Fool's Gold (20 page)

“Woman?” There was no way Lette was going to let that shit lie. She went to kick him again. Balur's arm shot out fast enough that she had trouble tracking it. He caught her ankle.

“It is already feeling like Mattrax was taking a shit in my skull. I would be begging you not to be kicking it anymore. Ours has been being a long and fruitful partnership and it would be being a shame for it to end with me being the one to be tearing your leg off and to be shoving it up your arse.”

Lette sneered. “Like to see you try.” The truth was, though, that if Balur wanted to, she would see him both try and—assuming she didn't pass out from the pain—succeed.

Balur grunted, let go of her leg, and rolled into a sitting position. He let out a second grunt, somehow deeper and more profound, and put his head in his hands.

“Be reminding me,” said Balur, his voice even more gravelly than normal, “to not be drinking any more Fire Root potion.”

Lette groaned. So
that
explained it. “You stupid, silly fuck,” seemed the best way to summarize that situation.

Balur grunted. “Was killing a dragon.”

That, she knew, would in Balur's mind excuse any behavior. Show up at a Batarrian wedding, tear the bride in two, and use both halves of her as a latrine? Okay as long as it resulted in an unimpeachable display of one's might.

“It was an unconscious dragon,” she pointed out, for all the good it would do.

“Wasn't seeing you killing it.”

Will, Lette realized, was staring and pointing. Both she and Balur turned to look at him. Will's finger wavered at Balur. “You?” he managed.

“Of course him,” Lette said. “Who else would get drunk enough to cave in Mattrax's skull.”

“So… so…” Will's jaw worked. “Balur's the prophet,” he managed. He looked off at where Firkin sat. “They should be worshipping him. Not me.”

Now it was Balur's turn to look confused. “They are worshipping you?” He looked from Will to Lette. “Why are they worshipping the farmer?”

Lette couldn't quite resist the short, sharp punch to Balur's pride. “They think Will killed Mattrax,” she said.

The transformation was immediate. One moment Balur was a sagging ball of scales and aches, the next he was an eight-foot towering statue built in honor of righteous rage. His arm snapped out, caught Will around the neck.

“You are claiming my kill?” he roared. Brown phlegm flew out of his mouth, spattered Will.

Maybe that particular punch had been a little too short and sharp…

“Balur,” Lette said, affecting patience.

Will croaked.

“I am going to be killing you,” Balur growled at him. “Or are you going to be claiming that as suicide as well?”

“Balur,” she repeated.

“I shall be arranging your intestines so that they shall be reading, ‘I claimed the rightful kill of Balur, mightiest of the Analesians.'”

Balur always got far too invested in the whole revenge thing.

“Bal—” she started for the third time, then changed her mind and went for the more direct, “Hey, you, the son of a whore lizard.”

Balur snapped his gaze down to her. “What?”

“Let him go, you gargantuan fucking idiot.”

Balur curled his lip but did as he was told. Will landed, gasping, pawing at his bruised throat.

“Why?” Balur growled. Whether he was asking for Will's motives or hers, Lette wasn't sure. Maybe Balur wasn't either.

“I didn't claim it,” said Will, his voice sounding raw. “All I've done is tell people that it wasn't me. I just found an eye you left on the ground. I was using it as a lantern. I didn't even know what it was.”

“The crowd,” Lette said, “did what crowds always do. They made a stupid assumption. And then someone did what people always do when crowds make stupid assumptions. They agreed with it, and took advantage of it.” That was, as far as Lette understood it, the entire principle of the political system.

“Who?”

Perhaps there was a little Fire Root left in Balur's system. He was never at his best when he was monosyllabic.

“Firkin,” she said reluctantly. If she didn't give the name up now, it would just take up more time as Balur badgered her for it.

“Then I am knowing who I must be killing next.”

“No!” she snapped with more than a little vehemence. “He is surrounded by a crowd of a hundred or more, all of whom believe him completely.”

“Then I will be killing all who are getting in my way,” Balur said, already turning.

“No!” There was a shrillness in Lette's voice that she regretted. But it stopped Balur. He turned, looked at her. “No,” she said again. “That's not who we are… Not who I am anymore.”

Balur stared at her. She saw disbelief. Disappointment. But she wanted to be a better person, not a weaker one. So she held his gaze.

“We are tribe,” Balur growled.

“Then our tribe is not killing a hundred innocents today.”

Balur curled his lip. For a moment she thought it might come to blows. Analesian dominance patterns died hard. But then Balur shook his head, let his shoulders slump. “You are not being fun anymore.”

Lette breathed. “We just need to get the gold and get gone from here,” she said.

She flicked her gaze over to Will, checking that he was still on board. He was looking at her with a distinctly nervous expression. She arched an eyebrow.

“I could go and tell them Balur killed Mattrax” he said quietly.

She shook her head. “Shut up,” she told him, “and help me get rich.”

Lette's nerves tightened like bowstrings as they approached Mattrax's cave. There was another crowd here. Not as big as Firkin's, but big enough to keep her up at night if she had to cut through them to get to the gold.

I'll let Balur go in first,
said the cold, calculating part of her mind.
Shock and awe. Let him carve a path. They'll start to flee downhill—the path of least resistance. I'll cut them down just as they start to break. Five or six should do it. Women and children if I can. That paralyzes them, gives Balur more time to work. Then they flee backward, toward the mountain. I put a blade in anyone spilling off to the sides. Then we press them up against the rock, finish them. Less than a minute's work
.

She half shook her head, half shuddered. She didn't want to listen to that voice.

It got you this far,
she whispered back to herself.

“Is that Quirk?” Will had stopped walking and stood squinting.

Lette's stomach did a slow gymnastic routine. Memories of fire and fear. The smell of cooking flesh in her nostrils. She looked over at Balur.

“Wait,” she said. “Are you aroused right now?”

Small purple frills had opened up along Balur's neck, narrow vibrant lines of feathery color. Like a fish's gills. Their display was involuntary, and only ever appeared when Balur was contemplating mating rituals.

Balur brushed a hand at his neck, and failed to meet her eye.

“No,” he blustered. “It is just being… I am just waking up. This is being the way I am in the morning. It is being nothing to do with nothing.” He looked away.

She shook her head. “You sick bastard. You're totally turned on by her body count, aren't you?”

Balur hesitated, then shrugged. “There were being a lot of torched bodies in that cave last night.”

Lette grunted her disgust. Still, she was used to Balur's depravities. A lot of his whores liked to share their stories with her. They seemed to think that some battle-scarred bond must now exist between them. She rather wished they wouldn't.

From the poorly stifled sounds of revulsion coming from behind her, it rather sounded like Will didn't want to hear about the depravities either. She wondered what that was like—to still have innocence left to lose.

“If you're so hot and heavy for her,” she said to Balur, ignoring Will, “then why don't you go in first, and make sure she's feeling less murderous than last night?”

“Murderous? Body count?” Will, it seemed, had gotten over the mental image Balur had summoned. “What are you talking about? Quirk wouldn't even kill Ethel last night because she's a pacifist. I think she's treating the wounded up there.” He pointed. And, Lette saw now, the women and men were almost universally bandaged and hobbling.

Lette turned and smiled. “Ah,” she said. “Yes. Well, you know how our thaumatobiologist has given up magic? How she's moved on and made herself a better person?”

Will nodded.

“Yes,” Lette said. “So that was horseshit.”

“She…” Will started.

“Roasted a score of people alive?” Lette finished. “Yes, she did that.”

“Oh fuck.”

Balur cut in. “It was being like a firestorm in the night. Ribbons of fire were dancing about her.”

“Keep it in your pants,” Lette told him. He brushed at his neck.

“She's treating the wounded,” Will repeated.

“She probably wounded most of them herself.”

“There must have been… I don't know. Some sort of extenuating circumstances.”

“Like her being a psychotic, magic-using arsonist and lying to us about it?” Will was cute and all, but it was possible to push the naïve thing too far.

“How about we are going over there and just asking her?” Balur put in.

“I told you to keep it in your pants.”

“I think ‘just talking' is pretty close to keeping it in your pants,” Will put in.

Lette breathed. She had started to calculate whether she could stash Will's body before the crowd noticed. She was
not
going to be that person.

“Fine,” she said. “Let's talk.”

They pushed through the crowd. Quirk kept her head down as they approached, focused on the stitches she was putting in a young boy's arm. Her fingers made short, precise movements. Strands of pig gut tightened, sealed fleshed together.

“You don't know a… ‘better way' to help with that?” Lette asked without preamble. She and Balur loomed over the spot where she sat working. The young boy looked up at them. He was biting on a strap of leather while Quirk worked.

Quirk didn't look up. “I told you,” she said. “I'm reformed.”

None of them said the word
magic.
None of them mentioned spells. The crowd hadn't put it together yet. There was no need to help them along the way.

“Reformed?” Lette allowed acid to etch the edges of her voice. “You were reformed last night?”

Quirk cinched a stitch tight with a sharp jerk of her wrist. The boy winced, let out a slight moan. Quirk blew out, put a smile on her face.

“Sorry,” she said to the boy. “That's the last one, though. You go on to your mother. Tell her how brave you were.” She flicked a glance at Will. “As brave as the prophet himself.”

The boy's eyes widened along with his smile. He ran off, grinning.

Will was looking about anxiously. “You've heard?” he asked Quirk quietly.

“When it's all someone will talk about despite the fact that you need to amputate his hand, then you work out that it's important to a lot of people.”

Will shook his head.

“This is striking me,” Balur rumbled, “as being a fairly transparent attempt to change the subject.”

The small grin that had graced Quirk's face fled. She looked down at the ground. “I have more people to treat.”

“Cauterizing wounds?” It was probable, Lette thought, that antagonizing someone who could cook you in your clothes was unwise, but… gods, she sat there so calmly, trying to pretend it hadn't happened. She had lied, had killed. Lette would not be satisfied until there was some blood in the water.

Yet when Quirk looked up, Lette was afraid she had cut too deep. Something flickered in the mage's eyes. Something bright and dangerous.

“What else would you have me do?” Quirk hissed, with the intensity of a flame. “I caused half these wounds. I cannot go back. I cannot undo them. I slipped. Sometimes I slip. Not often, but last night I did. So I can stand up, and say, Yes, it was me, I did this. And they will string me up and burn me, or something else more inventive but equally vile, and I shall die. Or I could keep my mouth shut and actually do some good healing the hurt.”

Lette hesitated. There was some sense to the words.

“That is being all well and good,” said Balur, “right up until you are doing it all over again.”

Quirk nodded, short and savage. “You're right. I should just end my life. A knife across the wrists is effective, I hear. Maybe I should find a ledge. Just let my past beat me. Just let the person I was win. Or maybe, if I'm going to do that, I should just torch you all. Watch you all burn.” She eyed Balur. “The meat would be peeling off your bones before you even got that hammer above your head.

“Part of me wants to do that, you understand? Since I've met you, there's been just a little piece of me that wants to know what you'd smell like if I cooked you.” She turned that slow, big-eyed stare on each of them in turn. “But I don't. Because I'm better than that. Because I still have things to offer. Because I am holding on to the dream of who I could be.”

Lette honestly felt bad for the woman. Her heart went out to her, in fact. They were alike in many ways. She had forgotten that somewhere along the way. Possibly when her hair was on fire the night before.

However, of more immediate concern was the fact that Quirk's hands were shaking and letting off smoke.

“How close,” Will asked, “would you say you were to slipping right now?” He was stepping back as he spoke.

Quirk clenched her fists. “Just let me tend to these people,” she said. “Just let me undo a little of the damage I've done.”

Lette exchanged a glance with Balur. He shrugged.

“So she is being sorry,” he said. “Plenty of murderers are being sorry. It is not stopping us from being the ones who are stringing them up from trees or from being the ones who are then hitting them until they are stopping moving.”