Unbound (54 page)

“Lioness of Hoskopp,” said Big-Coat, and gave a little giggle.

“I will have to steal it back,” she was musing. “Do any of you know a decent thief?”

There was a pause, then Shev raised that one finger again.

“Ah!” Javre’s blood-clotted brow went up. “It is said the Goddess places the right people in each other’s paths.” She frowned as though she was only just making sense of the situation. “Are these men inconveniencing you?”

“A little,” Shev whispered, grimacing at the dull ache that had spread from her side right to the tips of her fingers.

“Best to check. You never can tell what people enjoy.” Javre slowly worked her bare shoulders. They reminded Shev of the Amazing Zaraquon’s too, woody hard and split into a hundred little fluttering shreds of muscle. “I will ask you once to put the dark-skinned girl down and leave.”

Crandall snorted. “And if we don’t?”

That one eye narrowed slightly. “Then long after we are gone to the Goddess, the grandchildren of the grandchildren of those who witness will whisper fearful stories of the way I broke you.”

Hands-in-Pockets shoved his hands down further still. “You ain’t even got a weapon,” he snarled.

But Javre only smiled. “My friend, I am the weapon.”

Crandall jerked his head towards her. “Put this bitch out o’ my misery.”

Pock-Face and Big-Coat let go of Shev, which was a blessing, but closed in towards Javre, which didn’t seem to be. Big-Coat pulled a stick from his coat, which was a little disappointing since he had ample room for a greatsword in there. Pock-Face spun his jagged-edged dagger around in his fingers and stuck out his tongue, which was uglier than the blade if anything.

Javre just stood, hands on her hips. “Well? Do you await a written invitation?”

Pock-Face lunged at her but his knife caught nothing. She dodged with a speed even Shev could hardly follow, and her white hand flashed out and chopped him across the side of the neck with a sound like a cleaver chopping meat. He dropped as if he had no bones in him at all, knife bouncing from his hand, flopping and thrashing on the floor like a landed fish, spitting and gurgling and his eyes popping out farther than ever.

Big-Coat hit her in the side with his stick. If he’d hit a pillar, that was the sound of it. Javre hardly even flinched. Muscle bulged in her arm as she sank her fist into his gut and he bent right over with a breathy wheeze. Javre caught him by the hair with her big right fist and smashed his head into Shev’s butcher-block counter, blood spattering the cheap hangings.

“Shit,” breathed Crandall, the hand he was holding Shev with going limp.

Javre looked over at the one with his hands rammed in his pockets, whose mouth had just dropped open. “No need to feel embarrassed,” she said. “If I had a cock I would play with it all the time too.”

He jerked his hands out and flung a knife. Shev saw the metal flicker, heard the blade twitter.

Javre caught it. She made no big show of it, like the jugglers in that travelling show used to. She simply plucked it from the air as easily as you might catch a coin you’d tossed yourself.

“Thank you,” she said. She tossed it back and it thudded into the man’s thigh. He gave a great spitty screech as he staggered back through the doorway and into the street.

Mason had just pulled his own knife out, a monster of a thing you could’ve called a sword without much fear of correction. Javre planted her hands on her hips again. “Are you sure this is the way you want it?”

“Can’t say I want it,” said Mason, drifting into a fighting crouch. “But there’s no other way for it to be.”

“I know.” Javre shook her shoulders again and raised those big empty hands. “But it is always worth asking.”

He sprang at her, knife a blur, and she whipped out of the way. He slashed at her and she dodged again, watching as he lumbered towards the door, tearing the curtain from its hooks. He lunged at her, feathers spewing up in a fountain as he hacked a cushion open, splinters flying as he smashed the counter over with his flailing boot, cloth ripping as he slashed one of the hangings in half.

Mason gave a bellow like a hurt bull and charged at her once more. Javre caught his wrist as the knife-blade flashed towards her, big vein popping from her arm as she held it, straining, the trembling point just a finger’s width from her forehead.

“Got you now!” Mason sprayed spit through his clenched teeth as he caught Javre by her thick neck, forced her back a step—

She snatched the big prayer bell from the shelf and smashed him over the head with it, the almighty clang so loud it rattled the teeth in Shev’s head. Javre hit him again, twisting free of his clutching hand, and he gave a groan and dropped to his knees, blood pouring down his face. Javre raised her arm high and smashed him onto his back, bell breaking from the handle and clattering away into the corner, the ringing echoes gradually fading.

Javre looked up at Crandall, her face all spotted with Mason’s blood. “Did you hear that?” She raised her red brows. “Time for you to pray.”

“Oh, hell,” croaked Crandall. He let the hatchet clatter to the boards and held his open palms up high. “Now look here,” he stammered out, “I’m Horald’s son. Horald the Finger!”

Javre shrugged as she stepped over Mason’s body. “I am new in town. One name strikes me no harder than another.”

“My father runs things here! He gives the orders!”

Javre grinned as she stepped over Big-Coat’s corpse. “He does not give me orders.”

“He’ll pay you! More money than you can count!”

Javre poked Pock-Face’s fallen knife out of her way with the toe of her boot. “I do not want it. I have simple tastes.”

Crandall’s voice grew shriller as he shrank away from her. “If you hurt me, he’ll catch up to you!”

Javre shrugged again as she took another step. “We can hope so. It would be his last mistake.”

“Just . . . please!” Crandall cringed. “Please! I’m begging you!”

“It really is not me you have to beg,” said Javre nodding over his shoulder.

Shev whistled, and Crandall turned around, surprised. He looked even more surprised when she buried the blade of Mason’s hatchet in his forehead with a sharp crack.

“Bwurgh,” he said, tongue hanging out, then he toppled backwards, his limp hand catching the stand and knocking it and the tin bowl flying, showering hot coals across the wall.

“Shit,” said Shev, as flames shot up the flimsy hangings. She snatched up the water jug and flung it, but the meagre spray made scarcely any difference. Fire had already spread to the next curtain, shreds of burning ash fluttering down.

“Best vacate the premises,” said Javre, and she took Shev under the arm with a grip that was not to be resisted and marched her smartly out the door, leaving four dead men scattered about the burning room.

The one who’d had his hands in his pockets was leaning against the wall in the street, clutching at his own knife stuck in his thigh.

“Wait—’ he said, as Javre caught him by the collar, and with a flick of her wrist sent him reeling across the street to crash head first into a wall.

Severard was running up, staring at the building, flames already licking around the door frame. Javre caught him and guided him away. “Nothing to be done. Bad choice of décor for a place with naked flames.” As if to underscore the point, the window shattered, fire gouting into the street, Severard ducking away with his hands over his head.

“What the hell happened?” he moaned.

“Went bad,” whispered Shev, clutching at her side. “Went bad.”

Javre scraped the dirty red hair out of her battered face and grinned at the ruin of Shev’s hopes as though it looked a good enough day’s work to her. “You call that bad? I say it could have been far worse!”

“How?” snapped Shev. “How could it be fucking worse?”

“We might both be dead.” She gave a sharp little laugh. “Come out alive, it is a victory.”

“This is what happens,” said Severard, his eyes shining with reflected fire as the building burned brighter. “This is what happens when you do a kindness.”

“Ah, stop crying, boy. Kindness brings kindness in the long run. The Goddess holds our just rewards in trust! I am Javre, by the way.” And she clapped him on the shoulder and near knocked him over. “Do you have an older brother by any chance? Fighting always gets me in the mood.”

“What?”

“Brothers, maybe?”

Shev clutched at her head. Felt like it was going to burst. “I killed Crandall,” she whispered. “I bloody killed him. They’ll come after me now! They’ll never stop coming!”

“Pffffft.” Javre put one great, muscled, bruised arm around Shev’s shoulders. Strangely reassuring and smothering at once. “You should see the bastards coming after me. Now, about stealing back this sword of mine . . .”

Mazarkis Williams

“I saw a rat nosing around outside. Put the cat to it, will you?” Nana May’s clean hands wound her yarn into a ball. “I won't have it showing up and ruining everything. Not today.”

Emil glanced around. “Greygirl!” He heard no answering yowl, so he got on his knees to look under the table and behind the spinning wheel. “Is Greatpapa very old, Nana?”

“Old, yes,” she said with a sigh. “More than some tales.”

Emil made a show of looking for Greygirl behind the ladder that led to his mat in the loft, but his mind was on the old stories. “Nana May, wasn't your papa in the Wizard War?”

“And don't you go asking about that, either.” Nana May's eyes strayed to Emil's set of wooden soldiers, carefully carved by his own papa three years ago, crowded around a vase on the tiny side table. “He doesn't hold with great tales any more than he holds with rats. Just leave it be.” She rose to put the yarn into her wool-box. All her wool was yet undyed, the same black and grey as her hair.

Emil moved to the doorway of the tiny cottage, his anticipation now tinged with a familiar unease. Nana May always said leave it be. She didn't like to talk about his father, Alain; or the blight in the garden; or the way her witch-charm was ripped from the door and smashed under someone’s heel. She had once said in a bitter moment that her papa would never come to the cottage because of
his
papa. Now Alain was dead, drowned in the river, and so Greatpapa came, bringing his own secrets with him.

From now on Nana May would sleep in the other side of the loft where Alain used to sleep, and Greatpapa would take her little bedroom in the back. Emil missed his father’s warm voice in the darkness, but Nana May had her own kind way of speaking. It was only the things she wouldn’t say that made him want to spite her. He folded his arms over his chest. “Papa said that
I
would be the man of the house now.”

Nana May smiled at him the way a person did at a new lamb or spring flower. “Plenty of time remains for you to be the man. Never fear.”

She didn’t understand. But the bitter words gathering in his mind slipped away when he caught sight of two figures on the road. “Here comes a man with a lute, Nana, and he has a very old man with him.”

“That won't be your greatpapa, then,” said his nana, flashing her dark eyes at the doorway. “He don't hold with musicians either.”

But the two men were heading straight for the door where Emil stood. “It's him, Nana!” said Emil, his voice rising in excitement. He cleared his throat. “It's your father,” he said, a bit deeper.

* * * * *

Now they were upon him. Emil’s greatpapa leaned on a walking stick but still managed to twist his head around, checking the path behind him and from side to side, as if he expected an animal to attack at any moment. The musician was young enough to hold his shoulders straight, but he carried snow in his hair. He squinted at Emil, creases forming to either side of his hazel-colored eyes.

“Welcome to our home, Greatpapa. Welcome, stranger,” said Emil, bobbing his head like a bird.

“You Alain’s boy?” asked his greatpapa, looking him up and down with eyes like the winter sky. His cheeks folded away from his nose like two pale fans. "Never did like that sneak, but you look all right." Some spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on Emil's chin. Emil tried his best to ignore it.

Greatpapa hadn't noticed. He waved his walking stick toward the other man. “This here is a fellow who showed me some kindness on the road. Being me, I didn't have no kindness to give back, so I brought him to your nana. May's always been good, in her way.”

Unfazed by the odd introduction, the musician stepped over the threshold, looked Emil in the eye, and held out a hand. “I'm Horace. I am very pleased to meet you.”