by Julia Knight
He pulled out a fresh piece of paper from a drawer and wrote in a fluid hand, blotting carefully from the little pot of sand by the inkwell.
Vocho read it over once he’d finished.
“Oh, that should do the trick. If it doesn’t, I’m moving to Five Islands.”
Chapter Four
Five months ago
The valley was small and narrow, a slice in the mountains except for at one end, where it opened out and dropped away towards the Reyes plains, which lay dim and brown in the distance. Snow choked the passes, and by the time Petri reached Scar’s camp, he was frozen to the bone despite the cloak and boots he’d been grudgingly lent.
Scar had made her offer and then ignored him, leaving him to the not-so-tender mercies of her followers. One, a bald-headed giant called Kepa, had given him the boots, still warm from whatever poor sod he’d stolen them from. Petri had a suspicion they had once been Flashy’s, along with the cloak, given their complete unsuitability for a mountain winter. Flashy himself had been left alive, along with Berie, at the inn with nothing much left for themselves except their underwear. Again.
Without this poor largesse, it was doubtful Petri would have made it to the valley. What had started before the inn as freezing rain that scoured the scars on his face soon turned into the full icy blast of an early winter. They had shaggy little mountain ponies–Petri had been given a broken-down nag as grudgingly as he’d been given the boots–but now snow fell in great feathering waves, obscuring everything, drifting in places higher than a horse’s head, so they’d been forced to stop.
Not for long though, because Scar would brook no stopping unless she had to. Two days after the inn had receded into the snow behind them they left the scant path and made their own trail up to the valley, the snow filling in their tracks behind them. Petri’s face and fingers had long since gone numb, and on his useless hand the skin was white and hard.
“No Man’s Land,” Kepa had grunted, though Petri hadn’t asked, hadn’t spoken at all along the trail. Those were the only words offered to him the whole trip.
The valley was cold and hard with packed snow, dotted here and there with huts walled with badly hacked logs and topped with snow-covered turf. These men and women had been settled here a while, Petri thought–grass and lichen grew on the rough planks of some of the huts, and a small tree had taken root in the thatched roof of a barn–but several of the huts sported freshly cut logs, still bright with sap, making him think the band had grown lately.
A larger hut at the end was where Petri was taken. Inside it was dark, gloomy with smoke, lit only by a mean fire at one end that did little to dispel the cold. A few rough planks on sawn-off tree trunks served as tables, and the floor was nothing but hard-packed earth, not even any straw. A few men and women sat huddled in old furs and patched cloaks, slurping a thin soup. It was rough, but Petri recognised a mess hut when he saw it.
Kepa gave him a push, and Petri stumbled in. The door closed behind, shutting out the last of the grey light with it. The people at the tables looked up, and there–he could never escape it–were the stares, the whispers, the sneers and snarls as people saw his face, thought they saw him in the bony shine of his cheek.
A hand shoved him down to sitting, and a bowl appeared in front of him filled with a greyish-brown liquid that was at least hot. His face began to tingle and burn as it warmed up, but he supposed that frostbite could hardly make it more of a mess.
Kepa sat down opposite with a bowl of his own. He took a few slurps, peered at Petri from under beetling brows, then he looked around, made sure he had an audience before he spoke.
“So, what’s so special about you then, skull man?”
A few sniggers sounded around the hut, and a few of the bolder came to crowd him at the table. Petri shrugged and kept his eyes on his bowl. He knew how these things went.
“Scar don’t take just anyone in,” Kepa carried on. “Especially not a nob. She takes on those that no one else wants but not cripples. She wants fighters, artisans, makers and doers, useful people, does Scar. So what’s so special about you?”
“Guild, wasn’t he?” someone else said. “Didn’t you hear Scar say? He’s a guildsman.”
“That true?” Kepa asked and shoved Petri’s shoulder, spilling his soup. “You a guildsman?”
“He was,” another voice chimed in. “Looks like someone fucked him up good and proper though, eh? And the guild didn’t bother to save him, did they?”
“Nobby bastards,” Kepa growled. “Well, I hope we won’t be a disappointment to you, Mr Guildsman. Whoever did that to you has left you right in the shit along with the rest of us. See this here?” He waved his spoon around the mean hut. “Once you’re this far out, it don’t get any better. Ever. We’re the dregs no one else wanted, and this is where we wind up.”
“The shit on their shoe,” another man said behind him, nodding morosely. “And that’s all you are now.”
The spoon jabbed towards Petri as Kepa went on: “No going back, no chance of a nice little house somewhere warmer, or a job, or anything. No one wants us, excepting Scar. You’ll be out here scraping a living off the rocks for the rest of your life with the rest of the crap. They didn’t just ruin your face, they took your life and stomped it into the mud. Whoever got you here, you hate them with all you got. It’ll be the only thing keeping you warm at night.”
He took another slurp of what Petri supposed must pass for soup before he carried on, seemingly encouraged by Petri saying nothing.
“We’ve been screwed over or ignored, hated–all of us–and don’t go thinking you’re any better than us, or had it worse just because you had further to fall. Now we screw back, just a bit. Fair’s fair, after all. Just don’t go thinking you’re something special because once upon a time you had a fair crack at the whip and lost it. Because you ain’t. Nothing special at all.”
With that he got up, and the rest wandered back to their tables, their little knots of cronies and friends, leaving Petri alone once more to contemplate his cooling soup and the thought that this was as good as his life would be ever again.
Later, as he shuddered under his thin cloak on the cold dank floor of the mess hut, felt icy draughts reach every crevice, heard the soft murmurs and groans of others who at least had company in their misery, he thought again of how he’d got here, who had put him on this path, had betrayed him to a cold and lonely existence.
Hate–the only thing to keep him warm. He felt sure he could supply enough for everyone.
Chapter Five
Now
Vocho found Kass up on the walls. Not looking over the docks this time, but down towards the rebuilt Clockwork God, who stood over the bridge that kept the guild separate from the rest of the city.
She looked very far from being the sister he thought he knew. Kass had always been a bit of a whirlwind, always something moving, outside or in. He hadn’t seen her fidget in months, and today she stood as still as the god she watched, so it was all going on in her head, and that worried him. He worried about being worried, because that wasn’t like him either. Petri bloody Egimont, buggering up his life even when he was supposed to be dead. If he ever saw him again, Vocho might have to kill him.
“Do you suppose he’s real, Voch?” she said without turning, startling him.
“Who?”
She looked sideways at him as he leaned on the wall next to her. “The Clockwork God. Bakar said he invented him, that he’s not really real only…”
OK, now he was really starting to worry. “Only what?”
She hesitated, then came out with it: “I swear he winked at me once. And it’s stupid. Bakar invented him to give people something to believe in, only I do believe it sometimes. Or I wish I did.”
He looked at her like she’d grown a new head.
“Kass, you really need to sort yourself out. The guild needs you to. I need you to.”
She shut her eyes, snapped them open again and sighed. He hated tha
t sigh. Kass never sighed, or not until the last few months anyway.
“The place hasn’t completely fallen apart under you. Much to my surprise,”
“My surprise too. Look, Petri’s gone, and I know how much that hurts. But god’s bloody cogs, Kass, you have to do something.”
She twisted the ring on her finger. “I know. I just don’t know how.”
“Well, here’s your chance.” He thrust the envelope under her nose. “From the prelate, asking us to help. Asking you to help. See, it’s got your name on.”
She eyed it critically. “I also see it’s been opened.”
“Well yes, Kass, because you haven’t been doing any opening yourself lately, have you? Just read the bloody thing, OK?”
She looked daggers at him but took the proffered envelope, opened it and read, frowning as she got further in. “It’s that bad?”
“You haven’t been paying attention. That’s the problem, Kass. I can deal with recruits and training and all that, if I really have to. Quite fun knocking them all on their arses, actually. But this? I can do it. But you need to. And I’m going to make you, if I have to strap you onto that bastard you call a horse and drag you the whole way. I’m going to keep on at you until you threaten to cut my head off. That’s when I’ll know I’ve got my sister back properly. Tell you what: I dare you to do it, double-dare you. Bet you a bull even.”
She snorted a laugh, but he could see the idea appealed. She never could stand being kept in the dark about something, even something as simple as what Bakar wanted. A last, longing, look at the Clockwork God, and she nodded. “You are so on.”
Vocho was feeling much more cheerful as he went with Kass to see Bakar. At last she was doing something. Even if it was only answering a polite, if rather cryptic and intriguing, summons, that was more than she’d done in weeks. She eyed the now almost clockless room and grimaced at the one that was left. Its sonorous ticks were the only sound in the room as they entered.
Bakar got up from a little table by the window to greet them, and urged them to take a seat.
“The clocks were always a comfort, and I miss them,” Bakar said to her unspoken question. “Now I prefer to watch from afar.”
Kass didn’t seem inclined to say anything–she was staring out of the window at the orrery, watching the clockwork with a distracted frown.
“So,” Bakar began with an embarrassed cough. “You read my letter? Any thoughts, Kass?”
She stopped looking out of the window and finally gave him her attention, and a shrug. “Highwaymen in the mountains. Or rather mercenaries, and with them leftovers from the Red Brook–Ikarans and Reyens, both probably. Maybe, if you’re really unlucky, maybe even a magician or two, since they shut the magical arm of the university in Ikaras and turned them all loose. Displaced men and women, looking to carve out a living by stealing, joined up most likely with the ones already there. Your men haven’t got very far finding them, and they’ve grown bolder but still not especially troubling.” A wan look appeared. “I’ve read the news, even if I haven’t done much else. So, not especially troubling, which makes me wonder why you asked for me?”
Bakar hid the twitch of a smile quite well, Vocho thought. “Because they aren’t just thieving any more. People are dying, many of them. Not to mention they’re closing in on Kastroa. Quite an important town as trade goes, or it was. Things have suffered of late, what with all the trouble with Ikaras, but now the Ikarans have found themselves a queen we were hoping to hammer out some new trade agreements, and the town would benefit immensely. First town out of the coal and iron mines on the Reyes side, you see.”
“I see that it’s important to getting Reyes back to where she was.” Kass frowned, which Vocho took to be a good sign–her brain was getting into gear.
Bakar took a sip of tea and nodded. “The area has had a bit of trouble with banditry in the past, nothing major, but now this new group is giving trouble all over the mountains and creeping ever closer to Kastroa. The Scar and the Skull, they call themselves. Been getting bolder by the day. The whole town’s in uproar and petrified of this Skull person.”
“And you want the guild to sort it all out?” Kass raised an eyebrow.
“Succinctly put,” Bakar said dryly. “I want you to stop them, stop the killing. Will you?”
“For the right price, naturally,” Vocho said.
She gave the pair of them a faintly amused look. “I’ve taken a bet that I would. But I don’t see why it has to be me–us?”
Not the response Vocho had been looking for, but it was better than nothing.
“For the good of Reyes? Isn’t that what you swear?” Kass bridled at that, but Bakar rolled right on. “Now Reyens are dying, and not just one or two. You’re the guild, the best Reyes has to offer, but that isn’t the only reason. You, the guild, weren’t the only ones to suffer in the battle for Reyes. Others suffered very much and are only now recovering, maybe need a little nudge in that recovery. I am, shall we say, more kindly disposed than I may once have been towards those who have a little emotional difficulty.”
His smile became strained at this veiled reference to his time of madness. Little emotional difficulty indeed.
“I hope you’re not thinking of sending us out with a bunch of madmen?” Vocho asked. He didn’t like the way Bakar had inserted this angle into the plan.
A flinch at that last word, but Bakar rallied. “Certainly not. As I say, many men and women suffered, as you have. Not all had the guild to fall back on. Perfectly good soldiers who just need… a little boost to their confidence. A little help from the two most renowned duellists perhaps. Besides, banditry is one thing, people dying is far more serious. I want it to stop, and who better to ask? Well, Kass? Will you do it? It would be an immeasurable help to me and to the towns currently terrorised.”
She looked between the pair of them like she knew exactly what they were up to, took another glance outside at the orrery and sighed. “Why not? It’s not like I have anything else planned.”
Bakar acted as though nothing was amiss and he and Vocho had hatched no plots. “Excellent. Reyes is always happy to pay the guild as befits its station, and it will be rewarded handsomely for this. Now.” He indicated a sheaf of papers strewn over his table. “Here’s everything my men have been able to find out. I’ve sent for the captain who led them, who’ll take you through it all, let you know everything they could discover. I’ve instructed him to do anything you tell him, Kass, and he and his troop will come with you. Latest reports put the band at about forty, possibly more, so you’ll not want to be going on your own. Ah, here he is.”
A rap on the door, which opened smartly when Bakar called.
He was tall, with a dark curl of hair over his left shoulder and a smooth way of holding himself that made Vocho sit up straighter and made Kass flinch–and no wonder because the resemblance to Petri was striking. His face was sort of blandly good-looking to Vocho’s mind, but there was a hint of a sneering twist to the mouth that made him seem as though all the world was there for his wry cynicism to laugh at. Add to that a crisp uniform and the way he moved, and he was the sort of man who walked into a bar and had women fall over themselves to reach him. Vocho hated him instantly.
“Captain Eder, Kacha and Vocho of the guild. I’ll leave you three to it, then,” Bakar said and did so.
Eder sat smoothly in the chair Bakar vacated. “I suppose I shall have to go through everything again for your benefit?”
Kass ripped her gaze from the orrery and gave him the kind of look which had left braver people hiding behind cushions, which he blandly ignored.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?” she said, and Vocho was glad to note a spark of life in her tone, even if said life was mostly annoyance.
Eder huffed self-importantly but did so. Places scouted, villages robbed, lines of inquiry, estimates of numbers and tactics and various strange rumours. Vocho’s eyes began to glaze over about two minutes in. Right up until Eder
said in an odd tone of voice, “And I’m pretty sure there’s at least one duellist with them.”
Kass shrugged, half interested, half looking as bored as Vocho. “What makes you say that?”
Eder shifted in his seat and a frown creased his good looks, but some hard place in him seemed to soften. “It’s nothing solid, you understand? A hunch, I suppose. But we talked extensively to the people who’d been robbed, those still living anyway. There’ve been highwaymen in that area for years. Small things mostly. A few sheep taken here, a couple of people held up there. Nothing organised and nothing too violent either. People accepted it–it’s a hard life in the mountains, and they’re a hard people, used to taking whatever the mountains fling at them. They were just as likely to lose a few sheep to the snow, or wolves, and the villagers felt a bit sorry for them, I think.”
Kass came and sat at the table, leaning forward as though actually eager for once. “That was then. Now?”
Eder cocked his head. “Now they’re afraid. Because things have changed. These bandits or whatever you want to call them are organised, and now they’re killing people. Not just those defending their own either, but old men and women, children. Whoever gets in their way. They don’t care. They seem to have suddenly adopted tactics more usually seen in military encounters and, added to that, they’ve started using their swords like duellists. I heard the villagers talk about it, and I’ve no doubt. Ruffelo’s style, Icthian–I studied them as best I could outside the guild, for all the good that did me…” Here Eder paused a moment, as though embarrassed, but he plunged on. “Someone’s been teaching them how to fight properly, and now they’re killing people. Lots of people.”
That made Kass sit up and really take notice–she looked more alert than Vocho had seen her in months.
“Any idea who it might be?” Vocho had missed a few faces around the guild house since the battle with Ikaras, but no one seemed absolutely sure who had died. Possibly because Vocho had burned the relevant bits of paper that would have told him. Possibly because in several areas bodies had been unidentifiable, and he was certain at least two had taken the opportunity to hightail it out of Reyes in the confusion, given their very strong links with Eneko and the fact he’d ended up with his head bouncing across the cobbles in front of the Shrive. “Any descriptions? Do we know who’s in charge?”
