A Crown for Cold Silver Page 17

  “Uh-huh. So how exactly are they dangerous fiends from hell again?”

  Purna’s skepticism had initially annoyed Maroto, but now that he’d gotten used to the brat he kind of liked it, truth be told. It felt strangely rewarding, to be imparting wisdom to an eager youngster. An old regret welled up in his throat; how different would his life have been if he’d gone against the clan and saved his nephew? If he’d stayed with the boy on the battlefield until his dad croaked, and then slung the youngster on his back and booked it out of there? Maybe he would’ve gotten clean a decade and change earlier; hells, without that added guilt pushing him into the stinghouses, maybe he never would’ve gotten so strung out in the first place. Maybe he’d have given that unnamed kid a name, and they’d have had all kinds of times together… But dead was dead, and he ignored the familiar throbbing at the scar tissue girding his heart. He was an old hand at suppressing such things. The key was never to let yourself look back, unless something was actively chasing you. Even then it was usually better not to know how close it was on your arse.

  “Yo, Maroto?” Purna waved her hand in his face. “You in the spirit world or whatever?”

  “Mmmm. What was I saying?”

  “You were arguing about devils and Immaculate translations, I guess, but doing a shit job of it.”

  “There’s this wonderful thing called education, Purna, you should try it.” Clearing his throat in what he presumed was an academic manner, he went on, “So yeah, the Immaculates call devils spirits, on account of their not being real the way you or me are, but we’re all talking about the same monsters. And the thing about devils is that they want to get their touch on, but they can’t… until they possess something real, preferably something alive. The really strong devils can do this on their own, under special circumstances. Not being a fucking diabolist I couldn’t say what those circumstances are. Anyways, when they do possess something, whether it’s an animal or a plant or even a pile of rocks, they can cause all kinds of trouble for us mortals… but taking possession of something can also trap them in our world, make it so they can’t flee back to whichever hell they came from. That’s how binding devils works—if you summon one up from the First Dark you can offer it a living animal to inhabit, and when it takes the bait the poor fucker’s bound to you. It can’t go home until you let it go.”

  Maroto had assumed this would spook her into silence, but no dice. “So you’re saying devils aren’t animals themselves, but are something… intangible, imperceptible, that somehow enters a normal creature, assumes control of its body, and in this body the devil’s free to do as it pleases. That about it?”

  “What I just said, isn’t it? Halfway, anyway. The flesh they wear gives ’em freedom to move about our world, sure, but it’s also their prison: they’re trapped inside whatever animal was available when they were first summoned.”

  Purna withdrew the cigar from her pursed lips and tapped it thoughtfully. “Are you familiar with Raniputri medicine? Plague theory?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Over the years and entanglements, Maroto had been stitched up, smeared with fragrant creams, and even cupped with hot glass bulbs all across the Dominions, but that was beside the point. “Were you even listening?”

  “Diseases can be like that, like your description of a devil. Something invisible that gets inside you, fucks you up from the inside. Affects all your organs, your brain included, but not by accident—by design. It’s intriguing, thinking about pestilence as a living creature, instead of the wrath of the Fallen Mother or the Barrowkings or whatnot. It makes sense, especially if you think about how illnesses spread through communities, and travel from one region to another along trade routes.”

  “You’re close!” said Maroto, remembering all too well Hoartrap’s plague devil, Lungfiller. Not that he’d seen it, of course, except for when they’d first bound the fiends and their true shapes were hinted at, before they entered the mortal vessels the Cobalt Company had prepared for them… “A devil can wriggle its way into something smaller than a butterfly’s eyelash. You know Hoartrap the Touch, the Third Villain from the songs? He had one he kept in a bottle, so small you couldn’t see it, but when he let it out, it brought death, and worse, to anyone who breathed it in. Nastiest of the nasty, that one.”

  “See?” said Purna. “You just proved my point. Devils are just what you call some animal you don’t understand, like a disease. They don’t come from any hells beneath the earth, they don’t have mystical powers, they can’t tell the future, or grant wishes.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Maroto, the charm of illuminating the unenlightened beginning to wear off. He’d seen devils with his own eyes, kept one within reach for over two decades, and this pup thought to talk down to him? “Devils are real, and they’re more powerful than a child like you could even imagine.”

  “And you know because you bound one, right? That’s how the song goes, you hunted it down and—”

  “I told you, we didn’t go looking for them. I’m stupid, not crazy. They came to us. Stalked us from battlefield to battlefield. Feeding.”

  “Like lions following a pack of hyenas, moving in on their kill once the dogs do the work?”

  “Nothing like that,” said Maroto, the booze bubbling in his stomach at the memory. “It wasn’t flesh they ate. It was something else. Pain, anger, sorrow… I’ve heard a lot of theories, but I don’t like to dwell. They didn’t just feed on the dead and the dying, Purna, they fed on us. When we’d won, and settled in to celebrate another victory, they slunk through the shadows and drank their fill from our black hearts. If our warlock hadn’t suspected them, we never would have known they were there. But Hoartrap knew, hells, maybe he summoned them in the first place. But they were invisible, hidden, until we bound them.”

  “How?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Maroto, the cigar turning tarry in his mouth. He would never, ever speak of what had happened the night of the ritual, but even down all these years, what he’d seen—what he’d done—haunted him worse than any devil. How had they ever let Hoartrap talk them into it? Or had it been Zosia who’d first proposed it, another dire gambit by the blue-haired general so ruthless that even her own troops had taken to calling her Cold Cobalt? With everything that had come after, the lead-up to the ritual had largely fallen from memory.

  “So you bound the devils,” said Purna. “Sure, I’ve read plenty about that sort of thing.”

  “Have you?” What if this girl was some amateur demonologist? Eyeing her hot pink collar and chartreuse vest with heart-shaped brass sequins, Maroto decided it didn’t seem likely. Not impossible, but not likely.

  “Yeah yeah yeah. But isn’t the whole point of binding them so you can force them to do what you want? Lead you to long-forgotten buried treasure, or write down the formula for turning coal into diamonds… or grant your wishes?”

  “They only grant a wish if you let them go,” said Maroto quietly. “Otherwise, they tend to be pretty sore on the person who bound them. But since I guess it goes real bad for a devil whose master dies without freeing it first, they do try to keep you safe from harm however they can, even if they hate you. How they manage it, I couldn’t tell you, but it definitely ain’t natural—I’ve seen blades coming straight at my neck suddenly fly wide of the mark, and poisoned mugs of ale start to bubble over when I went to take a sip.”

  “And your devil, the one that you bound—what is it?” Purna sounded right respectful now. “A pox, like that Hoartrap you rode with? The songs don’t match up on that count at all.”

  “Crumbsnatcher,” said Maroto with a smile, almost able to feel his devil squirm across his shoulder and nuzzle at the overgrown hair where his fade had been, back when he’d given half a damn about maintaining a respectable haircut. The devil had loved using its paws to trace where Zosia had shaved a stylish M into the stubble on the side of Maroto’s head. “A grey rat. Smaller than you’d think.”

  “Can I see him?”

  �
�I let him go,” said Maroto, remembering all too vividly the horror when he came back to his senses and realized he’d loosed the fiend. The creeping black cliffs of the canyon they rolled through could have been the walls of any number of stinghouses, Maroto too stoned to move from the cot even as the world slid away from him. “Ages ago.”

  “So you released your devil.”

  “What I said,” said Maroto, flicking his cigar away even though there was plenty of life in it. Bad as the taste of his memories could be, it was the bitterness of all but forgotten fuckups that had seeped into the end, poisoning its flavor—instead of a girl’s gloss or strong tubāq, it smacked of stale hornet toxins oozing out of his swollen lips the morning after a bender.

  “Now do you see why I’m skeptical about devils having any real supernatural powers?” said Purna.

  “No,” said Maroto grumpily. “You didn’t even ask what I wished for.”

  “Unless it was to end up so broke and desperate you’d take a trashy gig leading people you despise through country you hate, I can’t imagine your little devil granted it. You don’t seem like the sort to squander a once-in-a-lifetime wish on something like the perfect sandwich, so there’s the proof—if you’d gotten your heart’s desire, you wouldn’t be such a sad case, would you?”

  “I… wait.” After years of uncertainty, of fearful doubt, it finally came to Maroto, what he must have wished for back in that last stinghouse where he’d almost died repeatedly, where he’d lost weeks at a time and probably shaved years off his life. When he’d finally sobered up enough to realize his devil was gone, that he had wished it away, the possibilities had seemed endless, and mostly terrible, given the propensity for wishes to somehow turn out bad for their recipients. Realizing he’d freed a devil and couldn’t even remember why had been the absolute rock bottom of a middle age riddled with potholes, and had freaked him out so badly he’d never touched insects again.

  Now, though, half a year off of the bugs, it occurred to him that in a drug-blind haze he must have simply requested to be free of his dependence on the stuff. Old Black knew he’d wished to be clean enough times, when he was doing some depraved act in order to score another caterpillar or coming down from an icebee bender… and the last time he’d wished it, Crumbsnatcher must’ve heard his prayer. He should’ve guessed it wasn’t just his iron-steady willpower that had enabled him to walk out of that last stinghouse and, after a few rough weeks of withdrawals, start his life anew.

  For all the good it had done him. It hadn’t returned any of the wealth he’d lost or traded, it didn’t bring back dead lovers or dead dignity. He’d wished himself a new life, and, surprise surprise, it was just as shitty as the last one, only now he was far more conscious for it. Better still, it was liable to stretch on for year after miserable year, instead of abruptly terminating in a painless overdose. That was a devil’s wish, all right—nothing crueler than giving people what they ask for. Why not score some firewings when he got the caravan to Katheli, see if good old Crumbsnatcher had given him the ability to handle the stuff without getting hooked all over again? That was something to look forward to…

  “You all right, big chief?” asked Purna, and Maroto shook his head, realizing he’d been drifting. “Didn’t mean to pry,” she said.

  “Yes you did, but it’s no matter,” said Maroto. The kid was probably getting off on talking to a legend, albeit one fallen on hard times, but the truth was it felt good to have an ear to bend about it all. “Crumbsnatcher granted my wish, Purna, though it’s taken me a long time to realize it. Young as you are, you shouldn’t doubt something just because you can’t fully wrap your brain about it. Yet. Devils are real. Everything you’ve heard about them is true. And then some.”

  And if Cobalt’s really alive, if we find her and the rest, you’ll see for yourself, Maroto almost said but didn’t. Telling Purna about his destination, his true motive for returning to the caravan, would surely get the girl’s blood up, but he balked at repeating the rumor lest he make it false by speaking it aloud. A secret of the gods, or devils, entrusted to him, and him alone. Well, him and the pilgrim he’d heard it from, and the sister or whomever she’d heard it from, and on down the line, but still: you don’t count pelts from untrapped cats.

  Purna was giving him some sass, and he was about to put the question to her of just what the merry hob she thought the Gates were if not wells dropping straight down into hell, when something caught his notice up the road. This was why he insisted they take the lead vehicle and wouldn’t have it any other way. They were almost out of the Wastes, the gunmetal strip of predawn sky overhead widening with the canyon, and by its faint light he saw that Captain Gilleland and his two outriders had come upon a large cart or wagon parked in the center of the road. The three guards were still on their steeds, talking down to a small cluster of silhouettes. Of all the miserable dick-kicks destiny could deliver…

  Grabbing the reins and stopping their camels short, Maroto winced as one of the beasts vocally expressed its displeasure. The animals pulling the vehicles behind theirs gave similar protests as they, too, stopped, the caravan bottlenecked in the canyon. “Ambush. Kill that lantern and get everybody ready to fight. Bring the rear guard in, let them know. Fast.”

  “What are—”

  “Now, girl. Miserable guana-fucking bandits couldn’t hit us when we were going into the Wastes, no, we have to run into a crew on our way out. Wake those bums up, at this point the Giggle Collation outnumbers the guards we have left. We’re already in their killzone, so anyone who wants to live is going to have to fight, and dirty. These vultures are a ways worse than a lizard or some lepers.”

  Purna didn’t second-guess him, credit where due. They slid off the riding bench in opposite directions, Maroto pausing to root his chainmail vest out from behind the seat. Not his favorite kit by any means, but he could shrug it on fairly quickly, and once he had the armor fitted he drummed his fingers on the two handles jutting up from the recess. He decided on the ax, since he was quicker with it, and no mangy desert bandit deserved the taste of his mace anyway. Would that he still had one of his sun-knives to chuck around, but ages back he’d pawned the last couple he hadn’t lost. He’d have to invest in some new ones, if he came out of this, but for now, well, it was never good to put off doing a job for want of better tools. A favorite of Zosia’s mantras, trotted out whenever one of her Villains was whinging about the long odds she’d set before them.

  When they finally caught up to the Cobalts, what would Zosia make of Maroto’s new sidekick? For that matter, what would Purna make of Zosia, after all the songs she’d heard? Zosia was bound to be less of a disappointment than Maroto had proven!

  His past and his present were barreling toward a collision, and when they connected the whole Star would tremble before the second coming of the Cobalt Company. He gave silent thanks to Crumbsnatcher for freeing him of his bug habit in time to hear about Zosia’s return and pick up her scent; how tragic would it have been if she’d come back but he never knew it, too busy mourning her loss in some stinghouse?

  Assuming it really was Zosia leading these mercenaries, of course, that the pilgrim’s rumor was something more than gossip. But no, there’d be time aplenty for doubt in the days to come, and for now he must have faith. It had to be her. If anyone could cheat death this bad it would be his old general; not even a devil could bring back the dead, but leave it to Zosia to find a way back from hell.

  If he wanted to see her again, though, if he wanted to introduce her to his new buddy Purna and see the rest of the old gang and, later, when they’d snuck off somewhere, hold her in his arms and breathe in her bad boozy breath and know for certain it was truly her, first he had to get past whatever death-hungry fools had blocked his path.

  It felt all right, walking fast up the canyon with the ax casually slung over one shoulder. Felt like old times. In the blushing dawn he saw that Captain Gilleland and his men had dismounted, the morons, and it occurred to him th
at for all his fantasies of reuniting with Zosia, every single person he had led into this canyon might be dead inside of five minutes. Himself included.

  And then, darker still: even if they weren’t butchered, even if everyone walked out of the Wastes without a scratch beyond those he’d given them, there was Tapai Purna, the second daughter of an Ugrakari noble house he’d never heard of. Even if that girl lived out the night, when she died it would be because of him—long before he’d even met her, he’d derailed her life from its easy course, filled her with ambitions of the glory you found not at a card table but on a battleground. It wasn’t just that she knew his songs that told him this, it was that she’d doubted their veracity and still sought him out—she didn’t want to hear stories, she wanted to live them, and find for herself where the truth lay. That girl didn’t want to play a part in some drawing-room drama, either, she wanted to star in the theater of war, and whenever death came cleaving for her, it would be all Maroto’s fault.

  Good for her, and good for him. A barbaric thought, something to make his ancestors proud as they sat around Old Black’s Meadhall. Good for her, and good for him. Besides, whenever blame needed to fall somewhere, it always seemed to end up landing square at his feet.

  Maroto walked right into the bandits’ ambush, a caravan of fools behind him, and somewhere far ahead, Cold Cobalt. The Stricken Queen. Zosia. Zee.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Sullen and Grandfather were sitting around their campfire sharing a bulging beedi of crumbly old saam rolled in a dried tubāq leaf when the witch emerged from the darkness. Neither of the keen-eared Wolves detected his approach, the gargantuan geriatric materializing out of the smoke like the Deceiver in a tale of the new faith, or a prophetic ghost in a tale of the old. One of those born-again heathens Sullen had given the slip back in the Falcon People’s forest would have doubtless leaped up and begun bellowing invocations to the Fallen Mother to cast out the interloper, but Sullen and Grandfather were not heathens, and so knew that nothing happened without reason. It was better to hear out a traveler, however dubious, before deciding on a course. That, and they were both blasted out of their minds, and until Grandfather spoke Sullen wasn’t sure the big man was actually there.