by Julia Knight
“All kinds of idiots, yes,” Dom said. “What’s in that bottle of his?”
“Something Esti gave him for the pain–his back still looks like a butcher’s shop.” And yet here he was, following her anyway. Yes, love made idiots of them all, even weird and twisted kinds like the love she and Voch shared.
“Did she now? I think we might want to take a look at that.”
Only even asleep Voch wasn’t letting go.
“You do recall me telling you she was a poisoner?” Dom asked. “And yet here he is, drinking something she made.”
“By the time you told us that he’d already been drinking it, and seeing as he hadn’t turned green and frothy at the mouth, something for the pain was better than nothing. He’d never have managed to get this far without it.”
Dom gave her a penetrating look. “Yes, but how much further is he going to get? What about when the bottle runs out? Or when he can’t do without it? Though I think he’s already there.”
“Tell him, not me. Bloody stuff makes him act strangely, I know that. But I wasn’t leaving him behind. And Esti gave us this too.”
She went through Vocho’s pack, found the bottle of antidote and told Dom that he’d been right about Esti making poison, and for who.
“I hoped there might be an antidote,” he said when she was done. “What I came to Ikaras for, as it happens. I’m glad I didn’t entirely fail. But I wouldn’t trust it, or her. Not for a second. She’s a magician and not a single one is to be trusted.”
She packed it away again, in her pack this time. “That includes Alicia, don’t forget. Dom, why are you here? Why are you helping us? I mean, not that we’re not grateful, but I don’t see why. Everyone has their own reasons, wants, needs–like Esti, like Alicia. Like you.” Like me, she thought. “So what is it?”
Dom shrugged and frowned in Voch’s direction. “Lots of reasons. Pick any one you like.” He flashed her a grin, the old Dom, the sharp one, back again as though he’d never been away. “Maybe I see someone about to make the same mistakes I did, and want to help them.”
It seemed all she was likely to get from him, but Dom, for all his mysteriousness, was one person she found she trusted.
He took a look around, listened keenly for a moment or two and said, “We can rest here for a while, but we need to move, and sooner rather than later. Life-warriors aren’t to be trifled with, and I don’t like the sound of a single one after us as well. This needs thinking on. Go on. You sleep, I’ll watch.”
Chapter Nineteen
Alicia sat in her tent and frowned down at the table. Blood, and lots of it, bottled and smeared and everything in between. So much blood, and all hers for the using. This bit though, this little bit here, that was what she wanted. No more than a smudge on a corner of her dress, obtained when he wasn’t paying attention, but enough. Orgull and Licio and all the rest, they were a distraction now. This was what had been at the back of her mind all this time, all these years, driving her on, and yet now it was here, it seemed empty of promise.
Another bottle sat on the table, but the contents of this one moved. Sabates and his tattoos, so very crass she’d always thought. No subtlety, no sense of natural justice. She cut away the corner of her dress and laid it on the table, smoothed it down carefully with a gentle hand. It hadn’t been what she’d expected, seeing him again. She’d known he’d be older–as she was–but there was something else about him. Different, she thought, something very different. Narcis Donat Chimo Ne Farina es Domenech. Such a silly name, she’d always thought, and not even his full one. Something she’d teased him about a long time ago, and it made her smile even now, though she’d allow that the smile was different after finding that the extra part of his name meant he was a guildsman, the most famous they had, that their marriage had been a lie.
But she’d thought she’d feel something, seeing him. Her younger self would have expected fireworks in her head perhaps, the vestiges of what she’d felt for him before Eneko had stolen away Maitea and her heart with the child, told her who and what Dom really was, exposed all the lies that he’d had fed her. And she’d been so happy she’d believed every one, thought her life was charmed. Her older self knew that the world doesn’t work like that, that people don’t work like that, and everyone lies, that hate sits inside and festers, solidifies after time until it’s a stone ball in your heart. She’d expected to feel that hate but instead… she didn’t know. Perhaps she’d gone so far past hate she’d come out the other side, but still she needed to do this. Needed to lay that particular ghost to rest, even if she should be oddly grateful to him for altering the course of her life. She could have been a wife and mother all these years and never reached for anything else, never realised what potential she had. And now here she was, head of the magicians of Ikaras, adviser to kings, more than that even in time.
So, a peculiar sort of thanks to Dom for making her this way, for showing her she didn’t need to rely on anyone, that she should never trust the words out of anyone’s mouth. She took the stopper out of the bottle and reached for some tweezers. The leech wriggled in their grip, maybe scenting the feast of blood around it. A particular spell for a peculiar thanks. She dropped the leech onto the little square of cloth with its smudge of Dom’s blood and watched it feed. Not much there, just enough for it to know, to taste. It wriggled and sucked, and then it was done.
She lifted it carefully with the tweezers and found a new bottle to put it in, a small one that would fit in a pocket.
“Gerlar,” she called, and there he was. Silent, watching, waiting. Waiting for what she’d promised him, for his life back, for his reason to live.
“Take this,” she said. “Carefully! I’ve set it to him, but it can be turned if too much temptation comes its way.”
He took the little glass vial carefully, as she’d said. Such an obedient man.
Something shimmered over his face as he looked at the leech. “How do I use it?”
“You know where they are?”
He shrugged, a curious gesture that was part not caring and part caring desperately. “My kin know, at least know where to look, but they don’t share information with me. Not any more.”
“They will now. Here is my personal order. Show it to them and find out. And when you find the man I’m after, the new addition to their happy little band, use this on him.”
His lip twitched ever so slightly–the only indication that she’d just asked him to do something that dishonoured him. A life-warrior fought with edged weapons not subterfuge, but this one… this one wanted something from her so badly it coloured every thought. Even dishonour was worth what she offered. Find a lever, Sabates used to say, find the lever that will shift a man, and you have him. She’d learned well, maybe all too well for Sabates himself. His old partner back, that was what Gerlar wanted. His life-partner in blood and more. And she could give that to him with a little help from Sabates’ blood. Maybe she even would.
“Just make sure the glass smashes and the leech lands on his skin. I will do the rest. And here.” She indicated the other glass bottles red and pregnant with power. “Here is what you want. A new warrior, one to be your twin, exactly as the old one. Just do this one little thing for me, and what you want will be yours. Honour returned, a new chance to do things right.”
He hesitated, but it wasn’t long before he stashed the little vial in his tunic, bowed stiffly and turned away without a word.
A pang twitched at her. “And if you don’t…”
He stopped, his head dipped, and he took a deep breath. “I will, ma’am. I will. For my soul.”
When Vocho woke up the grey chill of dawn was in his bones, his legs were made of glass, his head stuffed with cotton, his back on fire. Getting up seemed like the work of a thousand years. The bottle was in his hands, and he went to take a crafty pull before Kass, over at the edge of the overhang, could notice. A strong hand stopped his. Dom.
“I think that’s enough of that, don’t you?”
&n
bsp; Vocho struggled upright and glared at him. “No, I really don’t. Maybe you’d like me to scream the whole way down the fucking mountain, bring everyone chasing us down on our tails. Maybe you just want to torture me. Or maybe you’re paranoid. But I’m using this for as long as it lasts. Hopefully by the time it’s done, so will the pain.”
Dom shook his head. “I told you to be wary of her. Not everyone wants the same as you and some people are prepared to go to great lengths to get it. Why is it, do you think, that a bottle of syrup given to you by a known poisoner makes you feel this way? Like you can’t go another hour without it? Let me look.” His hand snaked out. Vocho was too slow to react, and… and wasn’t that telling? He was quick, quick as anyone, so quick they told stories about it. Yet Dom just reached out and took the bottle, and it was then that he noticed how his hand wouldn’t stay still, how panicky he felt without it in his hand.
Dom sniffed at the bottle, grimaced and rolled his eyes. “You two are entirely too trusting, you realise that? How you ever survived as guildsmen I can’t imagine.”
Vocho eased himself into a position where his back was merely agony and wished he was back asleep where things didn’t hurt. “We didn’t have much choice, really.”
Dom snorted. “Always a choice.” He took another sniff. “God’s cogs, man, you know what’s in this?” Before Vocho could react, Dom had thrown down the bottle, which smashed with the whiff of dark-smelling herbs.
Vocho stared at it, at the one thing keeping him on this damned trail. The only thing that had made it even bearable.
“Now get up,” Dom said, dragging him to standing. “And let’s get the hells out of here, preferably while you aren’t herbed up to the eyeballs. Turn round and take off your shirt.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
Vocho wasn’t feeling his best just then, so he felt, all in all, he’d be better off doing what Dom said, especially when he had the sort of look on his face Da used to have just before he reached for his belt. Besides, his brain didn’t seem to want to cooperate in listing all the reasons why he didn’t want to.
He turned and, eventually, with a few gasps as he twisted his back, took off his shirt. Dom and Kass stared at it like he’d just grown a new head there or something. Dom touched the skin to one side of where the tattoo had been, and it was all Vocho could do not to scream. He held on to a handy rock to keep himself on his feet.
“All right,” Dom said at last. “Now I can see what we’re dealing with. We’re going to need to risk a fire. Cospel, make it small and as smoke-free as you can. Over there, that channel of rock might dissipate the smoke somewhat. Boil some water. Kass, have you got a spare shirt or anything like that? Good. Fetch it.”
A finger probed Vocho’s back gently, and white spots whizzed across his eyes.
“What do I do?”
“You?” Dom said. “You concentrate on how embarrassing it’d be to cry and faint in front of your sister when I start. And how stupid you were not to show me this before. She didn’t just take the tattoo off. If only it were that simple. You really know how to land yourself in trouble, don’t you?”
“It’s a talent, I guess,” he managed. “Do you know what you’re doing? I mean, you aren’t a magician. How do you know how tattoos work? And what are you going to do?”
“Make it so you don’t need that stuff Esti gave you any more. Make it so you can get to Reyes alive. Because like this you’d have been dead inside a day, you know that?”
“I do now!”
“If I were you, I’d get down on your knees with something to hang onto. This may hurt quite a lot.”
“When doesn’t it?” But it had to be better than the flames that seemed to burn across his back, to reach out for other parts of him, vines of agony working their way across his body. He got gingerly to his knees.
Dom did his best with hot water and compresses made from some foul-smelling leaves he found in his pack, scattered on hot linen and pressed onto the wound. He did his best to be gentle, but it didn’t do much good. Vocho dreamed of getting that bottle back, no matter what was in it, and he soon learned how embarrassing it was to cry in front of his sister.
When Dom was done, they didn’t give him much time to rest. Kass came scrambling down from a low ridge where she’d been keeping watch with the news that she’d seen movement behind them.
“How many?” Dom asked.
“Twenty at least.”
Dom swore quietly and helped Vocho up. “I’ve done the best I can. Just keep on your saddle for the next day or so, try not to make it any worse, and maybe you’ll live. You’ve got as much chance as the rest of us.”
“Are you going to tell me what it was?”
Dom turned away, but not before Vocho caught a quick and knowing glance between him and Kass as Dom started getting the horses ready–they’d kept them saddled, though with loosened girths, and now Dom set about tightening them for the race ahead. “There’s many types of poison, Voch. Fast, slow, fatal, not so fatal. Esti knows them all.”
Vocho made his way to his own horse, who greeted him with a headbutt and a warm and grassy snort, and didn’t mind when Vocho leaned on him for support.
“Luckily for you,” Dom went on, “I know a few as well. That one, if it’s the one I think, enters an open wound and creeps gradually towards the heart. Something was certainly heading that way. The bottle she gave you would have numbed the pain enough you wouldn’t have noticed until maybe a day or so from now, when boom! No more Vocho. It still might, but there’s no time for me to do any more now. If you die, then she thwarts Alicia. Do you see?”
Vocho didn’t see. He couldn’t manage his horse’s girth by himself but was past all shame. Cospel had to do it for him and help him into the saddle. He sat, shivering and feeling helpless, and concentrated just on staying atop the horse. Once Kass had kicked her own foul beast on, and his horse, knowing what was expected of him, followed, that was more than enough to occupy every waking second. He held on to the saddle horn and didn’t worry about reins or steering the horse up the rocky trail, trusting it to know best. Everything felt numb, and not in a good way. Pain was still there, buried beneath, waiting to break free and take him with it.
What had Esti done to him, and why? He found he didn’t give much of a shit past the fact that she had, especially once the trail got steeper and the jolting got worse. Kass led them on, pushing the pace, with Cospel following Vocho, and Dom bringing up the rear.
An arrow spanged off a rock to one side, followed closely by a bullet pinging off another. The way here was steeper, almost too steep for the horses to climb with riders, but they dared not dismount.
The track branched three ways. Kass didn’t hesitate to take the right-hand path, which seemed to lead towards the top of the pass, so close now Vocho was certain he could see the notch they were aiming for. His horse’s ribs were going like a bellows, but he held on tight and kicked on. When he turned round, Dom was nowhere, and all that greeted him was Cospel’s well worn and long-suffering face and a plume of dust back along the trail, too close for comfort. Another bullet, closer this time, enough to make his horse shy and almost have him off. Sweat made his shirt cling uncomfortably and slicked his hands as he gripped the saddle horn. That bullet had come from above.
He twisted as far as he could to look up, and the sweat turned cold and clammy on the instant. The rock walls on either side of the trail ended far above their heads, but not so far they were out of range. A series of movements told him everything he needed to know, which was how much shit they were in.
Vocho’s horse baulked as he tried to urge it faster up the slope, slipped on some loose scree and almost fell to its knees, sending him sprawling over its shoulder. All the world went dark, reduced to his back and the vines of molten lead that crept from the wound there. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, and would have killed anyone, anyone at all for another pull of Esti’s jollop, until a hand fell on his arm.
<
br /> Kass yanked him back into the saddle none too gently. “Hold on, just hold the hells on,” she murmured.
He nodded, about as much as he could manage apart from fumbling for the saddle horn again. His horse was spent, lathers of sweat on its neck, head bowed with effort. He heard Kass swearing as she urged her beast on, and if that bastard was in trouble they’d all had it.
A quick glance behind–they were gaining, no doubt about it. Cospel dug inside his tunic and brought out a tiny crossbow. Vocho wished with a kind of dizzy fervour that he’d got the hang of guns because one would be handy about now, though he drew the line at Kass using the one she’d filched even when they turned another bend and the way ended in a wall of crumbling rock. The upper pass, or at least one of them, was just above it, so close Vocho could almost touch it. It was just they couldn’t reach it, or not from here, and here was as nicely boxed in as you could hope for.
Kass reined her horse about and luckily for everyone seemed to have forgotten the gun at her belt. Instead she pulled her sword, and Vocho fumbled to follow suit. He could do that, if nothing else. The sword felt heavy in his hand and pulled at already screaming muscles, but he could fight, always.
Twenty, at least, behind them on horses as spent as their own. The only good news was that the trail was narrow and they’d have to come in threes or fours at most. But they had men above, men with guns.
A man fell screaming from the top of the rock wall and landed with the thud of broken bones and a splash of entrails at the feet of the first rider. Who forced his reluctant horse straight over the body as though it was of no consequence.
“Plan?” Vocho asked Kass, who sidled her horse next to his. Like old times almost. Except he couldn’t feel his arm apart from where it hurt like buggery, and he seemed to have quite lost his effortless not-giving-a-shit ways. He wiped sweat out of his eyes and glanced sidelong at his sister.
She took in the scene with a series of glances, tongue between her teeth as she thought rapidly.
