by Julia Knight
“You mean they, well, you know. All the time?”
“Yeah, all the time. God’s cogs, Voch, I’d have killed you years ago if they’d done that to us.”
“I’d have died of embarrassment first. There are some things a man should never see his sister do. Or anyone, come to that. I wouldn’t have pissed for years.”
“Me neither. But they say it means they bond closer than brothers and sisters. They know everything about each other. Everything. And when the cuffs are off, they stay together. They serve their king and queen, like I say, and it’s drilled into them that honour is the only way they have. The thing the Ikarans have about shades of rank, of gaining and losing respect, it’s in them tenfold. A hundredfold. By the time the cuffs are off, I reckon they can’t think of anything other than how to gain honour and glory for their master. It’s, I don’t know, who they are. No honour, no life.”
“Which is a nice story, but what’s it got to do with our little watcher?”
“Everything, because he is one. Or was.”
“Was? It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you can just quit.”
“Oh, he didn’t quit, Voch. He wears a scarf because he’s got no nose–they cut it off to mark him as a man who betrayed his pair.”
“That’s… pretty fucking gross.”
Kacha shrugged. They’d reached the edge of the clearing and a vicious-looking bush with purple flowers that Vocho would have sworn moved to follow their progress. They turned about and Vocho was glad because even the short walk had tired him, and his back was throbbing so hard he thought he might have to sit down. He wasn’t about to show weakness to Kacha though, not unless he passed out. Which was seeming increasingly likely.
“Gross to us, not to them. They think we’re a bunch of feckless idiots without a shred of honour between us. Anyway, he had no master, not after what he did.”
“What exactly did he do?”
“No idea. Doesn’t matter, probably. But the important part is, once he was dishonoured, the king didn’t want him; no lord or lady would take him, and he got shunted off to a lowly job, just to grind into him how he had no honour left. A guard. At the university.”
“Ah. Back to Alicia again? So, she’s watching. What for? Why not just come and kill us? What’s she waiting for?”
Kacha nodded towards a clump of bushes at the far end of the garden, still shrouded in the night’s shadows. “Best guess, him.”
Him? Vocho took another look at the bushes. Just bushes. Except that one shivered in a breeze that wasn’t there, and the next moment Dom was strolling across the clearing past beds of herbs and odd-looking vegetables.
He swept his hat off in Kacha’s direction and nodded at Vocho. “Good morning,” he said, like finding an assassin in your garden was to be expected. “How’s the invalid?”
“Grouchy, as I’m sure you can guess. How’s the assassin business?”
He spared Kacha a brief smile. “Busy, as I’m sure you can guess.”
“Come to kill us?” she asked.
“Not today. I’ll wait for you both to be on form. Unsporting otherwise.”
“Good of you. Then maybe some tea?”
He laughed at that. “Certainly. Tea. Though I’ll be sure to drink only what you drink in this house.”
Vocho followed them inside and wondered what exactly that meant. The kitchen was empty except for Cospel, who was dozing by the range and started when he heard them come in. He caught sight of their guest and cocked his head in a way which Vocho took to mean, “Oh crap, shall I start packing?” Vocho shook his head and Cospel relaxed a touch.
“Cospel, could we have some of that tea, please?” Kacha said and dropped into a chair. Vocho followed with rather more care, glad to be off his feet.
Cospel bustled about, handing Vocho a cup of the sweet whatever-it-was that Esti had apparently left for him, and tea to Dom and Kacha. Vocho took a long draught and breathed out as the pain began to subside.
Dom waited for Kacha to take a swallow of hers before he even touched his cup.
“A brave thing to do here,” he said.
“Seems you know something we don’t. Then again,” Kacha said, “maybe we know a thing or two you don’t.”
Dom nodded agreeably. “That could be true. You read your letter?”
Kacha flicked a glance Vocho’s way and back again. “Yes. But that’s not it. You first.”
“Well, shall we start with the fact that apparently you are not aware that you are staying in the house of Ikaras’s foremost poisoner? Whoops. I’m sure tea stains come out. Not to worry.”
It must have been the first time Vocho had seen Dom anything other than pristine, with Kacha’s tea all over his fine jacket. He tried not to gloat, but only managed it by choking on his own concoction.
“Poisoner?” he croaked when he got his voice back. He stared at his cup and put it down hurriedly. “I thought she was a magician. She is a magician.”
“Well, yes. Specialising in, among other things, the magical cultivation of plants, most particularly poisonous ones. She’s very good. I’ve heard she can grow anything, anywhere, and make it grow better than it does in the wild. A while ago she devised a way to make sugar grow better. She’s working for Sabates now, in a roundabout way, I’m fairly sure.”
“But she—”
“I didn’t say she wanted to work for him. I’m pretty sure she hates his guts, actually. But Sabates does have a way of getting people to work for him, as Petri knows to his cost. As do you. And like you she was cast out of her ‘guild’ for it, and is paying for it still, even as she continued to work for him in secret.”
“So what did she do?” Kacha asked. “Kill someone? Do magicians care about that?”
“Not really. Killing someone is irrelevant as long as it’s not another magician. Which sadly it was. Nasty business, and officially the king wants her dead and so do all the other magicians. Sabates has other plans for her, though. If she’s caught, she’ll hang. She has to work for Sabates or suffer the consequences. She’s trapped, just like you, so might well make a present of two fugitives to the king who wants her head, in order to save it. So, there you are–my piece. And yours?”
Dom sat back, though Vocho had an inkling he had other things to tell them. It seemed Dom always came with secrets.
Kacha took a sip of her tea and set the cup down carefully. “I suppose you know we broke into the magicians’ quarters in the university?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure Esti was very relieved to get her life’s work back. But what I came to tell you is that Esti’s been poisoning Bakar. Well, she’s not been giving it to him, obviously, but she makes it, I’m sure of it. Sending him quietly, or not so quietly insane. Don’t know how they’ve been getting it into him, but someone has.”
That made Vocho sit up. “So all that with Bakar being a bit, well, loony is him being poisoned? All those stupid taxes and the bit about the purple flags?”
“Almost positive. Almost. Esti’s involved in this somehow anyway. Maybe willingly, maybe not. Partly why I’m here–to every poison there’s an antidote. And that’s not all. You know Eneko threw in his lot with Licio in secret? Aye, well, I had my suspicions. I’ve got a spy or two of my own in the guild. Looks like Eneko’s preparing for a small coup of his own.”
“Has someone been poisoning Eneko as well?” Kacha asked. “Because he must be mad. Half of Reyes is getting ready for the war they think is coming, Licio negotiating or not. The guild is big and full of good men and women but a coup? A reach too far, at least now, surely?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But guildsmen have been protecting the border for a long time now, augmenting the council’s regular troops. Eneko’s had plenty of time to work on those troops. The councillors won’t work together if their lives depend on it, which they might. So Eneko’s presenting himself as Bakar’s saviour–the only man who can protect Reyes. Bakar is far enough gone that he’ll believe Eneko’s false promises
. And Bakar’s already uncovered one ‘plotter’ and had the guild deal with him as a gesture of good faith. Petri.”
Vocho risked a look at Kacha, but she gave no sign of having heard; she was looking up at the wind chimes playing at the window.
“What did they do with him?” she asked at last.
“I don’t know, yet. But I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Dom frowned but said no more and got up to leave, motioning to Vocho as he did so. Vocho pushed himself out of the chair and just about managed to keep the grimace off his face as he followed Dom to the door.
“Is she all right?” Dom asked in a whisper before he left.
Vocho thought about it for a while. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s right with her these days.”
“And you? You’re walking like a bloody duck, man. Esti get the tattoo off?”
“Supposedly. Apparently there are bits left, but at least no one can make me murder anyone against my will now.”
“Well, she’s good at what she does, I’ll give her that. But don’t trust her or anything she gives you to eat or drink. She’s killed more men than I have. What are you two going to do next?”
“Well, now you’ve given us that little speech about Eneko, I suspect Kacha will want to go back to Reyes and save Bakar and Petri in a blaze of glory. So thanks for that.”
“Vocho the Great is complaining about a blaze of glory?”
“No, I’m complaining about the fact I’ll probably die before I get the chance to see it.”
Chapter Eleven
It was something of a relief when they came to take Petri to Eneko. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been left in pitch-black silence, gagged and tied. Days, he suspected, with nothing but himself for company, leaving thoughts scattered around his brain like confetti. The lamps outside his cell were muted but still blinded him as they left so that tears soaked his face and dripped from his chin. The two men escorting him prodded him along, and he stumbled down the corridor like a drunk. By the time they reached what he assumed was Eneko’s room and he was shoved into a chair, Petri could see blurred shapes but not much more.
Someone removed the ties from his hands, the gag–Petri couldn’t make him out, but he knew the voice well enough.
“Petri, so glad to see you. I thought we might have a little chat.” Eneko, trying his best smooth voice though it seemed harsh as clanging bells to Petri after the silence of his cell. He sounded so ridiculous that Petri laughed and, once started, couldn’t stop for some time.
“Yes, that cell does do strange things to people,” Eneko said when Petri had subsided, weak from his outburst. “But I’ve found it very useful over the years.”
Petri blinked hard and tried to focus, but it was difficult. Half his mind was back in the cell, where there was no light, no sound, yet he had still been able to see things, hear things. Clocks, god’s cogs, there had been clocks everywhere, the sound of them driving him mad. He could still hear the ticking, recall how it had sounded so loud he thought it might crush his head. He’d seen the bone clock hanging in front of him, and after a time he’d come to realise the bones were his, that he was dead and that was his only monument…
The only thing that had kept him sane was his hands, even though they were tied behind him. His fingers knew every inch of his tiny cell, barely bigger than he was. Even his belief in that solidity had started to waver at the end, until he wasn’t sure whose face this really was, who he really was, where he was.
“Petri?”
Something cracked across his face, and the shape in front of him was talking. He tried to concentrate, tried to focus on the real sounds, but the whirr of the clocks drowned them out. Another whack rocked his head back, something cold and wet swept across his face, and when he opened his eyes again he could see more clearly. He wished he couldn’t.
Another blow from the back of Eneko’s hand made him bite his tongue so that he could taste blood. Even that was something–he was glad of anything real. His vision had begun to clear, though past Eneko’s blandly smiling face things were still a blur of red and yellow and blue.
“What?” Petri muttered, his voice sounding slurred and somehow old. “What do you want?” Because Petri was coming to realise he’d say quite a lot, anything in fact, to avoid going back into that black box. Something Eneko seemed to have anticipated.
“The only problem with that particular cell,” he said, “is that when they first come out, our guests tend to babble any old thing, and it’s imaginary as often as not. So we’ve found that a little something extra is needed to help them concentrate on what is really true.”
Eneko stepped back, and Petri saw what had been turning the world behind him red and yellow–a brazier, good and hot. Atop it sat a blade, and one Petri recognised–Kacha’s stiletto, its edges glowing as red as the brazier.
He tried to shake away the sound of the clocks in his head, the phantom voice of Bakar saying he’d read Petri’s future in the gears.
Eneko pulled on a thick glove, picked up the stiletto and came towards Petri, who tried to be stalwart and stoical, to be the brave and noble man he’d always thought himself in his head, but that heat, that blade… It was only when he tried to get up, tried to pull back, that he realised he’d been tied to the chair and that at least one of his escorts was behind it because they held his head still.
“Now, just a few things, and then all this unpleasantness can be over.” Eneko’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Firstly, what was it Sabates asked you to do?”
Petri’s scrambled brain groped for an answer but all he could think about was clocks, about bones and skulls–his–and clocks. Only wasn’t that the answer? He didn’t care about Sabates or Bakar or anyone else; he only cared about getting that blade away from his face, getting these thoughts out of his head. Not going back to the black cell. Anything but that, and the clocks that haunted him there.
“The clock. I had to do something to the clock.”
“Well now, that’s very vague. Bakar has a lot of clocks.” The point of the hot blade touched Petri’s temple and he had to clamp down a scream. “I don’t have much time, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to go a bit faster than usual. You choose, Petri. Eye or hand?”
The blade pressed down the side of Petri’s face, outlining his cheek in fire, trailing the smell of burned skin behind it. He couldn’t stop the scream this time, even when the look on Eneko’s face made him want to be sick.
“The clock! The bone one. I was supposed to make it run down, I don’t know why.” All pretence at bravery burned away with his skin and he babbled, only stopping when the blade reached the edge of his mouth.
Blessedly, the stiletto had cooled, but that merely meant Eneko placed it on the brazier to heat again.
While he waited, Eneko said, “And how do I know that’s the truth, Petri? You were born a noble and a liar. You were adopted by and work for the prelate, also a liar, and you also work for the man trying to kill him, making you a liar. You trained in this very guild, and yet you fold at the first hint of pain. You’d never have made a guildsman, a master. Never. And you wonder why I let you go, made you go? You’re weak, Petri Egimont, weaker than bad steel, softer than lead.” He picked up the stiletto again and inspected its cherry-red tip.
“Tell me the best way into the palace, into Bakar’s rooms.”
“You already had men in there. They brought me here, remember?”
“Not the directions to his rooms, Petri, the method to get past his defences. Besides, the men who escorted you from inside the palace were Bakar’s, not mine. I have bought Bakar’s trust by dealing with you for him. Can’t trust a man who can be bought, isn’t that so? You should know. First Bakar bought your loyalty, then Sabates. What was your price?”
“I was never—”
He got no further as the hot blade sank into his skin and drew down next to the first burn. Pain shot up his face and centred in hi
s eye, in his brain. The sizzling, the smell of his own burning skin made him want to throw up.
“Oh, you were paid, or were due to be. Leadership of the guild, wasn’t it? That’s what Sabates offered you. That and my head, I don’t doubt.”
A twist, more pressure, and the knife burned through Petri’s cheek to the bone. The hands holding Petri were hard as iron as he twisted, silent, beyond screaming.
“The best way in, Petri, for someone quick and quiet, where no one can see. In, a swift blade, and out, and no one the wiser as to who did it. I have a man, an assassin, who’ll do anything for me, because only I have what he wants. Or maybe one last job for myself. Not as good as our dear Kacha though, neither of us.”
The thought of her seemed to spur Eneko on, made the blade push further, burning under the skin now, slicing his cheek away or that’s how it felt. Blood lay on his tongue, and the taste of burned pork hitched his throat so that he couldn’t breathe.
“Years I spent training her, making her trust me so she’d do as I asked without a thought. Years. She was my perfect assassin, the pinnacle of my achievement, like my own daughter only better, and what happened? You. That’s what happened, Petri. You took my perfect, obedient assassin and ruined her with your questions, with your doubts and lies. I should have your eye just for that. Or maybe your hand. Both, if you don’t give me what I want. Tell me how to get to Bakar. Tell me how I can end all this with one swift, quiet thrust, and no one the wiser. Then maybe I’ll take pity on you, have mercy and kill you quickly.”
“There is no way.”
Eneko might be getting on in years but he was still quick as a snake. The stiletto flew across the room to bounce off a wall as Eneko smashed his fist right into Petri’s mess of a cheek. Pain exploded in his head like a clockwork gun so that Petri barely noticed falling back, his head hitting the floor, hardly tasted more blood in his mouth.
