A Crown for Cold Silver Page 6

  “Sure, sure,” said Purna, fiddling with her shredded vest until she could tie a strip of it into her collar, giving her a beggar’s modesty. “I just want its head. To, you know, mount? That’s the whole reason we’re out here, isn’t it, for this sort of thing? What’s the point in battling monsters if you don’t get a trophy?”

  “Come on,” said Maroto, getting up. “We’re going back before another one shows up.”

  “I’m not leaving without my trophy,” said Purna. “If you don’t climb down and get it, I will.”

  “Fine,” said Maroto. “Good luck. I’d say I’ll meet you back at camp later, except I probably won’t because you’ll slip and break an ankle and lie on some spit of rock crying until something comes along to eat you.”

  “What’s your price, barbarian?” said Purna, sounding as simultaneously bored and annoyed as a noble buying their bratty kid out of trouble. “To get me the head, how much would it cost me?”

  “More than you’re worth,” said Maroto, but he couldn’t help but feel the itch in his least honorable organ: his purse. It hadn’t looked to be too hard a climb down to the direlizard… “Ten thousand rupees.”

  “Let’s make it twelve,” said Purna with a smile, which was how Maroto found himself cleaning off the mace he had almost lost, along with his life, and descending to where the godguana had fallen. She had begun to cook in the morning heat, and the stench made him gag as he broke through her ridge of spines and the bones beneath, mashing her shoulders into reptilian paste. Would’ve been a sight easier with an ax instead of the dubious duo of mace and dagger, but then it would’ve been a damn sight easier to just tell Purna where to stick her twelve thousand rupees. He was half-baked himself by the time he rejoined Purna on the summit, whereupon he discovered she had drunk all his water while he was doing her dirty work. Yet not even the realization that to get them both down safely he’d have to carry her on his back compared to the frustration he felt when they were at long last back on the under-roads, returning to the caravan, and she said, “So twelve thousand rupees will take some doing, but while we were climbing I hit on the perfect solution.”

  “While we were climbing?” Maroto tried to keep a level tone; until he had the money in hand it wouldn’t do to spook her. “You promised me something you couldn’t pay, Tapai Purna? I thought you nobles were reliable about paying your debts.”

  “If we were there would be far fewer of us,” said Purna. “My shoulder really hurts, are you sure it’s all right?”

  “I’ll stitch you up at the camp. But only after I’ve been paid.”

  “Ah, yes. But see, I don’t have the money yet.”

  “When will you? I’d be quick about it, personally. You want those sewn up right away.”

  “That depends on you,” said Purna. “We could have it as soon as tomorrow.”

  “Depends on me,” said Maroto, a cannonball sort of weight settling in his guts.

  “As I said, I wanted no part in their vile little wager. No part. Bleh.” Purna stuck out her tongue. “But I can go back to my chums and enter a share, saying that after our adventure today I’ve warmed to the beast, and decided to take a chance on seducing it myself.”

  “Seducing it? The beast?”

  “Yes, that’s what they call you. Not me, though. I always just call you the barbarian.”

  Some improvement. “So you lay a wager, then later today or tomorrow we go off and have a screw and—”

  “No, no, no!” said Purna. “What sort of a person do you take me for? I lay the wager, then we sneak off and pretend to fuck, preferably tucked away in one of these canyons where the echoes can reach the rest, just so there’s no room for doubt. Then I get paid, and in turn you get paid.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Maroto. “Under no circumstances. I have pride, girl, a word unfamiliar to you so-called civilized folk, but one dear to me as the true name of any devil.”

  “Have it your way,” said Purna. “I think the pot’s closer to twenty thousand, so I’d go so far as to give you fifteen and keep a modest five for the injury to my reputation, but if you’d rather be silverless and proud, then—”

  “All twenty,” said Maroto, dropping Purna’s reptilian trophy in the sand. The wagons were just ahead. “All twenty, and you have to tell them that you convinced me you weren’t actually part of the wager before I agreed to fuck you. I won’t have it said I’m a whore or a rich lord’s plaything.”

  “Seventeen, and agreed on your condition,” said Purna, squatting down and hoisting the lizard head herself. Her arms were shaking but she managed it. “Final offer.”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Seventeen-five, and you’re no whore nor rich girl’s plaything.”

  “Agreed,” said Maroto, though he was no longer so sure about that last bit. They returned to the campfire, the coterie of coxcombs squawking and hooting at their bedraggled appearance and Purna’s prize. Revolting a scene as it surely was, Kōshaku Köz’s valet revealed herself to have both a barber’s bag and the skill to use it. Purna was treated first, naturally, while Maroto fended off the demands of the rest to be taken on a dragon hunt at dusk. Later, he overheard Purna’s version of events over brandy and cigars while his significantly worse injuries were tended to. He told himself that declining the valet’s offer of a centipede prior to setting in was a victory, albeit a small one, but every stab of the needle and tug of the thread reminded him of his weakness, his failings; here was a man who couldn’t even trust himself to take a painkiller before undergoing surgery, lest he backslide into his old ways. And after the day he’d had, all he had to look forward to was a make-believe tryst on the morrow.

  There was a time when Maroto wouldn’t have entered the Panteran Wastes for the far more lucrative and enjoyable proposition of raiding just such a party of wealthy fools, a time when he would have laughed in the face of anyone who suggested he might end up playing Great Barbarian Hunter for a bunch of second-rate fops. There was a time when Maroto would have gestured at his priceless armor, his witch-touched weapons, his lands and titles and holdings, to say naught of the bloody devil that served his will—here was a man with everything silver could buy, and many things it could not.

  When he squinted into the past, he could almost make out that man through the mists of bug- and drink-filtered memories and increasingly poor decisions. The simpering choir of the nobles carried on into the early hours of the night, and sleep was as elusive as dignity as he lay on his too-soft cot in his too-nice covered wagon, dreading the future every bit as much as he loathed the past. He told himself that once they were out of the Wastes he would never again debase himself so… but he’d broken that promise many, many times before and he would, sad to say, break it again.

  CHAPTER

  7

  It was long after midnight when Choplicker caught up to Zosia in the high country. Hearing him crash through the low ring of deadfall she had piled around her camp, she drew away into the junipers, into the darkness, into the focused wrath that was the only thing that let her rioting mind relax into silence… and when the miserable scavenger appeared across the fire, she pulled her bowstring back even farther, and loosed her arrow straight at his muzzle. The missile veered off course and disappeared into the night, just like she knew it would, but she nocked another anyway, storming out of the shadows at him.

  “Why?” Zosia’s voice broke as she drew her bow again, just across the small fire from the beast now. “Why the fuck didn’t you take it? I know you could’ve, I know it would’ve been child’s play for you to honor the terms I offered, so why?”

  Choplicker whined at her, keeping his wagging tail low to the ground the way he always did when he knew he was in trouble. This, this right here was how he’d lulled her into thinking they were all right with one another, this grotesque charade was how he’d convinced her that she had nothing to fear from him. That they were friends. And then he’d as good as murdered Leib.

  Zosia almost fired her
second arrow but then she noticed that Choplicker had not returned alone. The arms of a child were wrapped around his furry neck, its bloody back limp atop his own. Even freshly fed, it must have taken some effort for the old beggar to drag a corpse all the way up the mountain—and just to rub her nose in it.

  Zosia relaxed her bow and tossed it onto her bedroll. Then she stalked around the fire, meaning to take Choplicker apart with her bare hands, when the child slid down his haunches, letting out a moan as he collapsed onto the cold, moss-cushioned earth. Cursing, she hurried to the boy and rolled him onto his side, the firelight turning his bloody tunic to molten gold. He moaned again as she tore the cloth and prodded the wound, a rude, deep puncture that had narrowly missed the base of his spine.

  “Mayoress.” The boy’s voice was raspier than the junipers in the wind that stalked these heights. “It hurts.”

  Zosia sighed, letting out as much of her pain and rage as she could. It would only distract her now, and after the events of the day it wasn’t as if she was in danger of exhausting her stores in this lifetime. She bit the inside of her cheek, focusing herself as best she could. The wound was deep, no doubt from a spear, and his long, jostling ride up the mountains couldn’t have done him any boon. It would have been better if the boy had never woken up, if Choplicker had just dragged him into the underbrush and torn out his throat rather than delivering him to her. Which was the point, she supposed, and, hearing his slobbering, she scowled at the scavenger. He was licking the boy’s face, plastering the lad’s hair up, and if the wounded child hadn’t obviously welcomed the diversion from his pain she would have murdered the beast then and there. Or tried to, anyway.

  “You’ll be all right,” she said, straightening up. She had recognized the boy, for all the good it would do her to know his name. “I’ve got something in my bag to heal you, Pao Cowherd, just don’t go making any trouble while I get it. Lie very still.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Pao whispered, trying to pet Choplicker. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Should be,” said Zosia, her voice almost catching. She’d grown soft, all right—the stone was still in her somewhere, but she’d buried it so deep under years of easy happiness that she couldn’t seem to find it. Tending a badly wounded child was not the time for grief or doubt, and once she would have been able to smother these things, if she felt them at all… once, but ages past. Now the deep coldness inside her teemed with a hundred different splashing, thrashing thoughts and memories and emotions, and try as she might she couldn’t find the placidity that once came as natural as breathing.

  Fishing in her pack, she took out a wool shirt and brought it back to the boy, cutting into it with her deer knife as she hunkered back down. He was pallid as a corpse already, and trying not to cry. “Tying off a nanny goat’s tail is a dark deed, boy—you recall what I said I’d do if I caught you up by my place again?”

  “Said you’d… beat the devils out of me.” Even half dead, the boy grinned at her. There was blood shining between his teeth in the firelight. “Ain’t my fault, ma’am. Your dog… he brung me up here.”

  “Well, I suppose it’s all right then,” said Zosia, rolling the boy farther over to examine the wound before plugging it. There hardly seemed a point at all, but he was still talking, so who knew, maybe there was some hope… “This will hurt, but it’s got to be done. Then I’ll stop the wound and you’ll be right as rain before you know it.”

  “I feel sick, I—” But whatever the boy might have said next was lost as his voice turned into a gasping, gulping sob. Zosia had peeled back the soft crust that had formed over the wound and slid her index finger in, making sure there wasn’t a broken arrow or spear point lodged inside. Something hard and sharp met her fingertip, but she couldn’t tell if it was a piece of weapon or bone—too long since she’d rooted around in a body. Nothing she could do about it, anyway, wedged that firmly in there, alone on a dark mountainside. The boy was sucking the cold air in catfish gulps, his body basted with sweat, and she slipped her finger out.

  If he lived through the night, come morning she’d clean and cauterize the wound, but for now she would spare him that ordeal. Rolling a scrap of shirt into a plug, she quickly packed it in the wound. He found enough air to let out a wail at that, then fell totally silent. She tied the remaining woolen strips tight, the boy shivering as she hoisted his hip to get the bandage all the way around his waist. Cinching it, she watched his wracked face, wondering if this was it, if she had gone and killed the boy.

  No. His face was still locked in a rictus, but his shallow breathing was evening out, his almost imperceptible whines growing in strength even as the rest of him weakened. She stood back up, the speed with which she had gained the high country after dealing with Hjortt and setting the house aflame catching up with her in a series of twinges and aches. Devils below and devils above, but her left knee was angry with her. She wanted to rinse the tacky blood off her hands, but, knowing they’d like as not be bloodied again before the night was over, decided not to waste the water just yet. She held her hands over the diminished fire, the drying blood dark on her fingers. They were still shaking. They would be shaking a lot in the nights to come, with winter on the wind that gutted her blaze.

  “I’m thirsty,” Pao called with more strength than she would have expected. He had curled into a ball despite the pain it must have caused to bring his knees to his chest, and she brought him both a waterskin and her flask of enzian. He coughed more on the sip of water than he did on the slug of bitter booze. “Those soldiers… they killed everyone.”

  “That’s what I figured,” said Zosia, taking a pull on the enzian herself. She gave up on trying to keep the inevitable at bay and let herself remember harvesting the plants with Leib. While she excavated the roots from the flinty alpine soil, her shirking husband strung her small, pungent crowns from the yellow flowers, setting them with the rare purple bloom. A jewel for her diadem. The smell of earth and root, the feel of cold hands slipped under the back of her blouse to provoke a squeal. She took another aromatic dram, thought of the pot-still bubbling away in its hut behind the village’s communal longhouse, and wondered if the murderous Imperial soldiers were even now toasting with pillaged bottles of the same spirit. If she started back down now she could be there just before dawn, when even the sentries were caught in limbo between being drunk and being hungover…

  The boy—Pao, she told herself, his name is Pao Cowherd, though she’d called the rascal other things in the past—started to cry again. She forced another drink down his throat, then sealed flask and waterskin and went back for her war hammer. Twirling in her hand, the fist-sized face and icicle-shaped pick became a steel cyclone that caught the boy’s attention, and Choplicker’s, too.

  “Will I… am I dying?” the boy asked.

  Yes.

  “No.” Zosia released the spinning hammer and caught it in her other hand, the familiar sting of the handle against her palm making her grimace. “I’m a witch—many times as you’ve called me that, I’d think you’d believe it! And enzian’s a medicine, isn’t it, so even if I weren’t possessed of dark powers you’d be on the mend already. You’ll live, boy, you’ll live, and then you’ll go after those soldiers who did this to you.”

  “I’m scared,” said Pao, shuddering.

  “Only because you’re green,” said Zosia, reckoning she’d been even younger than he was when she’d first taken up arms. “I was green once, too, but you’ll firm up. Don’t think we’ll go after them tomorrow! Need to train you in the sword, the hammer, the bow, everything you ever pestered me and my Leib about teaching you. Need to turn you into a warrior!”

  She was sure this would have cheered him, but he just stared off into the blackness between the junipers, his back to the fire. The bandage had already soaked through. Glancing at Choplicker, she could tell it was taking every drop of what little self-control the beast possessed not to lap at the sodden wool.

  “You’re special, Pao Cowherd,” Zosi
a told him. “You’re not like anyone else out there in the whole world. You’re destined for this, boy, destined to be the one to change things, to make the Star a better place. And you do that with a sword. A magic one. That’s your destiny.”

  That got his attention. The boy turned his head toward her, winced, the desperate hope on his shadow-cluttered face sickening. “A magic sword? My destiny?”

  “That’s right,” said Zosia, feeling Choplicker’s eager eyes boring into her but refusing to look at the beast. “Why do you think you survived, eh? Why do you think Chop brought you to me? You’re a very special child, Pao, and your father trusted me to look after you, to wait until you were old enough and then teach you sword craft. To help train you up so you can rid the world of devils, restore peace, that kind of shit.”

  “My dad,” whispered Pao. “But you always said he was a drunk asshole and that’s why Mama ran him out of town.”

  “Of course I said that,” said Zosia, seeing the resemblance to his good-for-nothing father writ in the boy’s thick brows and broad nose. He would’ve grown up to look just like the man. Still might, she thought, but scarcely believed it. “I was trying to teach you some humility with that yarn, wasn’t I? For all the good it did. Couldn’t well tell you he was really a great knight and that someday I’d take you on a quest to retrieve his special sword, could I? You gave me little enough peace as it was, can’t imagine how awful you’d have been if we’d told you the truth.”

  “I couldn’t…” Pao’s eyes were half-lidded, the boy drifting into some dark depth that only time would reveal to be slumber or death. “Mama…”

  The wind stirred up a plume of embers, the coals pulsing, and she tucked the hammer in its loop on her backpack, put more wood on. Pao shivered on the bare, rocky ground, eyes clenched as tight as his jaw. She only had the one bedroll, and if she gave it to him it would likely be soaked in blood by morning. Choplicker rose from where he’d lain beside the fire and went to her side, his ever-thirsty tongue going to the hand that hung limp at her side. She numbly let him clean the blood off her, staring at the boy, and when he was done she offered him her other hand.