The smoke cleared in a hurry, sucked down into the Gate, and Zosia saw she’d shut the man up, but not in the way she’d intended. He was slumped over, pulled to the side by the chain that tethered him to the soldier Zosia had accidentally hit instead of her target. She couldn’t tell if her wide shot had struck a man or a woman, only that she’d blown their face wide open.
“Reload that for me,” Zosia grunted, shoving the smoking pistol into Purna’s shaking hands. She’d never been as good a shot with guns as she was with her bow, but wouldn’t miss twice, not at this range. “Now!”
“Well that’s just typical, innit!” the old man howled, looking up from his fallen comrade. “She wasn’t even there, you stupid fucking arsehole! She just enlisted, ain’t been in the Fifteenth more’n five months! And you killed her all the same, ’cause that’s what justice means to Cold Zosia! You’re worse than us, Your Majesty, ’cause we follow orders, but you’re the one giving ’em!”
Zosia closed her suddenly stinging eyes, took a deep breath. Stop, her internal dissenter pleaded, stop stop stop, but she tried to ignore her doubts, to stifle her growing self-loathing. She wasn’t here to debate her tactics or justify her actions to anyone, not even herself, and certainly not an Imperial cutthroat. She was here for justice, to fulfill the oath she had made to avenge Leib and Pao and all the rest. And contrary to the final desperate shit-talking of a condemned man, she didn’t want blood for blood’s sake—if he spoke true and the soldier she’d inadvertently shot hadn’t been part of the massacre, that was on Zosia, and she’d carry that burden to the end of her days. It could go on top of the pile.
“I’m a fair woman!” she shouted, cringing at how desperate the words sounded. “I won’t hold any accountable who weren’t at Kypck! So if you enlisted after, you’re free to go!”
She realized her mistake even before the first soldier piped up, and sure enough there was a chorus in short order:
“I wasn’t there!”
“Me neither!”
“I just got promoted to cavalry!”
“We came on after, after!”
“Swear on the Crimson Queen’s life, I never been to Kypck!”
“Shut up!” Zosia cried, what was supposed to be a triumph fast becoming a fiasco as most of the chained soldiers protested their innocence. They were probably all lying, they had to be… “All of you, be quiet!”
“What’s the problem?” the old-timer called, drops of his comrade’s blood caught in his stubble. “If you were there to know the whole Fifteenth’s responsible, should be easy enough to recognize the culprits! Course you could always raze all of Azgaroth, just to make sure you didn’t miss any! Or play it safe and hang the whole Star!”
“Fuck this,” Zosia muttered to herself, trying to drown her doubts with the memory of Efrain Hjortt peacocking around her house, her husband’s head in a gunnysack. It didn’t really work—her sweet dream of revenge had become a nightmare, in which she was a miserable prisoner condemned to carrying out an execution she no longer desired. “Fuck all of this.”
“Let’s wait, Zosia,” Purna murmured, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We can interrogate them back at the stockade, find out for sure who was there when—”
“It’s too late,” said Zosia wearily, the cold, bitter, hate-filled part of her heart knowing that if she paused for another moment she would lose her nerve entirely. “It’s too late for any of us. Soldiers! It’s time! Push them in!”
The Cobalt guards didn’t look much happier than the captives with the prospect, but good soldiers that they were they followed her order, shoving the line of Azgarothians closer to the Gate. There was some struggling, but the fight had been preemptively sapped from most of the prisoners, their bodies enfeebled after weathering the Chain’s witchery of the day before. As the first pair of boots teetered on the edge of the Gate, though, a voice rang out over the whimpers and cries of the doomed:
“Stop! Your general commands you, stop!”
And so they did, guards and prisoners and the pair of nobles and Zosia herself all turning as one to see Ji-hyeon burst out of the smoke astride a charger, her retinue hot on her hooves. A dozen more horses wheeled and stamped, having come in so fast through the fog they might have ridden straight into the Gate if they hadn’t instinctively shied away from the looming blackness.
“Just what in the holy fucking of the horny gods are you doing?” Ji-hyeon demanded, swinging down from her stamping horse.
“You know exactly what I’m doing.” The cold in Zosia’s belly broke apart, melting into magma as white-hot fury boiled down from her heart, all of her doubt and guilt incinerated by the wrath she felt at Ji-hyeon’s interference. In spite of her heat, or perhaps because of it, Zosia kept her tone perfectly civil as the girl advanced on her. “I promised you my guidance and aid in exchange for something very small: vengeance against those who killed my people. This is what we agreed to, General.”
“I never gave you permission to murder lawful prisoners!” Ji-hyeon wasn’t yet as good at masking her rage as Zosia. She might learn the trick, in time, assuming she didn’t force Zosia into tossing her through this very Gate, which is exactly what she’d do if this treacherous brat tried to renege on their deal. You don’t spend half a lifetime around devils without acquiring a taste for absolutes. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice, Captain?”
Zosia’s control slipped a few more notches toward total fucking release; it was a strangely satisfying sensation. “A deal is a deal. They’re mine, Princess.”
“Zosia, please.” Ji-hyeon was so close Zosia could smell the stale saam smoke on her breath, see the little bits of white that still showed through the thicket of bright red veins clogging her eyes. “The Thaoan regiment’s moving in on us, now. With Colonel Hjortt and the rest of the hostages held according to the laws of the Crimson Codices, we can talk them into a temporary truce, stall them if nothing else. But if we start executing prisoners of war there’s no fucking way they’ll agree to talks. They’ll attack us as soon as they find out!”
“Better make sure your people don’t talk, then,” said Zosia, and when Ji-hyeon’s face tightened Zosia leaned in real fucking close, her lips nearly brushing the girl’s ear as she said, “You don’t have a choice here, Princess. They go into the Gate, now, and if you say another fucking word I’ll toss you in after them and take your army for myself. I imagine most of these sellswords would be happy to have the real Cobalt leading them instead of a devildamned teenager who’d rather strike truces than blows.”
Forget saucers, Ji-hyeon’s eyes were as big as bucklers, but she knew better than to push Zosia. Smart girl. The general nodded forlornly, then turned back to her waiting guards, all the tension gone out of her shoulders. Zosia had hoped to postpone that little showdown until after the execution, but at least the bridge was crossed and she could get on with—
“Arrest Captain Zosia,” Ji-hyeon called to her bodyguards, too chickenshit to look at Zosia as she gave the order. “And take the Fifteenth Cavalry back to camp. This is not how the Cobalt Company treats prisoners.”
The guards moved fast, but Zosia moved faster. If she’d gone for Ji-hyeon she might not have reached her in time, but Zosia wasn’t after the general. She barreled into the captive at the end of the chain, a baby-faced man with a dazed smile turning up his tear-muddied cheeks at the unexpected reprieve. Her shoulder caught him in the side, and he flopped into the Gate before the smile even left his lips. And just as she’d hoped, instead of going slack the chain that connected him to the next prisoner jerked taut as soon as the man disappeared into the liquid emptiness of the Gate. A second soldier was yanked off her feet and slid screaming into the darkness, the next in line bracing himself but unable to overcome the pull of the chain cutting into his wrist, blood welling out around the iron bracelet as he was pulled forward, heels kicking up dirt as he gasped, too scared to scream, and that’s when Zosia was decked in the face, only realizing that the shrill laughter that fi
lled the air was her own when the fist snapped her cackling mouth shut.
Shaking off the halfhearted blow Zosia started to laugh again, because mercy of mercies, it wasn’t a guard who had engaged her, but Ji-hyeon herself. The girl hopped in place, clutching the maimed hand she’d thoughtlessly clocked Zosia with and yowling in pain. Instead of looking after their general, the guards had rushed to the aid of the chain of prisoners, locked in an unwinnable tug-of-war with the Gate. Cracking her knuckles, Zosia stepped forward to teach Ji-hyeon her last lesson: how to throw a decent punch. It was long past time for Cold Zosia to resume command of the Cobalt Company.
CHAPTER
9
It was almost a relief, to have it come to this. It was certainly clarifying, the jolt of pain in Ji-hyeon’s mangled hand bringing the chaotic, blurry morning into perfect focus. Even the reminder that her strong left jab was out of commission for the foreseeable future didn’t worry her; run-down and wild-eyed as the biddy looked, Ji-hyeon could’ve probably taken her with both hands tied behind—
Zosia came at her so fast Ji-hyeon barely got her arm up in time to deflect the first blow, and then the second popped her in the throat, a third snapped her chin, and the chain of punches would’ve laid her out flat if Ji-hyeon hadn’t snapped her knee into Zosia’s crotch, buying her a reprieve. Ji-hyeon stumbled backward as Zosia rocked in place, fists still raised but unable to immediately pursue her quarry as she rode out the pain. It was a low blow, but Ji-hyeon wouldn’t think twice about burying her foot in the woman’s snatch if she rushed in like that again. Choi called such attacks a Villainous Move, but what could be more fitting for the former Arch-Villain?
“Piece… of… shit,” Zosia hissed through her teeth, shaking her legs out. “You’re going in the Gate for that.”
“General!” A pair of guards let go of the prisoners’ chain to come to Ji-hyeon’s aid, and the line of struggling captives slipped another meter, the one closest to the Gate shrieking as his bound wrist inched down to touch the black surface. The kneeling guard who had finally fitted a key into the man’s manacle cursed, and then hand, iron band, and key were all pulled into the Gate, the prisoner’s forearm disappearing into the darkness.
Zosia took advantage of the distraction, charging in at Ji-hyeon again, but a pair of bodyguards came between the two women. Zosia stalked to the side, deftly twirling her war hammer. The screams of the man being drawn into the Gate obliterated whatever shit Zosia was talking, overwhelmed the frantic questions of the bodyguards, drowned out even Ji-hyeon’s thoughts… and then Tapai Purna jerked the kneeling guard away from the Gate, taking his place beside the hapless prisoner. Leaning perilously far out over the rim, she raised her kukri, and with no hesitation at all swiped it down into the man’s elbow. The blow cut off the man’s ear-piercing wail, but failed to do the same to his arm; it hung bloodily on by a ragged hinge of meat. Before Purna could raise her curved blade for another blow, however, the pull of the Gate finished the amputation for her, ripping the tendons out by their roots as it carried off the forearm. The chained prisoners and the guards supporting them all fell back from the abrupt release of tension, and Diggelby seized his tottering companion and pulled her back from the edge. Sound flooded back into Ji-hyeon’s ringing ears, and she returned her full attention to her mad captain.
“—fair fight!” Zosia was spitting like a trapped fox on the other side of Ji-hyeon’s two bodyguards, a third moving around to cut off any possible escape. “Think you can take on the Crimson Empire when you can’t even take one old lady, you cunt-punting chicken?”
“General?” One of the bodyguards, Ankit, had turned to Ji-hyeon, her pitiless panther mask looking for the obvious order. This could be over in a minute.
“Drop your weapon, Zosia!” The old cow looked ready to say something smart, and then she must have seen Ji-hyeon unbuckling her belt through the screen of armed guards. “I can’t offer you a fair fight, you horrible has-been, on account of you being too fucking old to hang—but if you really want to try me, I’ll beat your fucking ass with my bare hands.”
“Uh, General?” Purna still hadn’t caught her breath, her panting, wolfish tongue darting in and out of her mouth as she spoke. “I really don’t think…”
“Nor do I,” murmured Choi from Ji-hyeon’s other side. “That woman has tusks instead of fists.”
“About fucking time you stepped up!” Zosia dropped her hammer as Ji-hyeon’s scabbard and sword followed her belt to the rough earth. The woman’s back was fewer than a dozen paces from the hungry black pit that had eaten a pair of soldiers this morning, and ten thousand more the day before. “Here’s the stakes, Princess—winner takes the Cobalt Company, loser kisses that Gate!”
“Fuck your stakes,” said Ji-hyeon, elbowing her way between her befuddled bodyguards. She was mad as a newly bound devil but wasn’t about to get lured into some pissing contest with this cagey crone. “You take me down and maybe I won’t have you executed, but that’s a big fucking maybe after all your bullshit.”
For some reason the word bullshit set Zosia off again, her pupils swelling to fill her eyes as she trembled with rage. In a deadly low voice she spat, “Bold talk for a dead brat—I don’t see your little owlbat floating around to protect you, Princess.”
“And where’s your devil, Captain?” It was hard, talking trash on the fly, but over the course of the campaign Ji-hyeon had gained some experience in this field. “Seems like a wasted wish, to send him back to hell just so I’d kick your ass in front of my crew. All you had to do was ask.”
Which wasn’t great, sure, but Ji-hyeon didn’t have time to think of something better before Zosia nodded thoughtfully and then bolted forward with her arms tucked in tight to her chest. She wanted to get in close, just like before, but Ji-hyeon was ready for her this time and—
Shit, fuck, horse piss, how did a woman that old move like that? She was past Ji-hyeon’s blocks in a twinkling, fists wheeling in one after another, hammering a precise line up Ji-hyeon’s torso. The rogue captain would’ve nailed her already bruising throat, too, if Ji-hyeon hadn’t set her heel and shoved back into the onslaught, stumbling into the rain of punches and slamming her forehead into Zosia’s. Ji-hyeon had wanted the woman’s nose, damn it, both women reeling for a moment, and then, as if she’d read Ji-hyeon’s intentions, Zosia whipped her arm around, the back of her fist crushing Ji-hyeon’s septum with a pop the girl felt all the way to her feet.
The world went dim, the falling snow turning red as it filled Ji-hyeon’s vision. She staggered backward, half-blind, and then snapped her hand up to catch the blow she couldn’t see but knew must be drilling through the air to finish the job. Her fingers closed on a wrist, and only realizing what she was doing as it was happening, she pulled Zosia forward, yanking her into the left hook she’d fired without even thinking about it. Zosia struggled but Ji-hyeon held her fast, hitting her again and again. Each punch brought Ji-hyeon a little closer to reality, and by the time she felt the bones crunching in her already-crippled hand Zosia’s face was beginning to slide under Ji-hyeon’s two remaining fingers.
As her opponent came back into focus so, too, did a growing ache in Ji-hyeon’s side. Zosia was matching her blow for blow, clumsy rabbit punches to Ji-hyeon’s ribs as Ji-hyeon held her squirming right arm and battered her face. The old broad looked bad off, and Ji-hyeon knew she had her…
A leg that must have been prying at hers the whole time finally caught Ji-hyeon off balance, and they both went down, Zosia’s bloody mouth splitting into a grin as she tackled her quarry. The frozen earth felt soft as a feather mattress as it caught Ji-hyeon’s fall, Zosia lighter than a pillow propped on the girl’s waist, and when fingers tightened around her throat Ji-hyeon pitched herself to the side, taking her rider with her. They didn’t roll so much as stutter, Ji-hyeon coming up on top and grinding her elbow into Zosia’s gut only to be flipped over again, those hands still crushing her windpipe, and then it was Ji-hyeon’s turn to be
on top again. She dove down like an eel in one of Othean’s tide-pool gardens, biting Zosia’s shoulder until the woman let go of her throat and set to battering her ears. Ji-hyeon felt like a drum under the rhythm of those blows, an angry war drum that never wanted the beat to stop as she choked on her enemy’s blood and hair, and then she slipped under for a moment, because when she could see and think again she no longer had a mouthful of muscle, no longer saw an eyeful of silver hair; she saw nothing but the shimmering colors that lurked just beneath the shining blackness of a Gate. There was laughter down there, too, the shrill cackling of the deranged waiting for her to join the chorus. Fingers knotted in her hair and a knee dug into her back, and she gave up the struggle—it was time to see what lay beyond the rim when you didn’t have a guide to lead you safely through…
Then, just as she was warming to the prospect, Ji-hyeon was hauled rudely backward, bright blossoms of pain blooming across her face and ears, her throat and ribs. She blinked the blood out of her eyes, staring past Choi’s wide-eyed face. She had never seen her Honor Guard so upset, and she choked up with guilt at having so worried one of her oldest friends. She tried to tell Choi it was all right but only bubbled up blood, which turned into a coughing fit. Choi helped her onto her side and Ji-hyeon spat out a mouthful of bloody silver hair.
Zosia. She looked up, the mad chortling of the Gate still rattling through her throbbing ears, and she saw her former captain bucking wildly on the ground, landing a few blows even with Purna holding her arms and Diggelby wrapped around her legs, two bodyguards warily trying to help. Zosia laughed and laughed, her bloodied, mud-smeared face bearing only a passing resemblance to a mortal woman. She looked like one of the blade maidens from Ji-hyeon’s first father’s scrolls, a goddess so hungry for vengeance she would welcome a devil to ride her flesh instead of that of a beast.
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