The Justice in Revenge

by Ryan Van Loan

  Rain began to fall in drips and drops, and the wind whipped at my face, full winter coming into its own and promising more storms with it. I eyed one of the drops that ran down my stiletto as it slowly turned from translucent to vermillion and glanced down at the corpse before turning away.

  “The word no one seems to know, but everyone seems to fear. Sicarii.”

  23

  She watched from the curtainless window, standing far enough back that a stray glance from the street wouldn’t reveal her. Not that any would think to look up this far, but luck was a fickle mistress—she knew that, none better—and there was no sense in taking the risk. Her woman was well hidden, tucked into the alcove of a back door to one of the buildings lining the alley.

  There, walking down the middle of the street: them.

  Sicarii’s lips twisted and pulled back in a soundless snarl. The hulking brute bent to hear whatever abuse Buc was likely hurling at him, but he must have liked the shit she served because he chuckled, throwing his blond hair back, and she laughed with him. It would have made Sicarii sick, save she knew she was going to have the last laugh. She reached up and plucked her fiery amber-glassed eye from its socket and held it against the window; a lone sunbeam struck it and made it shine like a coal. Sicarii repeated the gesture again and then popped it back into place, blinking to work tears around the cold, hard glass.

  Below, her woman stepped out—and wonder of wonders, Buc leapt around the corner.

  Sicarii’s snarl twisted again, this time into a smile. I meant to take the big brute, but is this the day I dance over your corpse, girl? The first shots went over Buc’s head—the woman obviously had been expecting the taller Eld, but she was one of Sicarii’s best and would adjust. And then fill you full of steel. A small giggle built in the back of her throat.

  “What?!?”

  The giggle died unreleased as Buc snapped forward in a crimson blur of motion, hair and jacket trailing. Her arms moved so fast they looked like twin tornadoes that sucked in the sparks of steel and spat them back out again in every direction. Sicarii could practically hear the bolts ricocheting off of Buc’s blades. Impossible. Then the bolts stopped. Reload, you fool! The woman reached for her belt, then flew back as if a giant fist had slammed into her. The next instant, somehow Buc was standing over the assassin, and even at this distance, Sicarii could see the hilts of two blades jutting from the woman’s chest.

  “Impossible,” Sicarii whispered, the word catching, grating in her throat. She drew in a heated breath and let it out in a hiss.

  “Im-fucking-possible,” she repeated. Sicarii had seen that kind of performance before, the mind-bending speed that ended with one standing and the other dying.

  “Mind-fucking little bitch! You have magic. Magic.” Her breath was hot, loud in her ears, but louder still was the red rage screaming in her chest. Not fair. “You’re not supposed to have magic!”

  She drew a blade from the back of her belt; as she flicked it open, gearwork propelled a fan of blades from the handle. Snarling again, Sicarii attacked the plaster wall before her as she would have attacked Buc if she were facing the girl on the street. Knowing that strategy would have ended with her own death only made Sicarii rage more.

  “Cheating motherfucking cunt!”

  “Maestra? Er, Sicarii?” one of her men called from the edge of the steps. “Everything all right?” Fear was bright in his voice. “Ye need us to go gather Ule up?”

  Sicarii drew a shuddering breath. The haze around her vision began to clear, revealing the wall, now festooned with scores of cuts that left the plaster torn and a sizable pile of dust and shards on the attic floorboards. More dust and powdered plaster drifted thickly in the air, making her nose twitch. Sicarii forced the impending sneeze away and it went. Her body was truly hers now. After … before.

  “Ule won’t be needing us any longer,” she said when she found her voice. “I need pen and parchment.”

  I’ll need to warn the Dead Gods or they’ll walk right into this trap, expecting the girl to be mortal and finding out too late otherwise. Same with the Sin Eaters. Questions must be asked delicately now or Buc will …

  “Buc will make more enemies, sow more chaos,” she whispered. “So long as she doesn’t die by their hands, her magic will be mine for the taking. Belay that,” she said in a normal tone. “Did the Dead Gods find the evidence we planted?” She turned around, composed. “The item implicating the Sin Eaters in the disappearance of their missing priest?”

  “Not yet, Sicarii,” the heavily bearded man said, taking a step up into the attic. “Given their search, I’d say tomorrow morn they’ll run acrost it.”

  “Excellent.” She took another breath, her throat now truly in flames from her outburst, and let the pain stoke the rage in her chest. Anger was a powerful weapon, but she couldn’t afford to be a blunderbuss in this. No, we are the scalpel and anger is the razor’s edge of that scalpel. They’ll all feel that against their throats before the end. “See it’s destroyed.”

  “Sicarii?”

  “Everything’s just changed, my friend.” Sicarii sighed. All her planning, all her aims—she had many goals, true, but at the fore: making the girl suffer before she felt Sicarii’s blade slide twixt her ribs. Today would have removed Eld, leaving just the two of them to square off, as was proper. Tomorrow and the coming days would have seen Buc torn piece by piece until Sicarii deigned to end her life. But she hadn’t known Buc was a Sin Eater.

  Where did she find magic?

  The artifact? Had the girl retrieved it from the Shattered Coast after all?

  Magic offered many other possibilities … Wheels must be stopped turning, others set into motion. This requires care. Starting now.

  “The Dead Gods can’t find that evidence. Not as it stands. I want them pointed at Buc, straight as an arrow.” Then align the Sin Eaters to the same heading and watch the fireworks.

  Smiling, Sicarii began giving orders. Suddenly there were so many possibilities available to her, so many ways to satisfy the deep, longing rage that burned her from within. Revenge.

  “And remember, I want the girl alive.”

  “As you say, Sicarii,” the thick man said, pressing a knuckle to his forehead.

  “It won’t be easy, but if we take Eld prisoner, that might keep her at bay,” Sicarii mused. Her next thought made her chuckle out loud and he shivered at the sound. Given enough time … I can cut the magic right out of her. “She still dies,” Sicarii said, “but not until I’ve got what I want.”

  “What is it that you want, Sicarii?” the man asked hesitantly.

  Sicarii ran her tongue against the back of her teeth, practically tasting it. “All. I want it all.

  “Every fucking thing.”

  24

  “Will the signorina be joining us?” Joffers asked, pushing himself up from the stool he sat on and brushing out the kan cigarillo he’d been smoking. He pulled on the wide-brimmed hat of the gondolier and held the boat solidly as Eld stepped aboard. The old man’s face was lined and weathered and his white mustaches hid half his expression, but the question made Eld want to hug the man. Or cry. Or curse.

  “No, I think her stomach didn’t agree with breakfast,” he said, doing none of that. “She’s taking a carriage home.” I hope. He should have followed her, but she’d have known and gone were the days when they were never apart. That’s what you wanted, aye? He swallowed the lump in his throat.

  “Ah,” Joffers said neutrally. He began working the knots that tied the gondola fast to the canal’s edge. “Didn’t think anything could disagree with her stomach, I’ve never seen a woman eat so much and look so damned thin.”

  “It’s a curse,” Eld said.

  “A curse many’d wish for,” Joffers replied.

  Eld just nodded and crouched down beside the velvet-cushioned seats, eschewing them for the gunwale where he could watch for another ambush. Not that he could warn Joffers of that without explaining the whole thing, ju
st like he couldn’t tell Joffers that none would wish for the Sin Eater’s magic that made Buc so hungry she ate thrice as much as Eld though he was thrice her size. More lies. More half-truths. They all felt an anchor around his heart, ready to sink him.

  “Where to then, sirrah? Home?”

  Eld began to agree, but silence was waiting there and he didn’t feel up to facing that. Besides, going home wouldn’t solve the riddles they faced. The ones Buc had gone haring off on her own to solve because she was ashamed of her magic—or ashamed of him because he hated magic. Eld cut that line of thinking off before it sent him into another despair spiral. She was focused on solving the Doga’s attempted assassination and before Midwinter’s Day, though why the timing was so short, she hadn’t explained.

  She’d said a bookseller she knew kept architectural plans of all the old Servenzan buildings and she wanted a look at the Castello’s layout. Gods send she’s not planning a jail break. It wouldn’t be the first they’d attempted, but the last had nearly ended with him locked away in place of another for eternity. She wouldn’t try that. Not again.

  There were other riddles aplenty to solve, though, like why every other time he left the palazzo by himself, some pickpocket or other tried to steal his purse and to put a knife into him for good measure. When had that started? Before the attempt on the Doga, yes? Before the blood in the streets or the murders of Buc’s little fish? Actually, as he thought about it, it’d started around the same time the mages had begun demanding meetings in person. Hmm.

  “Say, Joffers, I’ve another destination in mind, if you’re up for a bit of a poling?”

  “It’s been a while since a man other than my husband asked me that, sirrah.”

  “J-Joffers?” Eld choked, turning around so quickly he nearly went over the edge of the gondola, into the midnight-blue canal waters. “Did you just make a joke?”

  “Thought you looked like you needed to hear one,” Joffers said, touching the brim of his hat. “If you don’t mind me saying, sirrah.”

  “So you’re up for it?” Eld felt his cheeks heat at Joffers’s raised eyebrows. “For poling. Gods’ breath, man, for poling the boat.” Joffers’s lips twitched. Eld surprised himself by laughing. “Just take us the fuck out of here, won’t you?”

  “With a will, sirrah. With a will,” Joffers said, returning to his typical taciturn self. Eld settled back down into a crouch, surprised at how light he felt in that laugh’s wake. The feeling was fading already, but for the moment he clung to it like a drowning man clings to the last scrap of air before the water comes over top.

  * * *

  “Eldritch,” the woman said from behind the screen of the carriage window. “This is a surprise, when I got the message, I thought … well, get in.”

  The door swung open and a short man in a powdered wig and dark-grey cloak stepped back, taking care to conceal the short pistole held in his free hand. Eld climbed into the carriage, pretending not to notice the weapon, and fell back into the seat as the carriage took off at a rapid clip. He doffed his tricorne and adjusted his coat so that it was straight—and would give him easy access to his own pistole, reachable through the space between the coat’s buttons—inclining his head slightly as he did so.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Parliamentarian.”

  “As it happens, I was considering reaching out to you,” the woman said. Her eyes shimmered like chips of obsidian in the lantern light that jostled back and forth with the clomping of the horses. Her jewelry shone brightly enough that it almost made her peach-colored dress, sewn through with thread o’ gold, look subdued.

  “Me?”

  “I knew your mother,” she said by way of explanation. “Before your parents returned to the mainland. While we weren’t terribly close, she did me a good turn when she had the opportunity to choose not to. I always pay my debts, Eld.”

  “I, uh, see,” he said, faking a cough to gain a moment to think. She knows Mother? He’d been disowned after resigning his commission. Not a surprise, and truthfully, any real affection he’d felt for his family had taken a drubbing when they first sent him to the Academy as a child. The blade was rarely thankful for the forge and they’d always seen him as a casting with a fault running through it. His resignation had only confirmed it. “Thank you,” he said, finally.

  “What can I help you with?”

  “Why do the Gods want me dead?”

  “Gods’ breath,” the Parliamentarian breathed. She whipped a fan through the air, its gilt blades sliding out with a snap, and fanned herself. “You cut right to the quick, don’t you, lad?”

  “I apologize for my bluntness. I know your time is valuable and had no wish to waste it.” He left unsaid that he knew no other way. I’m not a fool. Also that while he knew why the Gods would have reason to want him dead, he didn’t know if they knew why. Not completely.

  “Whatever makes you think they want you dead?”

  In terse sentences Eld described the attempts on his life and the deaths of the little fish, focusing on himself as much as possible, though it was inevitable that he mention Buc at some point. Such as, “It began with the Sin Eaters requesting an audience and when Buc told them to go jump in the Crescent, the Dead Gods came calling.”

  “The way I heard it, she told them to go fuck carp,” the Parliamentarian said with a sniff, still rapidly fanning herself. She stopped abruptly. “Has it ever occurred to you that they don’t want you dead, Eld, so much as they want Buc dead?”

  “But why?”

  “Because of this summer,” she snapped. “I didn’t think you dumb, lad.”

  “This summer we solved the mystery behind the disappearing ships and your agent, the pirate Chan Sha, sank the Ghost Captain,” Eld said. He was a terrible liar at the best of times but thanks to repetition, he could almost believe that was what had happened.

  “That’s the story,” she agreed. “Well, you were blunt with me and I appreciate that, so I’ll return the favor,” she said, putting away her fan. “The Chair”—she jabbed a bejeweled finger at Eld—“and the Sin Eaters and the bloody Dead Gods all believe you and that girl have information about last summer’s events. Information you kept from the rest. They’ve already searched your palazzo thrice—”

  “They’ve what?” Eld growled.

  “And found nothing,” she said, cutting him off. “Now, that may be because there is nothing to find, but the Chair’s never been the trusting sort and with the Gods at each other’s throats, they believe the worst of every scenario these days. They know Buc’s too smart to keep this sort of information on her person, so that leaves you, my lad.”

  “I’m going to ask a question,” Eld said, “but only because I’ve not a bloody clue about any of what you’ve just said. What information do they think we’re hiding?”

  “Well, that’s just it,” the woman said, leaning forward, back straight. “They’re not sure, are they? But there was something the Sin Eaters let slip in their haste to see the Ghost Captain sent to the sea’s grave. Something about an artifact. One of great power.”

  “Rubbish.” Eld prayed he’d learned enough from Buc to keep the tell from his face. “The Ghost Captain was most definitely sinking Company ships in service to break the alliance we have with Ciris and her Sin Eaters. I’ve since wondered why the Company hasn’t brought charges against the Dead Gods for it.”

  “Eld, I’m on your side,” the Parliamentarian said gently. “You came to me, remember?” Eld nodded. “You can trust me.” He carefully kept his head still. “So then, are you quite sure that’s all there was going on out in those storm-blasted seas?”

  “If there was an artifact, the Ghost Captain didn’t mention it, even when Buc had his head half chopped off,” Eld lied. There had been an artifact, a piece of Ciris that now lay inside Buc’s head. “We’ve done nothing since that would give them any inclination otherwise,” he added.

  “Which makes them all the more certain you’re hiding something,” she said
dryly. “The Kanados Trading Company uses Sin Eaters because we must—without their mind magic allowing them to communicate with one another across the seas, it would take a quarter season to get news from the Shattered Coast. And because some likely worship Ciris,” she admitted, “but to accuse the Dead Gods of such a crime would turn these back-alley brawls into an actual shooting war, and no one wants that. What they want is leverage, like this artifact.”

  “An artifact that doesn’t exist,” Eld snapped.

  “Aye, and I believe you,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s likely something happened to it? Did Chan Sha perhaps play a larger role than you and Buc let on? Allowing you to have the glory and your newfound seats while she sailed off into the sunset with this artifact everyone’s so damned eager to lay their hands on?” She leaned more, her eyes hungry. “It was that, wasn’t it?” she asked in a husky voice.

  “I—I—”

  “Of course, even if that is the truth”—she reached out and almost touched Eld’s knee, but pulled back at the last moment—“the problem is Buc. She came into that first boardroom like a queen deigning to meet with her commoners and the Chair never forgot it. That hoary, old sea serpent has been swimming in intrigue since she came from the womb and the only way Buc’s actions made sense was if she had a hidden card up her sleeve. Well, the Chair’s never one to let someone palm an ace before her eyes and get away with it.”

  “So she’s the one that’s been trying to have a knife put between my ribs?”

  “Probably not at first.”

  “Well, that makes me feel better,” Eld said sarcastically.

  “You want to keep your ribs intact? Cut the anchor chain you’ve wrapped around yourself and throw off that blasted girl.”

  “Buc is my friend,” he said, choking the words out. “Without her I wouldn’t have the position I have today. I wouldn’t be on the Board. She came in like a queen, aye, but she’s always been that way! She’s always been…” He paused, searching for the right word.