by J. M. Frey
Pip’s knees are so bent that it’s a wonder she hasn’t fallen to the damp grass, and it can’t just be her grip on the man’s forearm that keeps her upright. No, now that I am looking, I can see it—a thin black chest. She is kneeling on it.
I recognize it as easily as I recognized Kintyre’s knife in the tomb mosaic. It is my chest. The one from the hayloft; the one with my Shadow Hand accoutrements secreted inside. The one that no one but me can open.
It remains closed, the locks and hinges scuffed and gouged from someone’s unsuccessful attempts to force them. The bolts which once secured the box to the loft are still hanging from the sides, splinters of wood clinging to the fist-sized screws.
I return my eyes to Pip, whose whole frame is shuddering and jerking, her head shaking so hard back and forth that I fear she may harm herself.
“Pip!” I call.
“Ah, and here he is. Good lovie,” the man says. He reaches out to pet Pip’s hair, cradling the back of her neck like a lover, and fury flashes through me so hot and so fast that I am three steps toward him, my sword jumping into my hand before I realize that I recognize him.
“Well, this is certainly not the man I expected to be the Shadow Hand, is it?” Bootknife says. His grin is wide and gleeful and hatefully white in the moonlight. “But here you are, Lordling Turn. ‘Course it would be the pain-in-the-arse’s useless little brother. It’s all so po-po-poetical,” he mocks.
“Pip!” I yelp. “Come away from him!”
Bootknife pets the back of her neck again. “Oh no, no, she ain’t going nowhere, my little lovie, now is she?”
Pip shivers and gasps, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was on the verge of an orgasm.
“What are you doing to her? Let her go.”
Bootknife laughs, his ferret-features wide and happy, his dark eyes squinched shut. The tail of his queue brushes along his shoulders, hair dark and greasy. His elvish ancestry lends his eyes and cheekbones a swept-back tilt that, in the shadows, translates as ominous.
“Now, why would I do that, tell me? Got her right where I want her, I do. Though, she’s being bad, she is. Not cooperating.” He jerks her hair hard.
“Fuck you!” Pip sobs.
“So I’m punishing her, I am. Aren’t I?” With one pale, slender finger he draws aside the veil of her hair—a white, puffed tendril of scar tissue moves, crawls along her cheek, brushing the bottom of Pip’s ear and wrapping itself around her throat. She makes that familiar cough, that choking sound I’ve heard so often of late, and tries to hold perfectly still.
It falls together in my mind quite quickly after that. “The ivy,” I say. He doesn’t need to confirm it; I already understand. But I can’t think of anything else to voice, save for demands to let her go, and Bootknife doesn’t like to be told what to do. Instead, I say, “She can’t open the chest for you. And even if she could, the Mask would never accept you.”
Bootknife reaches down and retrieves his namesake from the sheath he wears in his left boot. It is flat and very thin, and, I know, very, very sharp. It shines in the watery light of the moon, almost like a Wisp itself, alive and thirsty.
“But you can do both. My little lovie told me all about the mask and how it works, didn’t she? Didn’t you, lovie?”
“Y-yes,” Pip moans. “I’m sorry, Forsyth. I’m so sorr—uck!”
“None of that,” Bootknife admonishes, and Pip reels backward but cannot break from his light embrace. “Up, up.”
Pip stands, limbs stiff and unnatural, joints nearly at the wrong angles, like a poorly strung puppet.
“Go kiss your man hello, lovie,” Bootknife sneers. His free hand makes a flinging motion toward me, as if he is spraying water, and Pip jerks forward, closing the gap between us. Her cheeks are flushed with misery and fury, and damp with tears. She fists the lapels of my robe in clumsy, resisting hands, and presses up on her toes.
She mashes her mouth against mine, barely a kiss, and then drops back down.
“Now kneel,” Bootknife commands, grinning.
And Pip, looking as surprised as I still feel, kneels.
“No!” I yelp, and hold on to her shoulders, keep her arms from being able to rise to my belt.
“Why not?” Bootknife asks. “You’ve never minded before, have you now?”
“Before?” I look down at Pip, but her face is turned away. She is ashamed.
Bootknife taps the flat of his blade across his palm, one foot on top of my Shadow’s Hand chest like it is a prize of war. Perhaps it is. “Have to say,” he drawls, “she’s got some neat tricks tucked away in that pretty little ‘ead, my lovie. Even I learnt a thing or two from her, didn’t I?” He taps the pommel of his knife between his own eyes.
“You’ve been in her mind?”
“Among other places.” He makes another gesture, and Pip jerks as if something has shoved its way inside her, and I suppose it has.
“Let her go!” I growl.
“Oh no, Forssy, no, no, no. That’s not how it’s going to go.” He takes a step toward us, putting himself between me and the chest. He points the knife at the back of Pip’s neck. The threat is very clear. One flick of his wrist, and she’s dead.
“How then?”
“You’re going to come over here, open the chest, and give me the mask. Give it to me, you hear? Proper like.”
“This is what you wanted all along?” I say, and it’s not a question, not really, because I know I’m right. It takes every fiber of my not inconsiderable self-control to not simply lunge at him, sword up. But then, the Writer only knows what he’d do to Pip. “To know who the Shadow Hand is, and to steal his secrets?”
“As you say,” he admits easily, shrugging.
“So, why the quest?” I ask. “Why let it get this far? Why not just . . . right after?”
“Because this way is more fun,” Bootknife taunts. “Because the more you thought she loved you, the more you told her. And the more you love her, the weaker your defense. But we’re at an end, now, aren’t we?”
I adjust my grip around my sword. “Because the knife is missing.”
“Of course the knife is missing!” he thunders, the rage and the volume both appearing so suddenly that I nearly take a step back. I catch myself in time. Bootknife jerks Pip again, in a fury. “It was mine! Mine! I was the one who read the legends and came! I was the one to battle the ward spells, who broke the castings! I was the one that nearly died for that knife, that perfect knife, my perfect knife. It was made for me, my tool, the extension of my hand. And your brother,” he snarls, foam flecking his lips in his puce-faced rage, “he took it! He took my heart!”
I swallow heavily and make no movement, no noise, fearing to set him off again. Bootknife takes a great, shuddering breath and seems to unruffle himself without even moving. He sighs, and it is filled with an unsettling, romantic longing. “And, of course, it’s Kinny-Kinny-Kintyre who’s got it, isn’t it? Just my luck, little lovie, just my luck. But once I’ve got the Shadow’s Mask, we can go finish up the quest together, can’t we, lovie? Are we gonna summon us up a Deal-Maker, eh?”
Pip fists her hands in the knees of my trousers and whimpers. “No,” she coughs. But the vines make her nod. She is fighting them, I can see, fighting them so hard they are starting to glow green with Bootknife’s power and effort.
Their grip on her loosens enough for her to gag, seethe, and, finally, from between clenched teeth whisper: “Yes, we will, sir.”
I am staggered. That Bootknife has used Pip as a conduit for his spying is clear enough; but that he has invaded her mind, her personality, so much that he can even make her speak as he wishes . . . it is horrific.
There is a riot in my stomach all of a sudden, a scream fighting with bile to be the first thing out of my mouth. I swallow hard and try to firm my stance, but I cannot seem to get my body to want to stay upright, to stay planted.
How much of what Pip has said to me was even her? How much of it was Bootknif
e, speaking with her mouth, touching me with her hands, making love to me with . . . I take a slow step backward, and Bootknife throws back his head, cackling in delight. Pip makes another desperate sound, and I immediately wish that I had not moved at all.
Bootknife’s laughter ratchets higher. “Oh, you’re disgusted! Cute, isn’t it?” I find myself suddenly wishing this graveyard was full of zombies and lichs and vampires, and that every single one of them would be attracted to the sound of his hateful, hateful glee.
“Go on, then,” he says, gesturing to the chest. “Open it up, my boy.”
“No,” I say. “Not until you let Pip go.”
Bootknife makes another gesture that has Pip on the ground in a second, back arched so high that only her heels and head are touching the grass, a scream so loud, so agonizing, so profound escaping from her throat. I stumble, my back and calves slamming into the freezing marble of the tomb behind me.
“Now!” Bootknife commands.
I stagger toward the chest, because I can’t bear to go in any other direction. Bootknife graciously steps aside, gesturing like a bullfighter, and I only spare a second’s thought for what might happen the moment the Shadow’s Mask is in his hand and my back is still turned.
But Pip is screaming, screaming, and I can’t . . . I can’t not . . . so I blow on the lock, and the hinges whisper and pop. I drop my sword to palm open the lid, and Bootknife kicks it away, back the way I came, and that’s fine, because there’s another sword in the bottom of the chest, under the cloak. I can almost feel Smoke yearning for the curling intimacy of my palm, ready to jump to our defense.
Bootknife just wants the mask, has his eyes on the prize, and I will let it distract him. I pull it from its velvet pouch, hold it aloft. He pinches it between two fingers, but he doesn’t pull.
“And the password?” he asks, too shrewd for my panicked mindset.
I mumble a few Words of Trust, and he grins. I let go.
The Mask hovers between us, glinting in the shadows, and then he lifts it, crowing in triumph. Pip goes completely slack, so deathly quiet that my heart skips ten beats in my chest.
Not dead, I plead. Please, not dead yet. But I wouldn’t put it past Bootknife.
I turn to face him, fall back against the chest, one arm buried up to the elbow in the fabric of the cloak inside it, trying hard to look as if I’ve swooned in horror. The horror is genuine, at least. It is a wasted effort, though—Bootknife isn’t even looking at me. He’s got the mask up to his face already, the greedy bastard.
The second he’s got the mask against his skin, he begins to scream.
I wrap my hands around Smoke’s hilt and lash upward. The tip of the blade catches Bootknife under the chin, knocking the mask into the air, but unfortunately leaving no more than a shallow scratch on the bastard’s face.
Perhaps I should have thrust Smoke through his chin and into his brains.
The mask flips end over end, flashing like a firefly in the ice-water moonlight, pinging off the wall of a tomb next to us and landing in a scruff of weakly glowing starflowers.
“You lied!” Bootknife howls, hands to his cheeks. I can see between his fingers that the flesh has reddened, burned. Perhaps I should have left the mask on him longer, instead, so it could have eaten through his face.
I am too kind.
“I have not,” I say, climbing to my feet and keeping Smoke up and pointed at him. I retrieve the mask, drop it back into the chest, and then kick the whole thing closed. The lock engages with a soft click. “I told Pip that the mask requires a pass phrase, but that it will also only accept as master a good man. Which, I am very pleased to say, Bootknife, you are not.”
He giggles. It grates upon my nerves like the screech of a bleeding hawk, raking up the flesh of my spine, making the hairs on my nape stand out, and my shoulders hunch in an effort to cover my ears without dropping my sword. I bare my teeth at him.
“Nope, not a good man. I am not,” he agrees. “I mean, lookit what I did to your girlie girl.”
I don’t take the bait and turn. He drops one hand and gestures. Pip makes a gasping sound (alive, thank the Writer), and I can hear the shift of fabric, the soft thunk of her boots on grass.
“Leave her be,” I say, thrilled that she is alive, but carefully containing my relief so he won’t see.
“Oh no, can’t do that, now, can I?” Bootknife laughs. He drops his other hand, the one still holding his knife, and shakes it at me, admonishing. “She’s too good a tool.”
“She’s no tool.”
“It’s not an accident that she survived, you know?” Bootknife says, posture and tone a study in forced nonchalance. He is picking his teeth with his dagger. “It took restraint on my part, it did. Didn’t like it, but did it. Good work, huh? And all that lovely medicine-magic floating ‘round in her blood—great world she comes from. Builds ‘em resistant, don’t it? Aren’t you gonna ask why I didn’t kill ‘er outright?”
“Why not?” I grit out, obliging.
“Cause my master said not to. Good idea, huh?” Bootknife giggles again. “That’s why he’s the boss man, he is. If she won’t tell us herself, he says, we use her to get other people to tell instead. Everyone likes a damsel in distress, he says. Nobody watches their mouths around pretty, silly little maidens. They’re a good prop to any scheme, he says. So we let her go, he says. But make sure we can control her, can see through her eyes and hear through her ears. Make sure she gets rescued, right? S’a good spell, isn’t it? Took me weeks to carve it against her spine, into her marrow and muscle. And she screamed, oh, how she screamed. But I had to take my time, I did.” He turns his attention to where she has walked up between us and makes a gesture with his hand that pulls the glowing vines tighter across her neck. Pip makes an ugly, guttural choking sound, eyes going impossibly wider, skin turning puce. “She’s a screamer, this one. Or maybe you already know that?” He leers at me.
I feel sick, all the way down to my toes, a rolling ball of hate and nausea.
“How much of what she did was you?” I ask. I don’t want the answer, not really, because I am terrified that it will be: all of it. “How much of what she said and how she acted was you pulling her strings?”
“At first, nearly none, wasn’t me. She knew you all by herself, betrayed her to us all by herself, she did, yeah? Wrote up that map, that chart thing, did all that research and told you so much, all on her own. But then she felt me pullin’, pullin’, so she shuts up, stops askin’ questions, and so I have to make her, I do.”
Smoke quivers in my hand, and I have never wished more than I am wishing right now that my sword was like Foesmiter, enchanted into never missing its mark, so that I could just throw it and have it pierce his heart. But my aim is not that good, especially not with Pip’s life poised between us like a sacrifice waiting to happen.
Bootknife says: “She’s a fighter, too, doesn’t do as she’s told, she doesn’t. Bad girl, very bad little pet. But then I started”—he twitches his hand in another complicated pattern, and Pip is dragged forward by her own body, the scars writhing and glowing such a vivid green across her shoulders that I can see them through her shirt. They wriggle down her arms, making her hold them out to me in a parody of an invitation— “to find other ways to make her obey. Squeezin’ the air out of her, that’s fun. Then she talks, my lovie. Then she says what she’s supposed to, doesn’t she? Give us a demonstration, yes?” he says to her. “Tell him you love him.”
The vines around Pip’s neck slide away, slithering back down under her collar. She gasps hard, as if her lungs are being compressed, but bites down on her own lips. Blood blossoms under her teeth, a rivulet sliding down her trembling chin, her eyes screwed tight and leaking.
She swallows hard, trying to drown the words, trembling, fighting, but Bootknife barks: “Do it!”
She goes slack, defeated.
“I-I love you, Forsyth.” She chews on the words, as if she can grab them with her incisors and kee
p them from escaping her mouth.
The twisting agony in my entrails tightens, leaving me equally breathless. No, Pip, no. Tell me that wasn’t him that made you say it.
“Tell him that you think he is a brave, strong man, yeah?” Bootknife is laughing. He waves his dagger in his air as if it’s a lady’s fan, mocking. “Tell him he’s worth something. Lie to him and tell him he’s a hero.”
“You’re a good man, Forsyth Turn,” Pip breathes, voice cracked and strained. Her head rolls back, eyes fluttering, and it takes effort for her to raise it, to meet my gaze. Believe me, her eyes plead. Believe me! “You’re a hero, bao bei. You are strong and intelligent. And you can outsmart this son of a bi—aarrgk!”
Bootknife clenches his fist harder, and Pip’s whole body spasms in agony.
“Now, now,” he scolds gently. “Don’t go putting words into your own mouth, lovie.”
“Fuck you,” she sobs.
Quiet, Pip! I beg, hoping she can see my desperation in my expression. Don’t antagonize the man who literally holds your life in the palm of his hands.
“Cry, lovie,” Bootknife sneers. “Go on, make it a good performance. Make him think you’re really that weak, that you need protecting. Appeal to his manly pride, you.”
She weeps on command, tears springing up in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, fat and pathetic. She is as miserable and horrified as she sounded in the stairwell of Turn Hall.
“You’re an absolute bastard,” I snarl.
Bootknife laughs again. “Yes, I am. Tryin’ to insult me with the truth? I already know my parentage, I do. Got on an uncooperative elfmaid, I was.”
“Let her go!”
