Did it matter?
With a shrug she tossed back the rest of the drink and waved him over for another. And another.
The pain in her shoulder receded, the weight on her heart lessened. She looked up, surveying the room, grinning to herself as she recalled that first time she’d come here. It had been lively then, with the card players worked up into a lather over some Valathean game that was supposed to be new – fresh in from the Imperial Isles, the greatest game behind the Century Gates. Of course it wasn’t anything of the sort. It was Detan Honding’s game, and the only winner was the man himself.
Pelkaia stared at the empty table, conjuring him in her mind’s eye as she’d first seen him.
He’d had his back to her, head bent down over a pile of cards so that his hair slipped up and his collar slipped down just enough to reveal his Honding family crest.
The Honding wanderer. A conman and burnout. The only sorry sack of flesh on all of the Scorched to have lost his sel-sense to trauma. Some accident on his line back in Hond Steading, an explosion or a fire, and he was done. The only survivor – left useless by his survivorship. They’d even taken him back to Valathea for a while, tried to cure his inability. Or so the rumors of the uppercrust went.
Pelkaia had suspected otherwise. The Catari had stories, stories her mother had sung to her at night in their filth-encrusted cave at the fringe of the Brown Wash. Stories of men and women who could make the firemounts roar to life. If the rumors about the Honding lad were even half true, then the only thing he was running from was whatever had been done to him in Valathea.
Gods below the dunes, he’d looked so blasted pleased when she’d had Ripka’s watchers arrest him. She’d been lucky, she knew, to find watchers nearby who were willing to follow her orders. Watchers too disconnected from their fellows to realize Ripka would be down by the Black Wash, preparing to put a man to death due to the depth of his talent.
And now what? What was she supposed to do now that Galtro was dead – her self-appointed crusade complete? She felt the folded lump of paper in her pocket, the doctored report of her son’s deadly ‘accident’. Felt Thratia’s name burning a hole in her hip. Was she finished? Could it ever just end?
What would she be, when this was over?
She straightened, shoulders drawing back, jaw tightening as she pushed aside all self-pity. It did not matter what she became, it did not matter where she ended up. She’d set out to destroy those who’d contributed to Kel’s murder. So what if there were one more guilty soul to destroy? So what if there were dozens? Just because she had work yet to do did not mean she had failed. This was not over.
The inn’s door burst inward, a flush-faced man stumbling as he tugged on a slate-grey jacket. Pelkaia went cold straight to her core, her whole body felt encased in amber as the man’s mouth began to move.
“Galtro’s been murdered! Thratia’s warden now! City’s on lockdown until the sun-cursed sonuvawhore who did this can be found!” The man snapped his jacket straight and Pelkaia saw the crest whip-stitched to his sleeve: Thratia’s house sigil.
The shockwave of his words spread syrup-slow throughout the room. Pelkaia watched in perverse fascination as eyebrows lifted, curses were uttered, and a few precious mugs were dashed against the floor. Men and women took to their feet, most a touch unsteady, hands reaching for hidden weapons. They cheered. Loud and bright and joyous.
“Easy!” The barkeep, a man who had more muscle in his arms than hairs on his head cried out as he hauled himself up to stand on the bartop. “Steady, all of you bastards! We’re prepared for this.” He stabbed a finger at the regulars crowded around the bar. “Wait your cursed turns while Tik gets the goods ready!”
Prepared for this? Pelkaia’s pulse hammered in her ears, her palms went cold and damp with newfound fear. Some detached part of her marveled that she could still feel fear, that she could still desire self-preservation. The rest of her began to move.
Slowly as she could without being obvious, Pelkaia levered herself to her feet. The regulars reached over the bar, their backs to her, hands grasping for grey coats the barboy Tik was hauling out from the back room for them.
No, more than coats. Weapons emerged from the false bottoms of transport crates, their clean metal gleaming in the dusty lamplight. Well-made weapons. Valathean weapons. Pelkaia swallowed hard. She stepped on the balls of her feet, felt the sway of booze in her limbs and decided she’d have to settle for mid-stepping. It was quiet enough. And they were being so loud, the metal clanging…
“Hey.” Tik scrambled to the bartop and pointed her way, his other hand waving a grey coat like a flag. “You loyal?”
“I just wanted a drink,” she blurted, then clamped her jaw shut and slapped a hand over her mouth in shock. Why had she said that? Oh, Gods below… Why had she touched her skin?
Tik’s eyes nearly leapt from his tiny, perfectly smooth face. “Doppel!” he screeched.
The mantle of her anguish was shattered by the crushing weight of her fear. Pelkaia bolted, ignoring the pain in her side, letting the alcohol numb her hurts and fuel her movement. She was lean, she was fast. But they were much, much closer to the door.
She thundered into a burly man who, thank the stable sands, had been well into his cups by the time she’d arrived. Her shoulder clipped his, and though fiery lances of pain raced through her he spun away and twisted, toppling like a felled log before his rushing fellows. The first two tripped over their comrade, and Pelkaia’s fist closed on the doorknob. She yanked it open and her head snapped back, strange fingers tangled in her hair.
Pelkaia threw her senses out for the bottle the boy had brought her, and found a dozen and a half on a shelf behind the bar. She yanked on the sel within the liquor, heard glass shattering amongst screams as her blind tug sent the bottles spinning into the regulars. Blood and honey perfumed the air. The fingers in her hair tightened their hold.
She gripped the door with both fists and jerked herself to the side even as she flung the door wide. Roots ripped from her scalp as she hurtled out into the street, fingers too numb to maintain their hold. The ground bit her knees. She got her hands out and tucked her head, tumbled through the dust and the grit and slammed into something warm and hard and hoofed.
The indignant honk of a cart donkey broke through the screams coming from the Blasted Rock, and she rolled just in time to avoid being trampled. She found herself in the gutter on the opposite side of the street, scrambled to her feet and took off running down the slope, pumping her legs as fast as she could to stay ahead of the forward tumble of gravity. If she lost her footing now…
Something cracked against the ground beside her and she jumped aside, nearly tangled in her own feet as she slewed sideways into an alley. Pelkaia dropped her back against the alley’s wall, facing the way she’d come from, heaving in great gasps of air.
In the street where she had stood rocks rained, pitched down by her pursuers. She snorted in derision, regretted it as snot dribbled over her lips. With a grunt she dragged the back of her hand across her mouth and spit. She was Catari. She should not run scared from a bunch of Aransan backwater drunkards.
Neither would she risk any of them landing a lucky blow.
Pelkaia peeled the sel from her body and stretched it as thin as she dared, covering the entrance to the alley, mimicking perfectly the obfuscation she left over the mouth to her own home’s alley. It was an easy shaping for her now, but she didn’t need it to be perfect. Those patrons of the Blasted Rock were too deep into their drink to notice any irregularities.