A Crown for Cold Silver Read online

  “I bet it does,” said Zosia, slowing her pace even more. The paths through the fields extended like spokes from the five-sided temple they were approaching, a pearlescent stone shrine that seemed to mute the air around it, to dim even the sunlight. She had gazed into the Gates on three different parts of the Star, but had never before approached the Immaculate one. As always, she began to feel the tug in her very blood, felt the hairs on her arms all stretching toward it… “Betrothed?”

  “I didn’t mention she is engaged to Empress Ryuki’s second son?” said Kang-ho. “Keun-ju, Bang, you two wait here while Mistress Clell and I continue our discussion a bit closer to the temple.”

  “Whatever you say, sir,” said Bang, planting her spear and leaning against it while Keun-ju wiped under his veil with a puffy sleeve.

  “Prince Byeong-gu, Ji-hyeon’s husband-to-be, is beside himself,” said Kang-ho when they had moved off a distance. “Our house is not the only one wearing white these past few months. It’s why we haven’t sent anyone else to search for her; Ji-hyeon’s intended has already ordered a dozen soldiers through the Gate after them, and has personally sailed south to hunt for her in the Empire.”

  “He sent people through the Gate?” Zosia shuddered. Spooky goddamn Immaculates. “Let me guess, they never came back.”

  “This was shortly after Fennec and Choi carried Ji-hyeon through it, so if the soldiers all emerged somewhere else on the Star it might take them this long to send word home, either by land or sea.” Kang-ho was clearly trying a little too hard to sell himself on the possibility.

  “Or they’re all floating at the bottom of the ocean with the rest of the Sunken Kingdom,” said Zosia. “Oooh, or maybe they’re off with the people of Emeritus, wherever those poor fuckers ended up, or some worse hell yet. You ever hear of anyone actually using one of these things successfully?”

  “I know Fennec wouldn’t jump into one if he thought there was the slightest risk to his person, not when he could just make a break for it in a boat.” Kang-ho almost sounded sure of it. “They came here with purpose, not as a last resort. Which means Fennec knows how to use them.”

  “Or thinks he does, anyway,” said Zosia, eyeing the temple. Devils below, but it was a cold sight, to contemplate the darkness beyond those mighty doors. There were Royal Guards positioned at each of the structure’s five corners, which Kang-ho had told her was a new addition following Ji-hyeon’s abduction. Before, any dotty Immaculate with the fancy could stroll right up and let themselves inside… and never be seen again on this world. But what if Fennec really had found the method to using the Gates to travel across the Star, stepping into this one and emerging from another a thousand miles away, just like the legends told? “I wonder if Fleshnester had something to do with it.”

  “I thought about that,” said Kang-ho. “In all the time Fennec was with us I never saw his devil, so I assumed he’d let her go long before he came to me for sanctuary. Of course, a fly can hide anywhere, so maybe he still had her… But why waste such a precious thing as a devil’s boon on using the Gate when you could flee by boat, save your devil for an emergency?”

  “That’s it,” said Zosia, sure of it—not a bad play, Fennec, not bad at all. “Why free a devil for a one-way trip across the Star when you could make it teach you the art of doing it yourself? I’ll bet he loosed it in exchange for the secret of using the Gates.”

  “You think they have such power to give?” Kang-ho looked dubiously at Choplicker, who had trotted ahead and taken a seat in the dust, staring at the temple.

  “Never know until you ask, eh?” A wince at that, wondering what she’d done wrong when she’d tried to free her own devil, and for such a smaller wish… “Couldn’t help but notice Fellwing hasn’t made an appearance; don’t tell me you let yours go for a never-ending pipe bowl, or a night with some radiant beauty? I’ve heard they can insert a notion so deeply into a person’s skull they never suspect the idea wasn’t their own—is that how you caught such a fine husband, by making him think he wanted you?”

  “I loosed her years ago, as soon as you loosed me, and for nothing at all,” said Kang-ho, but either he’d grown worse at lying over the years or Zosia’s long absence from the subtle whiff of bullshit had better attuned her to its bouquet. “It is wrong to bind them, and wrong to wish upon a devil’s freedom. If you seek to traffic with such powers, you should do so with mutual exchange, not torture and bondage.”

  “That right?” said Zosia, wondering if Kang-ho wasn’t on to something. Maybe she had gone about it all wrong, maybe it was all her fault Choplicker hadn’t accepted her offer. Maybe, but probably not—he was just a monster, same as any devil. “You always were a bit squeamish about them, even that owlbat of yours.”

  “She was never mine,” said Kang-ho, still watching Choplicker. “We just walked the same road for a while.”

  “Yeah, well, poetic as that is, me and Choplicker have a slightly different arrangement. He doesn’t do what I say, and I don’t do what he wants,” said Zosia, watching her devil carefully. He didn’t turn away from the temple when she said his name, but that only made her more certain he was eavesdropping. “Say for the moment I don’t assume you set this up with Fennec as some sort of scam you’re running on your husband and the Immaculate royal family—”

  Kang-ho seized her coat and got in her face, eyes bulging, cheeks red, arm cocked back as he hissed, “Suggest it again, Zosia, and I’ll toss you through that fucking Gate! I swear on the devils we freed, I’ll do it!”

  “Cool it, old man,” said Zosia, slapping him lightly on the forehead as she jerked her sleeve free of his fist. “I said I wasn’t assuming, didn’t I? And since I’m not, what do you think Fennec’s angle is? A payout from your kid’s fiancé is obvious, with her marrying into royalty. If this Prince Byeong guy—”

  “Byeong-gu.”

  “Yeah, him—if he received ransom demands, you think he’d tell you? Or would he try to handle it on his own? Maybe by going after the kidnappers instead of paying them off?”

  “Why would he do such a thing?” asked Kang-ho, a little calmer, but not much.

  “Shit, I don’t know—honor, maybe?” Zosia shrugged.

  “I don’t think the prince is familiar with the word,” said Kang-ho. “If the royal family had received demands for Ji-hyeon’s safe return, they would have contacted us at once, if only to politely suggest we pay part of the ransom.”

  “Well, maybe the plan was to kidnap your kid and ransom her back, but something went wrong, so they never got in touch,” said Zosia, realizing the dark implications of her words only after they’d left her mouth. Nothing new there.

  “Something like they jumped into a fucking Gate and are gone forever,” said Kang-ho heavily. “The possibility has not eluded anyone.”

  “Well, say it’s not as bad as all that. Other than the obvious ransom, why would Fennec abduct your daughter?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Zosia, and that’s what frightens me.” Kang-ho shoved his hands in his sleeves and looked heavenward. If he was peeking for portents, the encroaching rainclouds couldn’t have been a great omen. “Ji-hyeon is… she’s a special girl. Her sisters are equally loved, truly, but for better or worse I see myself most reflected in my middle child. Perhaps Fennec is working for one of my trading rivals, an Immaculate house that would not see the Bongs connected with the royal family. Or perhaps this is long-simmering revenge from Samoth for all my old sins, same as the attack on your village. Or perhaps Fennec seeks to cause me trouble for his own end. You know him better than I; what do you think he might want from all of this?”

  “I aim to find out,” said Zosia, looking back to the temple doors. To be able to strut right through there, into what realm only the devils knew, and come out from any one of the other five Gates, in the Raniputri Dominions or Flintland or even in Diadem itself, a knife’s throw from the castle where Zosia’s revenge patiently awaited her attention… Could there be a greater gift fro
m the devils than the use of their Gates? If Fennec’s devil had unlocked the way for him to travel with several companions, then surely turning Choplicker loose would grant her the means to bring an entire war party through—what defense could be mustered if an army appeared in the heart of Samoth’s capital? She wouldn’t need to raise much of a force at all, if instead of campaigns and sieges she could sack the Crimson Empire with a single attack, the work of one bloody night…

  Choplicker gave a happy bark and scrambled to his paws, finally turning away from the temple. He trotted back to her, wagging his tail, excitedly nuzzling at her hand with his heavy, slobbery muzzle. She snapped the drool off her digits, wiped them on her coat sleeve. “Now why would I do a thing like that, when I can just find Fennec and make him do it for me?”

  “What?” asked Kang-ho, but neither Zosia nor Choplicker responded, both turning their backs on the Temple of Pentacles and returning to the harbor. Wherever she had gotten to, it was obvious this princess wasn’t going to find herself.

  CHAPTER

  16

  After the Battle of the Extended Pinky, as the fops took to calling it, Maroto unexpectedly found himself all but adopted by the noblesse. It wasn’t that he had beat some much-needed sense into them, for they seemed silly as ever, if not more so. It wasn’t that he had stood up to them, because really, who needs a presumptuous servant? It wasn’t even that he had saved the day when, midway through their passage on the Desperate Road, the party had run afoul of the leper-monks who kept the Shrine of the Hungry Sands, because all Maroto had done there was holler at them to run for it, which they’d already been doing anyway. No, it seemed to be entirely the effect of his having provided them with dearly desired entertainment, and at last a story with which to impress their friends back home: they had stood against Captain Maroto, the Fifth Villain himself, fought him in brutal combat, and lived to tell the tale.

  Fine and good for those who had escaped the brunt of his blows by fleeing to a wagon or faking a concussion, but Maroto had expected Count Hassan, if no one else, to hold a grudge on account of his broken nose. Then there was Duchess Din’s torn earlobe, the result of Maroto ripping out the thick turquoise plug that had graced it. Yet if anything, the fops he had been the hardest on were the friendliest, something he could not for the life of him fathom until Tapai Purna clued him in while they rode together on the satin-padded bench of her pleasure wagon. Maroto drove, his massive sandals crowding the footboard beside her dainty shoes.

  “Scars, barbarian, scars.” She sounded jealous as she prodded her mostly faded black eye, winced. “You’ve given them treasures they could never purchase, not with all their wealth or station.”

  “See, you’re wrong there,” burped Maroto, passing her the fen-brandy decanter they shared, their wagon leading the caravan through what ought to be their last sweltering night on the Desperate Road. “For the right kind of dosh, I’ll give you scars a lot more impressive.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same, though,” said Purna dolefully. “Anyone can pay a barbarian to rough them up, but you’re not just any thug, and you weren’t doing it for coin. You were really giving it everything you had, fighting us for all you were worth. That’s what makes their wounds special.”

  Maroto nearly coughed on his bognac, but thought better of correcting her. He shuddered to think of how different the aftermath would have played out had he put just a wee bit more effort into it. He was glad he hadn’t. Far as fops went, this lot weren’t as bad as some, not by half. He’d actually started to feel bad about encouraging them to take this road, especially considering what had happened to Pasha Diggelby and his guards in the Shrine of the Hungry Sands. That the pasha himself had escaped that situation physically unscathed Maroto was counting as a big win, despite the fate of the lad’s would-be protectors. There was no helping it, though; if the rumor was true and Zosia lived, there wasn’t a day to lose by taking the long way ’round…

  “You did all right,” he said, feeling more charitable than he had in… years, really. “The rest never would’ve got a toehold, you hadn’t bumped me at the get-go, opened it up for them. And with that godguana before, too, and then again when we got into it with those lepers at the temple over the importance of novices actually wanting to convert. Didn’t take any of you pansies for being worth a kitten’s claw in a tiger fight, but you’ve proved me wrong. I’ll fess to that.”

  Purna vibrated from more than the rough road rocking the springs under their bench. He hadn’t meant to do more than pay her what she was owed, but doubted he could have puffed her up more if he’d been trying. Soon as it came, though, she played it off, setting her empty snifter into a gold wire holder built into the riding bench and taking a snort straight from the decanter the way he did. Then she started talking weak again. Kids.

  “You’re better than I expected, too. It was my idea, you know, to hire you for the expedition. Everyone else said you were washed up, even if you’d been hard way back when, long, long ago. And for the first week we were out here I started to wonder if they were right, if you were gone to seed. If you’d ever done half the things they sing about.”

  Ouch. Fair, but ouch.

  “I was wrong, I, um, fess to that. I do fess it.” Purna let him take the decanter back. It got quiet on the box seat, but Maroto was tipsy enough to take the silence as a challenge: he’d been dodging the truth long enough, and what was he doing now, leading these idiots back through the Wastes by the hardest road, risking the leprous shrine-keepers and worse, if not to face the past?

  “Truth is, I probably haven’t done a quarter of what they sing about. The things I did don’t make for good songs.” Now that was playing the viola a little hard, wasn’t it, Maroto? This girl was obviously looking for a role model, and given the company she kept she could do a sight fouler than him, so why piss on her fire? “But some of it was doubtless true… But in all the tales, what’d you hear that made you think hiring me to take you on some grand adventure was a wise investment?”

  “You’re the Fifth Villain!” said Purna. “What tales haven’t I heard? You rode with the Stricken Queen when she was but a bandit chieftain, and from the slag of cutthroats and sellswords you forged an army. You conquered mortals, you conquered monsters, you took on the whole bloody Crimson Empire and seized it for your own. You hunted down devils and bent them to your will, you shook the very pillars of heaven, and—”

  “And blehhhhhhh,” said Maroto, sticking out his tongue and blowing. “Just what I thought, a pack of crap. For one thing, you’ll call Queen Zosia by her name or not at all. For another, she wasn’t a bandit, she was always a—how’d she put it, revolutionary—and the Cobalt Company weren’t no cutthroats. Not all of us, anyway. For a fourth—or third, rather—for a third, we never hunted down no devils. Or I didn’t, anyway, though she sung songs of doing such business all by her lonesome. Fine enough tales at their root, I’ll allow, but Zosia’s singing always sounded like a constipated hound howling for release. Now, the devils, we bent them to our will, as you say, but we didn’t go looking for them—they came to us.”

  It was quiet again on the riding bench, as Maroto fumbled in the breast pocket of his tunic for the pipe he had lost years ago. Old habits to make a man blush. He missed that briar more than he missed his devil. What would this kid think of him if she knew all the awful truths?

  “Go on!” said Purna.

  “Light me a cigar and I will.”

  “You’re such a moocher. Moochroto.”

  “Smart girl like you could do better. But I’ll split your lip if you do.”

  “Promise?” Purna fished out two of the black-skinned Madros monsters she always kept close at hand. As she squirmed around and unhooded the bouncing lantern that hung on a hook above them to light the cigars, she said, “Of all the details, I thought for sure the devils were embellishments.”

  “And why’s that?” said Maroto, removing the syrupy cigar from his lips after one puff and scowling at its
familiar yet unexpected sweetness. The girl’s glossy lip paint, he deduced, all papaya and pineapple and other fruits that would never grow within a thousand miles of this place. Now that he knew the cause, he popped it back in his mouth at once. “Don’t you believe in devils?”

  “Of course I do,” said Purna, trying to blow a ring like he’d taught her to, but this close to the end of the Wastes a blessed bit of breeze finally wafted through the canyons, smearing her smoky hoop as soon as it left her lips. “But they’re nothing more than animals. Rare ones, sure, but just another part of the world—monsters and devils are what people call creatures they don’t have another name for. Only peasants, barbarians, and religious crazies think they’re something more.”

  “You just jammed most of the Star and all of the Empire into three little pots,” said Maroto, inhaling a hit on the cigar and immediately wishing he hadn’t. It burned like a toke of dried centipede, but without any of the menthol numbness as he let it out. “Myself included.”

  “There’s this wonderful new trend going around called ‘education,’ Maroto, I think you might find it interesting,” said Purna, and took advantage of a lull in the gentle wind to blow a grey ring up into the canopy overhanging their seat. “The rest of the Star is catching on to what the Ugrakari and Immaculate have always known—devils aren’t much different from any other animal. Calling them devils and ascribing them an infernal origin is just how scared people explain the unexplainable. Same as gods.”

  “Opinionated and a heretic,” said Maroto, trying and failing to blow a smoke ring of his own. “Knew there was something I liked about you. Let’s get something very clear, Purna, devils are real. I know, because I’ve seen ’em, and they’re not just another variety of critter. As for the Immaculates and how they look at devils, what you’re talking about is a translation issue—they call ’em spirits and say they’re harmless, because they’re pretty much both of those things, most of the time. Immaterial, I mean, and mostly invisible.”