Terms of Surrender (20 page)

Viper pushed her shoulders back and sucked a deep breath through her jagged, chiseled teeth.

“Can you feel that, Mari? The air is different here. They say Winter’s Reach is cursed, that it changes everyone it touches for the worse. You and I both know the reason, though.”

“The Misery,” Mari said flatly, standing her ground at the opposite end of the fighting pit.

“
Leaking
. All these years, spreading its tendrils out, brushing hearts and minds. It doesn’t
turn
you into anything, though. It just…brings out the darkness that was already hiding deep down inside. What did it bring out of you, I wonder?”

Mari beckoned with the bloody tip of a sickle.

“Come and find out.”

Viper charged, then
jumped
. Flipping head over feet, launching herself from a handstand, she tumbled across the arena floor with blinding speed. Mari barely had time to react before Viper landed on her hands, twirled, and drove a brtual kick into Mari’s stomach that sent her staggering. Viper somersaulted, landing on her feet in a low crouch, and spun into another kick that swept Mari’s leg out from under her. She fell to the bloody floorboards, thumping hard on her back.

Mari rolled to her left just as two daggers went flying, chunking into the wood. She scrambled to her feet. Viper drew two more knives from her sleeves and lunged. Mari caught her steel in the curves of her sickle blades, twisted her wrists, broke Viper’s grip, and sent the knives scattering. Before Viper could recover, Mari slammed her forehead down into her nose, feeling cartilage crack against her skull.

Viper darted back, flashing a lunatic grin, and wiped a drizzle of blood from her upper lip. Bright scarlet smeared across one cheek like war paint.

“Well, look at that. You’re actually going to make me break a sweat. Playtime’s over. Let’s
really
fight.”

She crossed her arms, whipping another pair of daggers from her sleeves and moving in for the kill. Mari raised her sickles, preparing herself, and then—Viper wasn’t there anymore. The witch jumped to the right and vanished, her form boiling away like a heat mirage. Mari felt a tug in the air, a sudden draft, as if it were rushing in to fill the void in Viper’s absence.

Mari blinked. Turned around, searching the arena floor.

“Renault,” Veruca shouted, “behind you!”

She spun just in time to see Viper cartwheeling toward her. Her boot slammed into Mari’s chin, clouding her vision in an explosion of pain. Then Viper flipped back onto her feet and lashed out with a blade. The knife slashed across Mari’s arm, tearing linen and flesh. Mari winced, the cut biting like a hot brand against her skin, and before she could recover, Viper side-stepped into a patch of rippling shadow.

Mari gritted her teeth. Clutched her weapons tight as sweat trickled down from her brow and burned her eyes. Her blood spattered onto the arena floor.

The next thing she felt was searing agony as Viper plunged a needle-thin blade through the back of her brigantine vest and into her shoulder blade. She turned, quick, and sliced empty air where the witch had stood just a heartbeat ago.

Mari dropped one sickle and reached back, yanking the dagger free and letting it tumble from her trembling fingers. Viper’s soft laughter echoed through the air, spilling from every shadow.

“Coward,” Mari grunted. “Come out and face me.”

“As you wish,” said the voice at her back as a rustling
pop
of air washed over her. Mari spun to see a whirling boot, Viper launching into a high spinning kick that crashed against the side of her skull. Mari hit the floor on her belly, groaning, the room twirling around her in a stomach-churning spin.

Viper strolled around her, giggling as she shook her head.

“Coven knight,” she said. “Really. As if you could
ever
be good enough.”

Mari pushed herself up on her forearms. Viper ran in, laughing as she drove her boot into her belly. Mari’s body clenched into a fetal ball, wheezing for breath.

“Stay down,” Viper said. “Haven’t decided how I want to finish you off yet.”

Veruca shouted from the corner. “Renault,
get up
. You can beat her!”

“Shut it, cattle.” Viper glared. “See, Mari, this is the problem. Let one of the cattle put on airs, and they
all
think they can start talking back to their betters. I can’t believe you thought our coven would want the likes of you. As if
anyone
would ever want you.”

Her breath gone, her strength gone, her stomach twisted and her head aching so badly she could barely see, Mari was back in Belle Terre. Down in the mud and beaten by the knights she had thought were her heroes.

“
Nobody wants you, and nobody ever will
,” the knight had told her. Crushing her dream under his plated boot.

“But Nessa wants me,” Mari whispered to herself.

And smiled. Her shoulder was a wreck, her body near broken, her face and arm cut and bleeding…but she smiled.

“What was that?” Viper frowned. “You have something to say, cattle?”

Mari pushed herself up on shaky arms, fighting past the exhaustion and the pain as she rose to her feet. Her sickle firm in her grip.

“Yes,” she replied. “What I said was, give up now. You’re outnumbered.”

Viper blinked at her. “How hard did I kick you in the head? The mayor’s a little too tied up to help you right now. You’re all alone, Mari. You’re just a beaten-down little
nothing
who tried to rise above her station and failed. Miserably.”

“
No
,” Mari said. Her free hand reached up and touched the brooch at her opposite shoulder, tracing the contours of the stylized owl engraving. “On this day, you face a
knight
. I don’t fight for myself. I fight for my liege, and she is always with me.”

A feral gleam shone in Mari’s eyes as she raised her weapon.

“This battle is two against one.”

Then she charged, faster than Viper was ready for, faster than she should have been able to move. She feinted with the sickle, ducked low, and drove a balled-up fist into Viper’s gut. She forced her backward, step by halting step, swinging the sickle in a fury as Viper struggled to parry her blows. All the while, her mind locked in the calculus of war. Angles. Speeds. Technique. Learning from Viper’s moves and anticipating her next attack.

She drove a knuckle punch into Viper’s throat, sending her reeling and thumping to the floor. The witch growled, scampering out of the way as Mari swooped in for the kill, and vanished into the shadows again.

Mari closed her eyes. Listening. Feeling the blood trickling down her cheek and arm and shoulder blade, the sting of her wounds, the sheen of sweat on her skin and the ache in her muscles.

Feeling for movement in the air.

“Delusional
bitch
,” Viper’s voice seethed from the shadows. “Fine, I don’t have time to play with you anyway. And once you’re dead, my next stop is your precious ‘liege.’ Think I’ll mount both your heads over my hearth. This battle is
over
, Mari, so—”

Mari spun on her heel and swung.

The tip of her sickle tore through Viper’s jaw, hooking up through the roof of her mouth and driving three inches of cold steel into her brain.

Viper shuddered, eyes wide with shock. Blood poured down Mari’s hand in a guttering torrent and spattered onto her boots.

“Goodbye,” Mari said and wrenched the blade free.

Viper collapsed to the arena floor, eyes glassy and dead.

Mari wasted no time. She scooped up her fallen sickle, strode to the corner, and parted Veruca’s bonds with two quick slices. She hooked her blades back onto her belt and hauled Veruca to her feet.

“Are you all right?”

Veruca rubbed at her red, chafed wrists, but she flashed a wild grin.

“Am I
all right?
That was better than sex. Well, not really, but close. Did you come all this way just to rescue me?”

“No,” Mari said, “and you need to rally your people,
now
. The Imperials are coming.”

The grin vanished. Veruca fell into step alongside her as they climbed out of the pit and headed for the doors, all business now.

“Knew they’d try again eventually. Numbers?”

“Maybe a thousand men. Infantry and archers. Coming by water, too. They plan to siege the walls and hit the harbor at the same time.”

“Follow me. I want you at my side the entire time.”

“Can’t.” Mari shook her head. “My liege is in danger. More witches are coming, her old coven.”

Veruca paused at the threshold, her hand on the door.

“My dream. Bear. The Misery. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? That thing in the mine.”

“That’s what everyone is here for. Veruca, you know me. You know I don’t lie. There are only three outcomes here: The Imperials take it, and destroy this city to punish your rebellion. My liege’s old coven takes it, and
probably
destroys this city just for fun. Or you let us have it. And we leave in peace.”

Veruca’s lip twisted as she thought it over.

“Plus,” Mari said, “assuming we all live to see tomorrow,
you
get an alum mine.”

Veruca pushed the door wide and led the way, out into the snow.

“Don’t you dare leave without seeing me,” Veruca said. “I want to meet this ‘liege’ of yours.”

The line of Coffin Boys outside, keeping a respectful distance from the steps, rushed up as they emerged.

“Mayor,” one said, breathless, “we have trouble.”

“Tell me about it. Imperials been sighted yet?”

“No.” He gestured back over his shoulder. “The guards at the gate are dead. Eviscerated. Someone—some
thing
—tore them apart.”

Veruca glanced sidelong at Mari. “Friends of yours?”

“I know where they’re going. You worry about the Imperials. Leave the rest to me.”

Mari glanced over her shoulder, then rushed back inside the longhouse. She needed something.

*     *     *

Beyond a gate none of the locals could perceive, their eyes merely drifting over it. Down a rocky defile, barren even for the Reach, steep and treacherous. There, at a wall of rock, loomed a jagged gash in the mountain. A tunnel of yawning darkness reinforced with iron-banded timbers.

“I’m
not
going in there,” growled the man in the wolf mask. “Are you crazy?”

Toad stuck his tongue out through the slit in his mask. “Coward. We should start calling you
pup
or
whelp
.”

“No, he’s right,” said an austere woman, looking out from behind the bone wings of a butterfly. “
She
controls the ground in there.
If
she somehow survives touching the Misery, we can confront her right here in the open when she emerges.”

There were six of them. Masked, buried in furs, some bristling with blades and others making the air around them crackle with static electricity as they argued and shook fists at one another. Each trying to egg somebody else, anybody else, to go into the mine and take a look.

“We need to stop her
before
she tries,” insisted Zebra. She folded her arms across her chest, the striped pelt on her shoulders rippling in a gust of freezing wind. “If she somehow manages to harness the Misery, we’re all doomed.”

“You’re doomed anyway,” said Mari, striding down to face them.

The witches spun, torn from their argument, and Mari swung her arms.

Her prizes from the Hall of Justice, Bear’s and Viper’s severed heads, thumped against the stony ground.

“My name is Mari Renault, servant of the Owl. I have killed two witches today, and my blades are still thirsty.”

She whipped her sickles free from her belt, the steel caked with dried blood. Like the blood spattering her face and wild hair, and the blood splashed across her armor and boots. A specter of violent death, a dark knight standing in the drifting snow. She raised one of her sickles, beckoning.

“Shall we?”

The six witches spread out. Masks tilting from one another to Mari to the severed heads at their feet. One stepped forward.

“There are six of us, little one,” Wolf growled. “You can’t defeat us all.”

“I don’t have to,” Mari replied. “I just have to keep you occupied until my liege emerges with the Misery.”

She hoped she could. Under her bluster, she was a mass of aches and pulled muscles, ears still ringing and stomach lurching from her battle with Viper. Her wounded shoulder burned, and every swing of her left arm was a jolt of raw agony.

Still, she had to try.

Hurry, Nessa
, she thought as Wolf took another shambling step toward her. He smelled like raw meat and dirt.

“The Owl is probably already
dead
in there,” he snapped.

“And if she is,” Mari replied, “I will die with my service fulfilled. I’m not afraid to die. Are you?”

“I
smell
the blood on you, meat. Your blood. You’re hiding it, but I know you’re wounded. Take on six of us? What do you think your odds are against me alone?”

The air sizzled, the sound of grease in an iron skillet, and a bolt of shadow streaked through the air. It drilled through Wolf’s temple and blasted out the back of his skull, sending him crashing to the ground in a spray of powdered bone. Gray ooze bubbled from the hole in his skull, like spoiled cottage cheese.

“I think—” Vassili said.

“—that her odds are excellent,” Despina said.

Mari looked back over her shoulder. The two witches stood higher up in the defile, arm in arm. Black smoke hissed from the tip of Vassili’s finger.

“Sister,” Despina said to Mari, “we are vexed with you.”

“Indeed,” Vassili added, though they were both smiling. “Starting the slaughter without us?
Rude
.”

Mari let out a sigh of relief. She turned, gritting her teeth against a fresh burst of pain in her shoulder, and offered them a formal bow at the waist.

“I can only ask your forgiveness,” she said.

Despina shook her head at Vassili. “I just can’t stay mad at her.”

Their arms parted as they fixed their gazes upon the surviving five.

Thunder pealed, loud as a storm cloud hovering two feet above Mari’s head, a sound that nearly knocked her flat. Hornets of living shadow rippled through the air in all directions, echoed by screams and shimmers of black lightning. She steeled herself and strode into the fray, sickles slashing, cutting robes and tearing flesh while Vassili draped her in crackling electric wards and Despina unleashed her fury on the rest.

In the thick of the fight, as they cut down the last of their old coven mates, no one noticed the wagon rumbling down from the city heights and drawing up to a stop just outside the mouth of the mine. Not until a wave of power washed over them with the force of a monsoon.

Mari dropped to her knees on the frosty rock, stomach heaving. Vassili and Despina crumpled at her sides. It was poison—a
psychic
poison, a toxin brewed from malice and spite. She barely had the strength to turn her head and see what was coming for them.

The wagon flap slithered aside, and the Dire emerged.

The ancient, lipless thing that floated before them, yellow-nailed toes dangling an inch above the snowy ground, extended arms far too long for her desiccated body. Her gangrenous flesh was mottled green-gray, stretched so tight across her birdlike bones Mari could see the organs pulsing underneath.

Her black, bottomless eyes locked upon Mari’s, and Mari collapsed to her belly. Pinned like a bug as she choked on her own bile.

Fox hopped down from the wagon’s perch, Hedy in tow, both untouched by the Dire’s power.

“Well, well,” Fox said. “Worm, Shrike, and…look at this. The Owl’s ‘knight.’ Three people I’ve very much been wanting to kill. Dire Mother, may I have the honor?”

The Dire’s skeletal mouth opened a crack. Something fat and orange, bristling with a thousand legs, squirmed behind her yellowed teeth.

“
Slay them
,” she whispered, the words reverberating inside Mari’s mind.

Fox drew a dagger, sleek and elegant, and stood over Mari’s prone body.

“Master,” Hedy said softly, “shouldn’t we—”

Fox gritted his teeth. “For the last time, you worthless brat,
shut up
. Speak only when spoken to.”

He crouched down on one knee and grabbed a fistful of Mari’s hair, yanking her head back and baring her throat. Dazed, overwhelmed by the Dire’s magic, her head lolled in his grip.

“Your mistress is already dead and rotting in that mine,” he murmured in her ear, savoring the moment. “Time for you to join her.”

Then came the voice.

“
There was a wise Owl, who lived in an oak
.”

The voice emanated from everywhere and nowhere. Burbling up from the stone beneath them and carried on a gust of frosty wind.

Fox froze.

“
The more she heard, the less she spoke
.”

“N-Nessa?” Fox kept his grip on Mari’s hair as he looked around him. The Dire wavered, her skeleton face pinched in odd confusion.

“
The less she spoke, the more she heard
.”

“I—I have your people, Nessa. I’ll kill them!
Show yourself!
”

Nessa strode from the mouth of the mine, head high, an amused smile on her lips.

Upon her left hand, she wore Muskrat’s skull like a gauntlet.

And underneath, visible through the skull’s eye sockets, the Misery glittered in her palm. Her gaze fell upon Fox.

“Why couldn’t
you
have been like that wise bird?” She turned toward the Dire. “Hello, Gertie. Time to die. By the way, my mother always hated you.”

Desperate, panicked, Fox hauled back on Mari’s hair and swung the knife around, intent on slitting her throat. Then Hedy landed on his shoulders, ninety pounds of sudden animal fury clinging to him, one hand clawing at his eyes while the other grappled his wrist, his hand losing its grip on the blade.

“Hedy,” he spat, “what do you think you’re—”

She let go, just for a second. Then the garrote slipped over his head and yanked taut around his neck.

“What I should have done,” the girl said, “a long,
long
time ago.”

Before the Dire could react, Nessa raised her hand high and unleashed the Misery.

A tsunami of violet light roared from the skull’s eye sockets. It blasted the Dire, consuming her in a ceaseless torrent of concentrated hatred and suffering and fear. In the light, Mari saw the Dire tremble—and then burn.

Her skull burst into flames, a living jack-o’-lantern, as the Dire let out an unholy screech. Her clawed hands convulsed at her sides, her legs kicking, flailing in the air, as the fire spread and turned midnight black.

Fox thrashed on his knees, trying to throw Hedy, struggling to get his fingers around the wire that chewed into his neck. The razor-sharp coil sliced tender flesh, spilling blood, as Hedy pulled on the garrote’s handles with every ounce of strength she had.

“The master of assassins,” Hedy hissed in his ear, “slain by a tiny…quiet…harmless…
mouse
.”

The light from the Misery died.

The Dire’s corpse plummeted to the snow, smoking and charred black. Tiny flames still rippled along her body, consuming torn muscle and shattered bone.

Fox fell a heartbeat after her, the razor wire buried halfway into his throat. Hedy knelt atop his body, panting for breath, and did the only thing she could.

She laughed.

Mari, Vassili, and Despina lay prone, still flattened by the aftermath of the Dire’s attack. One by one they stirred, groaning, struggling to sit. Hedy looked over to the mouth of the mine.

Nessa was down.

Hedy jumped up and raced over, stumbling in the snow. The others weren’t far behind. Mari shouted Nessa’s name, collapsing to her knees at the woman’s side. Nessa lay slumped against the cold gray stone, surrounded by fragments of skull and broken shards of the Misery.

“Please be all right,” Mari stammered, clutching her shoulder. “Please,
please
be all right—”

Nessa stirred. She tilted her head against the rock, squinting as she stared down at her left hand.

The Misery had left it a ruin. Her hand was a withered husk, fish-belly white and emaciated as the Dire’s, oozing blood in spots where the taut flesh had torn. She let out a pained wheeze, trying to move it, fingers trembling as they slowly curled.

“Hurts,” Nessa said, taking a deep breath. “But I’ll live. No strength. Not able to cut us a door out of here just yet. Worm? Shrike?”

Vassili and Despina leaned against each other, both of them pale and shaking. Despina shook her head.

“Just need a little rest first,” she said. “Still…feel her, in our bones.”

“We have to get out of the cold.” Nessa glanced at Mari. “Bear?”

“Dead.” She pointed at the other severed head, abandoned between bloody and spell-charred corpses in the snow. “Got Viper, too.”

Nessa gave her a tiny smile. Proud. Mari helped her to her feet.

The five of them hobbled forward, leaning on one another, holding close. Nessa paused. She glanced down at Fox’s corpse and the look of surprise on his pallid face.

“Your work, Hedy?”

Hedy nodded, her lips pursed.

“Looks like you’re going to need a new teacher,” Nessa said.

Hedy looked up at her, eyes bright with hope.

“I won’t go easy on you,” Nessa warned.

“I don’t want you to,” Hedy said. “I just want to learn.”

“We’re all cold and exhausted,” Nessa said, “but this needs to be done and needs doing now. It’s an honor overdue. Hedy, kneel down.”

Hedy sank to her knees in the snow. Nessa reached out with her good hand and took her by the wrist. She washed Hedy’s fingers and palm in the blood from Fox’s ravaged throat and held her hand high.

“Blood for blood,” Nessa said. “Mark this day, and mark this hand. The Mouse has killed for our coven. She has killed for
you
.”

Despina laid her hand on Hedy’s shoulder.

“I am Shrike, and I declare this woman my niece by blood. Anyone who denies this truth will earn my wrath.”

As Hedy’s smile grew, her breath quickened. Vassili took her other shoulder.

“I am Worm, and I declare the same.”

Their eyes fell upon Mari, expectant. She wasn’t sure why. Blinking, she looked to Nessa.

“Mari,” Nessa said softly, “you’re a part of this family, too.”

Then she understood. Her eyes locked with Hedy’s, both of them smiling as she rested her fingertips upon the girl’s brow.

“I am Mari,” she said, “and I declare the same.”

“Then we are united.” Nessa glanced up the rocky defile to the waiting city above. “Let’s find a warm fire and linens for our wounds. As soon as we’re rested up enough to cut a door, we’re leaving. Our real work has only just begun.”