A Crown for Cold Silver Read online

  “And here I thought you hung around because you liked me,” she said sadly, meeting his canine eyes and trying to convince herself this was all his fault, instead of hers. “No fool like an old fool, I suppose. Lie beside him, unless you’re itching to see just how much of your wickedness I’ll abide in one day. Not much more, devil, not much at all, I promise you that.”

  The thing that pretended to be a dog went to Pao. Even in the flickering light of the campfire she could see that all the white had left his coat, the black had left his teeth, that he was as young as when she’d first laid eyes on the fiend. Didn’t take much to keep him going, didn’t take much at all, but he would never be sated, not as long as the sun and the moon danced their way around the world. Maybe not even after they stopped.

  Zosia left the camp, left the junipers, stumbled up the night scape of shrubs and stones above the tree line, until her fire was a distant devil’s eye beneath her, and above her burned a thousand more, silver instead of gold but just as remote, just as cold. She rubbed her hands, turned, and looked down the ridge, down the mountain, down the starlit valley, out toward the highway, out toward the world she had left behind… the world that had followed her trail even to this distant hiding place.

  So Choplicker hadn’t taken her offer after all. In all her years, she had never heard of a bound devil turning down its freedom, but seeing was believing. She didn’t claim to be the expert on the monsters that some of her old confederates were, but still, it didn’t get more basic than that: you bind a devil, it has to protect you, and if you offer to set it loose, it will grant any wish. Any fucking wish. The songs were full of cunning mortals who received whole empires in exchange for setting a devil loose, and all she had wanted was to leave an empire behind.

  “Just keep us safe.” She repeated her wish to the darkness, the words echoing out from her broken heart twenty years after she had given them voice. “I just want to grow old with Leib, for both of us to live safe, boring lives until age claims us. Your freedom for our safety.”

  It was all Choplicker’s fault.

  As if wanting a thing was enough to make it real—didn’t this whole fucking tragedy prove that wishing for something wasn’t enough? No, the truth of it was that this wasn’t Choplicker’s fault. It was hers. After all she had seen and done when she’d led the Cobalt Company, she’d still gone and trusted her future to a devil? Trusted her husband’s life to a monster the likes of which not even the craziest sorcerer on the Star wanted to treat with? Zosia had captured the Carnelian Crown of Samoth, controlled the whole Crimson fucking Empire, schemed and plotted against the most devious minds on the Star to achieve her ends, and yet she’d made the most amateurish mistake imaginable—she’d stopped watching her back.

  Even when those Imperials had shown up at her door that very morning, she hadn’t believed it, had held out hope that Choplicker would magically solve her problems. If she had attacked Hjortt and his two weirdborn guards before the order was given to kill everyone in Kypck, maybe the whole village would still be alive. Instead, she was so convinced that a devil had granted her wish that she’d just sat on her fat old ass and let the worst thing imaginable transpire under her nose. Choplicker deserved some blame, oh yes, he fucking did… but she deserved even more.

  Except—and it was an elephantine exception—neither she nor her devil had beheaded Leib. In twenty years of living here, neither of them had harmed a single citizen of Kypck. Both Zosia and Choplicker would pay for their crimes eventually, but there were others to share the blame, and until then guilt would only distract her from some very important business. Devildamn every one of those responsible for this… but of course the devils never minded, so it was dependent on her to do the damning.

  She should have killed Colonel Hjortt instead of leaving him for later, she knew this, and she should have lain in wait at the house until that Sister Portolés had returned and then killed the weirdborn, too… It was sloppy, very sloppy, leaving things like this. They hadn’t seemed to know her real name, though, and she had burned the house with all its evidence, so if she bided her time before going after the soldiers who had massacred the villagers there was reason enough to hope that this incident might not draw the full scrutiny of those who might identify her.

  They would know her name before it was over, that they certainly would, but the longer it took them to put the pieces together, the less prepared they would be to meet her retaliation…

  Except this couldn’t just be an unhappy accident, could it? Every hamlet on the Star did the same as Kypck had done, trading supplies to whomever came knocking. Yet of all the remote towns in the Empire, hers was the one they selected to make an example of? They hadn’t even sent her a worthy enemy, just some half-grown nobody of a noble, an errand boy charged with delivering her an unmistakable message… and Zosia had a fairly keen notion of who had sent it.

  She hated that it almost felt good, to realize Queen Indsorith must be behind this. Choplicker wasn’t the only monster Zosia had made a deal with, and the more she thought about it, the more obvious it was that the Crimson Queen had orchestrated this entire attack. Now that it had transpired, Zosia saw how inevitable it all was—she’d been an even bigger fool to trust her successor to the Crimson Throne than she had been to trust her devil.

  Quick as the flash of illumination and flush of excitement came, it was gone again, leaving Zosia cold and melancholic. Going after the sovereign of the Crimson Empire had been hard work when she was a whole lot younger, when she had her Five Villians and the rest of the Cobalt Company behind her, but now? Now she had nothing. Less than.

  It should have been the boy. How many had she met who claimed to share his lot, how many songs had she heard that began this way? The sole survivor of a tribe, driven by a need for revenge, all their strength ahead of them, young enough to learn, to prepare, to adapt. Young enough to succeed. It should be this boy, who didn’t deserve anything worse than a mild ass-beating for his frequent trespasses.

  It should be the boy. If she had been a witch, like that idiot Colonel Hjortt had thought, if she could have given her life for his…

  And predictable as a water clock, there was Choplicker, padding between the small bushy willows that sprouted here, when all other trees fell back. A smile tilted at her mouth. All she had to do was say it, My life for his, and then it would be done, wouldn’t it? An innocent child in exchange for her black heart would entice a deal out of any devil within hearing range, especially one who despised her as much as Choplicker must, to have refused her before. The jackal-dog’s eyes glittered like the stars as he approached. My life for his.

  Maybe such an oath would work this time around, and maybe it would be but more noise on a wind-lashed mountainside, but Zosia wasn’t taking any chances. She couldn’t afford to, not until she had her revenge. She swallowed the sentimentalizing and cuffed Choplicker on the back of the head as she returned to camp. He snapped at her but knew better than to land a bite, just as she’d known better than to strike him as hard as she’d wanted to. They would be working together for a little while longer yet.

  Sleep never arrived as she lay on the rough ground, letting her body rest even if her mind declined the offer.

  In the morning the boy was dead, her only bedroll frosted with his frozen sweat and blood. She carried him to the top of the ridge and laid him out for the animals. After erecting small cairns at his head and feet, she removed the severed head of her husband from its satchel and set it next to Pao Cowherd, so that their cold brows touched. Zosia offered no prayers, only curses, and then she turned away, into the clouds that enveloped the upper reaches of the Kutumbans.

  It was time to begin her last, bloody work. The thing she hated most about herself was how warm the prospect made her. Choplicker would feed well before it was over. All the devils would.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Two days after he left home with little more than his weapons, his clothes, and his grandfather on
his back, Sullen was attacked. It would have been one thing if those doing the attacking had been from a rival tribe, maybe those deranged, pink-skinned Troll Lions from the Grey Savannah, or their old enemies the Jackal People, but the sad truth was that Sullen was ambushed by members of his own clan. Shameful.

  The attack came at Flywalk, the rope bridge that spanned the Agharthan Gorge. His people had hidden on the far side of the jagged trench that separated the Horned Wolf Clan’s territory from that of the Falcon People, and as soon as Sullen stepped off the bridge they came at him. Due to the time-honored popularity of ambushes at this spot, the thick, mossy pines had been cleared for a good hundred yards on both sides of the crossing, and so Sullen had just enough time to process what was happening as five named Wolves and two pups rushed across the stumpfield at him.

  “It’s me!” Sullen announced, holding up his spear and sun-knife in a friendly gesture, hoping against hope that this was a misunderstanding. It wasn’t, as evidenced by the sun-knife Oryxdoom hurled at him as the lead hunter closed the last dozen yards. Sullen sidestepped the multiflanged missile, and without putting any thought into it, really, whipped his spear around to meet Oryxdoom’s charge. It sounded rather a lot like spitting a practice gourd when the weapon connected with Oryxdoom’s armpit, the man’s ax flying from his upraised arm as he was skewered. The other six Horned Wolves drew up short, forming a half-ring around Sullen and the ravine behind him, the hunting party in low stances, spears, axes, and throwing knives ready.

  From his sling on Sullen’s back, Grandfather shouted, “You’ve wanted the boy gone all these years, now you put up a fight when he tries to leave?”

  Sullen knew Grandfather was only tying to help but blushed nevertheless. He could fight his own battles.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, well practiced in offering undeserved apologies to keep the peace. “I’m not leaving the clan. I just have to take Grandfather on a quest, then I’ll be back. And I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt you, Oryxdoom.”

  From where he lay on the black earth at Sullen’s feet, Oryxdoom did not say whether or not he accepted the apology. This was probably because Oryxdoom was deader than donkey shit, the brother of One-arm Yaw sprawled on his side in the loam, blood pooling toward Sullen’s flaking leather boots. Sullen tugged his spear free and took a slight step back from the mess he’d made, and would have taken another if he hadn’t remembered the dropoff behind him. The bridge was just there to his left, if he broke past Swiftspear, but the two pups had taken up positions behind their older sister, and Sullen really, really didn’t want to chop down the unnamed kids. And even if he somehow made it back across, what then? He’d be right back in the one place he knew his uncle wasn’t—his homeland, where nobody wanted him. When none of his clanfolk broke the silence nor rushed him, he tried again to explain:

  “I’m not turning tail like Uncle Craven did. I’ll come back,” he said, but now that he thought about it, that was exactly what his uncle had done the first time around that made the council so mad: left the clan without permission, and then came back without invitation. Looking at the mean faces of his people, he supposed they’d be fine with his following Uncle Craven’s footsteps as far as leaving the Noreast Arm went; they just wanted to make sure he didn’t return.

  What were they waiting for, then? Wise-eye would be the alpha, with Oryxdoom dead, but she just shifted her weight from boot to boot, her spear from hand to hand. Sullen told himself they hesitated because they didn’t really want to fight him. That Oryxdoom had put them up to this. That each wasn’t simply reluctant to be the first one to charge, or to lose their sun-knife by throwing it at him while he stood on the edge of the gorge. He could still talk them out of this, give a speech like the one from the ballads that Old Black had given the night-rovers, when she’d convinced those monsters not to eat her during the Worst Winter…

  He could do this. Clearing his throat, Sullen said, “You thought I was just running away, shaming the clan, but it’s not like that! I swear on my name it’s not! I’m going to find out why Uncle Craven disgraced us the way he did! I’ll get a worthy answer from his lips, or bring him back to face the judgment of the council! I vow it on the names of all my ancestors!”

  Wise-eye relaxed her shoulders a bit, and from the corner of his eye he saw Swiftspear look to her for guidance. Witmouth was nodding thoughtfully, no doubt recognizing the cadence of Sullen’s oath from the tales he himself had sung to the boy, back before Sullen had alienated himself from his people. They were hearing him out!

  “I swear on my parents I never meant to break the codes the way I did,” he went on, “and I don’t want to hurt nobody else. So why don’t we just—”

  “Kill them all!” Grandfather yowled, and Sullen stumbled to the side as the old man strapped to his back hurled one of his sun-knives at Wise-eye. She tried to dodge it, but Grandfather knew a thing or two about his business and two of the weapon’s curved points caught her square in the gut. She collapsed to the ground, the other woman and two men charged, the pups hurled knives in his direction, and Sullen obeyed the wordless impulse in his panicked skull—he charged straight ahead, slashing Witmouth out of the way with his spear and fleeing toward the tree line.

  Someone cut his side with something.

  Grandfather was boxing his ears, commanding him to turn and fight.

  A sun-knife skimmed the side of his scalp, ripping through his hair and stinging like an icebee.

  Sullen ignored everything but the rough, root-slippery ground beneath his feet as he crossed the stumpfield and gained the cover of the forest, sun-knives shying off the trees around him, another thunking into the earth just between his pumping legs. Whipping through the pine boughs, he immediately crossed the trail through the Raptor Wood, ignored it, plunged back into thick timber, underbrush clawing his calves and thighs, branches scratching his face.

  His clanfolk howled behind him, close, and then the downward slant of the ground sharpened considerably. Sullen cut sideways along the incline to keep his balance, but even still he began to slide down the hill, only keeping himself upright by grabbing at branches with his free hand. The descent steepened, and he half fell down the wooded mountainside, his stride lengthening with each breath as though he wore the enchanted snowshoes from the Ballad of Cleverhands. A fallen tree reared out of the blurry forest, but he bounded over it, landing thirty feet down the slope with such force he felt it rattle his bones all the way to the marrow. He kept going until he hit a hollow in the hills and cut to his right, running up the narrow valley for all he was worth.

  More howling came from back the way he’d come, farther off now, but he knew that only the ones in the rear would be announcing themselves until the lead Wolves caught him. This was not at all how he had pictured his morning. Grandfather hissed at him as a tree limb snapped at his neck, and the lad grunted an apology, barely able to hear himself over the sound of his own panting. He almost stepped on a startled armadillo, tore through sticky spiderwebs, abruptly changed direction, and plowed up the far hillside. The Raptor Wood was new terrain to Sullen, denser of tree than the lightly wooded steppes on the other side of the Agharthan Gorge, and beset with toe-breaking stones far fiercer than those of the Savannahs where his village lay. But then the song-singers said that all woods are home to a Horned Wolf.

  “Enough,” Grandfather said after they had scaled and descended half a dozen more hillocks with no sign of immediate pursuit. “Rest a moment, damn your face, rest and let me think.”

  “All right,” said Sullen, promptly dropping into a crouch just over the crown of the newest rise and gulping the air. With a surge of nausea he realized the cramp in his side that he had been ignoring was actually a gouge that went clean through his hempen shirt and into the meat of his ribs. Half of the garment was dripping red. Prodding the wound, he wondered how he came by it. Swiftspear proving her name, probably, back when he first fled.

  “You’ll need to bind it before we go
on,” said Grandfather, leaning over Sullen’s shoulder for a look at the mess. “Quick as you can, boy, they’ll be on you like termites on a juicy log, and this is no place for a showdown. Never would have happened if you’d just stood your ground.”

  “Why would they…” Sullen tried to get his thoughts in order as Grandfather dug through the pack that strapped him to his grandson. “Why wouldn’t they… Why did you… Why?”

  “Why?” Grandfather whined, his imitation of Sullen cutting deeper than the wound in his side. “Whhhhhhy? Because they’re not Wolves, they’re dogs, that’s why, dogs of their foreign masters.”

  That hardly seemed to explain anything. “Oryxdoom always had it in for me, but Wise-eye seemed kind enough, and Witmouth taught me every song I know. Why’d they all come so fast after us? Do they think we’re cowards? Disgracing the clan?”

  “Thank your uncle for that when we find him. When he came back they invented some special excuses for him, on account of all the treasure he gave the elders, but that only brought more embarrassment on the council when he quit the second time. You don’t let a rabid dog flee, not when you have a chance to put it down, and since we all share the same blood, well, they assumed the worst. Fool a wolf once and all that shit.” Grandfather unspooled a blanket from the pack, bit into the cloth, and tore. Passing the sizable strip to Sullen, he stowed the rest. “Oh, quit your pouting, I never said you were mad—they’re the crazy ones, not us. They’ve suckled at the Crimson teat all right, and liked the milk. A pup like you should be appalled at the depths of depravity a soul will sink to, once it’s been exposed to paganism, but I’m sorry to say it don’t surprise me none. The only thing that caught me off guard was their waiting until we were across the bridge before springing the trap.”