by Julia Knight
When Vocho made it–barely–downstairs the next day, he found Cospel clattering around in the kitchens and Kass already up and poring over the map. While it was gratifying that his little plan to perk her up was working, the overloud greeting and sly grin when he winced were not.
The landlady wordlessly handed him a plate of spiced sausages and hot buttered bread, and he plonked down next to Kass and set to, feeding his face being the best hangover cure known to man. When he paused for breath and a swig of the apple tea that had come with the plate, he peered over her shoulder. He hadn’t really been paying all that much attention before–Eder seemed more than capable of looking after all that–but…
“Kass, have you noticed what I’ve just noticed?”
“I don’t know, Voch. Kind of depends on what you just noticed.”
Ah. Well now he’d started… it wasn’t like he wanted to remind her, but it looked like it was going to crop up whether he did the cropping or not. “Well look. Here’s No Man’s Land, or Skull’s country or whatever we want to call it.” He pointed with a bit of bread and then had to brush away the crumbs. “And here’s where we know there have been attacks, right? Right. All in a semicircle out from No Man’s Land, with Kastroa right on the furthest edge. Draw a line between the two and then go further. If they carry on as they have been, where are they going to end up?”
Kass frowned and turned her head to follow what he was saying on the map. Then, slowly, her voice sounding blurred, “Elona… Oh.”
Oh indeed. Vocho didn’t say anything but finished off his bread in silence as it sank in. Elona, where once upon a time the duke’d had a son called Petri. Of course there weren’t any dukes any more, and the duchy was probably split up into half a dozen estates for the richer clockers who’d replaced the nobles. He didn’t suppose there was an Egimont within fifty miles of the place. But still, just the name was enough to bring a shadow back to Kass’s face. And why did he keep thinking of Petri? It couldn’t be him. He was a sly double-dealing bastard, but the nerve to be the Skull? Never. Jollop paranoia certainly, perhaps a signal to pull back on drinking it so much. That and the look of pity on Carrola’s face last night. He needed to learn to be him without it. Just as soon as he’d finished this bottle.
“Well, lovely as Elona is supposed to be,” Kass said finally, “I don’t think that’s where we’re headed for now. Come on, we’re supposed to be getting ready to go.”
Vocho glanced out of the window and suppressed a groan. The still grey air was thick with falling snow. “We’re going out in that? I’m not sure our gear is up to a mountain winter. I thought things were supposed to be warming up. It is spring.”
“Spring works differently up here, it seems. Eder certainly intends to go out in that, and if he goes, it won’t do for the guild to stay behind.”
He stood up and brushed crumbs from all the crevices they’d managed to invade. “And what do we think of Eder?”
Kass rolled up the map and stashed it in her pack, which was ready under the table. “I don’t think about him much at all.”
Vocho studied her. She was being entirely too nonchalant about Eder, which made him highly suspicious, but he left it for now.
Danel had managed to beg, borrow or threaten some furs for them and the rest. Cospel sat looking at a forlorn pile of ex-rabbit and ex-wolf sulking on the floor of the stable. He picked one piece up gingerly as they walked in.
“It stinks like it only died last week,” he said.
“That’ll be your one then,” Vocho replied.
Cospel smirked in a most irritating fashion. “Fair enough. The rest stinks even worse. Anybody’d think they were keeping meat in these.”
“Maybe they were.” Sergeant Danel came in from the yard, stamping snow off his boots and looking resigned. “Salt’s expensive here–too far from the salt mines–and smoking’s all right, but for a mountain man the best way to keep meat is out in the snow. Mountain speciality, that is, proper cold-aged beef, like my mum used to make. Nothing like it. You cut your meat and let it age in autumn, then it freezes as the winter comes in. Only you don’t want any critters taking to pinching it, and not everyone has room for a meat house. They sews it up in old furs and hangs it from trees.”
Cospel dropped the fur with a grimace. “Nice.”
“All I could get at short notice. We’re going to need it too. Colder than a snow troll’s balls out there. Pardon my Ikaran, miss.”
Kass looked round from where she’d been absent-mindedly running a hand along a fur. “What? Oh don’t be bloody silly. A bit of language never killed anyone.”
The door to the inn opened, and Eder, Carrola and the rest of those billeted there came in and set about readying themselves and the horses. Most of them, like Vocho and Kass, hadn’t ridden in weather like this very often, or indeed ever. Weather like this, to Vocho’s mind, was for staying indoors near a fire, not actually going out in.
“Eder, are you sure that—” Kass began.
“Perfectly sure,” he snapped out, voice clipped and cold. “I’ve my orders from the prelate to apprehend this Skull as quickly as possible, and I intend to carry them out.”
“At the risk of frostbite or worse? Avalanche? You said you’d already lost men to that. You angling to lose some more?”
One or two of the guards gave Kass a look, the sort that said “precisely the wrong thing to say”.
“I thought I’d made myself clear?” He turned away sharply and made for his horse.
Kass stepped between him and it, and yes, there she was, the sister he knew. One hand on a hip, the other on the stiletto that often graced her off hand when she fought, eyes bright and chin jutting.
“And I am making myself clear. Bakar put you under my orders on our little jaunt here, in case you’d forgotten, and you and your troop are going nowhere unless you convince me it’s best.”
Eder ground his teeth, but a glance at the way she was playing with that stiletto, another at Vocho, who shook his head very slightly in return, and he turned on his heel and headed for the bar. “Very well,” he threw over his shoulder before he addressed two of his troop on the way. “You and you, get the horses ready. We’ll be leaving as soon as I can make her see sense.”
Vocho would have told Kass that annoying Eder was a bit of a stupid move on her part, but the way she was smiling, like she hadn’t in months, like she meant it–he didn’t have the heart. Instead he faced the prospect of saddling Kass’s evil beast of a horse for her and set about getting Cospel to do it for him.
Kass followed Eder back into the bar, where he threw himself into a chair by the fire and tapped a foot as he waited. She shouldn’t have needled him, she knew that, but she wasn’t taking men and women out in that snow without assurances. Besides which… besides which there were things that needed talking out.
Eder waited for her to sit and gestured impatiently when she leaned up against the fireplace instead, elaborately casual.
“We can’t wait,” he said at last. “We know they were at that village a week ago, and even they can’t move fast in this. Maybe they’ll be holed up, waiting it out. It’s our chance to catch up with them.”
“It’s our chance to die of exposure,” she said in return. “Which I don’t much fancy. They’ve got a magician, whether you believe in that or not, and I doubt they’re holed up anywhere except in their own beds. We, however, will be facing a snowstorm in tents, wearing barely adequate gear. After Red Brook and that avalanche, that surprise attack, I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to risk losing any of your soldiers again. Yet you seem hell-bent on it.”
His whole body seemed to twitch at that, and his teeth clacked shut. “What you think of Red Brook or the rest, or me–and you made that perfectly clear–makes no difference. Bakar gave us both our orders. Catch the Skull as quickly as possible. Once the thaw comes, there’ll be no stopping him.”
She regarded him solemnly. If he wasn’t going to bring it up, neither was she. It might only make h
im worse, and he was angry enough as it was. Get through this job, stop people dying, that’s what she had to be thinking of. Not whether she’d react differently if he tried to kiss her again, even whether she wanted him to. Whether it was just because of how much like Petri he was…
“Not so much orders in my case, more of a commission,” she said at last. “He didn’t order you to get all your troop killed, did he?”
It was as though he was a fully wound clock and she’d just turned the key another half a wind too far. He exploded out of the chair and slammed a hand on the table, the other reaching for his sword out of habit. Then his eyes cleared, he seemed to realise what he’d been just about to do, and he sank back into the chair with shaking hands.
“We need to go,” he said at last, without looking at her. A brick-red flush worked its way up his neck. “No matter how little you think of me. Go, and as soon as we can.”
“If you’re doing this in a weird attempt to impress me—”
His lip lifted like that of a beaten dog. “Why would I want to do that?” he snarled. “I no longer care what you think.”
A retort sprang to her lips, but she clamped down on it. She’d made a stupid mistake, and he was rightly pissed off with her for it, but this was something else, ran far deeper than a misplaced kiss. She’d do best to keep her peace for now.
Finally, Eder got himself under icy control. “Sergeant Danel says this will be no more than a flurry–clearer weather is expected; the thaw should be here any day. It’s colder than we were expecting or have provisioned for, but Danel’s found plenty of extra furs; each horse is going to carry as much wood as possible, and the tents we’ve brought are more than up to the job. I will go, even if the guild stays behind. Maybe it should. It might be better all round.”
“It might,” she said and noted the daggered look he shot her at that. “But it’s not an option. I’m telling you this is a mistake. It could be a very costly one.”
“Then it’s my mistake to make, my troop, my men and women. The weather is set to clear, and we’ve prepared as best we can. You lot stay here if you like, but we’re going whether you agree or not.”
He glared at her from under a furrowed knot of eyebrows, waiting perhaps for her to argue the point. Instead, tired of argument, tired suddenly of everything, she said, “All right. But we go via Kastroa. It’s not far out of the way. Find out what we can there, find some better gear, see how the weather is before we head up into the wilds. Agreed?”
The bewildered look he gave her brought back a sudden slew of memories so sharp she could taste the spiced wine Petri had bought her, feel his breath on her neck, his hand on her naked back, watch him unwind from an uptight, upright man into…
Petri would have been better off staying that upright, uptight man. And she’d be better off right now not thinking about how Eder was like Petri and whether she wanted Eder to kiss her again, because she thought she might, might want him to show her what was under all that anger, all that doubt. Later, she thought she might want him to do more than that.
“Agreed,” he said at last, and thank the Clockwork God for small mercies.
“Let’s just hope we don’t regret this later when our hands fall off due to frostbite.”
Sergeant Danel had been right–the snow didn’t fall for long, although long enough for Kass to wish she’d not agreed to this. While the snow stopped after half a day on the road, the wind still came keening down over the tumbled ridges of the mountains, sharp enough to cut through even the furs and loud enough to ensure she’d barely slept that night. Now, in a day that seemed cold enough to freeze her to her marrow, Vocho fidgeted awkwardly in his saddle next to her, lips thin and hands clutched on the saddlehorn. His horse protested as his weight shifted, throwing its head back and snorting, breath puffing out like fog.
“Voch—”
“It’s fine,” he snapped, though it clearly wasn’t. But Vocho was never going to admit that hip wound gave him any trouble. Not when there were people to impress. Like Carrola, who rode a couple of steps back along the trail. A blind man could see how hard he was trying to impress her, but Kass got the feeling that anyone would find that tricky.
“Where are we heading and are we likely to get there soon?” Vocho asked. “Like, before my face freezes off?”
“Kastroa, weren’t you paying attention? Find out any more we can, gear up if possible, and besides it’s on the way, sort of. I suspect your face will be fine. If you can call your normal face fine.”
He gave her a startled sideways look, then grinned. “This face, I’ll have you know, has been the downfall of many a lady.”
“If by downfall you mean they have to shut their eyes to avoid it, I suppose.”
He threw back his head and laughed, before it was cut short by a grimace of pain. “Kass, you have no idea how much I have missed you bitching at me. Go on, do it again.”
All of a sudden they were easy again, like they had been before–before dead priests and robbing coaches and magicians trying to kill them. Before Petri. Even that thought couldn’t cloud her mood, the weight lifting from her head, the fog flying out of her eyes so that she noticed, for perhaps the first time in months, the taste of the air, the smell of the wind that lashed her face. He cheeks ached from her own grin, from muscles too long unused.
“Your face would make the Clockwork God rust.”
Vocho tried one of his poses, one which he liked to think made him look heroic but actually made him seem cross-eyed. “This face is the face of a great duellist, the great duellist, and don’t you forget it.”
“How could I when you spend all your time reminding me?”
The way went quicker after that, and warmer, for all the frosty looks that Eder threw their way as they joked and bickered along the road.
Kastroa was a higgledy-piggledy collection of houses that seemed to bleed into one another, a wall around them and a cobbled slushy square in the middle with a representation of the Clockwork God standing sentinel, a snow-clad trade house overlooking it. The roofs were steeper here than down on the plain to prevent a build-up of snow, decorated with fancy woodwork along the eaves and peppered with more chimneys than seemed practicable. The people dressed in furs rather than wool, making them the grey of wolves rather than the splashes of colour they would be in Reyes, but the god was the same, the clocker stalls in the square, the smells of spicy sausage coming from another at the back, the stories the bards were telling at the corners. One of the more astute of those saw the guild colours under their ragtag furs and promptly started telling how Kacha and Vocho had saved Bakar, Reyes and the guild single-handedly. Supposedly anyway. Kass noted an embellishment or two that she suspected had originated in Reyes, quite possibly under Vocho’s instruction. She also noticed the way Eder kicked his horse past with unnecessary vigour and the worried look that Carrola gave his back.
“Did you hear that?” Vocho said now to Carrola. “Outstanding courage, the man said. Dashing elan and style.”
“I heard it,” Carrola said as she swung down from her horse and looked about, before her eyes slid colder than the snow over him. “I’m not sure I believe it.” She left Vocho gawping after her as she made her way over to Eder.
“Smart lady.” Kass made sure her horse was firmly tied up and away from anyone it might take a dislike to.
“You can take a good thing too far, you know.” Vocho dismounted carefully and massaged one thigh before he tried a step that made him hiss. “God’s cogs, the cold has done dire things to me. Very dire.”
Eder held court by the rather rusty Clockwork God in the centre of the square. The prelate’s colours on his flash got him deference, and a small crowd of people huddled around in their cloaks. Until Kass strode up, furs thrown back to show the guild tabard underneath.
A thin, ascetic-looking man in sumptuous furs and brocade that appeared to double his breadth, ignored Eder, making his face go puce with rage, and grabbed her hand in his cold one. “The gu
ild! You must be Kacha, and… and yes, that must be Vocho. I couldn’t mistake you two; we’ve heard so much about everything you’ve done! Please, come inside, come inside.”
Eder looked daggers at her, but she ignored him and followed the man inside the trade house. The main room was sweltering from four fireplaces, one on each wall, and the man–“Call me Imanol, please. I’m the mayor now for my sins, after that terrible night”–took her and Vocho’s fur cloaks and handed them to a smiling wide-eyed boy who couldn’t seem to stop looking at them until Imanol gave him a gentle prod. Cospel hurried after the boy–he’d be in the kitchens with a plateful of food in no time, picking up all the gossip.
Imanol led them to the largest of the fires. The mantel was fully as high as Vocho was tall and carved into intricate patterns interspersed with little clockwork figures picked out in blues and reds and golds. A click of Imanol’s fingers, and more boys and girls came with plates and steaming cups, bowls of fragrant steaming water to wash in, hot towels to dry them after. As an afterthought, he waved Eder to a sumptuously stuffed chair before he pulled another over to sit right by Kass and Vocho.
“Such an honour, such an honour,” he said as he watched them wipe the grime of the road from their faces with hot cloths. “Here, please, try this. It’s the best thing when you’ve been out in the cold.”
He handed Kass a cup of something that smelled like molten sugar and tasted even better. Vocho fiddled about with his, slid a hand into his tunic and out again before he took a sip with a sigh, but Imanol had Kass’s attention.
“So glad that you’re here. It’s been a terrible time, terrible. The Skull has everyone petrified from here to the border, maybe even further. Raids all over. They killed the mayor, you know.”
“Killed him? When?”
“Yes, poor man, dragged him off a few weeks ago and gutted him as some sort of message. Has us all quite quaking. I thought that’s why you’d come? Because of our message? I see not–so terribly difficult to get messages through in this snow. The bandits even robbed a mine, and that’s a huge worry. If we can’t protect the mines, if we have no iron and coal to trade… The prelate’s men have done what they could, but they aren’t the guild, are they? Pretty useless, really, though better than nothing, I suppose. But now you’re here, we should see something done.”
