by Sam Sykes
When it rains in Cathama, the pampered Imperials crowd beneath the awnings in their cafés and wait for their mages to change the skies. When it snows in Haven, they file right into church and thank their Lord for it. And when it gets hot in Weiless, as you know, they ascribe the sun to an Imperial plot and vow to redouble their Revolutionary efforts.
But in the Scar? When it pours rain and thunders so hard that you swim through the streets and can’t hear yourself drown? Well, they just pull their cloaks tighter and keep going.
And that’s just what I was doing that night when I got into this whole mess.
Rin’s Sump, as you can guess by the name, was the sort of town where rain didn’t bother people much. Even when lightning flashed so bright you’d swear it was day, life in the Scar was hard enough that a little apocalyptic weather wouldn’t hinder anyone. And as the streets turned to mud under their feet and the roofs shook beneath the weight of the downpour, the people of the township just tucked their chins into their coats, pulled their hats down low, and kept going about their business.
Just like I was doing. One more shapeless, sexless figure in the streets, hidden beneath a cloak and a scarf pulled around her head. No one raised a brow at my white hair, looked at me like they were guessing what I had under my cloak, or even so much as glanced at me. They had their own shit to deal with that night.
Which was fine by me. So did I. And the kind of shit I got into, I could always use a few less eyes on me.
Every other house in Rin’s Sump was dark as night, but the tavern—a dingy little two-story shack at the center of town—was lit up. Light shone bright enough to illuminate the dirt on the windows, the stripped paint on the front, and the ugly sign swinging on squeaky hinges: RALP’S LAST RESORT.
Apt name.
And it proved even more apt when I pushed the door open and took a glance inside.
Standing there, sopping wet, water dripping off me to form a small ocean around my boots, I imagined I looked a little like a dead cat hauled out of an outhouse. And I still looked a damn sight better than the inside of that bar.
A fine layer of dust tried nobly to obscure a much-less-fine layer of splinters over the ill-tended-to chairs and tables lining the common hall. A stage that probably once had hosted a variety of bad acts now stood dark; a single voccaphone stood in their place, playing a tune that was popular back when the guy who wrote it was still alive. Rooms upstairs had probably once held a few prostitutes, if there ever were prostitutes luckless enough to work a township like this. I’d have called the place a mausoleum if it weren’t for the people, but they looked like they might have found a crypt a little cozier.
There were a few kids—two boys, a girl—in the back, sipping on whatever bottle of swill they could afford and staring at the table. Laborers, I wagered—some young punks the locals used for cheap jobs with cheap pay to buy cheap liquor. And behind the bar was a large man in dirty clothes, idly rubbing the only clean glass in the place with a cloth.
He set that glass down as I approached. The cloth he had been polishing it with was likely used to polish something else, if the grime around the glass was any evidence.
No matter. I wouldn’t need to be here long.
Ralp—I assumed—didn’t bother asking me what I wanted. In the Scar, you’re lucky if they give you a choice of two drinks. And if you had any luck at all, you didn’t wind up in a place called Rin’s Sump.
He reached for a cask behind the bar but stopped as I cleared my throat and shot him a warning glare. With a nod, he held up a bottle of whiskey—Avonin & Sons, by the look of the black label—and looked at me for approval. I nodded, tossed a silver knuckle on the counter. He didn’t start pouring until he picked it up, made sure it was real, and pocketed it.
“Passing through?” he asked, with the kind of tone that suggested habit more than interest.
“Does anyone ever stay?” I asked back, taking a sip of bitter brown.
“Only if they make enough mistakes.” Ralp shot a pointed glance to the youths drinking in the corner. “Your first was stopping in here instead of moving on. Roads are going to be mud for days after this. No one’s getting out without a bird.”
“I’ve got a mount,” I said, grinning over my glass. “And here I thought you’d be happy for a little extra money.”
“Won’t turn down metal,” Ralp said. He eyed me over, raising a brow as it seemed to suddenly dawn on him that I was a woman under that wet, stinking cloak. “But if you really want to make me happy—”
“I’ll tell you what.” I held up a finger. “Finishing that thought might make you happy in the short term, but keeping it to yourself will make you not get punched in the mouth in the long term.” I smiled as sweetly as a woman with my kinds of scars could. “A simple pleasure, sir, but a lasting one.”
Ralp glanced me over again, rubbed his mouth thoughtfully, and bobbed his head. “Yeah, I’d say you’re right about that.”
“But I do have something just as good.” I tossed another three knuckles onto the bar. As he reached for them, I slammed something else in front of him. “That is, assuming you can make me happy.”
I unfolded the paper, slid it over. Scrawled in ink across its yellow surface was a leering mask of an opera actor upon a head full of wild hair, tastefully framed in a black box with a very large sum written beneath it and the words DEATH WARRANT above it.
“Son of a bitch!” Ralp’s eyebrows rose, along with his voice. “You’re looking for that son of a bitch?”
I held a finger to my lips, glanced out the corner of my eye. The youths hadn’t seemed to notice that particular outburst, their eyes still on their bottle.
“He has a name,” I said. “Daiga the Phantom. What do you know about him?”
When you’re in my line of work, you start to read faces pretty well. You can tell who the liars are just by looking at them. And I could tell by the wrinkles around Ralp’s eyes and mouth that he was used to smiling big and wide. Which meant he had to have told a few lies in his day, probably most of them to himself.
That didn’t make him good at it.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’ve heard the name, but nothing else.”
“Nothing else?”
“I know whatever they’re offering for his death can’t be worth what he can do.” Ralp looked at me pointedly.
I looked back. And I, just as pointedly, pulled my cloak aside to reveal the hilt of the sword at my hip.
“He has something I want,” I replied.
“Hope you find someone else who can find it.” He searched for something to busy his hands, eventually settling on one of the many dirty glasses and began to polish it. “I don’t know anything of mages, let alone Vagrants like that… man. They’re funny stories you tell around the bar. I haven’t had enough customers for that in a long time.” He sniffed. “Truth is, madam, I don’t know that I’d even notice if someone like that showed up around here.”
“Birdshit.” I leaned in even closer, hissing through my teeth, “I’ve been here three days and the most exciting thing I’ve seen was an old man accusing his wine bottle of lechery.”
“He has a condition—”
“And before I came in here, I glanced around back and saw your shipment.” I narrowed my eyes. “Lot of crates of wine for a man with no customers. Where are you sending them?”
Ralp stared at the bar. “I don’t know. But if you don’t get out, I’ll call the peacekeepers and—”
“Ralp,” I said, frowning. “I’m going to be sad if you make me hurt you over lies this pathetic.”
“I said I don’t know,” he muttered. “Someone else picks them up.”
“Who? What’s Daiga using them for?”
“I don’t know any of that, either. I try to know as little as fucking possible about that freak or any other freak like him.” All pretenses gone, there was real fear in his eyes. “I don’t make it my business to know anything about no mage, Vagrant or otherwise. It’s not
healthy.”
“But you’ll take his metal all the same, I see.”
“I took your metal, too. The rest of the Scar might be flush with gold, but Rin’s Sump is dry as six-day-old birdshit. If a Vagrant gives me money for not asking questions, I’m all too fucking happy to do it.”
“Yeah?”
I pulled the other side of my cloak back, revealing another hilt of a very different weapon. Carved wood, black and shiny as sin, not so much as a splinter out of place. Brass glimmered like it just wanted me to take it out and show it off.
At my hip, I could feel the gun burning, begging to be unleashed.
“As it turns out, asking questions makes me unhappy, too, Ralp. What do you suppose we do about that?”
Sweat appeared on Ralp’s brow. He licked his lips, looked wild-eyed at my piece before he looked right back into the ugliest grin I could manage.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t feel particularly great about doing something as pedestrian as flashing a gun. It feels so terribly dramatic, and not in the good way. But you must believe me: I was expecting this to go smoothly. I hadn’t prepared anything cleverer at the time. And, if I’m honest, this particular gun makes one hell of a statement.
I certainly wasn’t going to feel bad about this.
Behind me, I could hear a hammer click. Cold metal pressed against the back of my neck.
“I got some ideas,” someone grunted.
Now this I might feel bad about.
Ralp backed away from the bar—though not before he scooped up the knuckles I left there, the shit—and scampered away to a back room. I let my hands lie flat on the table, my body still as a statue as I stood there.
“The Phantom doesn’t like people asking about him.” Male voice. Young. I could tell that even without him prodding me with the weapon like it was something else. “Thinks it’s terrible rude. I happen to agree with him.”
“As do I,” I replied, keeping my voice soft. “I must seem even more rude right now, keeping my back to you.” I spoke slowly, calmly. “I’m going to turn around and face you.”
“N-no!” His voice cracked a little. “Don’t do that.”
I was already doing it, though. I kept my eyes open, my lips pursed, my face the very picture of serenity as I pushed the scarf back over my head.
Not that I felt serene, mind you. My heart was hammering my ribs at that moment—you never get too used to having a gun jammed in your face, no matter how many times it happens. But it had happened enough times that I had learned a few things: I could tell a shaky hand by the feel of a barrel against my head; I could tell how far back a hammer was pulled by the sound.
And I knew that, if someone was intent on killing you, you damn well better make them look you in the eye while they do it.
When I turned around, I recognized the youth from the table—some soft-faced, wide-eyed punk with a mess of hair and a cluster of acne on his cheeks. He had a hand cannon leveled at my face. The other boy and the girl stood behind him, holding a pair of autobows and pretending to know how to use them.
Good weapons—too good for this hole masquerading as a township. It was unheard of to even see a weapon using severium this far away from a major city. But good weapons didn’t make good fighters. I saw their eyes darting nervously around, their hands quivering, too small to hold steel that heavy.
“You’re young,” I observed.
“Yeah? What of it?” the kid asked.
“Too soft to be working for a Vagrant,” I said. “Daiga must be desperate.”
“The Phantom’s not desperate!” He tried to sound convincing, but the crack in his voice was anything but. “He’s just on the run. He’s going to get out of this shithole soon enough and take us with him when he does.”
“Yeah,” the girl growled from behind him. “He’s going to show us magic, teach us how to be mages like him. We already hit an Imperial caravan with him! Scored a haul like—”
“I’m sure he was very impressed.” I kept my eyes locked firmly on those of the kid in front of me, pointedly looking past the barrel. “Why else would he have given you the very important task of picking up his wine?”
“Shut up!” the kid all but screeched. “Shut your fucking mouth! The Phantom—”
“Daiga,” I corrected.
“The Phantom said to kill anyone who came asking after him, any Imperial or… or… Revolutionary or…”
“Child,” I said. “I’m no Imperial, no Revolutionary. Daiga’s no hero who can get you out of here.” I stared into his eyes, forced myself not to blink. “And you’re no killer.”
His hands shook a little. Arm was getting tired. He held the hand cannon up higher to compensate.
“You’ve got a shit deal here,” I said. “I know. But pulling that trigger isn’t going to make it better.” I took a breath. “Put it down.”
Second thing you do to see what a man is made of, you put a weapon in his hands.
If he’s got any sense, he’ll put it right back down. If you’re fresh out of luck, he’ll hold it as tenderly as he would hold his wife. But as much as I don’t believe in luck, I believe in sensible people even less, so most of the time you get people like this kid: scared, powerless, thinking a piece of metal that makes loud noises will make anything different.
So when he realized it wouldn’t, when his arm dipped just a little, I knew I had this.
I grabbed him by the wrist, pushed the cannon away, and twisted his arm behind his back in one swift movement. He screamed as I pulled him close against me, circled my other arm around his neck, and looked over his shoulder at his friends. They hadn’t even raised their autobows before they realized what I had done.
“Listen up,” I snarled. “You want to put holes in your friend, you pull the triggers right now. You want everyone to come out of this alive, you put those things down and tell me where Daiga’s hiding out.”
I watched them intently, waiting for them to realize the shit they were in, waiting for them to drop their gazes, then their weapons.
Only, they didn’t.
They looked nervously at each other, saw the fear in each other’s eyes, fed off it. They raised their weapons, pointed them at me, fingers on the triggers. They took aim like they thought they wouldn’t hit their friend.
And that’s when I knew this whole thing had just gone to shit.
I shoved the kid out of the way just as I heard the air go alive with the screaming of autobows. Tiny motors whirred as they cried out, bolts flying from thrumming strings. Their shots went wide, missing both of us. I leapt behind the bar, ducked beneath it.
I heard wood splinter as they fired, bolt after bolt, into the wood, like they hoped the bar would just disintegrate if they poured enough metal into it. Sooner or later, they’d run out of ammunition, but I couldn’t wait for that.
Especially not once I heard the hand cannon go off.
A colossal flash of fire lit up the room. The ancient reek of severium smoke filled the air. And a gaping hole was now where half a bar had once been.
I pulled my scarf low against a shower of smoking splinters raining over me. He held a primate’s weapon—those things were just as likely to explode as fire—but it made a lot of noise and did a lot of damage, so I imagined he didn’t give a shit.
Besides, as I heard him reloading, I came to the same realization that he no doubt had.
He only needed to hit once. And I only had half a bar left to hide behind.
I pulled my gun free from its holster and it greeted me, all bright and shiny and eager to please. It burned warm, a seething joy coursing through my glove and into my palm. His bright brass barrel, carved like a dragon’s mouth, grinned at me as if to ask what fun thing we were about to do.
I hate to disappoint him.
Another hand went into the bag at my hip. The shells met my fingers. Across each of their cases, engraved in the silver, I could feel the writing. I ran my hands over each one, mouthing the letters as I did.
I pulled it out, flipped the gun’s chamber open, slid the Discordance shell in. I drew the hammer back, counted to three, then rose up behind the bar.
And, for the briefest of moments, I saw the look on the kid’s face. I’ve seen it a thousand times before and it never gets old. Eyes go wide, mouth goes slack as they stare down the barrel of my gun and, with numb lips, whisper the same word.
They knew his name.
I didn’t aim; with Discordance, you don’t have to. I pulled the trigger, laid the shot right beneath their feet. The bullet streaked out. An instant later, it hit the wood. And an instant after that?
Well, I guess I ruined Ralp’s bar.
The spell kicked in as soon as metal hit wood. There was a flash of bright light. Then the air swelled and tore itself apart as a noise so loud it took on a rippling, shimmering shape exploded out into a sphere.
The kids were hurled aside. They flew like they had wings, tumbling through the air along with the shattered floorboards and chairs. Their screams would be drowned out by the spell if they had any breath left to make them. The girl struck the railing to the stairs and tumbled down them bonelessly. The boy skidded across the tables before coming to a halt against the wall.
When I hopped over the bar, I surveyed the wreckage. Tables were shattered, chairs were splintered, and where the bullet had struck, the floorboards had been torn up and the earth had been carved into a perfectly smooth bowl.
Discordance is a hell of a spell: not lethal, but hurts enough that you might wish it were. Imperials used to use it to suppress riots in the colonies before the riots became revolutions and nonlethal spells weren’t cutting it.
I found the kid lying next to the door, breathing shallowly. I glanced at his friends long enough to make sure they were, too. Might have been stupid to leave them like that, but I won’t have it said that I was so stupid I couldn’t think of a way to stop a bunch of punks without killing them.
Of course, they didn’t need to know that, did they?
I grabbed the kid by the lapel of his coat, slammed him against the wall, put my big, grinning gun in his face.
