by Julia Knight
A sound behind Vocho made him whirl, sword out and at the ready. He was completely unprepared to see Eneko, who took in the room in a glance and then focused on Kass. As he always had. Vocho had the wildest urge to do something, show him what he’d missed by overlooking him, but stayed his hand. Now was possibly not the time. Mainly because suddenly Eneko looked old. He’d always been older, of course, his hair sprinkled with grey even when Vocho first met him, and that had been almost two decades ago. But until recently Eneko had still seemed strong, vital, dangerous. Now he had old man’s hands, lined and studded with prominent blue veins, shaking slightly. His hair was shot through with great bands of white. His eyes were pouched, his skin sallow. He looked like a man who’d suffered much in a short space of time.
“Kass,” he said now, his voice the tremulous tones of an old man. “Kass, I did it for you. He took you from me, filled your head with lies, betrayed you. He betrayed us all. I needed what he knew, I admit. But I did it for you.”
Did what?
Kass flinched back at these words, seemed bewildered, then her whole body clenched as though it was only by a great effort she didn’t kill Eneko where he stood. “Not for me,” she ground out through gritted teeth. “For yourself. Always for yourself, everything you’ve ever done. Oh, you like to pretend it’s for the greater good, but we know, don’t we, that it’s always all about you.”
Eneko laughed at that, a vicious rasping sound that made Vocho’s shoulders twitch. “If only that were so. But it’s true, no matter what you tell yourself: I did it for you. And yes maybe for me as well. But Petri’s not the only reason you’re in Reyes, is he? I hear tell of an antidote of some kind.”
Vocho shot a look at Esti but she shook her head. Instead, it was Dom who spoke.
“And here it is.” He pulled a familiar-looking bottle from an inside pocket. “For you.”
“Dom, what are you…” Kass said, but he silenced her with a look that Vocho couldn’t interpret. Esti moaned behind them.
Eneko reached out for it, but Dom kept hold of the bottle. “You keep your end of the bargain. Tell her, us. That’s all it would take, maybe. Licio and Orgull have other magicians, but it’s Alicia with the power, and you have the means to stop her if you tell me, her, what we want to know. If you’d told Alicia or me, things might never have come to this.”
Eneko snorted derisively. “Are you still harping on about that? Almost twenty years ago, and you won’t let it go. Give that bottle to me, and I’ll tell you.”
Esti gave Vocho a “Told you” look.
Dom looked long and hard at Eneko and finally handed over the bottle.
Eneko gloated over it. “Yes, I heard about this, Kass. I heard about a lot of things. Takes a long time to brew, I’m told. It won’t be getting to Bakar, at any rate. Shall we see what it does? You told me such marvellous things about it, Dom. Even I’ve heard of Esti and her renowned concoctions.”
Before Vocho or any of them could do a thing, he’d ripped the stopper from the bottle and downed the contents, smacking his lips as it slid down.
Vocho heard Esti whisper behind him, “No, oh no! I’m too close!
“I really did do it for you, Kass,” Eneko said. “Petri betrayed you, didn’t he? Lied to you, used you, and you’re still too blind to see it. Well, I removed the blinkers from your eyes. And now Dom has betrayed you too. Everyone betrays. Everyone. That’s my last and best lesson for you.”
Kass lunged for him with a snarl, but Dom caught her, pulled her off balance. She whirled on him with an elbow, smacked him in the side of the head and spun back towards Eneko with a savage look that twisted her face out of all recognition. Sword up and ready, tongue between her teeth.
“Don’t try it, girl. Even now you’d struggle to beat me.”
Dom whispered something to her, and she subsided.
“Tell me, and maybe we can end this and concentrate on saving the city,” Dom said.
Eneko laughed. “Stupid boy. I don’t know where your daughter is. I did once, but that was a long time ago. She could be anywhere by now.”
Then it was Kass holding back Dom, her gaze pinned to Eneko as the antidote got to work.
A sheen of sweat popped out on his forehead, and his mouth worked but nothing came out. He staggered back a pace, recovered and fell to his arse with a thump. The bottle smashed on the floor. Vocho and Dom shared a glance, confusion on Vocho’s part, some unnameable emotion on Dom’s.
Behind them Esti moaned in pain.
“She…” Eneko said, all he seemed able to say, though his eyes were on Esti.
“She’s a world-class poisoner,” Dom said. “Not always in the way you expect. And Eneko trusted what I told him about it, before I went to Ikaras. Why wouldn’t he? He thought he held all the cards I wanted.”
Eneko was going a funny colour. He raised a shaking hand in front of his face and screamed at what he saw–his fingers writhed like vines, their tips a vivid green. His boots burst open and more vines wriggled out into the open. Eneko’s breath became strangled, great heaving gasps past whatever was happening in his throat. Vocho took a step forward and hesitated. What could he do? And did he want to?
Similar things were happening to Esti, until the whole room seemed green and the scent of earth and leaf mould stung Vocho’s nostrils. Kass swore viciously and went for Eneko, but again Dom caught at her and had her this time. She elbowed and kicked and bit and used every crafty trick she knew, but he held on, just, whispering in her ear until all the fight went from her.
The masses of vines reached out to each other, grabbed hold and drew the two writhing bodies together, enveloping them in greenery, then began to retract. One body reappeared but only one. The vivid green faded from Eneko’s skin and he blinked as though the past few minutes had been some kind of vile nightmare. Then he looked up at them and smiled, only it wasn’t his smile. It was the cheerful and good-natured grin of Esti.
At which point a great clamour arose in the distance, coupled with a faint boom which might have been something slamming into the walls. The Ikaran army was here.
Chapter Twenty-four
Alicia sat in a tent pitched on the top of a small hill where she could see Reyes laid out before her. On a table sat vials and pots of Sabates’ blood, a mound of paper, bundles of brushes. Orgull waved another unit in front of her–a sorry lot, farmers, weavers, men who ran stills making rum. Poorly armed, barely disciplined enough to stand in a straight line. Not a soldier among them except for the officer. But they were going to have to do, and she had the means to make them a force to be reckoned with.
She poured a measure of blood into a clay pot in front of her. No longer fresh, it had the reek of festering scabs about it, but it hadn’t dried so still kept all its potency. A clean sheet of paper, a new brush, and she set to work. It didn’t take long–she’d worked out the method a long time ago, against such a day. When she was done she beckoned the officer forward.
“Ma’am?”
He was very young, she thought. Still keen, but with a terror about him as he stood in front of her and Gerlar. She wasn’t sure who scared the poor boy more, and found that thought pleasing.
“Take this,” she said and gave the paper for Gerlar to pass over. “Be careful with it. You’ve been instructed as to the proper method of implementing it?”
He took the paper as though it was, and very poisonous, snake. “Yes, ma’am. I’m to say—”
Gerlar’s hand hard on his arm and a warning growl shut him up.
“Get your men close to the walls and then use it. You’ll find things much easier then.”
“What does it, er, I mean, ma’am, what can I expect?”
She cocked her head at him, and his voicebox bobbed up and down in utter panic, but he didn’t back away.
“You can expect your men to become fearless. You can expect to find great joy in battle and a fierce lust to kill all who stand in your way. You can expect to win. This is not my only magic for
the day.”
His shoulders slumped and he sagged like a balloon with a leak as the terror abated somewhat. “Thank you, ma’am.”
He marched smartly back to his men, ordering them away to the front of the line.
“How much of that is true?” Gerlar asked in his growling voice.
She looked up sideways at him. He had his uses, but she could push him only so far, she knew that. Especially when Ikaran men were involved. Duty, obedience, servitude, those were his watchwords, and while he’d lost all honour when he’d not died with his partner, he sought ever to get it back, not tarnish himself still further with lies or manipulations.
“All of it is true,” she said. “When he says the word, those men will become like you. In a way. Not experts, not good with weapons, but they will be unstoppable.”
She smiled inwardly at his confused grunt. “Here, let me show you.”
They walked a short distance to the top of the hill from where Licio and Orgull were directing the army. It spread out like some weird growth on the plain, darkening it with people.
“I think we’re ready,” Licio said hesitantly. “Are you sure—”
“Positive, your highness. Gerlar, fetch a signaller.”
A signaller duly arrived, a young lad with a pair of flags and a bugle.
“Signal the first unit to use its paper,” Alicia told him.
A quick burst of flag-waving, a return wave of a flag, a short delay and then an intense flash of light.
“Is that it?” Licio said. “I expected something a bit more dramatic.”
“Just wait, your highness.”
They didn’t have to wait long. After a minute or two a man broke from the line and rushed towards the city walls, then another. Then a half-dozen all shouting so loudly Alicia could hear them even at this distance, a blaring wordless wailing. And then the whole regiment went, waving their weapons, screaming mindlessly. They fell on the main gate like a storm-driven wave.
Dim figures moved across the tops of the walls, flitting between crenellations.
“Archers. Or gunmen.” Gerlar’s scowl threatened to engulf his whole face. “Our men will be—”
The faint crackle of gunfire sounded, but the Ikarans didn’t stop. Alicia saw one atop the gate arch clearly take a shot to the stomach before he leaped at the man who’d fired at him, thrust him from the walls before he dived into the knot of men behind him with a wild yell.
Licio watched through an eyeglass with a growing smile, as did Orgull, although his smile was rather smugger. “And you’ve given this to all the regiments? Signaller, send in the next!” Orgull said.
“All except the life-warriors, your highness. They need no bravery from magic. And we also have this.”
She drew a paper from her copious sleeve and carefully unfolded it. Dark, decaying blood glistened on its surface, and Licio’s face grew pained.
“Is that Sabates’ blood?”
“Oh yes. I’m sure he would approve, your highness.”
“Well, perhaps. What does it do?” He leaned towards it, but one upraised hand from her stopped him.
“Oh, now this, this may well be what wins you your city back.”
Persuasion, that was what blood magic was all about, when you got right down to it. Most magicians could persuade people; some could persuade animals; Esti could work miracles with plants. But Sabates had discovered, and hinted to Alicia, that sometimes even the elements themselves could be persuaded with enough of the right sort of blood. And this was exactly the right sort of blood. I don’t suppose you ever expected it to be yours, did you, you old bastard?
The traceries of the design were hair thin, delicate as angels, deadly as demons. Alicia half thought she could see them squirm on the page, waiting to be used. She leaned over, breathed a word on them and shut her eyes. Above the faint yells as more and more regiments raced towards the city, each soldier full of the desperate need to kill anyone in their way, came a great rushing sound followed by a hollow boom.
Licio cheered and clapped his hands, and even the understated Orgull gasped. She opened her eyes and looked out over the city. In particular towards the guild, whose imposing battlements were just visible above the city walls. A great gaping hole had appeared in those battlements. Orgull gave her a sidelong look as though reassessing her. Sabates had never done anything half so impressive, at least not anything Orgull knew about.
“Have you got more of those?”
“Only Sabates’ blood will work for this spell. But perhaps a dozen more.”
“And blood for the soldiers?”
“Oh, any blood will do for that.”
“Excellent.” Orgull nodded to one of the life-warriors standing beside him, who promptly took three steps forward and slit Licio’s throat. “Get a bowl for that, someone, would you? The lady here needs blood.”
Licio dropped to his knees, fruitlessly scrabbling at his throat as he tried to breathe. Blood coursed down his fine tunic and into the grass before one of the signallers, ashen faced and shaking, got a bowl under the wound while the life-warrior held the rapidly weakening king. Finally, with a last despairing gasp and a twitching kick, Licio died.
“Not a moment too soon,” Orgull said. “He was beginning to get on my nerves. Now, is that enough blood for you?”
A message. No one was so important they couldn’t die if Orgull willed it.
Alicia and the king stared at each other, neither willing to break first, but a twitch of her hand on the parchment, a nod of her head to the chaos behind her in Reyes, and he looked away. There would be a battle of wills later, but for now they would take the city and leave that for afterwards.
“Certainly,” she said. “What would you like me to target first?”
An uncertain smile form Orgull. “I never liked the palace. Wait, no. That stupid Clockwork God of theirs. Start there.”
That suited her very well.
She dipped the paintbrush into the bowl of blood and began.
Kass turned back from the window and what was happening outside. A huge section of the arch over the gates had fallen, leaving rubble and dust and injured guildsmen scattered over the courtyard. Beyond, she could hear the faint yells and gunshots of a furious encounter down by the main city gate.
What greeted her when she turned was little better: Eneko, only he wasn’t Eneko any more. Or not exactly. She should have felt something about that, some grim satisfaction that he’d got no more than he deserved, but while there might have been a twinge, it was overshadowed by too much else. Besides, she’d wanted to skewer the bastard and watch him bleed to death.
Dom and Voch had strapped him to the chair, and he’d lost the pale green shade across his skin, but there was still something… odd about him, and not just because it looked like Esti’s eyes were peering out of his face, or that his fingers still looped and writhed like vines. The voice too, as he tried to reason with them, was odd. Eneko’s rough accent and Esti’s smoother Ikaran-tinted tones mixed together.
The fingers twisted in ways no one’s ever should, and then the straps were open, and Eneko stood, swaying slightly. “You can’t hold me,” s/he said. “But I can help you.”
Dom and Voch both drew their swords, and Kass had a hand on hers, but it stayed in its scabbard, for now.
“You keep saying that,” she said. “But what help have you actually been? You took off Voch’s tattoo but left him hooked on your jollop or in pain. Poisoned him with it.”
“Not poisoned,” s/he said. “It was the only way to deal with the remnants of the tattoo. Dom told you that, didn’t he? He wanted that antidote, to give to Eneko. You’ve more reason to distrust him than me.”
Kass glanced at Dom.
“Never trust anyone, Kass,” Dom said. “Not even me. We all have our own dreams and desires, and Eneko had–has–what I want. I had no intention of it hurting you or Voch, if that’s any consolation, and that jollop might well have been poison. How many people have you poisoned no
w, Esti? Twelve? Fourteen?”
“Three. Under duress from Sabates. I gave you the antidote, and it would have worked too. I only wanted Sabates to stop forcing me to work for him, to get back at Alicia.”
Kass spared a look at Voch, who just shrugged like he had no idea what the hells was going on. She knew that feeling. It felt like the whole world was a rug that had been pulled from under her.
“Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t, and it doesn’t matter for now. Let’s start with what we can see, what we need to know,” Kass said in the end. “Esti, you start with what the hells you’ve done to Eneko. Truthfully this time.”
S/he laughed at that, and Kass couldn’t hear either of them in it. “No time now. Not if you want Reyes to survive. You need me.”
Outside, another resounding crash, a series of screams, the grinding sound of metal under stress. She didn’t need to look to know where it came from–the Clockwork God. Further away, the sounds of fighting grew louder, the shouts in Ikaran more distinct.
“She’s using magic,” Esti said. “Making farmers into warriors. Sabates wanted the destruction of Bakar for his own revenge, but Alicia is far worse. She’s got a husband to kill and a child to find and then Eneko to kill too. Her daughter, that’s what she wants most, as no doubt Dom has told you. This body here–Eneko–he’s the only one who knows where that child is. Part of why she made me… Alicia’s coming and she’ll kill anyone in her way. Unless you let me help. Actually…” Eneko began to vibrate, fingers twisting over one another, eyes rolling. An arm shot out, longer than a horse for a few seconds, and smacked Kass to the ground before it withdrew. “Actually I think you’ve done me a favour, Dom. I didn’t realise how strong it would be if I was too close… Stronger than Alicia. I also think you’ll find you can’t stop me.”
