Daggar knelt beside her, and took the opportunity to take hold of her hand. He couldn’t help noticing how unnaturally cool her skin was. “What exactly is it that you have under that breastplate of yours?” Something in the air seemed funny—not quite right. He couldn’t help thinking back to the various magical explosions and misfortunes which he had witnessed in the last year or so. He touched Sparrow’s armour briefly, and stared at the soft yellow dust which came off on his hand.
“That is none of your business,” snapped Sparrow. “Help me up, or leave me here. Either way, I will answer no questions.”
Daggar rocked back on his heels, staring at her. She returned his stare until, no longer quite able to meet his big brown eyes, she turned her head sharply aside, hiding her expression behind a veil of tawny-blonde hair.
No need to tell him that this wasn’t the first time this had happened—or that she was just as worried about it. Why should she tell him anything? After a moment, Sparrow straightened her shoulders. “I will stand now,” she said curtly. “I must be in Zibria by nightfall.”
Daggar extended a hand in a vaguely courtly gesture which was interrupted when his other arm jerked high into the air. Singespitter’s wings had unfolded, and only the leash attached to Daggar’s wrist had stopped the sheep from flying off into the horizon again. “Oi!” Daggar yelped.
Sparrow drew her sword with a nasty snick sound, and pulled herself to her feet.
“He usually only does this at times of severe stress and/or imminent peril!” Daggar yelled at her above the noise of fluttering sheep wings.
“Then danger is coming.” Sparrow had already guessed as much. She squinted into the distance. “Dust and crag-veins!”
Daggar steeled himself, and then looked. What he saw gave him no cause for alarm. “You mean the bird? That can’t be it, Singespitter likes birds.”
“Tell me it is a wren,” said Sparrow in a voice of unnatural calm. “A small yellow pigeon, yes?”
“Don’t be daft,” said Daggar. “It’s a canary.”
Sparrow nodded slowly. “Then we are dead.”
* * *
Officer Finnley was quite sure by now that they were all completely mad, himself included. “What makes you think this ‘death canary’ of yours has even half a chance of tracking the girl down?”
“If, as I suspect,” replied Mistress Opia coldly, “the girl, as you so quaintly describe her, has used the liquid gold without correct safety precautions, she is now a walking time-explosion waiting to happen. She must be giving off vibrations that even an uneducated squirrel could distinguish. My highly trained death canary will be able to recognise, isolate and possibly even annihilate her. Meanwhile, the Soothsayer can track the canary in her Pool of Wonder and give us more explicit directions.”
“Ah,” said Officer Finnley, sure now that he had spotted the flaw in her plan. “How will she do that, then? We’re miles from Dreadnought.”
Mistress Opia smiled her sugary smile, and produced a small portable crystal ball from her large black bag. “As you can see, Officer McHagrty,” she said calmly. “I have considered every possibility.”
* * *
The canary zoomed in for the kill.
“Duck!” yelled Sparrow.
“It’s just a bird,” protested Daggar, throwing himself to the ground anyway. His whole personality was programmed to respond to non-existent threats, no matter what common sense had to say about it. “What harm can it—ow!”
The swooping canary neatly clipped his ear as it zipped past his head.
Sparrow lunged at the bird with her sword, gaining its attention. “Have you never heard of death canaries?”
“I refuse to admit that anything as dangerous as you imply could possibly exist without me knowing about it,” replied Daggar loftily, throwing himself behind a bush as the canary came in for another swoop.
“They are a Zibrian invention. Assassins.” She threw herself to the ground and rolled aside as the canary came at her. “As long as you keep moving, you have a chance. But the minute you stop—”
Singespitter the sheep had managed to slip his leash and was currently flapping his way out of the danger area.
“Can’t we just wait for it to tire itself out?’ yelled Daggar, dodging another aerial attack by the small bird.
“They do not get tired.”
A jet of flame shot past Daggar’s right ear, singing his collar and startling him half to death. “What the hell’s that?”
“They also breathe fire!”
“Right,” said Daggar in a very shaky voice. “I’ve had enough of this!” He pulled his second-best lucky dagger out from under his tunic and threw it at the approaching canary. As usual when he was absolutely terrified, his aim was true. The knife struck the canary in the centre, pinning it to the nearest tree.
Sparrow stood very still. “Thunderdust!” she gasped.
“A pretty good shot, even if I do say so myself,” agreed Daggar proudly.
When Sparrow had finally got her breath back, she said, “You do not cut a death canary. Not under any circumstances!”
“Why not?” he demanded in a wounded voice.
The two halves of the dismembered canary fell to the ground. They began to buzz. Two sharp-beaked yellow canaries rose into the air, and a synchronised twin burst of flame streaked out in Daggar’s direction.
“Not fair!” he howled, throwing himself behind yet another bush.
“I am sorry, Daggar,” said Sparrow as she pulled an orange capsule out of a pouch on her belt and snapped it firmly between her teeth.
The buzzing sound stopped. The two death canaries hovered in mid air. So too did Singespitter the sheep, whose weight-to-wing ratio meant he couldn’t fly very fast.
Sparrow barely paused. She scooped up her leather satchel, sheathed her sword and started walking.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” said Daggar.
Sparrow whirled around, surprise overwhelming her usual harsh expression. “Why are you not frozen?” she demanded.
“I don’t know about that, but I do take antidotes to almost everything on a regular basis. You were just going to walk off and leave me!”
“Maybe.”
“Now, why would you do a thing like that?” Daggar grabbed his sack and yanked the frozen Singespitter out of midair.
Sparrow glanced back at the canaries. “Let us move while we can.” She began to stride, and Daggar soon caught up to her, despite the extra weight of the sheep in his arms.
“I thought you wanted to team up,” he accused.
She shot an angry look sidelong at him. “The exploded temple did not stop them. Travelling with you did not stop them. An ordinary tracker might have been confused, but they are not using ordinary techniques. If even half of what I have heard about the Brewers is true, they will not give up on me easily. You will be safer if we part company.”
“You mean you think you would make better time on your own,” Daggar predicted, quite accurately as it turned out. “I thought…” he paused. “Hang on, did you say the Brewers?”
“Yes. I stole something from them, and they want it back.”
“You’ll never make it,” said Daggar in a stunned voice. “I mean, the Brewers. They’ll eat you alive and spit you out as chemical equations.”
Sparrow stopped in her tracks, impatient. “All the more reason why you should go elsewhere! The canaries will not follow you.”
“No fear,” he said, shaking his head wildly. “I’m already connected with you. The Brewers will hunt me down, bite off my head and turn my kneecaps into frogs no matter what I do. If I stick with you, at least I have half a chance of you protecting me!”
Sparrow rolled her eyes, tiring of the discussion. She was a mercenary, not a diplomat. “Kiss me, Daggar.”
He looked at her in astonishment. “What did you say?”
“Kiss me,” she repeated. And then, because her suggestion had obviously left him in a state of shock,
she kissed him.
Daggar’s state of shock wore off, eventually. He even kissed her back, once he realised that she wasn’t going to kill him for taking such a liberty. But then his eyes rolled back in his head, he dropped the frozen sheep and hit the ground snoring.
“So,” said Sparrow softly. “You do not have an antidote to everything.”
And she continued walking in her long confident stride, over the rough canal path towards the marble columns of Zibria.
6: Chainmail, Ale and Deathless Prose
Zibria was a sprawling, haphazard city of pillars, temples, philosophers and scantily clad women. It was also the city where Aragon had spent a large portion of his misspent youth. He had not realised until this moment that this village was so close to the city, but it had to be if Bounty was here. Zibria was her territory, which was one of the main reasons he had not been back in a long time.
His unexpected visitor smiled her sexy smile, and said nothing. Framed against the yellowish window of the cheap tavern bedroom, she looked extraordinary. Hobgoblins were renowned for being the most obnoxiously attractive creatures in Mocklore, and Bounty Fenetre was more trouble than most. Unlike common or garden goblins (less than a foot high, hive mind, randomly destructive), hobgoblins were fiercely independent and dangerously self-aware. They were also entirely of human proportions.
Bounty’s eyes were wide and deep. Her hair was a rather ratty brown colour, but tangled winsomely down her back. She wore chainmail. Not the usual bulky square-cut mail tunic that your average foot soldier might wear. Her chainmail was body-hugging, impossibly slinky as it slid its way from her curved shoulders down to mid-thigh.
Aragon regarded her slowly, his cool grey eyes taking in every detail. Finally, he spoke. “Doesn’t it chafe?”
Bounty Fenetre struck a pose. “It looks good, and it stops me getting shot at.” She smiled in sultry fashion, which showed her otherworldly cheekbones to their best advantage. “So, Silversword. Long time, no…” She allowed her eyes to drift deliberately towards the bed. “How have you been?”
Aragon stood up, tiring of her games already. “Go away.”
Bounty pouted at his lack of open-armed welcome, and then promptly ignored it. She hitched up her slinky chainmail and sat on the bed, swinging her leather-booted legs in an annoying fashion. “I heard you became an outlaw.” It would have been an accusation if not for her teasing voice.
“I heard you became a bounty hunter,” he replied. “Finally decided to live up to your name?”
She chewed on a lock of ratty brown hair. “Something like that. So who was she?”
Aragon looked up sharply, his eyes giving nothing away. “Who?”
“The woman. The one who made you turn to a life of crime.”
“I killed an Emperor. Didn’t you hear?”
Bounty nodded with a gleam in her eye. “I heard you were still his champion at the time. You’re the most famous traitor in the Empire.” She dropped a slow wink. “I heard you did the same to the latest Emperor, our Lady Talle herself. Who would have thought a local bint would do so well for herself?” She laughed throatily. “I also heard you singlehandedly got her mistaken for a pirate and imprisoned by the Skullcap Lordling!”
Aragon was in no mood for laughing, and it showed in his face. Catching the sour mood, Bounty frowned curiously. “Did I say something wrong?”
In the following meaningful silence, the sound of a full-scale bar brawl drifted up the stairs.
“It’s late,” said Aragon curtly, moving across to where his rapier-belt lay slung across a chair. “You can leave any time you like.”
“I could take you into custody,” she pointed out, winding the nibbled lock of hair around her little finger. “Haven’t you seen the posters? There’s an Imperial price on your head. I’m quite good at my job, you know.”
With a tiny shikking sound, Aragon drew his transparent silver-steel rapier and held it unwaveringly with the sharp end pointed directly at her throat. The hand which was not holding the sword was clenched into a tight fist. “Try,” he invited.
Bounty licked her lips. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Aragon paused. He gestured towards the door with his clenched fist. “Listen to that.”
“There’s nothing to hear,” she said crossly. “Don’t change the subject!”
But Aragon was already moving to the door. “The fighting’s stopped,” he told her, flinging the door wide open.
Bounty Fenetre jumped to her feet and followed him out to the landing. “The punch-ups don’t ever stop till after midnight,” she said disbelievingly.
In the bar below, the brawlers had paused in the act of brawling. Some still held chairs and broken limbs in mid-air. Everyone’s attention was focused on the little jester who had finally got up the nerve to climb on a table and declaim his greatest work.
“O!” he declared in a theatrical voice which only squeaked occasionally.
“Sing, bright Goddess, of blood-red hair,
“A pirate bold, a Pirate Queen.
“Sing of those deeds which shook the world
“And chanced to change its colour scheme…”
There was something unrecognisable in Aragon Silversword’s cold grey eyes as he listened to the exploits of Kassa Daggersharp unfolding in epic verse. He lowered his sword, and his other hand remained clenched tightly shut.
“So,” said Bounty Fenetre at his elbow. “There was a woman.”
“No,” said Aragon shortly. “There wasn’t. And anyway, she’s dead.”
To Bounty’s open astonishment, he went back into his room, bolting the door behind him. She put her hands on her hips, expressing her indignation in one expelled, “Well!”
On the other side of the door, Aragon let his rapier fall to the floor. He prised open the fist which had remained clenched the whole time, wincing at the imprints left by his deeply-digging nails.
Lying on his reddened palm was a tiny object, a ring made of silver and steel, marked with a familiar symbol. A spiral within a spiral. It had fallen free when Daggar and Tippett solemnly tossed Kassa’s body over the side of the ship. This ring was a symbol of Aragon’s enslavement at her hands. She had used this, her witch ring, to brand her mark of loyalty into his chest, a magical ritual which prevented him from leaving her side as long as she lived.
He hated this ring. Detested all that it stood for. And he wasn’t letting go of it.
* * *
Zibria was a pit. An exotic pit, but a pit nonetheless. The Gilded City was faded, peeling and falling apart. It was early evening, and the pillared streets were filled with flocking crowds, all selling, stealing and chattering at the top of their voices. It was much like Dreadnought on market day (which was every day except every other Sunday) only noisier and dirtier. Everyone wore less clothing, but that was about the only improvement.
There were more ‘heroes’ in Zibria than in the rest of the city-states of Mocklore put together. Every cheap drinking house or brothel had at least one lion-skinned muscle man on their door. It wasn’t compulsory for a hero to have one divine parent, but it certainly was traditional, and no god put himself about as much as Raglah the Golden, the ferret-faced god of Zibria. His favourite method of visiting mortal women was as a shower of gold, although he rang the changes occasionally by taking the shape of an interesting farmyard animal.
Aragon made his way through the throng now, lost in his own thoughts. He had left the grimy tavern in the nameless village early that morning, via the kitchen so as to avoid both Tippett the jester-poet and the seductive Bounty Fenetre. His life was his own, now. Wasn’t it?
Glancing at a plate glass window as he walked past, he caught sight of a familiar face, a glimpse of blood-red hair. It couldn’t be, could it? He turned, scanning the market place. He was going out of his skull. She was dead—and yet there she was, a deep green cloak, a fall of hair, even the big black boots. Aragon started to move, pushing people out of the way, heading for the fle
eing figure, who ducked into an alley. Finally, as he threw himself towards the mouth of the alley and caught sight of her, the woman turned.
She pushed back the dark green hood, the dark red hair, and it all dissolved away, leaving a beige-blonde goddess laughing at him until she, too, vanished into thin air.
Aragon stopped short, and someone crashed into the back of him, nearly knocking him to the ground. He had only time to see a flash of lion skin before he was lifted bodily into the air and pressed into the growling face of an angry hero. “You gotta watch where yer going, mate,” snarled his assailant. “You know what happens when someone like you inconveniences someone like me?”
“You’re not important,” said Aragon Silversword tonelessly. “You’re not even unique.” Without even thinking about it, he had a knife at the hero’s jugular and was tapping the blade thoughtfully back and forth. “Tell me quickly, is there a Temple of Luck in this city?”
The lion-skinned thug’s eyes were startled. He opened his massive hand, letting Aragon (and the knife) fall harmlessly to the ground. “Yuh,” he grunted. “End of the street. Green sign.”
“Thank you,” said Aragon, brushing his clothes absently and heading off in that direction.
He had seen that goddess before. He remembered lights, explosions, the last Glimmer to devastate Mocklore. They and their flimsy ghost-ship had been caught in the maelstrom, their only hope to throw themselves on the mercy of a god.
Kassa had chosen the Witch’s Web, a construct formed of the three most dangerous goddesses ever to exist: Fate, Destiny and the Other One, the one who was never summoned, no matter how desperate you were. Lady Luck.
Only when Aragon was inside the building did he realise his mistake. This wasn’t a temple, it was a gaming house! Tables of people with money to burn were crammed in together, risking coins on the roll of a dice or the spin of a wheel. The women were wearing fur, the men were drinking from goblets with umbrellas in them, and the management were making an awful lot of money.
Aragon didn’t want to be here. Firstly because it did not help him achieve his mission (which he was only just beginning to form in his mind) and secondly because it brought a vivid memory of Kassa flooding into his mind.
The Mocklore Omnibus (Mocklore Chronicles #1 & #2) Page 33
