by Sam Sykes
“Ten knuckles. And a femur. Minimum.”
“TEN?” That icy composure didn’t so much melt as explode into a thousand shards. His eyes bulged out and he almost choked on his mustache. “You killed a Vagrant, not raised the damned dead! To demand that much weight in metal is… is…”
“Sir?”
One of his guards—the tall man with the nice face—leaned forward, trying to whisper. But he had a voice unused to meekness and I heard him clearly.
“The Phantom was a considerable hindrance to our efforts here in the region. There was criticism from High Command regarding our handling of him. And he might have even been associated with Stark’s—”
Courageous turned his scowl toward the guard, who immediately cleared his throat and fell back into line, looking straight ahead.
“If the price is too steep”—I hummed thoughtfully—“I can always go see how much the Imperium will pay for it. There’s an agent to the Empress right here in town, in fact.”
Men with jobs, likewise, have people they answer to. And those people tend to have neither ethics, nor jobs, but an awful lot of pride that tends to get wounded by, say, losing a prize to their hated enemies due to thriftiness.
Hence why, after one minute, Courageous was looking at me like he would skip the noose and strangle me outright and why, after five, I walked out of his Cadre with a pocketful of metal.
There’s a hundred ways in which the Scar lives up to its name, but my favorite is this one.
The Imperium on the East and the Revolution on the West are the fingers that squeeze it until it bursts wide open. And the blood that comes gushing out is the freeholds.
Cities ostensibly named for the fact that they pledge loyalty to no factional power, they first started out as hideouts for bandits, murderers, and other scum who saw the Scar as a place to run away or a place to plunder. Eventually, that scum found trade and investment to be more profitable than robbery and slavery and wound up establishing some semblance of order. The laws vary from freehold to freehold, of course, depending on which baron is running the place, but the universal law between them is that they hold the Imperium and the Revolution in equal contempt.
Not that this deters business with either of them, of course. Freeholds still allow Cadre Commands and Imperial agencies to operate inside their walls, as a gesture of goodwill with a very expensive price tag. Sometimes, that’s not enough and one power or another will send in a small army to take it over. In most freeholds, the citizens divide their time between work, sleep, and worrying themselves stupid over which power is going to come kill them in the night.
Most freeholds, though, aren’t Lowstaff.
The first thing that hit me when I walked out into the city streets—other than a blast of hot air courtesy of the afternoon sun—was a face full of dust from a passing carriage. The draft bird hauling the load squawked angrily at me, the driver adding a colorful insult in agreement, as they rumbled up the road. The dusty citizens of Lowstaff—the laborers, the draftsmen, the peacekeepers, the mothers, and the children they couldn’t be bothered to keep an eye on—got out of the way more by instinct than by attentiveness. Each of them was involved in their own personal world of shit, not the slightest regard or thought for their fellow human beings. Not a one of them even looked up, let alone looked at the people walking around them. To live in Lowstaff was to spare only enough attention for your fellow man to hate him for a few precious seconds before you got back to ignoring him.
In short, my kind of town.
I pulled my scarf a little tighter around my face and set off down the dusty streets.
Lowstaff was just wealthy enough to be attractive to bandits and so was just wealthy enough for high walls to keep them out. Things like paved streets, stone buildings, or cleaning up the loafs of bird shit left lying around, they had too little money and too few fucks to remedy. The nicest building in town was the Cadre Command’s cold, stone bunker ringed with barbed wire and patrolled by stone-faced guards.
The money in my pocket wouldn’t be enough to draw the attention of people in a nicer city. But in Lowstaff, I had an urge to get on with my business before anyone started thinking the kind of problems they could solve with this metal outweighed the kind of problems they’d get by fucking with me.
“Madam! Madam!”
But it seemed I was too damn slow for that.
“Miss! Hey! Wait up!”
Footsteps followed as someone hurried to catch up to me. He ran past me, put himself in my way. And before I knew it, I was looking up at the guard from Courageous’s office—the tall one—standing in front of me.
In the dim light of the command room, he had looked like just another zealous goon in a nice coat. But in the cold light of day, he looked like a zealous goon in a rather shabby coat.
Not that he wasn’t handsome, in his own way; he had a strong jaw, graceful arches to his eyebrows, and his eyes weren’t too close together. The scar on his cheek and the way his crooked grin matched his crooked nose couldn’t hide his youthful looks. But it was his weapons that caught my eye—the short sword at his belt, the gunpike over his shoulder. They sat awkwardly on him, weight his body twitched with anticipation of shedding.
I can’t say exactly why that put me ill at ease.
“Madam Cacophony,” he began.
“My friends call me Sal.” I squinted at him for a moment. “I suppose you can, too.”
“Sal.” He shot me a grin too nice for a soldier. “I just wanted to extend my thanks to you for managing the Phantom for us. We used to have a medal for Exemplary Outside Duty, but—”
I pointedly jingled my pouch. “I prefer this metal, thanks.”
“No, I mean, really thank you,” he said, his voice growing uncomfortably genuine. “I know a lot of Vagrants are vile—” He caught himself. “I mean, no offense.”
I smiled at him in that polite “I’m screaming inside” way.
“But the Phantom was a problem for us. He slew at least ten of my comrades. Good men and women who gave their lives for the Revolution. Not to mention all the civilians he robbed and defiled. I just…” An exasperated joy spread across his face. “Thanks. Thank you for doing that.”
And just like that, I knew what I didn’t like about him.
They called themselves by different names. They called themselves a force to oppose the decadence of the Imperium and to bring freedom and glory to those poor nuls the Empress had crushed beneath her heel. But the Revolution was still just one more army filled with men like this one standing before me.
With their bright smiles and their eyes that lit up in such a way that made you think they actually believed in what they were doing, that they actually believed that the world could be made a better place.
And if you looked too long into the eyes of men like these, you might start believing it, too.
I knew a man like that, once.
“Sure.” I pulled my scarf down to avoid his eyes. “I’m always happy when killing benefits someone.”
“Cavric.” He fumbled with his hands, unsure as to whether to offer to shake mine or salute. Eventually, he settled on the former, thrusting it out. “Cavric Proud, madam. Low Sergeant of the Glorious Revolution of the Fist and Flame.”
“Cavric.” I took his hand. It was strong, warm. “A pleasure.”
“The pleasure is all mine, madam.”
I think if he knew what kind of hell his life was going to be after meeting me, he probably wouldn’t have said that.
“I should get back. Staff Sergeant doesn’t like Vagrants, let alone us talking to them.” He grinned, fired off a quick salute. “Keep up the good work!”
I watched him run back to command and I couldn’t help but grin. It was just like a man like that to use the words Vagrant and good work in the same thought. Vagrants didn’t do good work. We robbed, we cheated, we looted, and we murdered. And sometimes, we did that to each other instead of some poor, undeserving civilian. Occasionally, t
he world was better off for one of us killing another, but no one intelligent was ever happy to see a Vagrant.
I’ve heard the superstitions about us. A Vagrant looks at a pregnant woman and her baby dies at the age of two. Chickens lay black poisonous eggs if a Vagrant visits the farm. The blood of Vagrants will water a tree that will grow screaming heads.
That one’s my favorite.
There are others, but the end result is that most Vagrants showing up where you live will ruin your day.
Not me, of course.
A girl like me tends to ruin your whole week.
SEVEN
LOWSTAFF
You’re probably wondering why anyone would choose to live in a freehold, let alone try to make a life for themselves here. The Scar’s a harsh place—harsher still if you’re not afforded the protection of the Imperium or the Revolution. In fact, usually one or both of them is looking to either burn your home down or plant their flag on it. And that’s to say nothing of the beasts, bandits, clansmen, and of course, Vagrants.
So why set up shop in a place like the Scar?
Same reason anyone does anything stupid: sex or money.
Of course, sex isn’t any better in the Scar than somewhere more civilized, but there were a number of economic advantages to setting up shop in a freehold. Taxes were cheap, for one; there were no Revolutionaries to confiscate and redistribute your profits in the name of equality, nor Imperials to fine you for looking at a mage in a way he didn’t like. Like everything in the Scar, if you could make it, you could keep it.
Assuming someone like me didn’t come and take it anyway.
Which is why I found myself, in a darkened little corner of Lowstaff, standing beneath a sign with an elegant flower twisted around the words BLACK LILY APOTHECARY: TINCTURES, RESTORATIVES & ELIXIRS, pounding on a door no one was answering.
“Come on, come on!” I shouted. “I know you’re fucking in there.”
Really, I didn’t mean to sound as mad as I did. Frankly, if I knew I was on the other side of the door, I probably wouldn’t open up, either.
But I had business that day.
I glanced around the little corner and, satisfied that no one was coming out to see what all the noise was about, I took ten steps away from the door and aimed myself at the window. I took a running leap at it, my fingers catching the sill, my feet braced against the wall. Fiddling with the lock would be pointless—I knew who had made it—so I whispered an apology before smashing a window with the hilt of my sword. A quick reach later, I had it open and was pulling myself inside.
I didn’t feel good about that. Or about putting my dirty boots down on a nice velvet rug. Or about the whole forced entry thing. But I knew the proprietor—she wouldn’t hold it against me.
After all, this wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever done to her.
The floor and walls inside the shop looked to be made of the same high-polish red wood, though it was hard to tell. Every inch of floor was covered with plush carpeting. Every inch of wall was dominated by shelves. And upon them were all the neatly organized amenities you’d expect an apothecary to have: vials of elixirs, pots of balm, jars of dried herbs, all rigidly labeled by price and ingredient and jars polished to a shine. It was the sort of interior expertly maintained to make the very forceful suggestion that people who looked—and smelled—like me ought to stay out.
But by now, you should know how good I am with following suggestions.
The door was locked and barred with two latches, in case I needed any more idea that I shouldn’t be there. The counter was rife with scales, powders, and other such amenities, but no one was standing behind it. I made my way around, careful not to disturb anything.
On the other side of the counter, I shoved a heavy chair out of the way before peeling up the rug and casting it aside. A wooden floor, completely unremarkable, greeted me. And I would have sworn I was looking at just a floor if I didn’t know the person who had built it.
She always did love her secrets.
I ran my hands along the wood until I found it, almost by accident. My fingernail caught the barest edge of a latch so hidden and small I could only fit two fingers under it. I groaned with the effort of prying it up, but the trapdoor itself was silent as the grave. A fitting match for the staircase underneath, dark as night as it slithered its way into a hollow beneath the shop.
I double-checked my satchel—still heavy, nothing broken, nothing leaking—and took in a deep breath before descending. My nerves were dancing like they should have when I faced Daiga. What awaited me down here, I knew was worse.
The darkness smothered me, so thick I tripped when the stairs gave out after about ten feet and turned into a straight tunnel. I felt for the left wall, pressed myself against it, and began to scoot myself down the tunnel.
I suppose if you could have seen, my face pressed against cold stone, scooting inch by inch down the corridor, you might have thought I looked pretty stupid. But you weren’t in my head, trying to remember how high that trip wire that triggered a deadfall was, hoping the trapdoor wasn’t any wider than the last time I was here, wondering if the last pressure plate trap at the end shot fire, spiders, or both.
Also, it was dark as hell, so you couldn’t have seen me in the first place, so fuck off.
After twenty feet of picking, pressing, and praying, I saw the faintest glow at the end of the tunnel. A black square illuminated by a border of yellow light. I found a handle in the darkness, satisfied that I had put every trap behind me.
I gave a quick pull.
I heard a loud click!
And that’s when I remembered the saw.
A flash of silver whispered through the darkness. The shriek of metal hit my ears. And not that I was thrilled about falling back on my ass, but I damn sure preferred it to being bisected by the spinning blade that came screaming out of the edge of the wall. I ducked low, letting it swing over me for what felt like an eternity, before it skulked back into the wall with a squeaky mutter, disappointed that it hadn’t done its one job.
I crawled back to my feet. I pushed the door open. And by the dim glow of an alchemical light, I saw what was so worth protecting.
The air was stifling and thick with fumes. Beakers and vials boiled over blue-flamed burners, noxious mixtures distilling and churning out vapor of purple and green. Workbenches lined the walls; whatever wasn’t laden with alchemical apparatus instead held various pieces of machinery—not dissimilar to the one that had just tried to kill me.
Racks of weapons fit in every spot not dominated by tools or beakers. Gunpikes, pistols, blades—some of which had purposes I couldn’t tell, aside from killing people messily—stood on racks, in crates, wrapped in bundles. And every inch of metal, wood, or stone exposed was covered in faintly glowing script in a language no one had spoken for centuries. Illuminated by the blue light of an alchemical candle that hadn’t sputtered out in six years, the room was a workshop, an armory, and an explosion waiting to happen, all in one.
You could be forgiven for not noticing the girl standing at the center of it all. Hell, I didn’t.
Not until the hand cannon was in my face anyway.
I stared down its snub-nosed barrel, down to the pair of pale hands holding it. Over the sights, a pair of dark brown eyes rendered into a huge, wary stare behind a pair of gigantic glasses looked back at me. Locks of black hair fell out of a messy bun, quillpens stuck in it, to frame a pretty face locked in a tight-lipped grimace. Her face contorted at the sight of me, hands shaking along with her scowl as she aimed the gun at my heart.
Waiting for a reason.
I stared into those eyes—without blinking, without speaking—as I took a step forward. Through the fabric of my shirt, I could feel the metal of the barrel against my chest.
I raised a hand and slowly rested it upon hers. Her fingers warm and shaking under mine, I pulled one of them away from the trigger and set it alongside the barrel.
“Like this,” I said. �
�You don’t pull the trigger with both fingers.”
She blinked, perplexity plain across her face and growing as I straightened out her arms.
“Arms straight. And feet planted.” My hands slid down to her waist and tugged down, planting her feet on the floor. “Shoulder width. Make a foundation to fire from.” I clicked my tongue and pushed her hips back slightly. “And bend at the waist, for fuck’s sake. Stick your ass out a little.”
Perplexity turned to offense as she opened her mouth to protest. I, however, spoke first.
“And crucially, don’t point at anything you don’t intend to shoot. And don’t shoot anything you don’t intend to kill.” I met her stare again. “Do you intend to shoot?”
And she met mine. Her eyes rent large as they were behind her glasses, I could see resentment battle reluctance behind her stare, with anger sitting on the sidelines to fight whichever won. A long moment passed and I wondered if she’d actually do it.
I wouldn’t have blamed her.
But eventually, she lowered the weapon. Her body shrank from an already petite frame to downright tiny as she set it back on the table. And over her shoulder, she shot me a scowl.
“You’d just leave a huge mess to clean up,” she replied through a quill-sharp voice. “You always do.”
You might have thought it odd that the prospect of cleaning up a mess was all that spared my life.
But then, you probably didn’t know that many Freemakers.
“If you want a clean shot, you need to work on your stance,” I replied as she stalked back to her workbench. “I’ve told you a thousand times to stick your ass out.”
“And I have clarified on as many occasions that my posterior is not a concern of yours at this particular moment in time.” She took a seat on a stool and plucked up a quill, returning to her work of inscribing a short dagger with the same script that dotted everything else in her workshop. “Given that yours is in my workshop, though, I must request that you remove it, posthaste. Otherwise, I will have to ask that you wait for me to change into boots that I might introduce it to.”
