by Julia Knight
“Nothing, I suppose.”
“Exactly. Eder might well be even more dangerous now than he was before. Depends on whether Scar listens to him or not, and what he says.” A short hesitation. “Depends if I can rely on my daughter doing what she said.”
“Is she—”
A harsh look from Dom, one she’d never have expected of him, and Kass shut up.
“I don’t know,” he said in the end. “She’s suspicious of me, maybe hates me, with good cause, but I think she hates Morro more. That may be our only hope.” He cocked his head and looked at the blood on Kass’s furs. “Is all that yours?”
She looked down and found blood was leaking through her dressing again. “Eder was pretty dangerous to start with.”
“I could help with that,” Dom said. She narrowed her eyes, and he blushed. “Ahem, on second thoughts, perhaps not.”
“No,” she said. “Perhaps not.”
“How bad is it?”
She shrugged, only using one shoulder so she wouldn’t cause any more damage. “No major organs destroyed, no broken bones. Lucky I have boobs really, or it might well have killed me.”
“Uh, yes. Eder’s certainly very determined, isn’t he?”
“So am I.”
“I’ve noticed that about you. What is it you’re currently determined to do? Because while all this is terribly cosy, I feel we should really be making a plan.”
“We came to sort out the Scar and the Skull. Then I came on to rescue Voch, but he’s escaped and hopefully is in better shape than I am.” She tried to think, but everything kept whirling in her head, not helped by the generous glug of jollop Cospel had given her. “Petri. I—”
“You can’t save him, Kass. You can’t. Why do you think we told you he was dead? Other than he asked us to, I mean.” She shot Dom a look at that, but he hurried on. “You didn’t do that to him, Eneko did. And before that, Sabates. Not you. You can’t save him from what he is now, who he is; only he can.”
“And you couldn’t save Alicia or your daughter, but it didn’t stop you trying, did it?”
She regretted the words as soon as she’d spoken them, at the way his face shrivelled behind the beard and he stared down at his hands.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did,” he whispered. “And you’re right. But I made Alicia that way, Maitea too. My lies, my stupidity. My responsibility in the end. All you did to Petri was be too late despite every effort. The rest of it was his choice. You can’t save him, Kass. You never could.”
It’s been too late for me for a long time.
She looked at Dom’s worn face, the ragged beard, heard again the slight hitch when he’d said his daughter hated him. “You can’t save Maitea, either, can you?”
Dom turned away with a frown that told her she’d hit home, and she wished she hadn’t.
“What are we going to do then?” Dom said at last, as though he knew exactly what her answer was going to be.
“I can’t not try to save him,” she said. “And I don’t think you can’t either. If you want to, then you and me, Dom, are going to do what I came to do: put a stop to the Scar and Skull however we can.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
A shout dragged Scar from the hut, leaving Petri with Morro, exactly where he didn’t want to be. He made a move after Scar but the voice stopped him.
“Couldn’t even do that right, could you? Couldn’t even kill a man who is everything you despise. So much for the dread Skull. Your cowardice, your weakness, could destroy us all. Well, I for one don’t intend to let that happen.”
Against all his better instincts Petri turned. Morro had his gloves off now, the dark shapes swirling on his hands trying to catch Petri’s eye. He kept it determinedly on Morro’s smooth face, though he broke out in a sweat at the effort. Everything about those hands wanted to be watched, wanted him to see, was made for him to see. His own hand trembled, and he gripped the hilt of his sword for reassurance, for something solid to hold on to amidst the swirling smell of cooking blood.
Morro smiled, a smooth lifting of the lips, pure and unadulterated pleasure. “Scar believes everything I tell her now, and you know what I’ll be telling her next? How I sadly had to kill you to defend myself. She might not have believed it before, but helpfully you’ve made sure she will now.”
It came swift and sure, before Petri had time even to open his mouth to reply. Ice in his limbs, so that they felt as brittle as glass, that to move would be to shatter, leave sparkling parts of himself upon the floor. The cold grew–bred–in his bones down to the marrow. His heart stuttered with it, his lips blew breath that fogged, and Morro’s smile grew, and with it the ice. Petri couldn’t turn away, couldn’t move without cracking, but if he stayed he was dead. A moment of weakness, and he saw the hands, saw snowflakes grow and fade all over them, icicles like daggers. Everything was numb except the pain of his heart struggling with the ice that now ran in his veins.
“She’ll believe me because she already believes you betrayed her, that you want her place, or dead, or both.”
More shouts, then Scar calling for Morro harshly and insistently, a shot that rang like a bell in the crystal-cold air. Morro turned for the door, calling for Maitea to “Keep an eye on our friend here” before he ventured outside into what sounded like chaos.
Maitea appeared out of nowhere, seemingly made of shadows that coalesced into her form, one finger on her lips for Petri to be silent. Her hand on Petri’s was hot, hot enough to burn his fingers, melt the ice that coated them, break the frost-bound spell of it. Daughter of a magician, he thought, and apprentice to another. The warmth of her hand spread.
“We don’t have to live the lives they tell us,” she breathed into his ear. “Run. While you have the chance.”
Petri broke–broke free, broke for the door. He didn’t stop for anything, not to make sure Morro didn’t follow, not to stop his magic if there was any stopping it. Fear and ice made him run, made him a coward again as he staggered out into the snow, afraid that he would shatter, that no matter how he tried he could never be the man he wanted to be.
He ran from the torches, from Kepa’s startled face, from Scar’s snarl, from Morro’s hands and Maitea’s whisper. Cast out from the outcasts…
He ran from everything and everyone.
Kass crouched in the lee of a hut, watching chaos unfold as Dom launched himself into a knot of bandits, sent three flying and was left confronted with the bald giant. He never hesitated, not for half a heartbeat, coaxing a grin even from her exhausted lips.
Scar was there, moulding everyone to her orders by sheer force of will. But where was the magician? Where was Petri? Kass moved silently from hut to hut as only an assassin could. Dom was making a marvellous distraction, but no Petri so it was useless. A shot behind her, a scream, and she turned, but Cospel’s “Hah, want to shoot him in the back do you? Tough shit, sunshine” reassured her that he and Danel were doing their best to make sure no one brought Dom down until she’d found who she was looking for.
She managed to avoid a few stray crew members, ducked around another hut and there he was, running right in front of her, covered in a thin sheen of frost that glittered on the bones of his ruined face. He ground to a halt as he saw her.
They stood, both of them unmoving, unspeaking, for long seconds. There was too much she wanted to say for it to come out as anything coherent. All she could do was stare.
“Come to kill me then?” he said at last. “Go on, get that sword up. Run me through. Go on, Kacha the brave, Kacha the good, Kacha the saviour of fucking Reyes. Go on. I’ll give you the fight of your life.”
His voice but not his words. Not her Petri. Two men swam in front of her, overlapping, merging, drawing apart. You can’t save him. One thing these men shared she could see in both their eyes. Terror. A look she knew of old, in the eyes of men before they died, before she killed them. She was two women to his two men, a killer sick of killing.
&
nbsp; “I haven’t come to kill you.”
“What then? Gloat? Come to gawp at my new face like everyone else? Well come on then, have a good look. It’s not like you’d have ever loved this half a face, is it? As soon as Eneko put that blade on me, my old life was dead, the old me and everything he ever dreamed of.” The voice was a growl, the bare-bone half of his face glinting and gruesome in the flickering light, but he was still in there. She just had to find him.
“Oh, but I do love that face, even as it is,” she said. “You just never gave me the chance.”
His sword dropped away and he cocked his head as though what she said surprised him. Had he thought so little of her? Had so little of him really survived?
“I came to save you,” she said into the silence. “I never left you, in my head. By the Clockwork God’s cogs and gears, I swear I tried to be in time in Reyes, but I was too late, no matter how I tried, so I came to save you now. Or rather I came to save, not the Skull, but the Petri I’m in love with.”
The frost on his face cracked as he laughed at that, a sound that ended in a wheezing growl that set all the hairs on the back of her neck quivering. He whipped his sword towards her, meeting hers with a clang. He laughed again and pressed towards her so that their faces were inches apart.
“The Petri you know is dead, sliced away by Eneko’s knife.”
“I refuse to believe that.” With a heave she shoved him away, and he whirled off back into dancing snow that shrouded him in darkness, leaving her to hitch painful breaths, holding herself up on the side of the hut.
Petri’s lips burned where he imagined she’d kissed them, burned with heat and cold and his own regret as he ran. Tears blurred his eye. There was no escape–from Morro, from Kass, from himself.
He turned a corner and suddenly could see clearly for the first time in weeks, in perhaps his whole life. Scar’s crew were on the ground and bleeding, or trying to get close to Dom and his whirling sword as he played with Kepa. Scar was shouting orders, Morro approaching her back. A look of stunned dreaming in all their eyes but Morro’s.
Petri looked down at the sword in his hand, not a duellist’s but solid nonetheless. Scar had brought him here all that time ago to do a duellist’s job, and here he was, running like the weakling they always said he was. He recalled Scar asking him if he was sick of running. And he was. Sick of running, tired of being weak. Even if Kass couldn’t help him, he could do the one thing that would free them all from this nightmare.
It had begun snowing again, Morro’s work, Petri thought, to shield them from who stalked them, make their guns useless from any distance. Soft feather flakes this time, swirling in a bitter wind. Morro could, would perhaps, make this winter last for ever. Petri walked through it, felt the flakes stick to skin, melt in eyelashes and hair until he could see them flowing in a whirl that centred on the magician. Morro was standing like he was king of the mountain, Scar watching him like she used to watch Petri, and the stab of that surprised him.
Further on Petri could make out the ring of sword on sword, a grunt here and a scream there as a blow told, but now he couldn’t make out who it was, who was winning. Scar’s crew, if the cat-smile on Morro’s face was anything to go by. Petri crept closer, silent in the snow, Silent Petri, the old Petri and the new. Afraid but not going to give in to it. Weak perhaps but ignoring it. He screwed his courage to the hilt of the sword in his shaking hand.
He paused just out of striking range behind Morro. The magician’s attention was all on the fighting, which was louder now, so that Petri could just hear the heavy breathing of a man spent, hear a muttered curse. A gust of wind, and the snow cleared for a brief second, revealing Kepa bleeding from half a dozen places. In front of him Dom, a ragged prince, taunting him.
Others of Scar’s crew surrounded them, waiting for an order perhaps or just an opportunity. One of them waited too long–with a reverberating clong he went down as though someone had snuffed him out, revealing a hard-breathing Cospel with a gun in one hand and a dented tankard in the other. On the other side of the ring a second went down, screaming at the sudden hole in his leg, his cry mingling with the unmistakable sound of a gun going off at close quarters. A third man ended up planted face first in the snow and stayed there. Kass’s face was just visible behind the curtain of snow for a second before she retreated into the darkness.
Dom and Kepa ignored them all, intent on their fight.
“You’re not bad,” Dom said breathlessly, “but can you do anything about this?” He let loose a flurry of attacks, feints, double-bluffs and cuts that should have carved Kepa into bite-sized pieces, yet only drew blood, didn’t follow through.
Kass’s face appeared again, blood running from somewhere in her hair. She looked straight at Petri. He saw clearly now, couldn’t mistake that look. Don’t let go of yourself. I believe in you. You’re a good man.
No, he wasn’t. But he wasn’t a weak man either; he was never going to be weak again. Seeing Kass again had shown him that if nothing else. Once, in another lifetime, Petri had watched while Bakar had taken down a whole regime of magicians and their puppet king. Have an edge, he’d told Petri, and do it quick. They die like anyone else. He had his edge–Morro didn’t know he was there, thought him slowly freezing to death or at least firmly under Maitea’s gaze.
Petri Egimont, both of him, took a step forward, shut his eyes and thrust.
His blade met nothing but air.
When he opened his eyes Morro was there, but Petri never even saw his face. Only his hands, free of his gloves, gently steaming as falling snow melted above them. The markings caught at him, pulled him in. Death and ice, breaking swords and blood.
“You think I didn’t know you were there?” Morro said, his voice barely audible over the whisper of snow. “You think I can’t deal with the likes of you?”
The hands moved, and Petri’s eyes moved to follow, helpless to do anything else. A scalpel appeared, a hand reached out, found an arm not its own, slashed and drew blood, drew out a scream that rang familiar in Petri’s head. The scent of cooking blood became everything.
Other voices came, other screams, but so did the ice in Petri’s hands, in his heart, freezing him, turning him to glass that might shatter.
“Weakness, Petri, that’s what you are.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Vocho leaned on Carrola, past all shame. Torches moved jerkily below them, a scream rose out of the darkness beyond, and the snow fell. Vocho thought the snow might always fall.
“Can you see what’s going on?” he asked. “Because that sounds very much to me like someone has met either Kass or Dom and is regretting it.”
The sound of a shot, unmistakeable, and another scream.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m buggered if I’m going to miss out on all the glory.”
“Voch, you can hardly walk—” Carrola said.
“I can bloody well walk that far. There’ll be no living with her if she does it all herself.”
They staggered down the slope, a beast with two bodies and three good legs between it. By the time they reached the bottom they were both sweaty and Vocho was out of breath. The torches were patchy and made as many shadows as they did rings of light, but at least they had an idea where to go and a better chance of making it without falling over something. They moved, slowly and jerkily, towards the centre of the little valley. Snow hissed above the torches, whipping into Vocho’s eyes, but he scrubbed them clear.
Dom, rags flying, was clearly playing with the bald-headed giant in a cleared area in the middle of the huts. Vocho could just make out Cospel flitting between shadows, until he settled in one, knelt down and took aim with a gun. A resounding bang, and a man fell to his knees with a scream and a splash of bright blood in the snow. Over at the back there was some sort of ruckus that seemed to involve Scar, the magician and Petri, but Vocho couldn’t make it out clearly, except that Scar’s arm was pouring yet more blood into the snow. Where in hell was Kass? The
re! Breathing heavily in the shadows, staring at Petri with a sword in one hand and a knife in the other, though both seemed clean of blood. Which was more than could be said for her–blood old and new covered her, but she was alive and upright and Vocho felt his knees sag a touch at that. He covered it by shifting his weight on Carrola, and was comforted when her arm grasped him more firmly.
“Petri!” Kass called out, her voice almost lost in the wind. “Petri, look at me. Me! Not his hands!”
Petri bloody Egimont, scourge of Vocho’s life. A crabbed movement by one of the huts to his left, the one they’d kept Vocho in, caught his eye. A gun poked out of the door, next to a dead body. A hand wound it, pointing it at Kass all the while, who was so intent on Petri, as always, she’d not noticed.
Vocho let go of Carrola, ignored her shout and staggered towards the gun and the man holding it.
Eder lay in the doorway, his leg in its splint stiff before him, winding the gun until it clicked. Vocho lurched past the dead body–throttled from behind by a scarf, face purple and grotesque–and all but fell onto Eder.
Eder didn’t even miss a beat. The butt of the gun cracked Vocho on the side of the head, making his eyes go screwy. Before he could catch his breath Eder was on him, punching, smacking with the gun. Vocho’s nose broke and flooded blood over both of them. Vocho, blind with pain, still came on. He managed to get a hand to the gun, but Eder headbutted him, broke his nose again, it felt like, and his grip slipped.
The barrel swung towards him, and he didn’t think, grabbed at it, grappled with Eder. Vocho kicked out with his good leg, caught Eder’s broken one with his boot, and the gun went off right by his ear, his head ringing with the noise so that the rest of the world seemed silent.
