govanti’s chest and shook his head. “He’s not breathing, Buc!” He pounded on the boy’s chest and put his ear to the lad’s mouth. “He’s not breathing!”

  I stared at the tableau I’d created, or Eld had, or we both had with our intertwining secrets, and for the first time in my life, didn’t know what to do. I was supposed to protect you. Marin’s torn body, still lying outside, flashed through my mind. Both of you. I’d failed, and in spectacular fashion. Why is Govanti here? What other secrets has Eld been keeping from me?

  “He lacks air,” I said, surprising myself. Maybe it’s not too late. Once I started, the words kept flowing, as if with a will of their own. I dropped down beside Govanti and knocked Eld out of the way.

  “I have to give him mine.” I glanced up. “Remember the way we saved that cabin boy who went overboard on the way back from Colgna?”

  “You saved him,” Eld said, climbing to his feet. “Can you save Govanti?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “If I seal his mouth with mine and give hi
m my breath…” I pressed my mouth to Govanti’s and blew. Four or five breaths, then pound his chest. “C’mon, lad.” I bent over him and blew another breath into his lungs and yelped as something bit me.

  I sat back, rubbing at my lips.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “Something’s wrong,” I said thickly. I could feel my chin burning and a blister erupted on my lip. “He’s burning up.”

  Govanti lurched beneath me with a cry, then flopped back onto the wooden floor like a broken doll.

  “We’ve got to wake him!” I could feel my lips tingle with Sin’s magic as he healed my burns.

  “If he can scream,” Sin said in a voice that sounded as if it belonged to another, “can he breathe?”

  “Likely,” I agreed, sitting back on my heels.

  Govanti’s thin chest fluttered with movement but he didn’t open his eyes.

  “He may have been poisoned,” I said out loud.

  “Then we need to wake him. Now,” Eld shouted. He took a few jerking, aimless steps, then caught himself against one of the high-backed chairs set around the drawing-room table. His boot kicked a metal bucket, and liquid sloshed inside. He looked down at the bucket, then picked it up.

  Shit.

  Suddenly I realized what Sicarii had done, and time stilled. Not because of Sin—because of fear.

  “Eld!” My shout stopped him in his tracks so quickly that water splashed over the side and onto Govanti’s leg. “Toss that water on Govanti and we’ll both go up in flames.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” He lowered the bucket, sending more water lurching out of it.

  “Serpent’s Flame.” I pushed myself up and took a step back, just in case. “Lad’s covered in it.” Govanti’s trouser leg began to smolder and I heard the crackle of guttering flame trying to catch.

  “Gods.” Eld set the bucket carefully on the table. He drew a ragged breath that turned into a cry when he saw the smoke. Immediately he began trying to shrug out of his jacket.

  I was already moving, Sin fueling my tired legs as I leapt over the table and grabbed the sand bucket by the fireplace. What are you doing? I wasn’t sure if the thought was mine or Sin’s as the room blurred from our speed, but I knew if I slowed I wouldn’t be in time. I ran past Eld, who was caught in his jacket, and reached Govanti just as flame leapt up from his pants.