Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  Scar’s house sat at the centre of the valley, a crude thing made from bound-together logs and turf like all the rest only better made, snugger with no gaps in the planking and no leaks in the roof. The warmth of the hut was enough to stagger Petri, make toes and fingers come back to painful life for the first time in what seemed like weeks, made his own spot in the hayloft seem like ice in comparison. She sauntered in, dropped her baldric over the back of a chair and poked an already good fire. A pot of something hung over it, and not the watery soup that would be his in the mess later. A rich rolling smell puffed out with the steam when she lifted the lid, making his stomach growl audibly.

  She looked up at him, frowned and jerked her head towards the rough table and chairs pulled up close to the fire. Petri took the hint and sat, wary, hiding his right hand in the fold of a worn fur cloak he’d fought off some man a week ago in the barn.

  Scar walked over to the table and sat opposite him, one hand playing with a long knife. Petri realised he was still carrying Dom’s sword and he put it down on the table.

  “Don’t talk much do you, Silent Petri?”

  Something about her made him squirm–the intensity of her look, the way her hand moved over the hilt of her own sword, the hook that he was sure was barbed into that question.

  “Not much,” he agreed.

  The reproach in her look chided him. She’d saved him from the gods knew what fate, fed him, found him somewhere warm to sleep.

  “Never did talk much,” he said with an effort, to appease her, maybe stifle some of that unnerving energy. “And people seem less inclined to talk to this face.”

  “I’m not less inclined,” she said. “And dinner’s waiting, if you don’t mind sharing. I hear you had a little trouble in the barn.”

  He looked up from the sword and found her watching him with a forthright look and a cock of her head. He looked down again because he must be mistaking that look.

  “Come on,” she said, handing him a bowl that brimmed with hot mutton stew. “It’ll get cold, else.”

  He didn’t seem to have much choice, and the memory of no food for days on end was still fresh in mind and stomach. His pride stung at charity taken, but his stomach told his pride to quieten down when it came to eating what little came through the mess just lately.

  “Stolen food always tastes better, I find,” she said with a grin. “And they’ll be getting the good stuff in the mess today too, if that’s what’s sticking in your craw.”

  He dug in, and so did she. They sat and ate in silence for a while before she threw down her spoon. “God’s cogs, you really don’t talk much, do you?”

  “I said as much.”

  “You’re hard work, Petri. But I know a bit more about you now, whether you tell me or not. Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. And maybe you’ll want to tell me which is which. Because that assassin had a lot to say on our way back.” The grin had gone, and her face grew serious, hard as the mountain they sat on. The knife was laid, very precisely, between them on the table. “Tell me about him. Because he’s a man I never expected to find in these mountains, much less trying to kill me. As out of place as a shark up here, and almost as silent on the why as you are. Talk, Petri. It’s time to talk. Show me I was right to bring you here.”

  She moved the knife upright so that its point pierced the wood of the table and twirled it.

  He watched the light flicker along the blade as she toyed with it, swallowed down the shivers that image brought with it. A hot knife and a dark cell, and pain and betrayal–his own. The knife had made a coward of him, and that one man could do that to him coiled inside and fermented into rage. And Eneko had done that, because Petri watched Scar’s knife now, glittering in the light, and he was piss scared, and he hated her for that, wanted to stand up and shake it out of her, whatever she was doing to him.

  “Domenech,” he said at last, his voice sounding strangled as though his brain tried to throttle the words before they could come. “One of his many names. Used to be a guildsman, a long time ago. Eneko…” He shut his eye but couldn’t shut out the glimmer of the blade, the knowledge that he was weak in front of it, in front of her. No, not this Petri, this Petri was strong. “Domenech was the guildmaster’s assassin once, I know that much, and he was thrown out of the guild. Years ago. He appeared again last year.” With Kass. The roiling in his gut grew worse, so that he thought he might throw up the stew or maybe pick up the sword and stab something with it.

  “And what might an assassin want with me? A guild-trained assassin at that?”

  “That you kidnapped his daughter would seem a fair bet.”

  “If she is his daughter. She doesn’t think so, does she?” Scar laughed, flipped the knife up and laid it back on the table so that Petri could breathe again. “Maybe someone hired him to kill me. Someone I’ve robbed, probably. There’s a certain freedom to knowing everyone hates you, have you ever thought of that? You never have to worry what anyone thinks of you because you already know.”

  He couldn’t say that he had, but then again he’d never seen someone so utterly carefree, who seemed to give not a crap about what anyone thought of her.

  Her grin became feral as she looked askance at him. “What should we do with him, this Domenech? Dangerous, he could be. Very dangerous to keep around.”

  Petri shrugged. “Maitea wants him alive for now. I’ve told her all I know, which isn’t much.”

  “No, she wants to try to find out what she can about him and her supposed mother, but he’s dangerous, I think. Maybe too dangerous. But killing–I don’t like that much either, especially not in cold blood.”

  “It depends on what you want. His father is very rich, so I’m told.”

  “Is he now?” She looked thoughtful. “A ransom?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe Maitea would be the heir if Domenech were to die.”

  “Ransom’s not usually our style; we like to keep quiet, out of sight as much as possible. Survival, that’s our watchword. Like you, Silent Petri. We want to just be, and be left alone. The smart way. Small and subtle and we live. Stupid and loud and we die, it’s as simple as that. And I will not have these people die if I can help it. They are mine, and I will look after them. You included.”

  She stared at something inward with a frown, and Petri was struck again by her energy, her drive, though it was only now he realised what she was driving for. Survival, the smart way for her and every other outcast here, him included. The way she looked at him, talked to him–she didn’t care about his face, or what he’d done to deserve it. She didn’t care about where he’d come from except how it could help the people up in this thrice-forsaken valley.

  “Maybe I can get him to see sense, help teach your crew a few tricks,” he said. “Subtle is what he does, what he’s trained for, and he’s as rootless as anyone, as far as I know. Maybe if he really wants his daughter to trust him, he’ll help you.”

  “An assassin on my crew, now that would be handy if you could manage it, if I could trust him. Waifs and strays the lot of us.” A slow mouthful of stew, and then she said, “What about Morro?”

  Petri shook his head. He’d tried, dug with all the subtle words he could manage, and the magician had said almost nothing, and Maitea with him. “Just want to be somewhere safe, both of us” had been all he could get out of the pair of them.

  “Strange Morro and Domenech should both be at that village, isn’t it? Neither is a mountain man, that’s for sure. And that Morro, he’s an odd one. Persuasive with it too. We’ll see. Perhaps.” She picked up Dom’s sword and laid it in front of him. “Well now, Silent Petri, how would you like this very fine sword I have procured for you? Fitting a guildsman such as yourself.”

  He looked at it, glittering on the table. Scar’s men had swords, a few made here, some stolen, and they were passable enough but crude and heavy, not given to quick work. Not easy for his weaker left hand to heft. This, though, this was perhaps the finest example of a duelling sword he�
�d ever seen. He picked it up in his left hand. Not too heavy and not too light. With this maybe he’d be able to teach himself to use his weak hand properly, like he used to use his right.

  “Go talk to your Domenech. Find out why he’s here, what he wants, why he really tried to kill me, if Maitea really is his daughter. Take her with you too, because she has questions of her own. See if he can be persuaded to join us, as you suggest. If not, he’s going to be exceedingly uncomfortable until I decide what to do with him. Spend a few words, Silent Petri, and take the sword.”

  She meant it, he thought, and meant something else he couldn’t quite work out. Still, there were perhaps a few words he wanted to spend with Domenech for himself.

  The hut they’d taken Domenech to was the worst of the lot, barely better than being outside. The turf was starting to slide off one side of the roof, letting in little puffs of snow, and the logs in the walls hadn’t been caulked so the knife wind moved through the space in icy slices. The floor was a mess of half-frozen mud and rancid straw that stank of pig.

  Domenech sat in one corner, double tied as Petri had suggested, at wrist, elbow, ankle and knee. Even so, even tied like a hog waiting to be butchered, sat in filthy rags that showed only a hint of the splendour they’d once had under furs not fit for a dog, Domenech gave off the air of a man who could walk free whenever he chose. He just wasn’t choosing to right now.

  Maitea stood beside Petri and looked down impassively at the man who said he was her father.

  Domenech was rather less impassive as he looked back. “Maitea? Maitea, please.”

  She turned away sharply, and that movement made Domenech’s face twitch as though in pain, but he soon gathered himself though he stared longingly at Maitea’s back.

  “The tables turned then, Petri?” Domenech said, at last sparing Petri a glance when Maitea stayed turned away. “I seem to recall the last time we met: it was you in the cell and me, magnanimously, letting you go. I hope you don’t feel you need to cut my face off to even things up at all. You could let me go though.”

  Petri leaned back against the door jamb and watched him carefully. The hilt of Domenech’s sword was cold in his hand–everything seemed colder than ever, inside and out. But his hand worked on the hilt, itched to be used. Sudden rage made him want to slice that face, as his had been. For someone else to know what it was to be faceless, friendless, betrayed and alone. He gripped the hilt harder. Yet he wasn’t alone now, was he? He’d found a place, rough though it might be.

  “Not yet,” he said at last. “What are you doing here?”

  “She wants to know, does she? Luckily for her, there was a slight tactical error on my part due to an emotional overinvestment. If she doesn’t get on with long words, tell her I tried to kill her because I, personally, wanted her dead.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Isn’t that enough? That’s all. No one hired me, no one paid me. I merely wanted to kill her for daring to kidnap my daughter. Almost twenty years I’ve been looking for her; I finally find her, and your friend takes her away from me. So, in a moment of rash emotionality I decided to do what I was trained for, but wanted it too much and buggered it up.”

  A long silence then, before Domenech shifted uncomfortably in his bonds. “I suppose there’s no chance…?”

  “None. Unless you were to agree to work with Scar.”

  Domenech raised an eyebrow. “Scar? Is that her name? Seems to me I’ve heard of her, taking in waifs and strays, thieving to keep them fed. Very noble of her, and she’s smart too. Keeps a bunch of cut-throats and thugs in line, which isn’t easy. A graceful tightrope to walk, and she does. But to work with her? Doubtful. Would she trust me enough?”

  “She might. I won’t.”

  “No, and you’d be right–I’ll be honest about that. You’re working for her though?”

  Petri shrugged. It seemed obvious enough.

  “Interesting she took you on. Does she know who you are? I see she does. Why? Why take on a half-handed ex-guildsman whose name is known for cowardice in every newssheet in Reyes? Just another waif and stray? I’ve heard much about her, and being soft-hearted doesn’t fit. She’s got a use for everyone, and she’s got a use for you.”

  Words wanted to explode out of him, the right ones that would flay Domenech where he sat, but Petri couldn’t seem to conjure them. His hand worked on the hilt.

  Domenech shifted again. “Small-time robbery? I mean, it doesn’t seem enough for you, really. Scar has plans, though, I bet. I also bet that the snow hampers her, to Reyes’s benefit.” He looked at Petri sideways. “Of course, if Scar were to become bolder, then she’d have to be dealt with. Bold enough, the guild would become involved. But I don’t think she’s that stupid. Are you?”

  “She’s no plans that way. She just wants to keep everyone fed.”

  Domenech looked up slyly. “If the guild were to become involved… You know who the guild master is now, do you? No? We kept our word, me and Vocho. Told her, told everyone you were dead. She hasn’t taken it well.”

  “She should have thought of that earlier,” Petri growled.

  “Maybe. And maybe you should think about it now. She tried, you know, tried to get to you with everything she had. It just wasn’t enough.”

  Petri stood back, thoughts knotted in his head. Maitea stirred, her glance ice-cold as she regarded Domenech. Petri welcomed the distraction.

  “You say you’re my father,” she said. “You say that I was stolen from you a long time ago. You say a lot of things, but Morro tells me there’s a lot you don’t say too.”

  All of a sudden Domenech didn’t seem half so sure of himself. He shuffled onto his knees, looking like a man begging for his life.

  “I am your father, and you were stolen from me–us–by the man who did that to Petri’s face. I’ve spent all the years since looking for you. I’ve killed to find you. I tried to kill Scar because she took you away, stole you from me again just when I’d found you.”

  Maitea seemed unconvinced. “What about my mother?”

  Domenech flinched at that, then steeled himself to look Maitea in the eye. “Your mother tried to kill me because she blamed your loss on me, and rightly. She spent years trying to find you too. She started a war to find you, pitted Ikaras against Reyes just for that. Neither of us wanted to let you go.”

  Petri stared at Maitea–now he could see it, what was so familiar about her. Ice-fair hair and ice-fair face. Alicia’s daughter.

  “And where is she now?” Maitea said.

  “She… she died in the war she started.”

  Finally an expression on that cold face, a smile, but not one Petri would ever want directed at him. “Morro tells me it was you who killed her. That you ran her through from behind, like a coward. That killing is all you know how to do.”

  Domenech sagged back at that, his hands opening and closing uselessly on nothing, his face behind its ragged beard suddenly very old. It was all the answer Maitea needed. She leaned forward and spat in his face, her cool features full of sudden and all-consuming hatred. “I never had a father, and I don’t need one now.”

  With that, she spun on her heel and strode out of the door, back straight and head held high. Dom stayed statue still. He seemed crumpled, smaller than when they had come into the hut. Petri turned to go and only just caught Domenech’s whisper behind him: “Just like her mother. Just like her.”

  Maitea stalked across the snow, and Petri hurried to catch up. She spared him a glance that told him nothing, just ice behind the eyes.

  “Did you know my mother?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Not well. She was a magician, like Morro.” And had a snake for a heart. Just like her mother, Dom had said. Petri wondered just how like her she was.

  “Did he kill her, like Morro said?”

  “I don’t know. I was… otherwise engaged at the time. But if he hadn’t he would have denied it.”

  She stopped and turned to face him. “
The man who did that to you–he says that it’s the same man who stole me.”

  Slavery, Petri recalled from the day his world shattered, when Eneko had thrown him to the wolf of Bakar. Petri’s brother had discovered their father and Eneko had been involved in slavery and had been killed for that discovery. “It would not surprise me in the slightest.”

  A short nod, a delicate frown that creased her clear forehead. “My mother, what was she like?”

  Petri hesitated, but her cold eyes demanded the truth. “I have no love for magicians, and she was one reason why.”

  Maitea looked back at the hovel where Dom was trussed like a pig to be slaughtered. “Morro tells me many things. That I can do magic, that I’m to be his apprentice, that my mother was powerful and so might I be. Is it wise, do you think, to deny a magician what they want?”

  What to say to that? His life had unravelled from the day he’d become involved with them, and the thread of that unravelling had ended in Eneko’s room.

  “Look at my face,” he said, “and then decide.”

  Scar paced up and down in front of her fire as Petri told her about Maitea and her mother. “What about the assassin?”

  “He won’t work with or for you. If he agreed, he’d be lying.”

  “Worth keeping?”

  Petri shrugged. “For the ransom you might get, maybe. It depends on what you intend to do.”

  The pacing increased, and Petri was reminded of a caged lion he’d seen once, forever pacing, chaffing at its inability to hunt, to pounce, to do anything but pace. The snow had stopped Scar’s plans, though what those plans were beyond thieving enough to live on, Petri wasn’t sure. Though even that had become a struggle this winter, with snow up to the eaves. Even on horseback a five-mile trip was an ordeal, and they needed to range further if they weren’t to attract too much attention.

  “Do? Same as I’ve always done. Keep my crew fed and safe. Outcasts the lot of us. Looks to me like a magician is as outcast as the rest, now the university has closed in Ikaras, and Reyes has never been fond of them since Bakar took his seat in the palace. Morro might do very well for us. You can go, Petri.” She dismissed him with a distracted wave of her hand and called for Kepa. Petri went and fought for his place in the barn, and the sword at least made that easier, if not the thoughts that circled his head like vultures.