Nursing his arm, Midwinter Jack stared past Sur Blaek to fix the prentices with a strangely delighted smile. Then he pressed his fingers to his lips and whistled a single, high-pitched note.
Engine noise tore through the night. Headlights blazed, hot and blinding.
‘Run ’em down!’ Midwinter Jack cried as a pack of jet-cycles tore free of the mist, while he and Sur Blaek sized each other up, their blades drawn. The paladero may have been injured, but he was still ready for a fight.
Five riders strong, the cycle gang shot towards the prentices at full speed, each of them hiding their face behind a ghoulish mask. All but the leader of the pack. Her hair was as slick and pale as Jack’s, her long scarf billowing behind her like the tail of a great red dragon. Her cycle was just as beastly, a muscular contraption of exposed rotors and billowing vents that spewed black smoke.
Again, Hero lined up the thunderstick. Took aim. Fired. The pack leader swerved easily out of the way, dirt exploding beside her. Keeping one hand on the accelerator, she reached for the sword slung across her back. It flashed as she pointed it at Hero’s heart.
‘You’re first!’ the pack leader shouted, gaining ground fast.
Scowling, Hero tossed the thunderstick to Joss. ‘Take this,’ she said as she armed herself with two of the zamaraqs in her bandolier. She kept her gaze locked on the pack leader as she unfolded the throwing weapons without looking, widened her stance and cracked her neck. Then, with whiplash speed, she let loose.
The first zamaraq flew at the pack leader’s face. She grinned as she swatted it away with her sword as if it were nothing more than a fly at her visor, and kept rocketing forward. The second zamaraq, however, proved impossible to deflect. It hurtled straight into the cycle’s intake valve, blowing the engine as if it had been hit with a battle mek’s mortar shell. The cycle veered violently to the right, where it crashed into the two nearest riders. All three were flung from their saddles, their cycles flipping over repeatedly and nearly wiping out Sur Blaek and Midwinter Jack.
‘Jane!’ Jack shouted, the smirk wiped from his face.
‘Your lady friend can’t help you now,’ Sur Blaek wheezed through his injury, pressing the advantage to drive his knife at Jack’s torso.
‘She’s my sister, you dolt!’ Midwinter Jack said, parrying the attack. ‘Alabaster Jane to the likes of you!’
‘I’ll make sure to have it inscribed on the grave marker you’ll be sharing with her,’ replied Sur Blaek as he pivoted into another attack, all while clutching his wound tight.
‘Come on,’ Joss said, leaping up from behind their boulder to aim the thunderstick at the remaining riders. Retuning the instruments on the handle, he widened the aperture of the muzzle, then pulled the trigger. The blast was broad enough to knock both riders from their cycles with a thwomp, though too weak to cause the same havoc as Hero’s shot. It would serve, though.
‘Nice shot,’ Drake told him.
‘Indeed,’ said Hero. ‘How about covering us while Ganymede and I go help Sur Blaek?’
‘You got it,’ Joss replied, toggling the thunderstick’s controls for a more concentrated blast. He’d handled such a weapon on only a few rare occasions, but there was no time to worry if he was up to the task of safeguarding everyone. He could step up or fall apart. Anything else was an unaffordable luxury.
Having not brought their humming knives, Drake and Hero drew their simple iron daggers and ran towards Sur Blaek. His bloodloss was making him unsteady on his feet, and Midwinter Jack was quick to press the advantage. He let loose a salvo of heavy blows that left Sur Blaek stumbling backwards, tripping over his own feet, crashing to the ground.
‘Mighty generous of you to offer that grave marker for my sister,’ snarled Midwinter Jack as he advanced on the fallen paladero, his blade poised to deliver the killing blow. His scarf had come loose in the brawl to reveal a large red tattoo that ran the width of his throat, resembling a gruesome grin. ‘But I think instead I’ll carve you up to make meat for my beasts.’
‘Do it if you’re going to do it,’ said Sur Blaek, struggling to keep his wound from weeping. ‘Don’t make me suffer your ceaseless blather.’
‘As you wish,’ Jack replied, and brought his weapon down towards Sur Blaek’s skull. But the blow was blocked by a crude piece of iron that sparked like struck flint. Midwinter Jack looked up, mouth agape, and caught Hero’s fist square in his face.
‘That’s what we call a Thunderfolk Hello,’ Drake told him, stooping to pick up Sur Blaek as Hero warned the assailant, ‘Don’t make me show you a Blade’s Edge Goodbye.’ But Jack only smiled up at them from the dirt. ‘I doubt you’ll have the chance,’ he said, his gang emerging from the mist to coalesce around him. Together they were half-a-dozen strong, armed with a heavy arsenal of lethal weapons. With his sister at his side, Midwinter Jack rose up at the head of the pack, while Hero and Drake flanked Sur Blaek.
Joss could see all this from his vantage point midway up the hill. But he could see something else, too. Between Midwinter Jack’s gang and his own brethren, Joss spotted one of the crashed jet-cycles lying against the base of a turbine. Its power capacitor was shredded and throwing off sparks, so dangerously unstable that the slightest nudge could set it off.
Joss decided to give it a shove.
He worked quickly, retuning the thunderstick’s controls and taking aim with the help of the shadowscope.
‘Drake! Hero!’ he shouted, and saw them look up. ‘Move!’
His brethren took hold of Sur Blaek and ran as fast as they could. As Midwinter Jack and his gang stared up at him in confusion, Joss squeezed the thunderstick’s trigger. The polished wooden staff expelled an ear-splitting boom and the wrecked jet-cycle exploded in a furious fireball. Flaming shrapnel rained down over Jack’s gang as they scrambled for safety, while the wind turbine that the cycle had been propped up against groaned.
Teetered.
Then collapsed, falling to the ground in a spectacular crash. Mud and filthy water were splattered everywhere, drenching everything.
Despite the distraction, Joss knew it wouldn’t take Midwinter Jack and his gang much time to recover. Which was why he, Drake and Hero formed a tight huddle around Sur Blaek and fled as fast as they could, never stopping to look back for fear of finding a pale white face and a gruesome red grin on their heels.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A RAPTOR AND A TYRANNOSAUR
LEANING out of the doorframe, Joss stole a glimpse up one end of the alleyway, then the other. He paused a moment to listen and, hearing nothing, retreated inside, bolting the door behind him. Walking the few steps up the tight corridor, he came to the cramped surgery where Sur Blaek was spread out with a surgical mek operating on his wounds. Drake and Hero, both at the paladero’s side, fixed Joss with a questioning stare.
‘Nothing,’ he shook his head. ‘If anyone followed us, they’re laying low.’
‘We’ll need to get out of town as soon as possible,’ Sur Blaek grunted through bloodied teeth. ‘No telling what dangers could yet be lurking.’
‘Remain still, please,’ the mek intoned as it tended to its patient.
It was Sur Blaek who had led them to this backroom clinic on the outer edge of Freecloud, staffed only by the compact little mek that had answered the door. Joss had speculated that the physician who would be operating on Sur Blaek must have been taking a break, until the mek had led them into the adjoining room, clamped its legs to the floor, then concertinaed out into an all-in-one surgical theatre, including a spotlight and padded leather chair. Sur Blaek had flopped into the mechanoid’s embrace with relief, and was quickly administered with sedatives as the mek’s head floated by on a telescoping joint.
‘Penetrative wounds with no major organ damage,’ it noted. ‘Applying sutures and bandages.’
Sur Blaek threw the machine a mistrustful glance. ‘I should say, before the painkillers addle my mind too much, that you all handled yourselves very well tonight,’ he grunte
d as the mek tugged at the thread in his neck, then clipped it short. ‘I’ve seen full-fledged paladeros crumble under softer opposition. And Sarif?’
Joss shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Yes, sur?’
‘That was a fine shot. A damn fine shot.’
Joss felt his cheeks flush hot. ‘We’ve had run-ins with bandits before,’ was all he could think to say.
‘Evidently you’ve learned from the experience, then. That speaks well for you as a student. Despite your teacher’s recent loss of temper.’ While Joss tussled with all that had just been said, Sur Blaek leaned further back into his padded chair, tilting his chin up so the mechanoid could better reach the wound on his neck.
‘The only question is – who tipped them off about us?’ Drake said, arms folded across his chest. ‘The barkeep?’
‘Hard to say,’ Sur Blaek grunted as the mek went about its work. ‘Could have been the lad at the stables.’
‘Could have been the whole town working in one long chain, for all we know,’ Joss said. He hadn’t been in Freecloud for long, but he’d already taken it for a place where trust couldn’t be bred.
‘However they found out, they didn’t strike me as typical rustlers. They were too well-equipped. Too organised,’ Drake went on.
‘That’s because they weren’t rustlers,’ said Hero. All this time she had been busy sharpening her zamaraq, the blade glistening beneath the surgical light. ‘They were assassins.’
Sur Blaek kept his eyes on his synthetic physician while Joss and Drake traded dubious looks.
‘What in all of Ai are you talking about?’ asked Drake.
Hero gestured to the mek. ‘We can talk in front of that thing, right? You pay in cash, it dumps its memory log the moment we walk out of here?’
‘Like all midnight clinics,’ Sur Blaek said.
Hero snapped her zamaraq shut and loosened her shoulders. ‘The tattoo Jack had on his throat? It’s the mark they give all convicted killers in the prisons of Covora. Easier to identify them should they escape, which only a handful have ever done. That handful formed a gang; the Red Grin Gang. Cutthroats-for-hire who wear the red marks on their necks with a sense of professional pride. Except tonight, when they each went to the effort of hiding their tattoo.’
‘All the better to pass themselves off as rustlers?’ said Drake, and Hero nodded.
Drake rubbed his chin. ‘But it was only Midwinter Jack who ventured out to meet Sur Blaek. Why would the others bother with maintaining the charade once the trap had been sprung?’
‘They wanted it to look like a black-market deal gone wrong,’ said Joss, following the path of Hero’s logic.
‘But to whom?’ Drake said, always reluctant to leap to conclusions. ‘If they killed us all, there would have been no witnesses left to say if it was rustlers or hired killers or any of a dozen different bogeymen.’
‘They weren’t going to kill us all,’ Hero replied. ‘Only Sur Blaek. I doubt they even knew we were there. After all, the man who hired them wouldn’t have mentioned it. He’d have only told them that they should hide their marks, make it look like an altercation with a rustler gone wrong.’
‘You’re talking as if you have a suspect in mind,’ Drake said.
‘She does,’ Joss replied, staring at Hero with the same certainty that she was exuding.
‘Who?’ Sur Blaek asked breathlessly.
Joss and Hero turned to each other, spoke the same name at the same time. ‘Rayner.’
Sur Blaek hacked on the operating table. The surgical mek administered another dose of anaesthetic.
‘Lord Rayner hired a gang of professional killers from Covora to murder Sur Blaek?’ said Drake, his tone dripping with disbelief.
‘And organised it so that we would be there to serve as witnesses,’ Hero said without missing a beat. ‘He didn’t plan for Midwinter Jack to bring back-up with him, nor did he ever imagine that we’d actually have the gumption to get involved and save Sur Blaek’s life. He just wanted a few fresh-faced patsies to stand idly by and see Sur Blaek’s downfall as a matter of record.’
‘But … why?’ asked Sur Blaek, the veins in his neck bulging as the mek kept stitching.
‘Because you’re the only rival left for the lordship,’ Joss said.
‘That’s nonsense. Rayner is the lord of Blade’s Edge Acres. Done. Settled.’
‘Not in his mind,’ Joss replied.
‘Nor in the minds of many of the paladeros, prentices and fieldservs who answer to him,’ Hero added. ‘You heard the applause he received at the memorial dinner. Or lack thereof. It was mostly just the mercenaries he hired for paid protection, just the same as the mercenaries he hired to have you murdered. He’s holding onto his position by a thread, and he’s already killed once to claim it. What difference would it make to kill again in order to retain it?’
‘You think he killed Lord Haven?’ Sur Blaek said, both eyebrows raised.
‘I do,’ Hero said without a hint of doubt.
‘And this isn’t just your grief talking?’ Drake asked.
Hero responded with a look that could stun a stegosaur. ‘I may have been unsure about that before. After tonight I’m more certain than ever.’
‘How, then?’ asked Sur Blaek.
‘The blackglove,’ Joss said, and again Hero nodded.
‘The supply that Rowan told us had gone missing. It has no taste or smell, remember? Rayner could have slipped it to Lord Haven at any time and it would have gone completely undetected.’
‘If he was poisoned, there would have been signs,’ Drake insisted.
‘True,’ Hero replied. ‘A fatal dose of blackglove is marked by a pooling of blood in the hands, turning them dark. Hence the name. Rowan said he found Lord Rayner dressed in his gloves and riding leathers. I don’t suppose you saw the body too, Sur Blaek? Maybe noted if his hands were bare? Or what colour they may have been?’
‘The only time I saw him was when he was being cremated in full uniform. Gloves and all.’
‘And who organised the cremation?’
‘Lord Rayner. Almost immediately.’ Sur Blaek shifted in his chair. ‘Though that was from the physician’s recommendation on how to deal with a diagnosis of merchant’s pox.’
‘A diagnosis that would take very little effort for Rayner to have arranged,’ Hero said, and turned to Drake as if she’d just revealed the winning hand in a game of castes.
Joss had to admit, she had taken many of the fragments that had been floating around in his head ever since their arrival at Blade’s Edge Acres and pieced them together to form an incredibly persuasive picture.
But Drake still looked unconvinced. ‘This is tenuous at best,’ he said. ‘And certainly not enough to convince anyone of Rayner’s guilt.’
Hero’s air of triumph evaporated. ‘You don’t believe me?’ she asked.
‘It’s not about what I believe. It’s about what we can prove.’
‘Ganymede, you are so wonderful in so many ways,’ Hero said softly, before her face hardened. ‘But your need to ingratiate yourself at the cost of your own dignity is sickening.’
Drake recoiled as if he’d just been slapped. Joss winced, while even Sur Blaek looked taken aback. Then Drake’s expression took on the same intensity as Hero’s. ‘Remind me again about you and your bludgeoning ways?’ he said.
The room fell silent as Hero stared Drake down.
And then the surgical mek beeped. ‘Your sutures are complete,’ it said. ‘Allow a moment for the application of bandages and you may be on your way.’
This last part of the operation was done without a word spoken between anyone. When his bandages were firmly in place, Sur Blaek rose, stuffed a wad of notes into the money slot on the mechanoid’s chest, and gathered the prentices beside the door. Drake and Hero shuffled apart in an effort to avoid each other, standing either side of Joss to use him as a buffer.
‘We’re not free of the foul winds just yet,’ Sur Blaek said as the mek cleaned itself o
ff, then collapsed into its initial form to wait for its next patient. ‘If we’re going to make it out of this town unscathed, we’re going to have to set aside whatever hard feelings we may have and band together. Keep a wary eye open and your hands by your swordbelts. Watch each other’s backs. Aim for the stables and retrieve your mounts as quick as you can.’
‘What about Rayner?’ Joss asked. ‘If Hero is right, the danger won’t stay behind in Freecloud. We’ll only be escaping a raptor pen for a tyrannosaur paddock.’
‘Better a duplicitous tyrannosaur that’s willing to bide its time, I say, than a raptor that’s ready to tear you to pieces right now. Remember, keep your wits well-honed. It’s as true now as when I told you before. Understood?’
The prentices all nodded.
‘Then let’s go.’
A thousand dark windows gazed down at the small group as they departed the clinic, any number of them containing a pair of watchful eyes. Keeping his head down, Joss moved as quickly as he could, setting his fears aside until they had reached safety.
But if Hero’s suspicions were true, there would be no safety. Not for any of them. Which meant he could only hope that the good fortune he’d found all the way back in the Gauntlet held true. Because if it didn’t, there was no telling what grizzly fate Lord Rayner had in store for them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A HAUNTING FAMILIARITY
THE same strong southerly that had impeded Joss and his brethren’s journey to Freecloud now helped drive them all the way back to Blade’s Edge Acres, where the sun was just starting to creep up over the horizon. Rather than land in the training yard, Sur Blaek led them to the rookery where the pterosaurs were kept. Drake and Hero didn’t say a word to each other as they drew their mounts to the ground and slid from their saddles.
‘So – what now?’ Joss asked Sur Blaek as he too dismounted.
The Edge of the World Page 14
