‘Long story. Don’t suppose you have room for a ride back?’ Drake asked, and received a swift elbow in the ribs from both Hero and Joss. ‘Ouch! What? It’s not like we couldn’t use the help!’
Zeke laughed as he waved an arm of invitation to them. ‘Hop on up,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind riding with a no-good wastrel, that is.’
‘Survived the experience once already, I suppose. And I can’t imagine there’ll be any masked men to sell us out to along the way,’ Hero grumbled as she climbed up into the back of the cart, Zeke wincing at her insult.
Drake took a slightly more conciliatory approach by perching at the front of the cart, near enough to Zeke to be polite without actually having to make small talk with him. That left only the passenger seat up front. Reluctantly, Joss clambered up into it.
‘Hyah!’ Zeke cried, getting the thunder lizard back up to speed, axels squeaking beneath them. It was the only noise they heard for what felt to Joss like an eternity.
‘You’ll be relieved to know I got those lug nuts back to the forge safe and sound,’ Zeke said with a grin that curdled as he took in Joss’s expression. ‘Sorry. Bad joke.’
Staying resolutely silent, Joss ignored their driver and chose instead to spend the ride stewing on his failures and focusing on tomorrow. Sur Blaek’s angry face loomed large in his mind, his imagination giving it an ever greater scope. Had the skyborne instructor finally lost all patience with him? Was this the beginning of the end for his training?
Nothing is impossible, he told himself, Lord Malkus’s words taking on a hard new meaning.
Joss gazed at the horizon, watching as the mass of solid blocks that was Blade’s Edge Acres gradually grew closer, lit starkly by flaming torches and small spots of soft lamplight. The wagon was quickly waved through by the guards, and Zeke drew the vehicle to a stop in the yard outside the fortress’s main entrance. Joss, Drake and Hero all jumped down, eager to be back after such a long journey.
‘Well – thank you for the lift,’ Drake said to Zeke.
‘Yeah,’ Joss said without looking over. ‘Thanks.’
Hero didn’t add anything as she marched off, only to be stopped by Zeke calling out, ‘Actually – Hero? Ganymede? There’s something I said to Joss the other day that I think demands repeating.’ He climbed down from the driver’s seat to address them directly, both of them looking confused while he drew a breath and readied himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know it doesn’t change what I did, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I wanted you to know how much I regret what I did to you. To all of you. It was wrong, and stupid, and selfish, and if I could take it back I would.’
The two prentices stared at each other, baffled.
‘Really?’ said Drake.
‘Really,’ Zeke nodded, then thought to add, ‘look, you don’t need to say anything. I just wanted you to know.’
Drake and Hero were still too stunned to do much but gawp at each other, leaving Zeke to climb back up onto his wagon.
‘Thank you again,’ Drake called out to him. ‘For the lift.’
‘Happy to help,’ Zeke replied. ‘See you around!’ He steered the wagon under an internal portcullis and disappeared around the corner.
Drake turned to the others. ‘That was … surprising,’ he said. ‘Is there something in the water here that’s making people unexpectedly apologetic?’
Hero shook her head in dim amazement. ‘If there is, let’s hope Sur Blaek has a big mouthful of it before tomorrow’s training session,’ she said.
Joss wished it could be as simple as that. He didn’t think he deserved to be let off the hook so easily, but the thought of facing another salvo of Sur Blaek’s wrath filled him with such a sense of foreboding that he would take whatever help he could get.
Trudging into the fortress, he steeled himself for Edgar’s inevitable barrage of questions. Upon returning to their quarters, however, the lad was nowhere to be found.
‘What in all that’s regal happened here?’ Drake exclaimed.
All their belongings had been scattered around the den. Their dining table had been upended and cracked down the middle, their armchairs slashed, their bedsheets doused with some mysterious liquid and left in wet piles in the corner.
Joss stared at the few meagre possessions he had in the whole world, ruined beyond salvaging. He counted himself lucky that two of his most precious belongings – the Champion’s Blade and his father’s betrothal necklace – had both been with him when their room had been broken into. But that still left his mother’s journal and Qorza’s Scryer unaccounted for.
Joss excused himself to check his room. While his wardrobe was empty, the hiding spot behind his bed remained undisturbed; both the journal and the Scryer were safe and sound. Relief flooded him, tainted only by the lurking unease of Edgar’s absence.
Returning to the den, Joss found the others still assessing the damage. ‘Who could have done this?’ he wondered aloud.
Pushing aside a busted stool with her foot, Hero looked up and frowned. ‘I’ll give you one guess,’ she said, and pointed to the common-room wall.
Joss looked up, read the crudely worded insult that had been spelt out in clumps of fresh muck, and his concern for Edgar darkened to a blood-red shade.
The shack at the bottom of the southern yard was glowing with lamplight and booming with the sounds of revelry. It was here that the fieldservs and older prentices of Blade’s Edge Acres would gather after supper to share a drink and a laugh and a round of castes, all while watching the latest tourney matches that were beamed in via the illumisphere.
Much like Rowan’s cottage, the shack seemed to have been slapped together from salvaged materials, ranging from discarded fencing rails to old shipping crates. In lieu of proper windows, a handful of holes had been cut into the woodwork, through which a motley crew of faces could be seen inside. One face was of particular interest; it was small and hungry and hateful, and moving in a shambling manner towards the exit.
Lynch shoved open the shack’s swinging door and stopped to sway in his boots. A heavy belch trumpeted through his chapped lips, its escape spurring him back into action. The Brute and the Newt sniggered as they followed along behind.
‘Wish we coulda seen the looks on their faces. Not a satisfied smirk among them, I’d wager!’ Lynch was saying as they stomped across the sodden yard on their way to the latrine, which was little more than a wooden box with a tin roof that sat opposite the fieldservs’ makeshift saloon. Treading inside, they were quick to use the three privies contained within, all of them too busy laughing to hear the railing post sliding into place to jam shut the one and only door.
‘Pew! What a stench!’ one of them chortled, none the wiser. Judging by his nasally, high-pitched voice, it could only be the Newt.
‘Ain’t nothing compared to the pong coming from the dormitory wing!’ Lynch said, sparking another round of laughter, which was coupled with their footsteps as they finished making water and moved to leave.
The door rattled. The door held. The door banged and shook. The door didn’t budge.
‘What the –?’ one of the thugs muttered, pressing his eye against the crescent moon peephole carved into the wood.
‘I know it’s tricky, but surely even you can master a door,’ said Lynch, rattling it himself. ‘What in obstinate muck is the matter with this thing?’
‘It’s got a post bracing it shut!’ Hero called out.
The latrine fell silent. Then: ‘Is that you, Villain?’
‘I’d watch my choice of words right now if I were you, Lynch,’ Drake called out from Hero’s side. ‘Or you’re unlikely to get out of there before next market day.’
‘What do you lot think you’re playing at?’ Lynch demanded, banging the door so hard it rocked on its hinges. ‘Let us out of here!’
But Lynch wasn’t the only one making demands.
‘Where’s Edgar?’ Joss shouted.
‘Who?’
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‘Edgar!’ Joss said, frustration boiling over. He hadn’t risked everything to rescue Edgar from Thrall and Ichor’s cult only to have him abducted by a bunch of sun-blistered eggbrains.
‘That pink-faced prentice what follows you around?’ Lynch asked, just as confused.
‘You mean our steward,’ said Hero.
‘And our friend,’ Drake added.
‘How should I know? I haven’t seen the little whelp since you all first showed your pathetic mugs around here!’
‘What a load of muck!’ Joss shouted. ‘You were in our chambers tonight! Don’t try denying it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lynch said, his tone quickly shifting to one of feigned and knowing innocence. ‘Besides – even if we had been – it’s not exactly something that can be proven. Is it?’
‘Not many people I know would scrawl “Cheeters and villens” on our wall in sabretooth excrement,’ Hero replied, calm and collected. ‘You need to brush up on your spelling, by the way.’
Lynch sniggered. ‘Lots o’folks round here could use a lesson or two.’
The defiance made Joss see red. ‘What did you do with Edgar?’ he demanded again, hammering his fist on the latrine wall.
Lynch’s answer was as definitive as they come. ‘Haven’t. Seen him.’
Joss and his brethren turned to each other, gesticulating in silent conversation while Lynch babbled on in the background. ‘So are you going to let us out now or what? Because I’ve taken in about all I need to see of this latrine. Y’hear me?’
Lynch’s question went unanswered.
‘Hello?’ His voice echoed across the field.
‘Anybody there?’ he tried again, and again was met with deathly quiet. ‘… Anybody?’
The further Joss and the others got from the latrine, the more Lynch’s voice was drowned out by the noises coming from the shack. But even those receded into the distance as the Bladebound prentices marched deeper into the heart of the fortress, searching for their friend and steward.
‘Maybe he’s hiding out in the shrine,’ Joss said as he paced their ransacked quarters, both Drake and Hero watching him with tired resignation after hours of fruitless searching.
‘We already checked the shrine,’ said Drake.
‘Maybe he’s gone there since,’ Joss replied. ‘Maybe we should check it again.’
‘Joss –’ Drake drew breath to speak, only to be interrupted by a familiar voice from the doorway.
‘Check what again?’
The prentices spun around. Edgar was staring back at them in bewilderment. ‘What happened here? You haven’t been brawling, have you?’
‘Edgar!’ Joss exclaimed, striding across the room to grab the lad by the shoulders. ‘Where’ve you been?’
Edgar gaped at him, overwhelmed. ‘I was just – I was using the illumivox to call home.’
‘The illumivox?’ Joss blinked, unaware there was one available for prentices to use.
‘You mean the one near the barracks?’ Hero asked. ‘But I looked there for you.’
Edgar flushed. ‘I, uh, had to make water a time or two.’ He looked past Joss to survey the room, catching sight of the insult that befouled the wall. ‘Who did this?’
‘Lynch,’ said Drake. ‘Not that we can prove it.’
Hero made a sharp little tsking sound. ‘We’ll never prove anything if we give up without even trying.’
‘You didn’t think that was trying?’ Drake said, incredulous.
‘I thought that was mildly satisfying payback. Not that it amounts to much. Mark my words; Lynch isn’t going to stop. He’s only going to get worse.’
‘You don’t know that. We could have put enough of a scare into him to make him think twice about ever messing with us again.’
Hero tsked again, louder this time, while Drake responded with an expression that was equal parts confusion and frustration. Joss stepped between them, his patience as worn out as the rest of him after a day that simply refused to end.
‘We’ll have to deal with Lynch later. For now, we need to clean up as best we can and then get some rest.’ With a sense of mounting dread, he added, ‘We have training with Sur Blaek in the morning.’
‘I’ll fetch a bucket,’ Edgar said, his nose wrinkling as he stared at the mess on the wall.
Not wanting him to slip away again so quickly, Joss ignored his aching muscles and lurched forward. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, and they left the chamber as Drake and Hero set about tidying.
‘I can’t believe anyone would do such a thing,’ Edgar said, shaking his head as they walked down the hallway to the utility room.
‘You can never be truly sure what someone may be up to,’ Joss replied. ‘Like when they’re mysteriously absent for hours at a time.’
Edgar’s eyes darted around, his face taking on a tinge of guilt. ‘Joss?’
‘Edgar,’ Joss replied. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’
Edgar chewed his bottom lip in deliberation, though just as he drew breath to answer, a sudden clatter echoed from further down the hall.
‘What was that?’ they asked at the same time, then crept forward to investigate. They soon found the utility room with its door half-open, the sound of splashing water escaping from within.
Captain Kardos was inside, his arms buried in the sink, water flowing from the pump. He was scrubbing at his skin with a thick bar of soap, the suds bubbling around his elbows. His back was to the door, his shoulders rigid with tension, and he was muttering angrily under his breath. It took him a moment to notice Joss and Edgar hovering behind him. When he did, he whirled around to glare at them.
‘What in the Regent’s good name are you doing here? I told you not to wander around the grounds at night!’
‘We, uh,’ Edgar pointed to where the cleaning equipment was kept. ‘We just need a bucket. For cleaning. And such.’
Red-faced with fury, Kardos threw a bucket at Edgar. ‘Take it and get out,’ he said, and slammed the door shut.
‘What was that all about?’ Edgar said in a small, puzzled voice. Joss was too shocked to answer. Not only because of how angry Kardos had been, but also because of what he’d been washing from his hands. Joss tried to tell himself that maybe it was soil. Maybe it was paint. But deep down, he knew it could be only one thing.
‘Blood,’ he said aloud.
‘Sorry?’ Edgar blinked at him.
‘Didn’t you see?’ he asked. ‘Kardos’s hands. They were covered in blood.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
A REFUGE FOR ROGUES AND SCOUNDRELS
JOSS and his brethren spent the rest of the night cleaning their quarters, all while speculating on what Captain Kardos could be hiding. As Drake pointed out, it might have been nothing at all. Kardos wouldn’t be the first member of a paladero order forced to wash blood from his hands.
‘But how many guards are involved with slaughtering livestock?’ Hero pointed out, prompting another round of discussion that only ended when they retired to bed.
As engrossed as Joss had been in discussing Kardos’s bloodied hands, another concern had gnawed at him throughout the entire evening; the prospect of facing Sur Blaek. That gnawing turned to a merciless mauling the next morning as he and the others arrived in the yard to find it empty.
‘Is that – is that it?’ Joss asked the others, stunned that their training could come to such an abrupt end, with his incompetence having cost them all their future. ‘Just like that? It’s all over?’
‘And on whose orders?’ Hero said quietly as she peered up at the battlements and the guards looking down at them. But then Clockwise came trundling out from the nearby storage shed, towing one of the flight rigs behind him.
‘Salutations,’ he said, and Edgar leapt forward to join the mechanoid in its efforts. As he helped position the rig in the training field, Sur Blaek walked out with his head bowed. He wasn’t full of righteous fury, as Joss had imagined he would be. If anythin
g, he looked strangely penitent.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘After some consideration of yesterday’s events, I’ve decided taking to the sky so early was a mistake. So we’re back on the rigs. For now.’
‘Sur?’ Joss said, stepping forward. ‘It was my fault, not Hero’s or Ganymede’s. If there’s any punishment to be handed out, it should be mine and mine alone.’
‘Sarif, this isn’t a punishment,’ Sur Blaek replied in a gentler tone than the one Joss had braced himself for. ‘If anything, this is me correcting my own error in judgement. And as Hero and Drake pointed out: bound by a blade, bound for life. Either all of you qualify for flight, or none of you do.’
There was nothing vindictive in Sur Blaek’s manner. No sadistic glee, no seething anger. And that somehow made it so much worse, especially as Joss glanced across to see the looks of frustration and dismay that were chasing each other across Drake’s and Hero’s faces. But there was no arguing the decision. All they could do was begin again, starting their training from scratch.
This time Joss fared slightly better, managing to cling to his rig through all its spinning and wheeling and ducking and diving. But every ride was hard-fought, coming with white-knuckled exertion and a desperate effort to stay saddled, to stave off defeat.
‘You’re overthinking it, Sarif,’ Sur Blaek told him after a particularly gruelling stint that left him chomping dirt. ‘This isn’t how it is with a raptor or any other beast. This is a partnership. You can’t exert your will as master. You have to win the animal’s trust, and earn your place as its rider.’
And how am I supposed to do that with a blasted machine? Joss thought, though he kept it to himself as he climbed back up and started over again. For six days straight, Joss lived at the edge of failure. And then, on the seventh day, something unusual happened. He and his brethren arrived in the training yard to find Sur Blaek waiting for them alongside Lord Rayner.
Rather than his usual riding leathers, Sur Blaek was dressed as a travelling merchant might be, with a broad-brimmed hat and grey linen robes that were tied tight around his knees and elbows to keep them from catching the wind. The only thing that gave him away as a paladero was the thunderstick he was carrying. A hollow staff made of polished wood that was almost the height of a man, it could have been confused for a walking stick if not for the intricate brass instruments clustered together a quarter of the way up its length. With those, the bearer could calibrate a wide range of concussive blasts to shoot at his or her desired target, from the benign to the lethal.
The Edge of the World Page 12
