by Julia Knight
“We need to find Bakar,” Dom said.
“Not now,” she said. “For now maybe Eneko is best left where he is. A temporary measure. At least until Ikaras and its army has been dealt with. We just need to make sure it is temporary.”
“How?”
“Eneko will be busy with the Ikarans. While he is, we can find out what he’s got up his sleeve, how many guildsmen are with him, or not, ready for when we give the antidote to Bakar.”
“Isn’t it a touch too late for Bakar?” Dom asked with a sarcastic slide to his voice. “I mean, he’s already gone round the twist. People aren’t going to forget that.”
“No, but they may understand when they find out why.”
“Of course, they’ll listen to us–a bunch of exiled guildsmen who couldn’t possibly be holding a grudge. That is if they don’t chop our heads off before we can open our mouths. Maybe my father—”
“Dom, the last time you had anything to do with your father, he sent you to the Shrive.”
Kacha stared up at the walls of what she had once called home. To the tower where she used to meet a man she considered a second father, more real, more there than her own da. A lot had changed since then. Or rather, it hadn’t changed; she’d just discovered that the world and people weren’t what they appeared, that everyone had secrets that drove them to do things that looked like madness to others.
What seems good to you.
To protect Reyes if it comes to it.
Maybe everyone else was a conniving bastard out for themselves, but she’d sworn that once, and she was going to keep on living by it if it killed her.
“No more lies,” she said. “Reyes has had enough lies for ten lifetimes. We let Eneko fight this battle–he’s got the city behind him now; they’re as ready as they’ll ever be. He’s a crafty fighter, always has been. He’ll have a plan to keep Ikaras from the door. So we let him. And while he’s doing that, we find out all we can, because I don’t trust him not to have something up his sleeve. Then we get Bakar, we give him the antidote. And then we tell the truth. All of it. We tell the councillors, we tell the storytellers down in Bescan Square, we tell everyone. And let people decide for themselves.”
“All of it? Even about Petri?” Dom said quietly. “Treason, Kass. Think about it.”
She fixed him with a look, but he didn’t flinch. “Yes, even about Petri. I think he’s as much a victim of lies as everyone else. As manipulated. He just didn’t have a tattoo on his back, that’s all. Look at it this way,” she said. “If we help Bakar regain power–and his right mind–we might get a pardon out of it and keep our heads. So might Petri. If we don’t, we might as well start thinking about another country to live in, because Eneko will surely see us killed. And he’ll find us. It may take him time, but he’ll find us. You too, Dom.”
“Well that’s settled then.” Dom stood up and dusted an imaginary speck of dirt off his coat. “So, where do we need to go? Is Bakar safe for now, do you think?”
“Oh, he’ll want Bakar as safe and sane as can be for his trial and execution. And I know exactly where to look. The only problem is going to be getting to it. Ah, Cospel, there you are.”
“Yes, miss.” Cospel limped up, out of breath and looking like he wanted to murder someone.
As the least recognisable of them, he didn’t need to lurk in the shadows, and as always he’d gathered all the pertinent gossip.
“Bellows are going like the clappers down in Soot Town,” he said. “Only in the one smithy though. No one goes in or out, except that a guildsman lets them. There’s been some funny orders filled there lately–for the guild. Reckon Eneko’s been planning this for weeks.”
“Years,” Kass said. “Sabates and the rest just sped things up for him. What else?”
Cospel shrugged. “Gates are still open. Towers aren’t going; easy for anyone to walk in or out. Some people are watching though, up in the secret bits. Got a lot of guns.”
“And Eneko?”
“Strutting around like cock of the bloody walk down near the main gate.”
“Good. Then he won’t be anywhere near the guild.”
“And how exactly do you plan to get inside?” Dom asked. “I’m good with locks, but I’m not that good.”
“No, but you and I are very recognisable, very wanted people. So, we’re going to walk right up to the guild and cause a big fuss.”
“That doesn’t sound like the best plan ever.”
“And here was me thinking you were the renowned Jokin, best duellist the guild has ever seen, unless you listen to Voch.”
“Have you always been this stubborn? OK, yes. I am quite handy with a blade. But the guild’s full of men and women like us, and I never fought all of them at once, Kass.”
“And you won’t now. Most of them are out in the crowd or down by the gate. The guild is the fallback position. Eneko is not expecting it to be attacked before the Ikarans get into the city.”
Dom sighed. “Fine. After you.”
Vocho stared up at the guild from the safety of the crowd in the square by what was left of the Clockwork God. That was where Kass would head, he was sure of it. The guild. Home.
“I could use magic to help us get in,” Esti said.
“No magic. Except in emergencies.” It was bad enough she’d talked him into letting her come with him, worse that he now wished he had eyes in the back of his head to keep watch on her. And the suspicions about Dom… he didn’t like those one bit, but they had a ring of truth to them. He didn’t trust Esti, but then again he was pretty much through trusting anyone. He wasn’t even sure about Kass now, and having Esti with him took the edge off the empty space at his side. Besides, she could do dire things with her magic, and dire things might be required before the day was out.
The problem with trying to break into the guild was that it was a sodding fortress, Vocho thought but didn’t say. Think of the glory, Voch, think of that. Well, yes, but he was finding that the thought of glory didn’t have quite the same allure as it once had. Possibly because getting it seemed to involve him experiencing a lot of pain. Not getting executed, however, he could get right behind.
It was just starting to get light, turning the city into a grey ghost of fading shadows. The crowd had calmed. Guildsmen had walked among them, quietly reassuring, issuing orders from Eneko. All able-bodied men and women to congregate by the Clockwork God. Some of the clockworkers were separated out, taken off to do something mysterious that Vocho felt sure didn’t bode well for the Ikaran army that the whispers said could now be seen from the city walls.
The streets around the Clockwork God were thronged but it wasn’t hard to make their way through to the bridge spanning the river that separated the guild from the city. The guild was for the city, not of it, that had been drummed into him from the day he’d arrived. It stood sentinel, but it wasn’t part of the city, its men and women a breed apart.
Walking over the bridge to the guild after so long away, after such an ignominious send-off, was a curious let-down. Still, he wouldn’t be the person he was if he didn’t add an extra bit of swagger to his walk. Even before they were halfway across a knot of men and women had assembled at the open gates. It didn’t look like a welcome committee though, judging by the way they had their hands on their swords. That at least half had guns too was a shock–guns had been banned as unsporting and not becoming the guild. More of a shock was the fact that blood soaked the ground between the gates, and no one was even looking their way. There was a shout, and some of the guildsmen ran for the cloisters with swords drawn.
“What’s going on?” Esti asked in a whisper.
“I suspect my sister has already been here. Ah, yes. See the wound on that man? She loves that move.”
“Then we need to hurry.”
“Style can never be rushed.”
If they were going to do this insanity, they might as well do it properly. They strolled up to the gate like they owned the place, and Vocho swept off his h
at with a mocking bow so that its–by now rather lacklustre–feather brushed the ground. It made his back sing with pain, but hells, that was the cost of panache.
Eneko’s second in command, a stocky woman in her fifties who could eat most guildsmen for breakfast, looked them up and down as if they were joints of meat she was thinking of buying. Only with less enthusiasm.
“Hello, Mother,” Vocho said with an inane grin he knew could be guaranteed to aggravate her. “Is this party for us? I’m touched.”
“Touched in the head, more like,” she replied and nodded to the four duellists behind her. Which was better odds than Vocho had been expecting. “Knew you’d be along after she turned up.”
Mother came for him, flanked on each side by two men who Vocho knew to be solid, if a little unimaginative, duellists. It might take more than panache to get out of this. The two to her left didn’t take much bar a few flourishes, a feint, a thrust they weren’t expecting because it came from the wrong side. Solid they might be but they were no match for him. The two on her right were soon engulfed by twisting vines, leaving only Mother. Who would be a test all by herself–lightning quick and with years of experience in putting even the best students on their arses. She attacked with the sort of controlled vigour that explained her extended nickname of Holy Clockwork Mother of God, Help Me. Vocho was hard put to defend himself but managed it with his usual style–by the skin of his teeth.
He tried desperately to remember all the lessons she’d given him, the techniques she’d taught him–and the ones he’d learned later that she wouldn’t know perhaps. All the ones he could think of were technically illegal in sparring, but then he figured he was no longer a duellist and they weren’t sparring. A slash to the face that she danced away from, a kick to the groin that ended with him being flipped over and scrambling to get up before she skewered him. He had a longer reach, better weight, but she was so twisty it bent his brain. For a time it was all he could do to stop her dispatching him like he was a first-year student.
He was tiring. Though so was Mother, and Esti had dealt with her two and came to back him up. Mother’s sword tip hovered between the two of them as she weighed her options. He feinted, lunged and turned that into another feint. Mother parried but picked the wrong feint. Vocho’s sword slashed across her shoulder deep enough to hit bone. Hopefully not deep enough to kill her–she was a tyrant who’d ruled his childhood with a firm and often applied hand, but he was fairly sure she was a well-intentioned one.
Mother fell back against the door to the guardroom and the way was clear, at least for now. They’d kicked up a bit of a fuss, and more duellists were running across the courtyard towards the gate. Vocho had no intention of being there when they arrived.
He and Esti dived for the open doorway that led towards Eneko’s rooms. Down stairs, up stairs, around twists and turns. Finally a stout doorway they could bar behind them, which they did and stopped to catch their breath.
“So far, so good,” Vocho said. “Now what?”
“We head for Eneko’s rooms.” Kass said. “Where he kept all his little secrets. His little secrets are exactly what we need.”
Dom nodded as though dimly remembering. “Lead on then.”
Down more stairs, around more bends, through other doors that they barred behind them until they came to a corridor Kass knew as well as any in the guild. Eneko’s rooms lay on the left, and around the corner lay another stout door with a bar, the guild master’s rooms being one of the most defensible places in a building that was a fortress to start with. Kass sent Cospel to drop the bar and keep an ear out for anyone trying to come that way.
Between Eneko’s door and the bend was a blank expanse of stone wall.
“I bet you’re going to tell me there’s a secret room behind there, aren’t you?” Dom said.
“A whole suite of rooms, in fact. When they built this place, it was for defence, and this was the last line. If the place got overrun, the king or emperor or whoever could hide in there.”
She found the toggle, and there was a smooth whirr from the wall before part of it swung in, revealing a well- lit chamber beyond. Kass crossed the room to another door. She opened it and pulled up short.
“What?” Dom asked and went to look.
Kass had expected a bedroom or some sort of study. Not this.
The room had been stripped down to its walls, which held a dozen oil lamps that lit the place up like day. Kass wished they didn’t. Against one wall a table groaned under the weight of various contraptions, some clockwork, some not, most of which she couldn’t name. Or work out what they were for. She didn’t want to know, either; they were crusted with blood and what looked very much like bits of skin.
Across from the table was a chair like the one in the barber’s Vocho used–it tilted back so its occupant was half lying down. Only this one had straps on it, and more blood, more bits of skin. Next to it was a cold brazier with a knife balanced on top. Which explained the smell–burned flesh. Kass shuddered at the cold feeling that wormed its way up her spine, more so when she saw that knife was hers, her old stiletto.
She didn’t recognise the thing on the chair for what it was at first. Just a clump of black hair tied with a dark ribbon, like many Reyes men sported. Only the colour of a ribbon and how it was tied were as distinctive as a man’s nose, and this one, beneath its coating of dried blood, looked familiar. More than familiar. She remembered buying that ribbon down in the night market on a starlit evening that seemed very long ago as though it had happened to someone else.
Petri. God’s cogs, what has he done to you?
Dom swore softly behind her. “What the hells is this? Kass? Kass?”
She was sitting on the floor with no memory of how she got there because her head was full of other memories, of days of laughing and nights full of whispered words, of sweat and want and wishing dawn would never come. Of a smoke-filled room when she’d made her choice, and so had he. Her skin prickled with cold, but her head felt hot and stuffy.
“Kass?” Dom had a hand under her arm and was pulling her up.
“Petri,” she said through numb lips. “It was Petri in that chair.”
It’s too late now. It’s been too late for me for a while. Almost the last words he’d said to her. But I meant this.
His ring seemed to burn on her finger, accusing her, and she couldn’t breathe for the aching heat in her chest.
If it hadn’t been for you, showing me, I’d never have joined Licio.
Would never have ended up here with his blood splashed over half the room. Dead. With that much blood–it was everywhere–he had to be. Petri was dead. That thought clanged inside her, cleared everything else out of her head but the need to find Eneko and kill him, right now. Right fucking now. Sod him being the best man to defend Reyes. Sod Reyes itself and what seemed good to her. Suddenly, being in the middle of a war about to happen seemed very good to her, because she was in the mood to kill every bastard who got in her way.
I wasn’t lying when I said I loved you.
She took a deep breath which seemed to crack open something inside her and gripped her sword, reassuring in its solidity when everything else seemed vague and dreamlike. All this politics shit, all these devious manoeuvrings could go to hell. Swords she knew. Swords she could use.
A last look at the chair, at the crushed and bloody ribbon that had shattered her head–Oh, Petri–and she got herself in hand.
For the good of Reyes or not, Eneko was going to die tonight.
Chapter Twenty-three
It wasn’t too hard in the end to find out where Kass was, and where she was, that was where Vocho needed to be. All they had to do was follow the trail of bleeding guildsmen. There were one or two tricky moments when some eager young pup recognised him and had a go at bringing him to justice, but nothing that Vocho the Great couldn’t handle.
The barred door was more of a problem until Esti came up trumps.
“It’s only wood, and woo
d is only dead tree. And I’m good with plants. Stand back a second.”
She leaned into the wood as though listening to the complaint of its grain, the whirl of its knots. One hand ran across the wood lovingly and she shut her eyes. A faint rattling creak from the door. Vocho backed off a pace. Magic wasn’t something to hang around in his experience. A twig wormed out from beside the lock, swelled and grew and twisted towards the faint light from a window. Another came, and another, until the door was a swaying mass of branches and leaves.
“I’m not sure—” he began, but an almighty crack stopped him. The door, or rather tree, twisted, revealing a very surprised Cospel on the other side, hanging on to what had probably once been a cudgel but was now a leafy branch.
“Ah, Cospel. There you are. I hope you weren’t planning on braining me with that?”
Cospel stared at the branch, then dropped it. “Course not. Glad you’re here.” A twitch of a glance at Esti. “And not on your own, neither.”
“Esti has some very important news. Where’s Kass?”
“In there.” He jerked his head back along the corridor. “Trying to find out what the old man is up to.”
“Kass left you here to guard the door?”
A truculent nod.
“Well, perhaps you’d better, er, guard the tree then?”
Vocho hurried on, wondering what he’d find. Kass had complicated feelings about Eneko, he knew that, though his own were less so: he just hated the bastard. Esti followed, muttering under her breath. They reached a spot where the wall was hinged open, turned into the chamber beyond and hurried across to an open doorway.
The smell coming through the doorway was disturbing, but no more disturbing than many another smell even if it was familiar. The sight of Kass stopped Vocho dead. Oh, he’d seen her angry before–sometimes it seemed like her natural state–but this was something else. Her glare felt like it could melt flesh at twenty paces.
He shifted awkwardly, more to deflect that look from him than anything else, because he was afraid of it. She was stubborn, and he could live with that or coax her out of it. But the look in her eyes now–of utter grief and burning hatred–there’d be no coaxing her out of that. She’d told him once she was sick of killing, but the look in her eyes told him she might make an exception, just this once.
