by Julia Knight
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Chapter One
They say that an ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship. Vocho wasn’t so sure about that. Probably depended on whose blood you were talking about, because blood seemed to have got him into nothing but trouble.
The wood Vocho and Kacha lurked in was a mean little thing, a straggle of trees and stunted bushes that fringed the muddy track between some two-cow town in the province of Reyes and a different two-cow, perhaps even three-cow town up towards the mountains and the border with Ikaras. A desolate and rain-sodden spot in the back of beyond, a far cry from the city of Reyes itself. Vocho sat and shivered and dripped as he watched his sister, atop her restless horse, wrestle with the clockwork gun.
“Are you certain you know what you’re doing with that thing?” he said at last. In retrospect, it wasn’t the best thing Vocho could have said to her just then.
Kacha stopped scowling at the gun and scowled at him instead before she raised a cool eyebrow and blew a drip of water off the end of her nose. “Of course. Pretty sure I know where I went wrong last time.”
“You shot my horse’s ear off.”
A curl of her lip from under her dripping tricorne. She was indistinct in the darkness under the sodden trees, her heavy black coat and that ridiculous hat fading into the shadows, leaving only the pale blur of her face.
“Anyone could have made that mistake,” she said airily. “It’s not like, oh, I don’t know, killing the priest we were supposed to be guarding, right?”
“That was an accident!” Vocho was pretty sure anyway – the memories of that night were vague, and though they seemed vivid enough in his dreams, they soon faded to guesswork and ghosts when he woke up. Sadly the duellists’ guild hadn’t seen it as an accident when said priest had turned up with a sword hole in him. Worse, it was Vocho’s sword, the hilt still in his hand. The guild, not to mention the prelate and his guards, tended to take a dim view of that sort of thing. Very dim.
“He was only a priest, and a bad one at that, and that was a good horse.” Vocho still smarted at the fact they’d had to sell the horse – for some reason it had got very nervy after that accident, and nervy horses weren’t good in his new profession of highwayman.
“Maybe only a priest,” Kacha said. “But he was the prelate’s favourite. He was paying our wages, and the prelate’s department and the guild get very upset about people killing priests they’re being paid to guard.” Kacha hefted the gun, prodded the clockwork mechanism and scowled at it some more, like that would make it work properly. “At least in the guild we didn’t have to deal with these sodding things.”
Vocho subtly tried to edge his horse backwards, out of line of sight of the gun, but instead the beast barged sideways and knocked into Kacha’s horse, making it shy and snap at the air, narrowly missing the feather stuck in the brim of Vocho’s hat.
“Careful,” Kacha muttered, “or it’ll be your ear I take off, and not by accident.”
Vocho knew when it was time to stay quiet, and now was such a time. His older sister was mercurial in nature and never more so than when waiting in a dark and rain-drenched wood on the edge of cold mountains for some clocker or ex-noble to drive by so they could rob him, instead of being in a nice dry guild house in a nice hot city down by the coast. Especially when it was because of that dead priest they weren’t in said dry guild house or hot city. Even more especially when Kacha had a new-fangled gun that was difficult to shoot right at best, and an accident waiting to happen at worst. Oh, how the mighty are fallen.
The rain intensified, bouncing from leaf to sodden leaf, shivering from cloud to ground in a constant litany of sound. Confounded northern mountain weather. Vocho would have given a lot of money to be back in Reyes city. It’d be full-blown spring down there by now, and a Reyes spring tended not to include bucketloads of rain, but featured long hot lazy afternoons with a cool breeze coming in off the sea. The nightlife tended to be a little more refined than getting soaked to the skin in the muddy arse-end of nowhere as well.
Raindrops plastered the jaunty feather on Vocho’s hat into a tangled mess, ran down his neck, soaked through his heavy cloak and his fancy trousers, was utterly ruining the finish on his best coat and made his hands slip on the little crossbow. He didn’t like crossbows any more than he liked guns, but they had a tendency to backfire less and sometimes you needed one, even if it was a coward’s weapon. Not so long ago they’d have been drummed out of the guild for using one, or the gun, if they hadn’t already been drummed out. He could hear his old sword master now. A projectile weapon is only for those with no class or no balls.
Three months ago he wouldn’t have gone out on a night like this for any money. Three months ago he’d have had that choice. Now he had no money and no choice, so here he was, shrivelling in the rain like a sodding prune. He might be poor, more than poor now, but a man had to make an impression and right now all he was good for was looking like a rat drowned in a water butt.
One insignificant little mistake, and they never let you forget it.
Kacha sat up straight beside him, listening. The rain had soaked through her hat, turning it into a sopping mess, and her blonde hair was dark and lank, but she didn’t seem to mind. Over the whisper of the wind and the rush of the rain came the faintest jingle, as of a horse harness. A vague splashing rumble, as of carriage wheels negotiating a muddy road.
“Kacha…”
She shot him a lopsided grin, but it was wound tight as a bowstring. She always got twitchy before a fight, and always hid it with a grin.
“Mask,” she whispered. He pulled his soaking scarf over his chin and nose and she did the same, making sure it was pulled up far enough to cover the telltale puckered scar under her eye. Between the scarf and hat, he’d have been hard pushed to recognise her if he didn’t know her.
A carriage came in to view around the corner, mud splashing from its wheels. A lumbering coach and four, it looked promising – well kept with fancy harness, and the horses were all matched too, which boded well. The driver was a huddle of clothes bundled up in an overlarge shapeless hat and an oilskin cloak against the weather. One armed and lightly armoured man in front on a springy bay horse that looked like it’d jump out of its skin at the slightest provocation, one to the side on a steadier-looking grey. Both men looked thoroughly miserable even under large hooded cloaks. Vocho could sympathise.
A lamp either side of the driver gave Vocho and Kacha light to work with. They waited till the coach was almost on them, then Kacha dug her heels in and her horse leaped from behind the screen of bushes and in front of the carriage. Vocho wasn’t far behind, aiming his horse to the rear of the carriage to stop it backing up. The bodyguard on the side didn’t have a chance to do more than draw his sword before Vocho’s bolt had his hand pinned to the side of the coach. Which was embarassing because he’d been aiming somewhere else, but he’d take what he could get.
In the hazy darkness at the front of the carriage the driver swore a blue streak and yanked on the horses, whic
h protested at the treatment and managed to get themselves tangled in the traces. The carriage slewed to a stop, making the pinned bodyguard scream before his hand, bolt and all, came free. He knocked his head on the way down into the mud and slumped unconscious. Which at least saved Vocho a job.
By the time the horses had stopped, the fore bodyguard was down and out in the mud thanks to Kacha’s bad-tempered horse lashing out at the bay and an expertly aimed smack in the head from the butt of Kacha’s gun. The bay horse dumped its suddenly unresponsive rider and shot up the road, reins and stirrups flapping, like as not never to be seen again.
Like a well oiled machine, the two of them. When they worked together, nothing and no one could stop them. They hadn’t been the best in the guild for nothing. At least it was earning them some money.
Muffled voices from inside the carriage, most with a hint of moneyed education about them, expressed varying amounts of surprise or drunken annoyance. Vocho heard a faint, “I say! That was bit harsh. Need to discipline your driver, Eggy old lad, I almost spilt my wine.”
Kacha might have been wearing a mask, but her brother could see the flinch around her eyes at the name. Good and not so good. Ex-Lord Petri Egimont, ex-noble who liked to let everyone know it, first-rate duellist, currently a lowly clerk in the prelate’s office, a pet, a symbol of the revolution the prelate liked to parade in front of his admirers more than anything, and yet of more than solvent means. He also knew both Vocho and Kacha, very well indeed in Kacha’s case. Their little spy at the inn on the edge of the woods had neglected to mention who the owner of the carriage was, instead telling them how the man thought tales of highwaymen lately come to the woods were a crock of bollocks and how he was determined to reach his destination by morning. Not to mention how he didn’t bother with many bodyguards, thinking he was above being robbed, or if he was, could beat them in a fair fight.
Sounded just like the pompous Eggy. More fool him.
A pale-haired head poked out of the carriage window. Not Egimont, but certainly once aristocratic if the quality of the chin, or lack thereof, was anything to go by. “Driver? Driver!” His voice was strident and slurred. “What the blazes do you think you’re—”
Kacha shoved the barrel of the gun into the side of his nose. She made her voice a couple of octaves lower than it already was and slipped into a guttersnipe accent to avoid giving herself away to Eggy in the coach. “Good evening. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to divest you of all your valuables, trinkets and trifles. Money or a hole in the head. I like to do things properly.”
“We’d prefer the money,” Vocho added from his end, affecting a noble accent. “But sometimes a hole in the head is so satisfying, don’t you think? And we haven’t shot anyone for days.”
A click as Kacha did something menacing with the gun. A whispered conversation inside the carriage. Vocho caught sight of the driver, who waggled his eyebrows as though trying to say something. Sadly, Vocho didn’t speak eyebrow.
“Oh,” said the pale-haired man, going cross-eyed as he tried to look at the barrel of the gun while not moving his head. “Well. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement. Perhaps twenty bulls? I’m sure I’ve got enough change. That would seem fair… Oh.”
Kacha had nudged her horse up parallel to the carriage, and the evil-minded beast knew exactly what was wanted. It grabbed the pale man’s hat off his head with a great show of teeth and for good measure at a signal from Kacha kicked hard enough to hole the carriage. That horse was more a highwayman than Vocho was, and made him mourn once again the loss of his old horse with its one ear. This new one was dancing under him like a ballerina.
“I think…” Kacha said with an air of contemplation. If she hadn’t been wearing her mask, Vocho knew he’d see that lopsided grin again. “I think everything you have would be fair. Those are our usual terms. I wouldn’t like it said that we had favourites. As it’s cold, I’ll let you keep your underwear. Can’t say fairer than that, can we?”
Just to underline her words, the horse snapped its teeth a hair’s breadth from the pale man’s nose. Between that and the gun barrel, it was looking like he’d have no nose left come sunup.
“Um, well yes, you have a point.” The pale man retreated into the carriage to a hurried and whispered conversation. Vocho caught, “Damned cheek of it!” “They’ve got a gun,” “So have I, somewhere…” “You can’t even see straight, never mind shoot straight,” “Being robbed by highwaymen is an extra, my lord” in a woman’s voice and “God’s cogs, I was just starting to enjoy myself,” followed by a boozy-sounding burp.
Another head poked out. Dark rather than fair this time, long hair done in the latest foppish style, bound at the base of the neck so that it curled across one shoulder. The face less vacuous, with more of a chin. A trim little beard, a long haughty nose, sharp dark eyes and apparently at least slightly less drunk than Pale Hair. Egimont. Vocho had his sword out and ready, just in case. Just in case Kacha shot the ear off a horse by mistake, or Egimont in the face. Given their recent history, it wouldn’t have surprised him. If she didn’t, he might very well give it a try himself. He sneaked a look at her and was troubled to see her look stricken just for a moment. Like she was ready to drag down her mask and let the world know who they were. Let Eggy know who they were, which would be a disaster.
Time for action. “Could we hurry this up?” Vocho asked. “I’m getting sodding wet here.”
It was enough to get Kacha to pull herself together, and she gave him a brief nod to let him know.
“I’m sure we can negotiate, my good sir,” Egimont said to Kacha in the sort of deadpan drawl that made Vocho’s shoulders itch. He said everything like that – when he spoke at all, which was rare enough – as though all was beneath his notice. He was just so effortlessly bloody suave, which was only the start of the things Vocho had against him.
He braced himself for Kacha’s reply but she kept herself reined in. For now. Only the Clockwork God knew how long it would last.
“No, we may not,” she said in a voice thick with suppressed fury. “Instead, I will shoot your gormless face off if I have to. We’re good with cash though. And jewels, we like jewels, rings, necklaces, trinkets, trifles, baubles and bibelots. How much have you got?”
Egimont raised his eyebrows. Kacha had never got the hang of courtly manners though she could pretend well enough when she needed to. “Not a lot as it happens. Temporarily embarrassed. You know how it is.” Egimont sounded odd – Vocho could only assume he was playing to the drunk ex-nobles in the carriage – which begged the question of why.
“Not really,” Kacha said. Vocho didn’t like the way her finger was twitching on the what-d’you-call-it – trigger, was it? The thing that made the gun go bang anyway. “Everything, that’s what we’re going for. Now out, all of you. And anyone looks like they’re trying anything, this gun tends to go off at a moment’s notice. So do I. And blood is such a trial to get out of silk, isn’t it?”
Egimont sighed as though he was suffering a great trial for a mere triviality and feigned defeat, though knowing the preening mountebank Vocho didn’t believe it for a moment. The door opened and they trooped out. Three men, one so drunk he could hardly stand, but not so drunk he couldn’t be sick, which he managed to do all over the pale-haired fellow, who was pretty damned drunk himself. Two women not, how could Vocho put this? Not of the same class. Underfed, underdressed. Women who were most certainly of his own original station – wretched and plebeian, just trying to earn enough to eat the only way they could. Vocho leaned over the pommel of his saddle, sword out and ready in case these fools weren’t as drunk as they looked.
“You ladies may go. If you’re quick, the inn’ll still be open.”
They didn’t need telling twice – a quick glance of agreement between them and they hared up the muddy road without a backwards glance. Pale Hair looked after them forlornly. “But I already paid!” he wailed to no one, or no one who cared anyway.
/> Kacha looked up at the driver, who silently spread his hands as if to say, These posh sods deserve everything they get. He was still waggling his eyebrows and mouthing something, but what with the dark and the rain, Vocho couldn’t catch it.
“You keep an eye on him,” Kacha said to Vocho with a nod to the driver. Her horse grabbed at the ruffles on the front of Egimont’s shirt and started to munch with much apparent delight and flashing of big teeth. Vocho would have sworn it understood the concept of intimidation, though good luck to it trying to get a rise out of the imperturbable Eggy.
“And now, gentlemen, if you’d like to empty your pockets.” Kacha was enjoying this, Vocho could tell by the undertone in her voice even as she tried to disguise it. Payback for whatever had happened between her and Eggy, which had left her bad-tempered or alternately silent and dreaming for weeks.
A gun waved in front of them seemed to get them going. Eggy threw two purses into the mud, both clinking heavily. “Go on, Berie,” he said. “And get Flashy’s too.”
Three more purses, all full. Not bad, not bad at all. At a signal from Kacha, Vocho leaped down from his horse, and that’s where it all went wrong.
Kacha’s evil sod of a horse took exception to Eggy’s face and made a grab for it. Eggy wasn’t as drunk as he looked, jumped back half a pace and snatched at the sword at his waist. Kacha wasn’t drunk at all, but the horse’s sudden lunge caught her off guard. The gun fired, there was a bang that seemed like it might take Vocho’s ears off, followed by a brief, gurgling moan. Flashy held up a hand with a hole in it, and promptly stopped being drunk and started being passed out at about the same time he fell into the mud.
“Aw, shit,” Kacha said but she didn’t get any further. Eggy had his sword out – despite the rest of his foppish appearance, it was a good if plain sword, well used – and went for her, smooth as well oiled gears, looking as effortless as ever. Berie tried the same with his flash and glitter sword, got it tangled up in his scabbard, tripped over his own feet and ended up face first in the mud next to Flashy, only less passed out.
