Ten Arrows of Iron, page 31
Seeing that I didn’t, he winced.
“Look, if we took the Imperium’s finest birds without covering our tracks, they’d find us,” he gasped. “We needed a distraction, a cat’s-paw on which to pin the disappearance of the Oyakai and… and…”
He took in a deep, desperate breath.
“Any time you want to stop strangling me, just let me know.”
“Sure,” I replied, tightening my grip on his throat. “I’ll tell you.”
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t react like this. Betrayal, subterfuge, lying—they were all part of even a peasant’s life on the Scar, let alone life as a Vagrant. And while I’d inhaled some of the Firelung, it wasn’t enough to make me want to do this—not after the shit I’d snorted over the years.
But it did make me wonder why this particular betrayal from this particular man rankled me in such a way. Lucky for me. Less so for him.
“Sal.” Yria sounded meek—or as meek as she could manage—as she tugged ineffectually at my arm in a bid to free him. “C’mon. He didn’t know this would happen.”
“Well, then he’s just one more fucking member of the Doesn’t Know Shit Club, isn’t he?” I whirled on her as Jero pawed weakly at my hand. “Do you not fucking get it?” I turned my snarl back on him. “Do you? You ask me to come onto this insane quest and don’t bother telling me that it involves Haven? You didn’t think a hundred-odd drug-fueled religious lunatics and that… that wood… skull thing they have was something that would warrant my attention?”
Jero rasped out a few words, trying to convince me. And had my fingers not tightened around his windpipe, he might have done it—he was very persuasive, which was one reason I was strangling the life out of him.
“You weren’t even supposed to know!” Yria protested, trying to pull my hands off. Her arms were already too skinny for that before they’d gone half numb from using her magic, though. “Hell, you didn’t even have to come! It could’ve gone off even if he did die! If you’re so pissed at him, why’d you even bother saving him?”
That was a good question. A good question with a bad answer.
She was right—I both could have and should have left him there to die. This plan had already gone cockeyed before I knew Haven was involved. The smarter thing to do would have been to let him die and leave the city before anything else could have happened.
But when I’d looked at him, broken and bleeding, I hadn’t seen a man who had lied to me, kept secrets from me, nearly gotten me killed. I had seen a man who had looked at me the way he had back at the start of the evening, with his smiling wrinkles and his bright eyes, and told me his secrets and asked me for mine and made me want to give them to him.
I’d been looked at that way before.
And I’d done crazy things to see that look again.
But that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. And that wasn’t the answer I was going to give Yria or Jero. Instead, I tightened my grip and spat something out.
“Because I won’t have it said that Sal the Cacophony let someone else kill someone who screwed her over.”
“Are you gonna have it said that Sal the Cacophony shat away a ton of money over some fucking pride?” Yria pressed. “Because that’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t let him breathe now.”
I actually had done that once.
All the same, with a final glower, I released my hand and let Jero collapse to the floor, gasping for breath.
Not that my faith in Two Lonely Old Men to reward us for our efforts meant much to me anymore, but the thought of letting Jero die, of one more person who had looked at me that way once and then never again…
I don’t know. Maybe I’m capable of forgiveness. Or maybe I’m a huge fucking idiot. It’s hard to tell the difference between the two sometimes.
But if the red fingerprints embedded around his throat were any indication, I’d at least made my point.
I glanced around the darkened room. In the banquet hall outside, the party continued to roar. The sounds of laughter and phantom instrumental quartets continued with all the tranquility of a bunch of people who didn’t know how close they’d come to being brutally massacred by a bunch of religious lunatics. Neither my absence, my return, nor my subsequent strangling of Jero had been noted.
“The plan”—I glared at Jero—“whatever it was, has gone to shit. We can’t stay here.”
“Yeah, can’t say as I disagree.” Yria glanced me over, snorted. “You ain’t looking like too much of a fancy Princess Sparklesnatch anymore, are you?”
I glanced down at myself. What skin was showing—and there was quite a bit more of it, now that I’d torn my dress apart—was peppered with cuts, bruises, and soot-stained sweat. Nobles loved eccentricity, but I didn’t think I’d be able to convince them that this was just a new trend I was setting.
“You go and find the big lass.” Yria stalked to the wall and started drawing a square in red chalk. “I’ll put a portal together to get us out of here.”
Jero’s hand shot up and caught her by the wrist. His stare was hard, his wrinkles deep as scars, when he looked up at her.
“No,” he said. “We stick to the plan.” He gestured at her square. “Go. Bring back Tuteng.”
“They fuck your head with a soldering iron or did your mama just love dumb babies?” Yria held up her hand. “I can barely feel my fingers. My Barter’s cost too much. I got maybe one more portal in me and anything else means permanent nerve damage and that costs extra. You’re painted redder than a horny radish.” She gestured to me with her numb hand. “And she’s half pumped on fucking wizard drugs. This thing is over.”
“It isn’t. It can’t be. We need this to work.” He staggered to his feet, breathing heavily. “Bring back Tuteng. We’ll find our own way back.”
“Your head’s so far up your ass you got shit in your ears,” she growled. “I said—”
“I heard what you said.” Jero’s voice turned deadly quiet, his eyes cold as winter. “Now hear what I tell you. If you go through that portal and leave, you had better hope they find an ocean wide enough to hide you from me, because once I get out of here, I will start looking for you. I will find you. And I will bring you back in one hundred different jars.”
Yria’s eyes went wide, her mouth silent. Hell, even I felt like I had just been hit in the head with a blade hearing that. He released her.
“Bring. Back. Tuteng.”
She glanced from him to me, winced. “Good fuckin’ luck.”
She waved a hand. The Lady’s song rose. The portal blossomed. She disappeared. And I was left alone with a man I sorely wished to kill but, for reasons that may or may not be birdshit, could not actually kill.
Which was a situation I was not entirely comfortable with.
“They’ll be back shortly,” Jero said, steadying himself. “We can take a moment to recuperate before—Wait, where are you going?”
And so I left.
“I’m getting Agne,” I replied, “and we’re getting the fuck out of here.”
“Sal, I—”
“No,” I spat as I pulled back the curtain leading to the banquet hall. “Fuck your plan. Fuck your employer. And fuck you.”
His voice dropped into a soft, cold whisper. “Did you not hear what I just told—”
“I did.” I turned, regarded him carefully. “And if you think you’ve got a threat that will stop me, feel free to make it now.” I narrowed my eyes. “But you better be prepared to do it right now.”
His mouth opened and hung there, wordless and heavy. His eyes followed, looking away from me and down at the floor.
“Yeah,” I said as I pushed through the curtain. “That’s what I thought.”
“What is she wearing?”
I could hear their whispers as surely as I could feel their eyes upon me. Stained with blood and soot, my dress in tatters, and trailing the latent stench of Firelung, I couldn’t really blame them. Nor could I really pay attention to them.
“Is it… was this supposed to be a theme party or is she actually…”
I ignored that.
“Summon the guards. Or the servants. Whoever takes out the trash.”
I ignored that, too.
“Oh my sweet heaven, she’s got thews like a Scion.”
That girl I might look up later.
But the scorn and disapproval and whatever guards they might throw my way would have to be dealt with later. As I shoved my way through the revelry, the astonished and agog expressions cast my way didn’t belong on the face I was looking for.
That one I found a moment later.
At the edge of the party, encircled by a truly impressive crowd of attentive men, Agne held a court of polite titters and swoons. As I headed toward her, the crowd became a wall of pushing, shoving, and hollering for her attention.
I sighed, cracked my knuckles, and waded in.
“Sal?” Agne shot me—or rather, the bedraggled creature that punched her way through the crowd of men to emerge before her—a confused look that quickly turned concerned as she took in my wounds. “What’s going on?”
“We’re leaving,” I growled.
“But the…” She glanced upward toward the Oyakai birds, still regaling high over the crowd. “You know, the thing.”
“It’s off,” I replied. “It’s all off. Everything’s off.”
“What? Why? What happened?”
It would have taken far, far too long to explain that murderous fanatics hopped up on drugs had become involved in a plan that she and I had not been privy to, despite our lives being on the line for it.
So I shot her a look that tried to explain it.
I doubt I came close, but I gathered by the cringing realization on her face that she knew something had either gone terribly wrong or I was about to make something go terribly wrong.
“All right.” She glanced around the multitude of men staring at us with increasing concern. “Let’s be smart about this. I can find a polite reason to leave, so long as we’re cautious and careful and—”
“Madam.” A bold young suitor stepped forward, one hand on the pommel of his sword, the other on my shoulder. “If this foul-mouthed lout is harassing you, allow me the honor of—”
Since the end of that sentence wasn’t going to be “swallowing my own teeth,” my fist smashed into his mouth, which probably didn’t help things.
Agne glared at me. “That is the precise opposite of what we needed to accomplish.”
“I disagree.” I turned and held up my bloodied knuckles to the crowd. “Unless anyone else has a better argument or a stronger jaw, we’ll be going now.”
You can’t count on rich people to not be stupid, but you can at least count on them not to be stupid when it’s their blood on the line. The assembled suitors took several collective steps back, permitting me a corridor to pass through as I took Agne’s hand.
I could hear the music and laughter begin to quiet as word spread through the crowd about the dirty woman with the penchant for fop-punching. Over the muted conversation, I could hear the rattle of armor and weapons as guards entered. As more and more eyes turned upon me, I knew it wouldn’t be long before they found me.
But that was fine. The curtains to the back room loomed before us. Agne was smiling politely and making excuses for her drunken friend as I hauled her through the banquet hall. We could find a back way out of the hall and return to the city. In another minute, we’d be far from this house and every last shitstain of a person inside it, just so long as—
“Sal?”
—nothing like that happened.
Velline stepped out of the crowd to interpose herself between me and my exit. She looked more curious than concerned, but her hand on her sword suggested that wouldn’t last.
“What’s going on?”
I was getting real tired of hearing that question.
“Holy shit.”
The woman with the long hair—Shenazar, I think her name was—stepped forward, along with the morose man, Dalthoros, to appear behind Velline. She glanced over the myriad of cuts and bruises decorating my body with a grin growing steadily broader.
“Is that blood?” she asked, excited. “Was there a fight? Are we allowed to fight at these things now?”
“Obviously not,” Dalthoros muttered, scratching idly at the bony plate jutting from his forehead. “Otherwise this wouldn’t be quite so dull. As it stands…”
Velline held up a hand and the two obediently fell silent.
“Sal?” she asked, much less confused this time.
I started to reply, started to think of some lie, but the words didn’t come soon enough. Not before I saw the realization dawning in her eyes.
That sharpened amethyst stare swept over me, taking in every drop of blood that marred me, before she locked gazes with me for a long, cold moment.
She slid her sword out of its scabbard by two inches. I clenched my fist. She lowered herself into a combat pose. I rolled my shoulder.
Be real fucking nice if I had a magic gun right about now.
Without a single word spoken between us, we both knew I wasn’t going to stay here and she wasn’t going to let me leave. I was tired, I was bloodied, I was unarmed, I stood no chance against her—but I was full of anger looking for a target and just mildly fucked up on drugs.
So, those odds seemed good enough to hurl myself at her.
“HALT.”
As I turned around, I noted with some irritation that it would be a lot easier to get myself killed if people would quit fucking interrupting me.
I heard the Lady’s song intermingled with the rattle of armor. Eyes blazing with purple light and brandishing a sword in his gauntleted hand, the Honorable Judge Keltithan emerged from the crowd, a battalion of guardsmen behind him.
“A great evil has been brought to my house,” he bellowed, eyes narrowing to slits upon me. He leveled his sword at me, sigils upon its blade bursting with blue light as a hoary chill engulfed the metal. “And though I know not how you deceived your way here nor what nefarious deeds you intend to serve, I know that you won’t be doing it.”
“Sal.” Velline spoke softly but sternly. “Whatever is happening, it doesn’t have to end in bloodshed. Come quietly. Let’s figure this out.”
Given that “this” meant explaining that I had lied my way in here with the help of a vengeful Freemaker intent on stealing the Imperium’s birds of war for purposes of launching an attack on a dangerous military power, I didn’t see that happening.
Of course, given that I was flanked on one side by a woman with a sword and on another side by a man with a much more impressive sword, I didn’t see escape happening, either.
Really, I admitted to myself as I surveyed the truly impressive number of people better armed than I was, I wasn’t seeing much of any option that wasn’t going to end with me getting gutted.
Except one.
And it came in the form of a shadow painted across the floor.
My gaze drifted upward to the skylight in the ceiling. I saw a silhouette looming, its shadow stark against the snow. I saw white cracks forming in the glass. I saw the flash of something metal in the darkness overhead.
Slowly, Keltithan’s gaze followed mine. His neck craned up toward the skylight.
Just in time to see it shatter.
Glass rattled. Guests screamed. Something plummeted from above in a spray of glittering shards to land upon Keltithan in a rattle of armor and a spray of blood.
The guardsmen recoiled and Velline drew her sword, our quarrel forgotten as something crouched over Keltithan’s prone form, mechanically pumping a blade in and out of his body until the body stopped twitching.
Slowly, the Havener rose to his feet. His machete was drenched in blood. His smile was broad and manic. Beneath the shredded remains of his blindfold, a pair of eyes stared out.
And from them, blood wept in bright red streams.
“Hello,” he said in a lilting, lunatic voice. “We are coming.”
“We?” Velline asked.
She didn’t have to.
They came eleven seconds later.
TWENTY-FOUR
YUN ATTORO ESTATE
The walls were bleeding.
In rivulets. In trickles. In floods.
From windows. From doors. From the ceiling.
“MY BLOOD IS FIRE!”
And everyone was screaming.
The Haveners came pouring into the banquet hall, blades flashing and blood gushing from their eyes and mouths as they carved their way through in a drug-fueled orgy of red steel. The delicate guests and effete aristocrats ran screaming from them as the guards and armed patrons fought against the tide in an effort to meet their lunatic foe.
Tables were thrown up as barricades, were split in two by cultist axes. Glass fell and shattered to make wine-stained beds for corpses to rest upon. The illusory opera singers continued to bleat out lilting tunes as a backdrop to the shrieking, their phantom forms shimmering as maddened attackers rushed through them.
In the span of an instant, the banquet had become a slaughter.
“I CAN FEEL THEM ON ME!”
And I had become a target.
The cultist—a hulking brute bleeding from a dozen cuts and spitting blood out his mouth—came rushing toward me, swinging a machete half the size of me. Panic burned through his bloodstained face as he trampled corpses and the fleeing as he raised his weapon.
“THEIR LEGS BURN! GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF! GET THEM—”
He didn’t finish that sentence.
Probably because his windpipe had just been crushed.
Agne’s fingers tightened around the brute’s neck, her eyes flashing purple and the Lady’s song rising in our ears. She hefted him off his feet, her skin not so much as bleeding as he hacked wildly at her arm, and glanced at me.
“I take it this is what was going on?” she asked.
“Yup,” I replied, drawing my sword and flicking my shield out.
“Huh.” She glanced back at the cultist. “You were right.”
With a snap of her wrist, she hurled the Havener face-first into the floor. His skull erupted with a wet popping sound, bits of white and gray sliding across the floor to mingle with the red.
