The Thief who Went to War ebook

THE THIEF WHO WENT TO WAR

Amra Thetys Book 5

Michael McClung

COPYRIGHT © 2019, Michael McClung

No animals were harmed during the production of this product. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or events, past, present or future, is purely coincidental. This product is not to be construed as an endorsement of any product, company or deity, nor as the adoption or promulgation of any guidelines, standards or recommendations. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty. This product is meant for educational purposes only. Some literacy required. Batteries not included. Package sold by weight, not volume. Contents may settle during shipment. No user-serviceable parts inside. Use only as directed.

Do not eat. Not a toy.

DEDICATION

For my crazy chickens, as always—and for all the Amra readers who have waited so long.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank all the members of the Ministry of Fiction for assuring me this book did not suck, while at the same time showing me where the book could suck less. You are a special bunch. Never change.

Abanon wields the Blade that Whispers Hate

Moranos holds the Dagger of Desire

Ninkashi grips the trembling Blade of Rage

with which she pierced the heart of her mad sire

Heletia grips the Knife called Winter's Tooth

Visini wields the Blade that Binds and Blinds

Husth fights with the Kris that Strikes Elsewhere

and woe betide the soul it finally finds

Kalara hones the Knife that Parts the Night

Grim Xith commands the Dirk that Harrows Souls

Eight Blades the Goddess has, and one

from eight will ren-

ONE

Fucking Bellarius.

I did not love the city of my birth, and never would. I would never forgive it for all that it had done to me—that just wasn’t in me. The best I could do was forget about it, and my history with it. Which I could not do while I was still in it.

I just wanted to leave. As soon as Holgren was fit enough to travel, that’s exactly what we would do, if I had any say. I was not getting stuck in Bellarius again.

The big question was where we would go.

I’d got enough of Holgren's story out of him to know that Lucernis probably wasn’t the safest place for him at the moment. Maybe ever again. Which was a pity, really; I’d made a home there. I’d built a life. Even made a friend or two. But considering what was coming after me, it was probably best I stay away from heavily populated areas. And anyone that I cared about, that could be used as leverage. Holgren excepted, of course. He’d gone through literal hells the last time I wandered off. He’d do it again, that much was clear. And besides, I didn’t want to be parted from him again, despite the situation.

Maybe that was selfish of me. Probably. I didn’t really care anymore. Holgren was far from toothless; he had as much of a chance to stand against the Blades as I did. More, in a lot of ways.

Holgren had also told me about the deal he’d made with the demon, Tanglewood. I’d offered to cut the seed out of his palm, but he’d shaken his head.

“It would almost certainly kill me,” he’d said. “Besides, I struck a bargain. Tanglewood kept its end, so I’ll keep mine.” Then he’d gone back to sleep in the dusty bed on the first floor of the Telemarch’s citadel.

Holgren was sleeping again. That was mostly what he’d done since we’d returned to the world, to Bellarius, to the Citadel. I made something approaching soup, hoping all my rattling would wake him up. I brought the soup up from the kitchen. He hadn’t moved a muscle since last I checked, so I checked to see if he was still breathing. He was. I took a long look at his face. Gaunt. Unshaven. Pale. And missing an eye. Well, from what he’d mumbled, missing his original eye. He’d got a replacement, but he refused to remove the black leather patch. When I’d asked, he said he’d tell me about it later, and then he’d gone back to sleep.

I paced. The soup was getting cold. My boredom was swelling to epic proportions. So I gently brought him to wakefulness.

“Oi! Wake up, Holgren!” I may have kicked the bed a little. So I’m not the best nurse.

He sat up, hair wild and eye wide, snorting something that sounded like “Wuzzing hemeh?”

“Dinner time,” I said in my most sunshiny voice, and brought him his bowl on a tray.

“Not hungry.”

“Too bad. Eat.”

Dutifully, he took a spoonful in his mouth. Reluctantly, he swallowed.

“What is it?”

“Soup?”

His eye narrowed and he poked at the lumps in the broth. “I’ve had soup. This is not it, not in any of its forms.”

“Water, meat, vegetable. Boil. Soup.”

“No wonder Bellarius is such a dour place. Nobody born here can cook.”

“I’d be insulted if that wasn't so close to the truth. Try your best.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You aren’t going to eat?”

“Me? Eat that? Do I look crazy?”

He literally growled at me. But he ate.

“Hey, what did you do with my flunky?” I asked him while he struggled to chew an especially gristly lump.

He swallowed before he replied, because Holgren was classy like that. “Keel? The worst thing imaginable.”

“You made him join the navy?”

“Worse. I sent him to school.”

“You monster.”

He shrugged. “It’s what he got for being intelligent but unlettered.”

“Where?”

“Gol-Shen.”

“Good thinking. Far enough away that he can’t easily get revenge.”

While Holgren contended with his dinner, I wandered around the room, at loose ends. It wasn’t the first time I’d done so in the day and a half we’d been pent up there. The Citadel was still a shithole, but it had more furniture than the first time I’d entered it.

“You gonna tell me about your eye now?” I finally asked.

“It’s not my eye, actually. It’s Lagna’s.”

My mouth dropped open a little. “Seriously?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Let me see it!”

“I would, but if I open it, complicated things happen.”

“Like what?”

“Like my mind goes someplace else, where I can see… anything, if I know where to look. And then I can physically go to it. It’s how I finally found you, but it’s not really something I enjoy doing. I have to look at the corpse of Lagna’s ghost, more or less, when I use it.”

“Oh.”

I spied the pack that Holgren had had on when he appeared at my hidey-hole outside reality. I hadn’t disturbed it while he was sleeping, because messing around with a mage’s stuff without his permission was neither safe nor bright. I scooped it up and settled on the floor next to the fire.

“Right then, let’s see what a mage packs when he goes to hells.” I stuck a hand in the pack, and was met with a sticky, tacky residue of... something. It seemed to cover everything inside the pack.

“Ew. What the hells got in here?” I asked, pulling my hand out and wiping it on the cooking rag that was still on my shoulder.

He coughed slightly and shifted himself higher in the bed, then leaned back against the pillows. “There was a river of blood. I had to cross it.”

“Oh.” What do you say to that? I opened the pack wider and started pulling things out, wiping them clean-ish as I went.

“Oh, look. A monster’s head under glass.”

“Amra, meet Halfmoon. Halfmoon, Amra. He’s not very nice. He wants to eat my brain.”

“Well, who wouldn’t? It’s a very clever brain.” The thing blinked its dozen eyes and ran a long, gray-blue tongue along the glass. I shuddered and put it aside. Facing the wall.

“Mages,” I muttered. I rooted around a bit more and came up with a small glass vial.

“Anonymous powder,” I said. “Let me guess, an ingredient for a spell.”

“No, that’s a jar full of the Road.”

“Seriously?” There really wasn’t anything worse you could put in your body, except straight sharp steel. The Road was a dead end. Worse than hellweed.

“Yes.”

I shook my head and threw it in the fire. “What, wine just not scratching the itch anymore? I take back what I said about your brain.”

“Well, I never opened it,” he said, peevishly.

“Thank Vosto.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Really?” The god of fools and drunkards, Vosto was the closest deity there was to a god of mercy.

“Really.”

“What was that like?”

“He compared me to a turtle stuck on its back, intimated that I was pathetic and ridiculous, told me I was in his debt, then told me to bugger off. Also, he very much seemed to enjoy calling me a fool.”

“Sounds like my kind of god.”

“Meeting a divine being not threatening or actively trying to kill me was a nice change of pace.”

I rooted around some more in the blood-goop inside the pack, but couldn't find anything else. “Is that it?”

“All that's left, anyway.”

“You could have told me instead of letting me play with hell blood!” I threw the pack on the floor, took up the rag, and started scrubbing at my hands.

“I could have. But you said hurtful things about my brain. Also, the soup.” He pointed the spoon at me in an accusatory fashion, and I gave him two bloody fingers in response.

“When you get better, I’m going to smother you in your sleep.”

I went downstairs, where there was a bucket of water and soap, and made good use of them. When I came back, the soup had been exiled to the far edge of the bed. I shifted the tray to the table and sat down in a chair facing him.

“All right, lover, listen up. We have a serious conversation in front of us, and not a bit of it contains light or joy.”

He shrugged. “I doubt it will be worse than dinner, so I feel suitably prepared.”

“First, the bitch Kalara, the Knife That Parts the Night. I renamed her Chuckles, by the way. Long story. Anyway, she’s more or less responsible for every shitty thing that has happened on this side of the Dragonsea for the past thirty years or so. Heavy on the ‘more’ side. She started the Helstrum-Elam war, for a start, and then the plague and famine that followed.”

“To what end?”

“To flood Bellarius with refugees, specifically children.”

He frowned. “I assume it wasn’t because she has a special fondness for unripe humans.”

“Unripe—that’s pretty dark, Holgren, even for you.”

“Sorry. In Thraxys there was an orchard—actually, you don’t want to know.”

“When I’m in the mood for a good screaming nightmare, I’ll bring that back up and you can tell me a bedtime story, thanks. Anyway, Kalara crammed Bellarius full of street kids. It was an experiment, kind of. Or a contest. Of sorts. She packed this city with street rats, and then started turning the screws on us. She suppressed any impulse towards pity for us from the citizenry of this fair city, to make sure we would have to fend for ourselves. And then she started the Purge.”

“And she did all this by manipulating the Telemarch.”

“That’s how the Blades seem to work, yeah. Or at least the two I’ve encountered. They can’t do all that much on their own. They need a human flunky, a slave to wield them for most things.”

“The obvious question regarding Kalara’s actions would be why.”

“She says it was to make me.”

He looked at me a while with his one eye. It was still raptor-like, that gaze. He didn’t notice that he was rubbing at the lump in his palm, but I did. “Do you think Kalara was responsible for what happened with your father?” he finally asked. He knew my story, of course.

I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that. The only person responsible for that piece of shit’s actions was himself. But once he was dead, and once Arno was taken by the lung fever, there I was on the streets. In Kalara’s proof house.” A proof house was a place where they tested armor and other metal implements to destruction, to see what they could stand. I used to steal scrap from the one in the Girdle, when they were careless enough to leave anything out in the yard overnight.

Holgren struggled up a little bit higher in bed. “And did Kalara explain what she meant when she said she’d made you? Made you into what, exactly?”

“The little bitch has been cagey about it. All she would say is she wanted a survivor.” Actually, she’d called me the ‘ultimate survivor,’ but that just sounded overblown and stupid.

“Were you meant to be a replacement for the Telemarch?”

“No. She was talking about something bigger.”

“What?”

“She didn’t say. All she said is that the remaining Blades will be after me, now. Some to kill me, some to make me their slave. And that’s why I pulled the disappearing act the night we killed the Telemarch. Well, that and the whole city exploding if I hadn’t.” I was still feeling ambivalent about being the savior of my shithole birthplace.

“Yes, Amra, let’s talk about that, shall we?” His tone was suddenly light, and as false as cut-glass masquerading as diamond. This was a part of our conversation I would happily skip.

“It’s getting late, Holgren, and you look really tired—”

“I went through literal hells to get you back after you disappeared.”

I nodded. “I will pay poets to write sonnets—”

“I don’t remember much at the very end, when the chaos magic was killing me and I was suffocating, but I do remember wine bowls scattered all over the floor.”

“Well, I was bored. It’s not like I was having a party or—”

“And then we were back here, and the chaos magic didn’t come back with us. Which leads me to believe you could have returned from whatever no-place you were, minus city-ending threat, at any time you chose. Which means I went through hells to rescue someone who did not want to be rescued.” His tone was not light, there at the end. Not light at all.

I got up from the chair, sat down at the foot of the bed, and put a hand on his blanketed knee. “Do you remember Thagoth?” I asked him.

“Don’t change the subject, Amra.”

“I’m not, I swear. Just listen. When the Shadow King added you to his khordun, you made the case that it might be better for the whole world if you stayed in Thagoth, outside of his control. Until you died.”

“And you shouted me down. And you were right.”

“That time. This time, there are six Blades after me, each one potentially more powerful that the Shadow King. I did the plusses and minuses, and I made a decision.” Actually, I hadn’t initially expected to survive Kalara and the chaos magic at all, but there was no way in hells I was going to tell him that.

He leaned forward and put one long finger on my knee. “But Amra, here is the difference—in Thagoth, we decided. The night you killed the Telemarch, there was no ‘we’ involved in your sums.”

“There was no time.” It sounded weak even to my own ears now, though it had seemed true at the time.

“You left me.”

“To save you.”

He pulled back and sat up straighter, his face as solemn as I had ever seen it. “I will say this only once, Amra Thetys, because it is embarrassingly, unforgivably, excruciatingly treacly, for all that it is the truth: if being saved means I don’t have you, I prefer not to be saved. Do not forget to include that figure the next time you are doing world-altering sums, if you please.”

What could I say to that?

I pushed him back onto the pillows, and kissed him long and hard despite the scraggly fur on his face. And then we started to do other things that are none of your damn business. 

Which of course is when the gods-damned door opened. Holgren summoned up his magic, and I dove for a knife in the pile of clothing by the bed. Then I remembered all I had was a paring knife I’d brought up from the kitchen.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Greytooth, turning away, but not fucking leaving. “You did give me the key.”

“Most people knock,” I muttered, and started getting dressed. “How are you, old man?” I probably shouldn’t have talked to him that way, him being both a mage and a Philosopher. But I was feeling a tad frustrated.

“Better than I was, now that I know you two are alive.”

“That’s sweet, thanks. How can we help you?”

“It’s I who have come to help you. I’ve received permission from my brothers to open our archives.”

“Archives?” Holgren asked, his voice betraying his interest. Once a bookworm, always a bookworm. I mean, I liked books quite a bit. But I’d liked what we were doing quite a fair bit more, and was hoping to get back to it sharpish. Now Holgren was practically inviting Greytooth in for a chat.

“Every piece of information we have acquired on the Eightfold’s Blades,” Greytooth replied. “Six centuries of research, and the first-hand accounts of the Philosophers who have contended with them.”

“That seems… useful,” I said. “You can turn around now, by the way.”

“We hope it will prove so,” he replied, and stumped over to the fireplace. “We suspect that, with Kalara’s destruction, the remaining Blades will seek to end the threat you represent. Anything we can do to assist you, we will. My own opinion is that you should bring the fight to them.”

“Or I could run far, far away, and keep running.”

My suggestion was greeted with silence.

“What?”

“You can’t, Amra,” said Holgren. “We can’t. They need to be dealt with.”

I blew out a breath. “Yeah, so I knew that. But it doesn’t have to be tonight. And anyway, I don’t have a clue where to begin.”

Holgren smiled. “Fortunately, you have two learned, reasonably intelligent fellows here to assist you in crafting your designs.”

“And we are not without other skills,” Greytooth added.

“Fine. But this is going to require more wine than what’s available in this draughty pile of stones.”

That was the moment I went to war with the castoff splinters of a mad goddess. She’d already gone to war with me, after all.

TWO

Somebody had burned down my fucking house.

There was a house-shaped hole in the familiar architecture of the Promenade, with blackened stones and charred beams littering the base of it. I stood at the primly closed gate on a sunny late-summer morning, mouth open, and stared in disbelief. They’d got the carriage house in the back as well. I was the proud owner of ashes, blackened beams, and shattered bricks. Behind me, the foot traffic on the Promenade just went on, as if nothing had happened. As if this was all quite normal and nothing to remark upon. I pinched myself fiercely just to make sure I wasn’t in some awful nightmare. I did not suddenly and abruptly wake up.

Some evil fucker had really burned down my gods-damned house. I don’t know how long I stood there, stunned, but it was… a while.

“It happened about two months ago,” said a voice by my side— one, I slowly realized, that I recognized. Inspector Kluge. I hadn’t even heard him approach.

“Have you caught the fucker?” I asked, unable to take my eyes away from the devastation.

“I’m afraid not. No witnesses, no suspects, no leads. But now that you have returned, Amra Thetys, perhaps that will change.”

I turned and stared at him. Same horsey face, same falsely empathetic eyes, with the pretty purple band around the irises. He looked a little older, a little more salt and a little less pepper in his close-cropped hair.

“I have no idea who’d want to burn me out. Except the neighbors. They were always giving me dirty looks. Did you interrogate them?”

Kluge pointed to the house on the left of my now-manseless lot. “That neighbor is a shipping magnate who makes fifty thousand marks a year, in a bad year.” He pointed to the house on the right. “There we have the residence of a baronet who is nearly ninety years old. It is my professional opinion that neither is responsible for burning down your house. After all, who would want to live next to a smoking hole in the ground, or risk their own home burning as well if the wind blew fickle?”

“No, you’re right. They’d have probably just hired assassins if they were that bothered.” I rubbed my face with both hands. It didn’t help. When I dropped them, my dwelling was still blackened rubble.

“I can assure you that the investigation is ongoing. There’s another matter to discuss. I’ve been sent by the Lord Governor to discover the whereabouts of your… associate, Holgren Angrado.”

“Why? Do you think he did it? Because that would be a real surprise. All his stuff was in there, too.”

“No. The Lord Governor has business with the magus. Long-delayed business. Where is Holgren Angrado?”

I shrugged. “Sorry, I couldn’t tell you. Holgren had business of his own to take care of.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Uh, three weeks ago? Thereabouts.”

“Where?”

“Bellarius.”

“And you’ve just arrived from there?”

“Yeah.”

“What ship?”

“The Hawkwind. Say, are you interrogating me? Because the last time you did that you threatened to hang me. I haven’t forgotten, you know. Things like that you don’t forget.”

“This is not an interrogation. If it were, as you well know, you would be in a dank, dimly lit room wearing shackles and manacles. No, Mistress Thetys, this is simply a pleasant exchange on a street celebrated for its beauty, under a cloudless sky.” He looked up at said cloudless sky and sighed a fake little satisfied sigh, then looked back down at me. “I could arrange the other venue, if you’d like.”

“You know, I’d love to, but it looks like I’ll be busy today finding someplace else to doss down. Maybe some other time, though.”

“Let me be very direct,” he replied. “You say you don’t know where Angrado is. I don’t believe you. Now, personally, it would cheer me to no end if your partner never set foot in Lucernis again. You, too, for that matter. But I am not asking for myself. I am asking for the Lord Governor, and when the Lord Governor wants a question answered, it gets answered, and truthfully. How long that takes and how much pain is involved are the only variables.”

“Kluge. Listen. I’m not saying I’m above lying to you. I don’t like you, and handing you a bag of cack instead of the truth would normally give me the same kind of joy as petting kittens, or winning a trifecta at the track. You may want to reflect on why that would be the case, by the way. What I am saying is, I’m not stupid enough to hand a bag of cack to Governor Morno, even if you’re the one who has to carry it to him. I don’t know where Holgren is. If you don’t believe me, haul me in. At least I’ll have a place to sleep.”

He gave me the look that said he didn’t believe a word I said, and was even suspicious of the individual syllables.

“I know far more than I care to about your personal history, and it is tightly interwoven with that of Holgren Angrado’s. You two are, both figuratively and literally, as thick as thieves. That you would not know his whereabouts beggars belief.”

“Yeah, well, when Holgren said he had business to take care of that he couldn’t talk about, you know what I said? I said ‘All right.’ And do you know why? Because our relationship is based on mutual respect and trust. You should try it in your own relationships. Really makes for a happier home life.”

I watched him deciding whether hauling me down to Havelock would be worth the bother. Saw the moment he decided it wouldn’t be. Maybe he had a full day ahead.

“We will speak again, Amra.”

“Damned right we will. There’s a fucking arsonist out there that needs catching. What am I paying taxes for?” I actually had paid taxes on the manse. Grudgingly. My man of business had explained patiently and multiple times that there was no way around it.

Kluge walked off without a further word, a little tight-jawed. I returned my attention to the ruins of my home.

Somebody had burned down my fucking house.

The old coot who lived next door hobbled out in his dressing gown as I contemplated the destruction. He pointed at me with his cane.

“You! You need to have this lot cleared! It’s the Promenade, not a damned charcoal burner’s village. The stench is still in my drapes!”

Noble or not, I gave him the fingers, which is when I noticed they were ink-stained. What the hells had I touched? I hadn’t been writing any letters. The question got driven out of my head, though, when he started throwing things at me, starting with his slippers and then moving on to progressively heavier things.

He had a good arm for such an old fart, but his aim was shit. By the time I’d exhausted my vocabulary of hurtful things to call him, we’d attracted a bemused crowd. Shards of pottery littered the Promenade.

Gods, but I’d missed Lucernis.

~ ~ ~

What do you do when you find out your house got burned down? You drink. Or at least I did.

Tambor’s hadn’t burned down in my absence, thank all the dead gods, and despite the place deserving it. On the other hand, their wine had somehow gotten even worse, which I would have bet life-altering sums of money wasn’t possible. At first, I suspected they’d finally just made the switch to straight vinegar, but as I grew increasingly sauced, I knew that couldn’t be the case. You can’t get drunk off of vinegar.

Don’t ask me how I know that.

The first jug got me through the shock and disbelief. The second lit a fire under my rage. I swore bloody vengeance on the perpetrator. People moved away from me in the wine garden. Fair enough. I hadn’t meant to do it out loud, or quite so… animatedly. Or while holding a knife. The third jug didn’t do anything for me in particular except make me more drunk, which is all you can reasonably ask from a jug of plonk, really.

The fourth jug got me to that hazy place I was looking for. The place where harsh truths had their edges sanded down a bit. Truth was, I’d been far happier living in the Foreigners’ Quarter than I ever had on the Promenade. I’d always felt like a squatter there, to be honest. Owning a manse on the richest street in the city had been a promise my much younger self had made while fresh off the boat, sick, and half-starving. And I’d done it. Took me ten years or thereabouts, but by Kerf’s chafed nipples, I’d done it. Not bad for a Hardside-born street rat.

But, like a lot of things you spend your life chasing, the catching of it hadn’t really lived up to expectations.

Maybe the shitty little firebug, whoever they were, had done me a favor.

No. No, they definitely had not. Tambor’s didn’t stock enough wine to make me that philosophical about it. I was still going to find whoever had done it and set fire to them. I realized I was stabbing the scarred, filthy table top with my best knife, and made myself stop. Drunk and angry is no excuse to abuse a knife. Not my best and favorite knife, anyway. It was a little flashier than was my habit, with an onyx stone in the pommel, banded by a tiny silver chain. I’d got it… somewhere. Honestly, I’d been through so many knives by this point in my life, who could keep track?

“Hey, Mistress Amra.”

I squinted up at the person who somehow had the gall, effrontery, temerity and bad judgment to both know my name, and not know not to interrupt my drunk.

“Kettle. Siddown, you’re blocking the daylight.”

“It’s nighttime, mistress. There ain’t no daylight left.”

“’s a figure of speech. You want some cat piss?” I squinted in the direction of the serving girl. “’Nother bowl for my wide friend, here!”

Kettle sat, and the woman passed him a bowl with a scowl even I noticed. “She vomits, that’s a silver mark for clean-up.”

“Hey. Since when?” I asked. She rolled her eyes and went back to her dark corner of disapproval.

“Place is going to the dogs.”

Kettle poured and drank. All of it, in one long swallow. Not even a shudder crossed his large frame. I was impressed. Then he set the bowl down and poured himself another. “The trick is to put it back so fast you can’t taste it. Much.”

I frowned. “That’s workmanlike, that is, Kettle. A true master of the drunk savors each mouthful, so’s you can regret your decisions in the moment. Not just the next day like some tyro.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, mistress. But really, I ain’t here to drink.”

“Then you must be lost, kid. There’s no other reason to be here, I promise you.”

“The old man sent me down here to fetch you, if you ain’t busy. He heard you was back.”

Kettle worked as Fengal Daruvner’s runner. Fengal was my fixer and fence. As in used to be, me being retired and all. I guess you could call him a friend. He’d done me enough favors.

“Huh. And where did old baldy hear that?”

Kettle shrugged. “He hears what he hears. He told me to collect you before you took up house under a table.”

“Don’t talk to me about houses.”

He frowned, which was a grand display of emotion for him. “Somebody burnt you out, yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“The old man keeps tabs on stuff. You know that.”

“Does he know who did it?”

Kettle shrugged. “You could ask him, mistress. If climbing out of that jug isn’t too much trouble.”

I decided it wasn’t. Then I stood up and Tambor’s started spinning, and had second thoughts.

“Silver mark!” shouted the nasty woman, so I gave her the fingers and staggered out under my own power in an expressly non-vomitous fashion, just to show her up.

Kettle had a hack waiting. He opened the door for me.

“Hells is this? Fengal’s so sure I’d cut my drunk short just because he whistles?” I stood in the street, swaying, fists on my hips. “I am my own woman, I’ll have you know, Kettle-son-of-Pot.”

“He said you’d likely be, uh, belligerent, depending on how deep in your cups you were. He said to tell you there’s a bottle of Gol-Shen waiting for you.”

“Well, shit. You shoulda just led with that.” I climbed into the hack, folded myself into a corner, and closed my eyes. Third Wall Road was too far to walk in my state, but I knew my stomach wasn’t going to take kindly to a carriage ride. It was going to be a race between passing out and throwing up. I prayed for the first. I hate vomiting.

Kettle climbed in beside me, making the whole thing rock unpleasantly. My stomach gave a dangerous little lurch.

“Baldy didn’t send you out with a bucket, by any chance?”

THREE

I came to, to a finger being poked repeatedly in my ribs.

“Do that again and I’ll stick you.”

“We’re here, Mistress Amra. Wake up, or I’ll be obliged to carry you in, and neither of us wants that.”

I cracked one eye open. “Try it and I’ll stick you.”

“Ah. You’re one of those drunks, sure enough.”

“Why the hells do you think I drink alone?”

“You need a hand down?”

“You need a kick in the nutsack?”

“All right, then.” He paid the driver while I poured myself out of the hack. I looked around, blearily. Third Wall Road hadn’t changed. Still grubby and working class, and a better neighborhood than most I’d lived in. Fengal’s eatery was right where I’d left it. He’d thrown a fresh coat of paint on it, though— a cheery yellow color that might not have been the cause of my queasiness, but certainly didn’t help.

My body wanted me to curl up somewhere dark and quiet, preferably with a pitcher of clean water and a half-loaf of bread. I knew from experience that the only way I was going to get past this stage of my drunk was to just muscle through it. Single-minded determination. Resolute fortitude. Other big words.

That would require more booze, and quickly.

I staggered into the eatery, which was about three-quarters full. Immediately I was assaulted by the dull roar of its patrons and the nasal ghost of decades of fried food and fish sauce. I couldn’t see Fengal sitting at the back at his usual table because my eyes weren’t cooperating with the focusing, but I knew he was there.

“Fengal, you hairless mother-violator! Where’s my fucking bottle of Gol-Shen?”

“I’ve got plenty of hair, you drunken reprobate,” he shouted back. “Just not where anyone wants it.”

I worked my way to the back and slid into the chair next to him. Kettle followed at his own leisurely pace, and took up his accustomed place against the wall.

Fengal didn’t bother with words until he’d poured me one. I didn’t bother with words until I’d downed it. The difference between Tambor’s Best and a bottle of Gol-Shen nearly gave me heart palpitations.

“You steady now?” he asked me.

“Getting there,” I grunted while pouring myself another.

“I haven’t seen you this cabbaged in at least five years, woman.”

“They burned down my house,” I said. “And then they burned down the carriage house in the back for good fucking measure.”

“So, is this helping?”

I snorted. “As if you’ve gone a day in your life without a bottle within reach.”

He raised a shaggy eyebrow. “Oh, it’s to be an ugly drunk, then.”

“I had a credenza!” My shout drew attention from nearby tables. I gave them the fingers.

“Not sure what a credenza is, I’ll have to admit,” said Fengal

“So don’t pretend you know my pain, you old fart.” I abandoned the glass and took up the bottle.

“I would never.” He let me suckle in peace for a minute before his next sally.

“So how was Bellarius?”

“Worse than having your house burned down, thanks for reminding me.”

“And how was… after Bellarius?”

“It was like what I imagine being dead is like, except you can make your own wine, but you have to piss into the void.”

“If that’s some sort of metaphor, it’s gone straight over my head I’m afraid.”

“Every word factual.”

“And Holgren? How’s the magus?”

I tipped the bottle back, but nothing went into my mouth. “This bottle is shockingly empty.” I stared at it. “Betrayed yet again.”

“You might want to slow down, Amra. You haven’t been here five minutes.”

“Then you shouldn’t have given me something so drinkable.”

“That’s a mistake I’ll rectify this time around, sure enough. Kettle, go fetch us a bottle of Mother Harm.”

For the first time, I saw Kettle looking… troubled. “Boss, are you sure?”

“Desperate times, son.”

Kettle disappeared into the kitchen, and came back with a dusty, cobwebbed bottle. It was black. There was no label.

“The fuck’s that?”

“Something from the motherland.”

“Elam’s not known for wine,” I said, the first tendrils of suspicion taking root in my brain.

“No. No, it is not.” He uncorked it and poured into my glass. Whatever it was, it was the greenish tinge of corpse skin, and cloudy, and it smelled like something you’d drown your enemy in a vat of.

“I’d get you a fresh glass, but honestly it wouldn’t matter.” I’ll give him this, he poured himself one as well, and without flinching. He raised his glass. “Welcome home, Amra Thetys.”

I grunted and put the contents of the glass back in a single gulp.

That proved to be a terrible mistake.

~ ~ ~

When next I experienced consciousness, the first thing I noticed was that weasels had been using my mouth as a burrow. Or a shitter. Or both.

Probably both. But it might have been stoats. I don’t know, I’m city folk.

The second and third things I noticed, simultaneously, were the terrible, terrible thirst and that my head had apparently been crushed by a mattock at some point, without me noticing.

The fourth thing dawned upon me slowly: the overwhelming urge to die.

I opened one gummy lid, stared blearily around at my surroundings, and discovered that I was in Fengal’s back room. Technically it was his office, I guess. There was a desk, anyway, as well as shelves filled with I don’t know what. But I’d never seen him use it for business. I was shriveled up on the cot in the corner. The last person I’d seen on that cot was Bollund, Corbin’s fixer’s muscle. He’d had a hole in his torso you could play peek-a-boo through. He’d karked it in the end. It gave me hope.

I was pretty sure if I just lay still long enough, death would come and take me. The question was how long was long enough. I desperately needed water, so I crawled off the cot and crept my way to the door. It opened before I reached it, and Fengal himself stood in it, too big to go around.

“You’re alive,” he observed.

“You,” I said, hand going to a knife. “The fuck did you pour me?”