“Am I supposed to be impressed by that?” Garret asked.
“I would not expect you to appreciate the myriad applications for this technology.”
Ward repeated his snapping with each of his fingers. Each snap caused a different spider leg to twitch.
“But you do understand what it means to be obsolete,” Ward continued. “Because in a fight against Ashlyn Malgrave, you would be just as overmatched as Bartholomew was against the cat. Would you like me to change that for you?”
“You’re not putting anything inside of me.”
“No. For you, an external application will be preferable.” He glanced at the noose on Garret’s hip. “Perhaps a weapon that aligns with your existing skills, but allows you to nullify Ashlyn’s power?”
Garret blinked. “I can see the value in that.”
“Good. We have a deal, then.” He turned to Nebbin. “As Garret pointed out, there is no reason to keep up false pretenses. Begin harvesting samples from Kira’s adrenal cortex—as much as her body can withstand. It will take time to engineer her steroid treatments from the hormone scrapings, and I want to have them ready and available.”
Nebbin smiled. “Yes, master. Right away.”
31
NOLA
City of Deepdale, Cat’s Eye Tavern
Lord Cuspar came into the Cat’s Eye just as Nola and Grittle were closing. Two wardens in full armor followed him.
“Ladies!” he said with a smile. “How are we this evening?”
Cuspar was an oddly shaped man. Not plump, like most lords from the sunny side of the canal, but not skinny either. More of a strange mixture of both, with an ample belly, but beanpole arms and no ass at all. Generally, his shape reminded Nola of a pear. On the other hand, his two wardens both had thick necks and forearms that were wreathed in muscle. They weren’t as tall as Lord Silas, but they were close.
“We’re fine, Lord Cuspar. Thank you for asking.” Nola gave a bow, as did Grittle. She hated bowing to Cuspar nearly as much as she hated seeing her sister follow her lead. “And you, m’lord?”
“Oh, the answer to that question depends on the status of your finances, Nola.” Cuspar moved to the bar, removing a pair of gloves made from a caiman’s hide as he walked. One warden stayed by the door, the other moved into the middle of the room and rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.
Cuspar took a spot at the bar and tapped a bare finger against it. “First, a drink.”
“Yes, m’lord.” She gave her sister a look. “All the way to the top.”
Grittle poured his beer, but Nola took it from her by the cask and carried it over. She didn’t have a good reason for doing that, but she always did, as if keeping her sister out of arm’s reach would also protect her from Cuspar’s much larger grip on their fate.
He took a long sip. Licked the foam from his mustache.
“As I recall, you were fifty-two silvers short of our agreed-upon quota last moon’s turn. Applying standard interest, that’s sixty-two silvers on top of the usual hundred.”
Nola didn’t say anything.
“Is that your recollection as well?” Cuspar asked pleasantly.
She wanted to argue the ridiculous and very much nonstandard nature of that interest rate, but it was difficult to negotiate when you had no leverage and the man on the other side of the table had two wardens with very large, sharp swords.
“Yes,” said Nola, doing her best not to sound pissed, but failing.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, that is where our debt currently stands.” A moment’s pause. “M’lord.”
“Hm.” Cuspar took another sip. The beer was half empty. “Of course, if you’re unable to cover the debt, we could perhaps adjust the ownership split of the tavern to a different ratio.”
Nola reached beneath the counter. As she did so, she noticed that both wardens moved their hands to the grips of their swords and kept them there, even when she came up with a sack of coins and flopped it on the bar with a clink and a rattle.
“Two hundred and ninety silvers,” Nola said. “Covers what I owed, plus your thirty percent of this week’s profit.”
“Profit?” Cuspar repeated. He looked more surprised than if Nola had drawn a blade on him. “How in the name of the forest gods did you turn a profit?”
“As I recall, the terms of our agreement didn’t include me detailing my methods of hospitality, m’lord. Just sharing the results.” She pushed the sack forward. “I assume you’ll want to count it.”
“Correct,” Cuspar said, voice full of irritation despite the fact that he was coming into more money than he’d expected. That was the sideways thing about lords. They didn’t just want to get paid, they wanted to get paid their way.
Cuspar tossed the sack to one of his wardens, who moved over to a table and started counting the coins. His lips moved while he worked through the sums. Cuspar drank his beer in simmering silence.
“Well?” he snapped when the warden had gone through everything.
“All here, boss,” the man said. “Two hundred and ninety.”
“Coin weights all felt right?”
The warden shrugged. “Few might have been shaved a bit, but that’s a tavern for you.”
“How many felt shaved?”
“Fuck’s sake,” Nola muttered. She reached into her apron and slammed a handful of coppers onto the counter. “Here. M’lord.”
There was a long silence while Cuspar glared at her. Eventually, the warden behind him cleared his throat.
“That’ll probably cover the light ones, boss.”
Cuspar turned around. “Did I ask you a question, Ulnar?”
“No.”
“Then keep your fucking mouth shut until I do.”
There was the smallest moment of hesitation in the warden, along with a tightness in his shoulders and hands. For a heartbeat, Nola wondered if Lord Cuspar might learn to regret speaking so harshly to such an imposing man. But Nola saw the promise of more coin in Ulnar’s future sway him away from violence in the present. His face softened.
“Will do, boss.” He started putting the coins back into the sack. “Sorry.”
Cuspar turned back to Nola. There was a gleam in his eyes that Nola recognized from when she first showed up at his manse, looking for a loan. She’d thought it was lechery at the time, but she was wrong. It was greed. Pure, simple greed.
“You know, if I were to explore your inventory in detail and discover any extra or illicit profits that you’ve been hiding from me, I would be within my rights to have Ulnar start breaking you and your sister’s fingers. Betraying a business agreement with a lord is a very serious crime.”
“I do know that, m’lord. I can get my ledger if you’d like.”
“I’ll piss on your ledger. I am talking about every. Little. Detail. Ashlyn Malgrave and her demon dog Bershad aren’t here anymore to protect the lowborn. And the way this war is going, they’re not likely to return. That means there’s nobody to stop me from coming back with ten wardens and pulling up your floorboards. Digging through your attic. Making sure there isn’t even one extra silver squirreled away for winter, understand?”
Oh, Nola understood. All too well.
“My floorboards are open to you and your men, m’lord. But the business will likely suffer if my patrons don’t have anything to stand on while they drink their morning beers.”
Cuspar grunted. Drained the rest of his beer. Burped. Then he spat on her floor for good measure.
“I don’t know how you came up with that coin, girl. But unless you can pull it out of your little cunt every month, this tavern’s gonna be mine one day. When it is, I’ll remember your smart tongue. And I’ll throw both of you out on your skinny asses.”
He got up. Took the sack of coin on his way to the door.
Grittle took two steps forward and spoke before Nola had a chance to grab her and put a hand over her mouth. “Lord Silas is coming back!” she said.
Cuspar tu
rned around. Gave a sly smile. “Is that a fact, girl?”
“Yes. We gave him a beer before he left, so when he does return he’s going to protect our tavern from people like you.”
“So, a little bit of rain ale is all it takes to bribe the demon of Glenlock Canyon into service?” Cuspar chuckled. “Good to know.”
He put his gloves back on, then gave an ostentatious wave. “Until next month, my little chickens. Keep on laying those silver eggs.”
When he was gone, Nola locked the door behind him.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Nola hissed at her sister.
“Why not?” Grittle asked, frowning. “Lord Silas will come back. He’ll help us.”
“We need to be able to help ourselves. And talking back to Lord Cuspar isn’t the way to do that.”
“You weren’t exactly charming his pants off, Nola.”
Nola smiled. Rustled a hand through her sister’s hair.
“C’mon. It’s time for bed.”
* * *
Nola and Grittle slept in the attic above the tavern.
A year ago, they’d been forced to cram their bedrolls between the crates of extra food and fruit. Nola had gone to sleep each night with the flowery aroma of fresh hops and sharp cheese in her nose.
Now, the attic was so barren that Nola and Grittle were able to spread out as much as they wanted—each with their own space.
“Long enough?” Grittle asked, mumbling around the tooth twig in her mouth.
“No. You need another full minute.”
“I already chewed for a minute.”
“You chewed for twenty seconds.” Nola pointed at the twig. “One full minute. Otherwise you’ll wind up with a bunch of brown beans for teeth, like Jakell.”
Grittle sighed. Then popped the twig into her mouth and started chewing again.
There wasn’t a lime tree within fifty leagues of Deepdale that hadn’t had its fruit picked clean by Blackjacks or people or both, but at least they could still use the twigs to keep their teeth clean.
While Grittle finished up, Nola played around with the Papyrian lens that Kellar had traded for that scrap of fish. The different tubes were made from brass, and covered with old rope. It wasn’t worth much right now—and part of Nola regretted allowing Kellar to tack it onto the trade for his breakfast—but maybe when the war was done, she could take it across the canal and work something out with one of the rich collectors. They always paid too much for crap from foreign countries.
For now, the lens was hers. Might as well use it.
The attic had one big window that looked out over the city. Nola propped it open with a wooden rod and looked out.
It was a quiet night. A bent-backed woman was struggling to move a cart up Canal Street. Two wardens were sitting on one of the bridges; both of them had their pants rolled up and their feet in the water. One of them was missing his right arm, and the other had a set of crutches next to him. Eventually, he pulled his legs out of the water and Nola saw that he was missing a foot.
She moved her lens to the far side of the canal. The highborn side.
Everything about the buildings and shops and manses across the canal was better. The walls were cut from stronger stone. The mortar was fresh and uncracked. The roofs were made from uniform slate and tile instead of old, rain-molded thatch.
Because Nola was in the mood for a little self-inflicted pain, she moved her lens around until she found Lord Cuspar’s manse, which was built just outside the castle walls. He had a three-floor manse made from red brick. There was an enclosed yard out back with a big cook fire that was alight with smoldering coals. It looked like Cuspar’s servants were cooking a goat tonight. Before he died, their father had run a goat farm to the north. Between the milk and meat, one goat could sustain their whole family for a moon’s turn.
Cuspar didn’t have a wife. Didn’t have any kids. And he was eating an entire goat.
Nola watched a cook come out from the kitchen and spread some herbs over the animal’s flesh, then go back inside. The short glimpse inside the kitchen made her stomach churn and her skin crawl. There were jars and jars of rice, grain, spices. Smoked fish hung from ceiling hooks. There was a whole basket of limes.
“Asshole,” Nola muttered.
Grittle finished with her twig, and carefully placed it on a cloth. Then she dragged her bedroll over to Nola’s and sat down. She always did that, despite the extra space they now had.
“Can I have a story before bed?”
Nola gave her a look. “I should punish you for talking back to Lord Cuspar and cancel stories for a week.”
“No, please don’t!” Grittle said, looking very concerned.
Nola sighed. Their father wouldn’t have liked how lenient Nola was with Grittle. He’d been a strict disciplinarian—stern with manners and chores, always worried about having enough to get by. Nola worried about those things, too. But she didn’t have the heart to pass that concern on to Grittle in full doses. So much of life was a difficult burden. Grittle deserved a few more years without feeling the full weight of it.
Nola sighed. “Fine, fine. What kind of story do you want?”
“One about the brothers.”
That was the only kind of story that Grittle ever asked to hear.
“A funny one?”
“No … a scary one. The one about the Blackjack that got stuck in the field.”
“That one’s too scary. You got nightmares last time.”
“No, I didn’t. I just got a little scared.”
“Let’s do the one about when Janus got his foot stuck in a rain ale bucket.”
Grittle seemed to think that over very carefully, weighing the merits of the proposed story. “Okay, but you have to promise to do all the different voices.”
“I promise.”
Grittle tucked herself tight into her blanket. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Nola cleared her throat. “The entire thing started with the unfortunate placement of the rain ale bucket…”
Grittle listened carefully, keeping her hands clutched around the blanket.
Nola did her best with the voices.
32
CASTOR
Castle Malgrave, Level 11
Castor was already in the map room when Osyrus Ward burst in, flanked by his little posse of engineers. He’d been sifting through some detailed maps of the Dunfarian coast, looking for a good island to buy after the war. Dunfarian dirt didn’t come cheap, but a sailor had told him once that the water near the coast was clear as glass and warm as a freshly drawn bath. That seemed worth the extra cost.
He had his eye on a crescent island with a nice little cove. It’d probably be teeming with crabs and lobster he could catch fresh each morning, then drench in lemon juice and eat for breakfast.
Ward and his men ruined that little daydream with all their bustling and mumbling. Castor folded up his plans for the future and walked over to the massive map of the Dainwood they were all looking at.
“Report,” said Ward.
“Six new warren locations have come in,” said Engineer Nebbin. “Five are middling in size. But the sixth one, located in Sector Nineteen, appears to be the largest warren that our Wormwrot patrols have found.”
“Show me.”
He was handed some papers and started reading through them.
“Note the description of the root tendrils,” Nebbin said, pointing. “They stretch more than one hundred meters from the mouth of the warren, which is twenty strides in diameter. According to the Seed matrix, we could recover twenty, even thirty pints of fluid. Enough to replenish the recent losses to our war acolyte ranks.”
“More than enough,” Ward said.
“Shall we dispatch a harvesting team, then?” Nebbin asked.
Ward continued frowning at the paper. “Who wrote this report? I would like to interview them personally.”
“Unfortunately, the lieutenant’s name is smeared, see here? It happens sometimes. The rep
ort itself is actually several weeks old, and was misfiled in the cartographer’s manse due to a clerical error. It was pure chance we found it at all.”
“Pure chance,” Ward repeated. “Hm.”
“Is there a problem, Master Ward?”
“No.” He set down the report. “We will dispatch a team, but I want an extra ten war acolytes to go with them, rather than the usual three.”
Nebbin frowned. “I am afraid with the rebellions in Lysteria heating up again, we only have three spare acolytes who are not currently engaged.”
“Then send an extra three,” Ward snapped. “And double the Wormwrot escort.”
“You think it’s a trap?” Castor asked.
“I think the discovery of a massive warren located twenty leagues away from any previously patrolled stretch of the Dainwood is suspicious. Don’t you?”
Castor nodded. “If Bershad might show up, Commander Vergun will want to go personally.”
Ward smiled. “He won’t be the only one.”
33
GARRET
Dainwood Jungle, Sector Nineteen
“So, why’s a legendary killer like the Hangman tagging along for a lowly warren harvest?” asked a Wormwrot sergeant named Yustar.
Garret ignored the question.
“Well?” Yustar pressed, leaning forward. His breath smelled like onions and beer.
“You have your orders, Sergeant,” said Garret. “Follow them, and we’ll all do just fine.”
Yustar didn’t like that answer. He spat onto the floor of the skyship to show it.
Unlike the open deck of the Blue Sparrow, everything in the newer combat skyships was covered in a shell of armor to protect from dragon attacks. The men were sitting in the main hold, and the pilots were at the end of the hallway in a covered cockpit.
It was hot, made worse by the idiotic face paint he wore to pass for a Wormwrot regular. And it was cramped, made worse by Yustar’s terrible breath. But it was preferable to getting snatched by a roaming Blackjack.
Fury of a Demon Page 23
