by Julia Knight
The dinner went well enough to start with, despite Carrola’s muttered “Really?” or “Huh!” whenever he told one of his stories, which made him stumble once or twice. But all the rest, Imanol and the other traders, lapped it up, and Vocho was feeling warm and cosy inside when it all went wrong.
Of course it didn’t feel wrong when Imanol stood up, dinged a knife on his glass to call for quiet and proposed a toast to “Kacha, Vocho and the guild, who will most surely rid of us the problem that has plagued us and the prelate’s men these last months. May their reputation be not unearned, and may their swords be ever accurate!”
A hearty agreement from all the traders, the odd “Hear! Hear!” a harrumph and a sniff from Carrola and a look that might have curdled milk from Eder.
“So,” Eder said with a polite chill in his voice when Imanol sat down with a raised glass in Kass’s direction. “Can you tell us what happened? It would help us to determine where we should be looking perhaps, and what we might expect when we get there. And of course what help you are prepared to give us.”
The table fell still; traders swapped nervous glances, and there was the general impression that if they’d been standing they would have shuffled their feet.
Imanol didn’t appear to notice. He cleared his throat, took a sip of wine and started. Most of it was in the report. Bands of thieves had always been a problem, but more so after last year’s battle. This band was led by a woman called Scar. Whenever her name was mentioned, Vocho noticed that everyone looked to Kass, as though she was going to pull this Scar woman out of her arse or something. Most of what Imanol said was so dull, Vocho wondered if anyone would notice him having a little doze, but a pointed look from Kass made him think again.
“We tried to send to Reyes,” Imanol was saying, “tell them what was going on, but it was clear that all the men experienced in these conditions are already here. Inexperienced people he might send would be a liability. It was also clear that the Scar had many men and women who knew what they were about, especially after she picked up the Skull.”
“And when was that?” Kass asked.
“Just at the tail end of the year, at least that’s when we first heard about him. And it wasn’t that he was more feared than her, it was what his arrival did to her. She was always quick to lose her temper, but while she thieved it was mostly non-violent. When he starting joining them on their raids, she got worse. Much, much worse. People started dying, many of them. And the Scar and the Skull got closer and bolder, and we called in help from the prelate’s men at the outposts. It was clear that the Scar and Skull were coming our way. So the prelate’s men decided on a trap. A poor decision, it turned out.”
“And not theirs.” Eder’s voice came quietly into Imanol’s words. Quietly but not without force. “Yours. Isn’t that the truth of it? Because I’ve talked to those men today, and what they say doesn’t tally with what you’re saying.”
“Well someone had to decide something, didn’t they?” Imanol went from unctuous to snappishly blunt in a second. “And that lot of useless watchmen weren’t about to–they have trouble deciding what to have for dinner. So all right, yes. Me and the mayor decided that if the Scar and the Skull were coming, then we’d be waiting. It might have even worked if those guards had been half the swordspeople that Kacha and Vocho here are–that any lowly guild member is–instead of half-asleep and clumsy with it. Our mayor would still be alive, not dragged away—”
“From under a cart, where he was hiding like some helpless blubbering child,” Eder said.
“Dragged away and taken off with barely a hint of trouble from the prelate’s so-called guards. Taken off and murdered by the people we’d asked them to protect us from. If they’d been half—”
“Yes, yes, half the men and women the duellists are.” Eder twirled the wine in his glass, lips back from his teeth like a dog tormented to the point of ripping a throat out. “Or perhaps if they’d not been ordered into a fool of a scheme by two men who’d read too many tall stories about Vocho and his exploits.”
“Hey. Now that—” Vocho began, but Eder wasn’t stopping for him. He wasn’t stopping for anyone.
“But did you read them all? How about the one where Vocho caused Licio to burn in his house and planned to assassinate the prelate? Or the one in which Vocho had to run to hide in Ikaras like a scared rabbit? Or Vocho the Great having to be saved by his sister? Or how he once tried to kill that sister because she persisted in beating him at sparring?”
“Oh, now hold on. Wait a minute–how did you know that?” Even through the dying dregs of the jollop, there was a worm of panic in Vocho’s gut.
Eder smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience from Vocho’s end. “Oh, I know a great many things. Like what it is you keep in your tunic you don’t want your sister to know about, and that you think you might know who the Skull is.”
Vocho turned to Carrola, who blushed and refused to meet his eye. He’d told her about the syrup, about Petri too, and only her. Told her his big secrets, and she’d turned round and told Eder. He felt oddly crushed, not because Kass would find out about the jollop–that would happen eventually and he had his arguments ready–but that it was Carrola who had told him.
“Vocho the Great is a sham,” Eder was saying. “And you, Imanol, killed your mayor by reading too many stories about him and, worse, believing that half of them are true. Kacha here runs the guild, and she’s barely able to concentrate on what’s in front of her, leaving it all to her second, Vocho the liar, murderer and all-round bloody liability, and you think they’ll help you? You think they can?”
Vocho and Kass both opened their mouths to speak at the same time but Imanol beat them to it. “Then what should we have done? Rolled over like beaten dogs? Died? Handed them everything we have and then starved for the rest of the winter?”
Eder’s smile was small and tight with victory as he spared Kass a disparaging glance. “Listened to the prelate’s men you had is what you should have done. Or handed over a portion in return for not being plundered, as several other places have.”
“Hand over our profits?” Imanol gasped out, and a murmur of agreement ran around the table.
Eder shrugged. “Guild here or not, this is not a band to be trifled with. Yes, hand over your profits and listen to the men and women you have asked to protect you.”
“Listen to the ones who let the bloody bandits roam free in the first place?” Imanol’s glare snapped off and a beaming smile took its place as he turned to Kass. “Now we have the guild, men and women specially trained for exactly this. No matter what you may think of them, Captain Eder, we here hold them in the highest regard. The highest. So, my dear Kacha, now that you’ve heard what happened, do you have any thoughts?”
Kass took a sideways look at Eder that promised a lot of words later, not many of them friendly, and turned on a sweet smile of her own. “Oh, plenty of thoughts now, Imanol. I will also talk to any guards who were here on the night. And can we borrow Sergeant Danel for a while longer? We’ll need someone who knows his way around up here, and he’s shown himself to be a resourceful man.”
Imanol inclined his head, shot a dark look at Eder and returned to her. “Anything you wish is at your disposal. I’m sure the guild will have this cleared up in a flash. While the prelate’s guards aren’t ours to command, I’m sure we can spare one…?” He looked around the table, got a chorus of nods and murmurs of agreement. “Quite so. If it pleases you, I’ll have the guards sent to you in the morning. They’ll confirm what I said.”
“I’m sure they will,” Kass said smoothly. “But maybe they noticed something you couldn’t have seen. You’ve been most helpful.”
Imanol preened at that while Eder glowered, and soon enough the meal broke up. Vocho hurried after Carrola. He caught her by the main doors, and she wouldn’t look at him.
He wanted to say something cutting, something rakish and sarcastic, but just about managed a pathetic “Why?”
She looked at him then all right, and he wished she hadn’t. It was like being sliced with a knife. “All those things they said, are they true?”
“Well, er, I… Yes. I mean sort of. I can explain—”
“That’s what I thought. Goodnight.” She hurried off at Eder’s abrupt command.
Imanol came over, unctuous again, his former bluntness well hidden. “I’m sure that was just sour grapes talking,” he said low enough that only Vocho could hear. “We all know you were cleared of any wrongdoing about the priest. Magicians! Could happen to any man.” He shivered theatrically. “And the rest… well, jealousy is a terrible thing, isn’t it?”
“Certainly is,” Kass interjected before Vocho could say anything. “Could I just steal my brother for a few moments?”
Imanol subsided, and Kass and Vocho left.
“Well that was interesting, don’t you think?” she said.
“What, my character being assassinated?” He stared after Carrola, but she didn’t look his way.
“He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Kass said. “Except maybe that bit about what you’re hiding from me and how you suspect you know who the Skull is?”
He’d hoped she’d missed that. “Kass, when have I ever hidden anything from you? You’re my sister.”
“Don’t give me that tripe. All the time, is the answer, and you know it. Besides, your eye is twitching.”
God’s bloody cogs and gears. He’d wished for his sister back, properly, but he was starting to regret that now. “Fine. I’ve been trying to think who the Skull is, because we probably know him, but I don’t know any more than you do.” Though if half his suspicions proved to be correct, making sure he was a good distance from Kass when she found out would be a grand plan. Or maybe he could somehow persuade her not to go up the mountain… No, that was never going to happen. He was starting to wish he’d left her mooning about up on the guild walls, because all the masters of the guild berating him at once would be nothing compared to the Skull being Petri and Kass finding out. Dear Clockwork God, please don’t let it be Petri, OK? For her sake. Honest. It wasn’t Petri, it couldn’t be. Pathetic Petri would rather die than do half what the Skull was supposed to be doing.
“And the surgeon gave me something for the pain in my hip,” he carried on. Which wasn’t actually a lie, because she had. It just wasn’t what he was hiding in his tunic.
“And your hip is worse than you let on. Oh, don’t look at me like that–I’m not blind.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. Up to beating your sorry arse at sparring in fact, now that you seem back to your normal annoying self. The cold bothers it is all.”
She didn’t look like she believed a word of any of it but said no more.
Vocho hopped from one foot to the other outside a midnight door, wondering what he had to be so nervous about. All right, he’d embellished the truth a bit and omitted several other truths, but when didn’t he? It had never bothered him before, which didn’t really help with the fact it was bothering him now.
He knocked on the door before he could talk himself out of it and regretted it half a dozen times before the door opened. One of Eder’s troop peered out, looked him up and down with a barely hidden sneer and said, “What?”
Vocho had a bizarre urge to ask if Carrola wanted to come and play but restrained himself. “Is Sergeant Carrola there?”
She raised a cool eyebrow. “Yes.”
A short silence which almost undid Vocho. “Well, can I see her then?”
“I can ask, I suppose.” She turned away as though doing Vocho a huge favour she expected to be paid back double, and he got a peek into the large room that was serving as the dorm for the women in the troop. Bits of uniform lay strewn everywhere, furs and tunics and swords and tabards, along with various little contraptions that held him spellbound as he wondered what they were, or were for. Someone shut the door in his face as he wondered, saying, “I don’t want an audience while I get undressed, thank you!” He hesitated, unsure of himself for perhaps the first time ever, but the door opened again half a minute later and Carrola shut it behind her.
“What the hells do you want?” she said. “Are you trying to get me demoted or something?”
“No, I just wanted to—”
“I don’t care! Go on, bugger off. I’m in enough trouble with Eder as it is, and why in the world would I want to talk to someone who’s done half those things? And you even admit they’re true!”
“Well, sort of.”
“How do you ‘sort of’ try to kill your own sister? Or ‘sort of’ burn the old king in his own house? If I listen hard enough, what other things are going to pop up, hmm? What other shitwittery have you committed? No, no, I don’t want to know. It’d be lies anyway, wouldn’t it? Or your version would be. I thought you were funny and a bit silly, half as dashing and possibly about a tenth as brave as you tell everyone, which is still fairly dashing and brave. Now I find out you’re just a bastard like all the rest. I’m in trouble up to my ears with my captain for talking to you, and I’ll likely get thrown out of the guards if he catches me doing it again. Eder’s fit to bloody split by the way. If he goes off half-cocked, it’ll be because of you, and we’ll be the ones getting it in the neck, so thanks for that. Now bugger off. I’ve got the middle watch shift and I need some sleep first.”
With that the door was slammed in his face so hard the vibrations shuddered his feet. He’d come intending, in a most un-Vocho-like way, to be truthful for once. Properly truthful. Now he recalled why he didn’t usually bother. He stared at the door for a while, like that would help, until another door behind him opened and Cospel appeared, a foaming mug in one hand and a sandwich thick with beef in the other.
It was a relief to be able to say “How in hells do you do that every time?”
Cospel looked at what his hands were filled with and grinned. “Natural talent. You look like someone just shoved a poker somewhere intimate.”
“That is exactly how it feels.”
Cospel sniggered but then took another look at Vocho, and a hint of sympathy crept into his voice. “I got a flask too, don’t ask where from. It’ll put hairs on your chest. Come on.”
Vocho was too deflated to debate it, so followed Cospel down stairs and around corners until he was thoroughly lost. Finally Cospel opened a door into what was little more than a cupboard with a bed in it.
“This is the room they gave you?”
“Aye, well, I’ve slept in worse. It’s got a bed and it hasn’t got rats.” He put his mug and sandwich on the windowsill and rummaged around in his pack, which lay by the end of the bed. “Got a few things to tell you anyways, so we might as well enjoy it. Not like I paid for this after all.”
With the flourish of a conjurer pulling a fake bouquet of flowers out of a hat, he produced a bottle. “Your best rum, this is. I thought we might be wanting some against the cold.”
“My best rum? Can I ask why it’s already half empty?”
Cospel shrugged. “Like I say, against the cold. You want some or not?”
Vocho took a swig and sat down on the bed, handing the bottle to Cospel, who took a generous gulp of his own.
“That Eder is bonkers, by the sounds of it,” Cospel ventured, looking his sandwich over like he was inspecting it for soundness. “I been speaking to some of his troop.”
“Oh, you can then? It seems I’m cause for getting demoted if they talk to me.”
“Yeah, well, you have that effect on people. Me though–just your bloke, aren’t I? A servant. Huh. Men like Eder don’t even see me, never mind worry about who I’m talking to. Useful, that is. Captain Eder is slowly undoing the screws that hold his head on, if you ask me. Got a right bunch of ants in his pants about you and Kass, I know that. More than he’s let on to you two. Standing orders: anyone caught talking to you or her gets it. He’s given ’em all a good talking-to about, what were it? Oh, yes, fraternising. None of that there fraternising with any guild me
mbers. If the guards is good enough for him, then it’s good enough for them, and all that bollocks, and they are to make double sure everything they do is to regulation and top notch, so as not to let the guild show them up. Get the idea he’s got a little plan up his sleeve too.”
“What sort of plan?”
“That I do not yet know, but I will. I also get the idea…” Here he broke off for a solid swig of rum, while considering Vocho out of the side of his eyes. “Likes that Carrola, he does. Quite a bit.”
“Yes? And?” What was he supposed to say to that? He didn’t even know how he felt about it, or why he should feel anything. If he had known, he wouldn’t have told Cospel anyway.
Cospel snorted and shook a disbelieving head. “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. From the sounds of it, she liked him too, in a way. Until that last trip up here, as it happens, and the avalanche. Turns out he tried it on; she told him she didn’t like him that way, she felt sorry for him and that, and they had a massive row what half the troop heard. Since then they’ve been all jumpy like scalded cats, but he was trying to talk her round. And of course then you come along being your usual grandstanding self, and then you show him up bad over that wolf business on top, and well. Just adds to his previous dislike of the guild, and with the temper you’ve put him in you’ve both made him hell to serve, Carrola in particular getting it in the neck about talking to you.”
“I don’t see—”
“Oh don’t give me that. You been sniffing around her since we started, and he knows it and don’t like it, or you.”
“I have not been sniffing! I have been engaging with my fellow travellers.”
A knowing grin scrunched Cospel’s pliable face. “You don’t normally look like a sick sheep when engaging with your fellow travellers. Anyway, might be why he was sniffing back, at Kass, to make Carrola jealous. Got short shrift there too, I reckon. I’m surprised he can still walk properly. Didn’t work making Carrola jealous, obviously, and Kass knocking him back probably put his nose all out of joint, so now he’s started throwing his weight around. And also now he really hates the guild, even worse than he did before.”
