The Stealers' War (48 page)

There was another noise as Holten pulled back the revolver’s hammer, a crash followed by a sharp sibilant hiss above the pistol’s click; then the woman screamed as something long and black wrapped around her hand. Her hand jerked up in agony, yanked with the force of—

A whip!

The woman wielding the weapon was framed in the doorway, a gang of rowdy brutes barrelling in behind her over the remains of the kicked-in door, a flurry of swords, rifles and pistols. Nocks instantly shoved Willow hard towards the intruders. She yelled in shock. Nocks reacted whippet-fast, grabbing Holten and flinging himself and the woman through the open window. Willow turned and ran to the window, just in time to see the two devils rolling off the boarding house’s canopy and into the street below. She tried to mount the frame and follow them, but at least four sets of hands seized her and yanked her back, turning her roughly to face the intruders.

‘Short one’s spry on his feet,’ said the woman with the whip, staring at the escaping servant. She had a silky voice to match her exotic face, wide eyes and honeyed skin. A touch of Rodalian mixed with Weylander blood and perhaps a few other distant nations blended in. Beautiful in a dangerously feline way. Her gang were armed to the teeth. Hard, sly, fight-beaten faces. Weathered clothes. They looked like a band of marauders and bandits.
And if they’re walking freely around Northhaven, then they’re working for Bad Marcus, one way or another.

‘No room on his face for a second scar,’ grinned a bandit. ‘I’d be fast out of it, too.’

‘Well here’s the waste of a perfectly good ransom,’ said the woman, prodding Benner Landor’s corpse with her boot. She turned to her warriors. ‘Tell me that this isn’t one of the richest men in the province lying here with his windpipe crushed?’

Willow tried to lash out at the ruffians restraining her. ‘Don’t you touch him!’

‘You think he cares now? Yes, you’re the rich man’s precious little daughter. I can see I’ve arrived at the right place, Lady Wallingbeck. Or are you back to your maiden name now that your husband’s planted in the ground?’

‘That was the bloody Landor wife who just went out the window, Aurora,’ snarled one of the bandits.

‘A family falling out?’ asked the woman named as Aurora, raising her eyebrows at the dead body.

‘Go to hell,’ snapped Willow.
Who are these damnable raiders?

‘Just staying on the ground with you people is hell enough.’ Aurora patted Willow’s wide stomach with a sly smile. ‘Two to ransom here . . . with a pair of great houses willing to pay. And you can’t even run away from us. What do you say, boys?’

The invaders hooted with pleasure.

‘A treasure ship low in the water with half her sails trimmed.’ Aurora secured her whip to her belt and raised a hand. A tiny gambler’s pistol lashed forward on a spring-arm, before disappearing inside her right hand’s bell-silk sleeve. She prodded Willow in the spine with a finger. ‘My little sting doesn’t make much noise. But trust me when I say you don’t want to feel it. You’re a free woman after your brother’s triumph at the trial, so let’s take some air together.’

‘The king’s soldiers are all over Northhaven.’

‘And we’re mercenaries loyally fighting by their side,’ said Aurora. ‘Besides, I don’t think the royal army gives a rat’s fart for what happens to Willow Landor, do you? A rebel sympathizer who contrived her way off the gallows at the cost of one of their own slain and a second officer close to death. The most interesting thing about you, my lady, is what you’re worth to the right people.’

The wrong people
. ‘I don’t suppose the fact that the trial went in my favour matters to you?’

‘Never appeal to a woman’s better nature. She might not have one.’ Aurora indicated the splintered doorframe. ‘Anyone you warn won’t live to repeat your pleas.’

They dragged Willow towards the door and she fought to reach her father. ‘Let me say goodbye at least.
Please
.’

Aurora nodded warily and the bandits pushed Willow to kneel by the body. She touched the uniform, unable to bring herself to stare at her father’s bloodied ruin of a neck. Benner had dominated and filled her life for so long, much as he had done to Northhaven and all the borderland’s farms. She couldn’t believe how easily he had fallen.
It should never have finished like this
. If only her father hadn’t believed his children dead and lost to the slavers.
If only I had never been taken.
Holten would have just been one more grasping aristocrat hoping to ensnare Benner Landor’s fortune, sent packing from Hawkland House with all the others. But she had caught the house’s patriarch in his grief and twisted it. Manipulated his hurt to supply Benner with a sham new family.
But it was over before that, wasn’t it?
The sad truth of the matter was that Willow had lost much of the father she knew after her mother passed away. The light of love had dwindled to be replaced by the burning, all-consuming fire of avarice and the self-justifications needed to keep the house ruthlessly expanding its reach. Leyla Holten had merely arrived at the end of the process like a fire-heated blade to cauterise the wound.
And twist it inside me for her sadistic pleasures
.

‘I have to see my brother, too,’ begged Willow. ‘Let me visit him. I won’t try to escape. Then you can sell me to the usurper or the local prefect or Emperor Jaelis for all I care.’

‘What about a last visit to your favourite horses up in the big house’s stables?’ said Aurora, caustically. ‘We could arrange all the servants and retainers to line up outside and see you off, too.’

‘Duncan’s dying. I may never see him again.’

‘Feeling guilty about the trial-by-combat, now?’ The female brigand shook her head in disbelief. ‘Well, it was a good fight. If your brother dies, then he dies well. I doubt he’d thank you for appearing in his surgical tent for a tearful last farewell.’

‘He needs to know the truth about what happened to our father.’

Aurora snorted. ‘Your version of it, anyway. Thousands of farm boys and factory hands coming back dead from the war, rolling across the border piled like logs in the back of carts for burial. Who speaks for them?’

Willow snapped back. ‘And how many killed by people like you?’

‘I know what I am, my lady. This is your war. I’m just another commoner paid to lug a pike around on your behalf.’

They forced her out of the room. Willow stepped over the body of the landlord on the stairs, careful not to slip on the blood. He’d received his just reward for betraying Willow to Holten and Nocks. Once the group were in the street they headed for the centre of the old town, which surprised Willow. She had expected to be spirited out of Northhaven and bundled into the care of the usurper’s enforcers; safely out of sight of anyone who knew the result of the trial. Disappeared. Instead, they headed for a building she knew well enough from her time working for her father. The Guild of Radiomen’s hold. Like a miniature citadel in the centre of the ancient city. Near the top of the hill with a distinctive antenna rather than a tower and battlements. Willow was surprised to see the hold’s armoured metal door lay open and guarded by more bandit fighters rather than the guild’s men.
This isn’t right.

‘Inside, girl,’ said Aurora, shoving Willow into the hold.

They went down a narrow stone corridor, into the public receiving chamber where locals and visiting merchants lined up behind the wooden counter to pay by the word to send messages across the guild relays. To the ends of Pellas itself if you cared to wait millennia for the return message to reach your ancestors. These brigands had cleared out all of Northhaven’s townspeople, though. The guild staff were off in the corner with their hands in the air, while a large middle-aged bandit sat on the counter, swaying his legs, bored. He was glared at by the guild’s elderly hold-master, who was as unhappy as Willow would expect at this invasion of long guild territory. Into ground that should have been treated as an inviolable sanctuary.

‘Here’s the Landor whelp,’ said Aurora to the man on the counter. ‘Her father’s dead, though.’

‘What did I tell you about that? Nobody pays for the return of a corpse.’

‘We didn’t do it,’ said Aurora, indignantly. ‘Probably the wife. She cut out in a hurry.’

‘That’s usually the price of marrying ’em,’ said the man, shaking his head. ‘An early grave.’

‘What do you know about it?’ growled Aurora.

Willow stared at the large bandit in bewilderment, realization dawning. ‘I recognize you! Your face’s been on enough newspaper front-sheets.
Black Barnaby
.’

‘Famous am I?’ The air pirate carefully rubbed his cheek as though polishing it. His dark bushy beard seemed to move with a life all of its own. ‘The illustrations never do me justice. And I far prefer Bold Barnaby. But the dirty ink scribblers never manage to get the name right, either.’

‘Black is accurate enough,’ said Willow. ‘For a man who sold out his own brother for gold.’

‘Privateers are only ever rewarded in coin,’ laughed Barnaby. ‘Either the ruler’s, or booty grabbed from the citizens they want dead. If I desired glory, cheap medals and the unreliable gratitude of monarchs I’d be wearing one of your stupid starched peacock uniforms. It’s a far better arrangement to position yourself on the winning side and be paid for it.’

Willow gazed at Jacob Carnehan’s brother in disgust. ‘There’s nothing I can call you that’s worse than what you actually are.’

‘There’s a fine line between courage and foolishness, girl . . . people in my trade usually try to build it into a parapet.’ He turned to look the guild official. ‘Why aren’t my people back yet, Master Radioman?’

‘You have hundreds of messages to transmit,’ spluttered the official. ‘It takes time to contact that many stations.’

Barnaby jerked a thumb towards the doors behind the counter. ‘Off you go, my sweet. Make sure this cunning fox isn’t playing us false. Take him with you. If he doesn’t hurry his apprentices to a decent pace, put a round in his head and promote the next piece of guild braid to hold-master.’

‘We are neutral in Weyland’s civil war!’ blustered the old man.

Black Barnaby patted one of the many guns tucked behind his leather belt. ‘Nothing more neutral than the bullet from a charged pistol, Master Radioman. Every corpse equal.’

Aurora left with the man and was away for five minutes before she re-appeared from deeper inside the hold. The hold-master looked as pale as a ghost. ‘It’s done. All our messages are sent.’

‘Excellent.’ He raised a hand lazily to his men. ‘Have our bucks put a torch to every battery room.’

‘You can’t do that!’ protested the hold-master.

‘People keep on saying that to me,’ said Black Barnaby. He accepted a rifle from one of his bandits, and then drove the butt into the master’s gut, doubling him up, before he lashed down with the weapon a second time. There was a terrible crack and the man fell still to the stone floor. ‘But I’m in the
I can
business. Always have been. I can do whatever I like because I’m Black Barnaby. The scourge of the Lanca.’

The staff in the corner cowered. Bandits prodded them with rifles, obviously eager to act as a firing squad if ordered.

‘This is one of the long guilds,’ cried Willow, horrified. ‘They’re neutral in all of this.’
We need them. The nation needs them.
‘Why would you—?’

‘Why? Because I bloody well
can
. Because my dealings here are concluded and I don’t need anyone else using Northhaven’s radio hold to report on your vanishing, girl. Now still your wagging tongue.’

Willow ignored him.
They need me alive and unhurt. At least until they hand me over.
‘Long guilds are an essential part of civilization.’

‘Civilization? Pah, nothing but mob rule with taxes. Keep your civilization to yourself.’

Terrified shouts echoed from inside the hold, the stench of volatile chemicals burning as torches were set to the chamber-sized batteries which powered their powerful radio relays.

A brigand with the rest of the gang came strutting into the chamber. ‘Finished.’

‘The locals won’t be happy,’ observed Aurora.

‘Have we swapped trades, Daughter?’ said Barnaby. ‘Are we in the happiness business now?’

Daughter? So that’s where the Weylander portion of this hellcat comes from.
Willow saw the resemblance on second glance.

‘Swivel me, you seem happy enough,’ said Aurora.

Barnaby turned to Willow. ‘She tells me I can’t and far too frequently. But that’s what you get for indulging your wretched offspring.’ He pulled a pocket-watch out of his crimson jacket, checking the time. ‘Off we hop. Can’t be late.’

‘The rumours in town are true then?’ said Willow. ‘Bad Marcus is coming through the prefecture on a progress to lord it over his conquered territories.’

‘So it seems. What’s the point of stealing a gold coin if you don’t get to roll the beauty between your fingers and savour its feel.’ He jumped off the counter, landing on the floor. Pulling out a pistol, he pointed it at the radiomen he had taken prisoner. ‘Off with your uniforms. Down to your woollens, my beauties.’ They complied, terrified. And once the prisoners shed their garments, the bandits chased them into the corridor, hooting with laughter. Aurora removed her whip and sent a crack or two in their direction to scatter the guild workers.

Nobody takes a naked halfwit seriously.

‘This is the style,’ roared Barnaby, watching the half-naked guild staff rush out into the open. He strutted after them, the air pirates sweeping Willow into his train. ‘A little mayhem to liven the blood and brighten the day.’

A low distant droning filled the sky. Willow stared up, finding the sun. The clouds to the north vibrated with the unfamiliar sound as big rolling white clouds above the high mountains disgorged a locust storm of warplanes. An undisciplined mass which seemed to appear without end to their numbers. Not Weyland’s new skyguard or the time-tested Rodalian flying wings. Certainly not the mosquito-like helos or strange rocket-driven squadrons of the Vandians. These were hulking, primitive craft of wood and fabric, engines that seemed too big for their bodies; no two alike, as though the artisans responsible had lacked blueprints to base their craft on and hammered away on brute instinct alone.