Legends and Liars

by Julia Knight

  “We hope that Dom kills a few more up there, try and bull our way through here and find another path, one that’ll take us out of this maze. Take out what we can on the way.”

  Not a great plan, but it looked like all they had.

  Kacha’s horse flung its head up as she shifted in the saddle, its eye rolled and it blew froth from its mouth, and then she let it have its head. With a wild yell she shot forward, the horse with its head out and teeth at the ready. The lead rider never stood a chance. He tried to rein aside, but the crunching impact of Kacha’s mount threw his horse off balance just as Kass brought her sword round to slice across his neck, and he fell in a splash of bright blood. Vocho wasn’t sure what the rest of them had been expecting, but he didn’t think it was that from the way they milled about.

  Another body fell from above, dead before he hit the ground behind their pursuers, whose horses threw up their heads and danced about some more. Not only the men weren’t trained in warfare, Vocho had the time to think, and that gave Kass the opening she needed. She didn’t so much fight as bludgeon her way through, using elbows and sword hilt and blade and her horse, and then there was a gap. Vocho took a look behind, saw Cospel right at his back doing his best to protect it, and headed for the space she’d made. He kicked his horse forward and everything else was forgotten–there was only the slice of blades, the pant of his breath, fire on his back and sweat in his eyes, all melding with the dull throb at the end of his arm, the pull of the sword’s weight on his shoulder, and another man replacing the one he’d just slashed.

  It was too close for arrow work, but more than one of them had a gun, though the men above seemed to have no clear shot, or perhaps Dom was having his wicked way with them, because, to his surprise, Vocho didn’t get shot. Passing Kass, he didn’t stop once he found himself out in the open either–with a glance to make sure she was still there, he sheathed his sword, held on to the saddle with one hand and used the other on the reins, slapping them on his horse’s shoulders to urge the poor beast to greater lengths. It staggered down the slope with a series of jolts that made Vocho feel his insides had come loose but then they were on smoother ground.

  He risked another look behind, found Kass right on his heels with Cospel not far behind, his pony taking all this far better than the finer-bred horses. Most of their attackers were trying to get themselves untangled, though a tall man on a roan horse had turned on the head of a pin and was even now after them. Vocho cocked an eye skywards because the three of them were fine targets now. Nothing, except two figures against the sun. One was certainly Dom–he could tell by the way he held himself–and then the second figure dived at him, and they fell out of sight. Vocho wasn’t unduly worried, given that Dom was a trained assassin and all-round sneaky bugger. He could look after himself and would catch up when he could.

  They reached the place where the path split and Vocho hesitated. Kass didn’t, but bulled past him, reined her horse around a corner and down a new path so quickly the horse almost fell, before recovering and stumbling on, stubborn to the core like its mistress. After what seemed like an age of jolting and swearing, of pain and sweat and fleeting visions of darkness across his eyes, the path split again, and Kass took one that turned into a wider way before the walls of the maze gave out entirely. A small plateau ringed with wizened trees opened up before them. On one side the ground fell steeply away down a scree-filled slope that would test a mountain goat, on the others paths led away through more rocks, while the main trail led towards the notch they were heading for–the pass. Reyes. Home.

  Kass pulled up by a small spring among some stunted trees, jumped off and did her best to make sure her horse didn’t drink too much of the ice-cold water in one go. Adding colic to their predicament would help no one but their enemies. Vocho slid gingerly from his saddle and tried to do the same, only every hurt came back with a vengeance, and he stumbled and fell to one knee. He grabbed a stirrup to pull himself back up before Kass noticed, but not quick enough.

  Her hand went under his elbow, and he was grateful and ashamed all at once.

  “We can’t stop long,” she said with an apology in her tone.

  “No. It’ll be fine. I feel better, honestly.” And he did, but “better” was a relative term. He no longer thought he would die at every breath, only every time he moved. He gripped the stirrup leather till his knuckles cracked but couldn’t stop shaking. His mind went to his pack, to what was in it, before he remembered what Dom had done with his only comfort. A chill took his stomach, making him shiver violently so that Kass lost her grip.

  “Voch, are you going to make it to the top?”

  What would she do if he said no? Leave him for the Ikarans? Once he would have known without hesitation; once she would have stayed with him no matter what because whatever happened they were two, always together. But now… now he didn’t know. Now she had other things on her mind, like Petri fucking Egimont. And Dom, let’s not forget him, and the two of them being all cosy about something last time they stopped.

  Speaking of which: “Did you see what happened to Dom?”

  Kass wiped sweat-damp hair back from her face and shook her head. Her eyes kept darting to the side, out across the plateau, to see if anyone had followed. “He can take care of himself better than you or me.”

  Under normal circumstances Vocho would have agreed, but that last man who had gone for Dom–there had been something about his silhouette or maybe the way he moved, like he was favouring one side…

  “Kass—”

  A noise like thunder echoed through the peaks that surrounded them, a wild yell amidst it. At the far end of the plateau, where the trail they’d taken bled out onto the dusty grass, a dozen galloping horses appeared. Only three or four had anyone riding them, and “riding” wasn’t strictly accurate; more like hanging on. All except the man at the front. A wild-eyed Dom, who urged a horse not his own to greater speed.

  Kass whirled to her own horse. Voch tried to mount his and barely even noticed the shame when Kass had to help him up. Her horse had something to say about being mounted, and said it with feeling, but she avoided the teeth and launched herself onto his back unscathed. “What’s he doing?”

  The riderless horses spread out over the plateau, slowing down, some of them stopping, flanks heaving and mouths flecked with foam. Dom, low in the saddle to avoid arrows and bullets, Vocho had to assume, opened up a lead before the few riders got their mounts under control and began to follow. He led them unerringly towards the little grove where Kass, Vocho and Cospel waited, out of sight.

  “Only four of them left,” Kass noted.

  Cospel grunted. “Had enough of this,” he said and swung out of his saddle and up into one of the trees near the edge of the grove while Kass held his pony.

  Dom was almost on them, and his hunters almost on him when the first flew backwards over his horse’s rump with a bolt in his throat. The horse shied and turned circles around the already dead man, whose foot was trapped in a stirrup. A couple of riderless horses milled uncertainly, muddling with the three riders left. Another of them got a bolt, in the top of his shoulder this time.

  “And he always pokes fun at me for not being able to aim a gun,” Kass muttered and readied her sword.

  But that was enough for their would-be killers. Only two were left unhurt, and no doubt they knew who they were chasing, at least that they were three guildsmen and one more who was a dab hand with a tankard and a little crossbow. They whirled about as best they could among the milling horses and left as fast as their mounts would take them.

  Dom came to an abrupt stop, his horse gasping for breath, and slid down.

  “Closer than I generally like,” he said.

  Cospel clambered down from his tree looking smug. “See, at least one of us can aim.”

  “A crossbow, Cospel?” Kass said with an arch of her brow. “Conduct unbecoming a guildsman, surely?”

  “If I’d ever been a guildsman that might matter,
miss. But I ain’t, and you ain’t neither now. I pinched it off that lady what Dom seemed so taken with. My tankard’s all very well, but if we’re on the run, Cospel, I thought, maybe we could do with something a bit better. Something with a bit of range.”

  Dom sagged against a tree and put a hand to his face. “You stole that off Cee?”

  “Well, you was doing such a good job of distracting her, I thought I might as well. It’s a right good un, and all. Bet you’re glad I did too. Besides,” he added with a sly grin, “it’s made of ivory and proper old Castan steel, inlaid with gold and everything–look, you can see the maker’s mark. I could retire on this.”

  “And how many bolts do you have left, Cospel?” Dom asked.

  Cospel’s face froze and he slid a glare at Dom. “None now.”

  “Then it’s very pretty but useless. Except, perhaps, to her. And magicians do get very attached to their possessions, and they find ways to protect them. See any funny marks on it?”

  “There was some,” Cospel admitted. “But they rubbed off on my hands.”

  “And what colour are your hands now?”

  Cospel looked down at his fingers. A rusty-looking red was smeared all over them.

  Roughly half a second later Cospel’s retirement fund was tipping end over end down the scree slope and Cospel was scrubbing his hands in the stream and muttering dire imprecations.

  Chapter Twenty

  Petri was never sure if he slept or not. He thought not. They hadn’t come for him for… days? He couldn’t be sure, only that it seemed a long time, weeks perhaps. She hadn’t come, and now neither did they.

  Only, only what was that? A new noise in the silken darkness, a sliding sound, the scuff of leather on stone, a soft breath, a laugh he knew, which echoed dimly off unseen walls. His heart seemed to shudder to a stop before, reluctantly, it started again. Another step and a blaze of light that blinded him. Another, and a human voice that sounded strange after so much silence, so he couldn’t understand what it said. And then, blessedly, a cup of water at his lips, a hand behind his head to steady him. It hurt to drink, the water so cold it stabbed into his brain, sending icicles to where his eye used to be, but he drank greedily and only afterwards wondered who’d given it to him and why.

  He began to make out shapes in the brightness and then a few blurred details. The face of the man with the cup. Petri gripped it so tightly that it broke, cutting his hand, but that was no matter. If Petri was a man shattered by events, Eneko was little different. Grown grey and gaunt, his mouth hooked up into a wry smile with no strength behind it.

  “Hello, Petri.” The voice sounded monstrous after the silence, the sound of a giant breaking rocks in Petri’s ears, but he now understood. “I’m afraid I need your assistance. I assure you I wouldn’t bother you, but I need what’s in your head.”

  Petri couldn’t look at Eneko, nor towards the light, which hurt his remaining eye so that tears bathed his face. He said nothing. He had nothing left to say, no words left inside him. Eneko had cut with hot metal and let them pour out like a lanced boil.

  “Come on, up,” Eneko said, and there was gentleness in his voice so Petri hoped. For what, he couldn’t be sure, though possibly for no more pain. A hand under his arm steadied him as he got to numb feet. His legs wouldn’t hold him to start with, but Eneko held him up until feeling, and with it pain, began to come back. No sound came from Petri though; his screams had all gone with his voice, sucked into the knife that hung at Eneko’s belt. Petri shuddered at the sight of it, but he could stand at last, though not without cost.

  Eneko led him out of the cell and up three steps, which almost confounded him, past two guildsmen. Eneko barked an order at them, and they helped Petri, leaving Eneko free to lead the way. A way Petri knew all too well. Up a winding stair, through two doors, along a cloister, where the fresh air revived him and sent waves of pain through the wound at his eye so that he staggered, blind and gagging with it, until they pulled him back up, pushed him on, gentle but insistent, with the hint that they could stop being gentle any time they liked.

  The cool night air on his wound blurred much of the rest of the journey. He recalled the Clockwork God, resplendent on his pedestal, mainly as a blaze of light he had to look away from. A broad avenue he only belatedly recognised as the way to the palace. Even at night it should have been full of people–hawkers, beggars and thieves, clockers strutting about in their finery. Tonight it was empty except for them, a flick of wind turning dust into whirling dervishes along the cobbles the only movement.

  The palace ahead was dark except for a few lanterns at the windows, and that too was strange. Bakar hated the dark. Not afraid, he just loved light and so put lanterns in every window, had kept some of the grand chandeliers, added more modest ones of his own so the whole place shone out over the city–a beacon of light against darkness, thought against ignorance, enlightenment against the barbarism of the old king, Bakar had once called it. A symbol, like his Clockwork God and his orreries spinning along their axes. Now the facade was largely dark, the vast orrery in what had once been the gardens stuttering in its rhythm. One of the planets spun past, squeaking slightly as it wobbled on its rail.

  Eneko eyed Petri in the dark and seemed to come to a decision. “Sabates is dead,” he said. “Killed by Vocho and your precious Kass, if reports are to be believed, which they shouldn’t be because it wasn’t them. Licio is a little boy, nothing without the magician behind him. Ikaras can be… dealt with. Bakar is, by now, almost completely insane. It won’t take much for the guild to take control with me at its head. With us holding the city, Licio will collapse, and Orgull will sell him out for not much at all, I should think. But Alicia is now a problem. I need to hold the city, and for that I need you, young Petri. For the good of Reyes.”

  The news of Sabates’ death was like a physical blow. He sagged and but for the guildsmen would have fallen. All he had sold his soul for, gone. Eneko was right: without Sabates behind him, Licio would like as not crumble. Everything Petri had sacrificed would be for nothing. And yet he couldn’t feel anything other than relief the man was dead. The rest of Eneko’s words washed over him except that last sentence, said in a tone of menace he’d come to know very well. He raised a hand to his ruined face, but stopped short of touching it. He knew that Eneko would not fail to follow through with the intent behind his words. His life was measured only by his usefulness now, if it hadn’t been before.

  Words came back to him, not ones he would ever have spoken before, when he’d been a different man to the cripple who stumbled along. When he’d had dreams of being noble and brave. She hadn’t come. She wasn’t coming. He was alone. He wanted to live but above all he wanted never to see Eneko’s knife coming for his flesh again.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said in a voice that sounded like someone else’s. Like his father’s.

  Kass stared down from their vantage point, a goat trail that led from one sharp outcrop to the next on an angel’s hair of track.

  The Throttled Neck, they called it. All the trails led to this one point everyone had to cross if they wanted to make it to Reyes without trekking a hundred miles out of their way. Some weeks ago when they’d first come to Ikaras, it had been a simple matter to cross. A few guards on either side looking not for one or two travellers but for bands of armed men as they glared at each other over the border. All they’d had to do was tell the guards some tale of petty trade, and through they went. A cursory search had been made, but three people on horses were hardly likely to be smuggling quantities of coal or iron, and so it had taken only moments.

  Now an army was camped in the Neck, crammed between two sheer cliffs impassable even for goats. There was no sign of the Reyes post; instead Ikaran soldiers sprawled everywhere, filling the air with the spicy scents of mountain food, Ikaran style. A corral to one side meant at least they knew what they were eating–sheep mostly, some goats and one or two scrawny cows. At either end of the pass a solid mas
s of men stood alert and ready.

  Dom stood next to Kass, shading his eyes against the setting sun.

  “How in hells are we going to get through that?” she asked.

  “With great difficulty,” he said. “How’s Vocho holding up?”

  She glanced back at her brother, who was sitting in a little nook trying to sleep and, by the look of it, failing. “Not well. We need to get him some proper medical attention. But first we need to get off this bloody mountain.”

  “Proper medical attention…” Dom frowned and scanned the ravine below. After a minute he put a hand on her arm. “Look down there. Just this side of that reddish outcrop. See it?”

  She looked at where he was pointing. More soldiers were coming in from behind them on the main trail: an army on the move, with all the attendant shouting, swearing, mud, carts getting stuck and messengers whipping horses through the crowds. A not very organised army either. These were not professional soldiers, and for them marching consisted of being sworn at until they all moved in the right direction at roughly the same rate. Different units met, intermingled and separated again but not necessarily with the same soldiers they’d started with.

  At the beginning of the Neck the army was met by a phalanx of tents. As each unit arrived, a man went to the largest one, presumably to report. Other tents spiralled away from this one, and these had more comings and goings. A mess tent, for sure, that one. Smoke and steam drifted out of a hole in the top, and at the back was a vast vat of hot water, or possibly soup, with half a dozen men toiling over it. Another was little more than a shelter next to a picket of horses, where every now and again a messenger would storm in, swap horses and race on. Gradually Kacha identified them. This was a weapons store, that some sort of quartermaster’s depot. The largest was clearly the headquarters. Everyone had to show a chit to enter.

  When the man returned from the headquarters tent, he’d hand a chit to his commander and men would be dispatched–some to go to the mess tent with a handful of pots each, some to the other tents for whatever reason, while the bulk of the unit would move on into the Neck. One tent was set further back, nestled right up against the rock wall near a stream that straggled down its sheer sides. Kacha couldn’t immediately see what it was for–not many went that way. But, after a lot of shouting when a particularly shoddy and ill-disciplined unit pitched up, a junior officer handed a chit to his commander, who immediately gave orders to a little knot of men huddled at the feet of his horse. Four of them lifted the fifth and jogged off to the far tent carrying him between them.