CHAPTER 4 #2
He looked over his shoulder. She’d flopped sideways in the chair, peering at him with her head tilted upside-down over the arm. The long column of her throat could not have been more exposed if she’d been on a chopping block.
If there was still a demon in him, it would take him three strides to cross the room, swinging the blade over his head—the ceilings were high enough that he need turn only a little sideways, rather than straight up—and then down.
Necks were harder to cut through than people thought, but with his weight and the weight of the sword, he could hardly fail to cleave through, straight into the overstuffed arm of the chair.
The wood and the cloth would probably bind worse than flesh and bone would.
“Is it the right kind? Brenner said it’s what the temple knights used…” She yawned, stifled it. “Sorry.”
And we’ll all go to hell in good company…
Caliban reached out and closed his fingers around the hilt.
Nothing happened.
He exhaled, waiting.
Still nothing.
He lifted the sword. It was a heavy blade, not beautiful, but that was correct. There were beautiful swords for parades and temple services. This was for the butchery of demons. It needed to be strong and sharp and brutal.
His muscles did not fire with alien strength. He did not turn around and paint the walls with Slate’s blood.
The exorcism worked. The demon’s really dead.
Be damned. Or not.
It occurred to him that his face was wet. He set the sword down, very carefully, and wiped his eyes.
He looked over, and saw that Slate wasn’t looking at him, very deliberately, and took that, as perhaps it was intended, as a kindness.
“So tell me about yourself,” Caliban said to Slate, the next evening. Brenner had gone off on some unknown errand of his own, seeing to whatever odd supplies an assassin needed, and they were eating a quiet meal together in the common room of the suite.
She paused, her spoon in midair. “Me?”
“We’re going to be on the road together for what—two weeks?—and in Anuket City for quite a while after that. I might as well know who I’m traveling with.”
She set her spoon down and picked up a piece of bread, chasing the remnants of the soup around her bowl with it.
“Um. My name is Slate, I’m thirty, and I have a tattoo that’s going to eat me unless I find out how to stop the Clockwork Boys.
I’ve never actually met a Clockwork Boy.
” She took a bite of bread. “But apparently the only way to stop them is in Anuket City, which no one on this side of the mountains has been able to get to for months. I think those are the important bits.”
Caliban sighed, leaning back in his chair. He had gone out earlier, and while he still jumped away from sudden movements, the sky had not been so huge, and the world not quite so incomprehensible. He’d stayed close to the walls and doorways nonetheless.
The sword across his back seemed to anchor him. Perhaps that wasn’t a surprise.
He ran his fingers down it now, slung over the back of the chair. “Brenner said you were some kind of…guerrilla accountant.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Did he? Damnit.”
“Is it true?”
“It was. I suppose I’m not much of one now.”
“How do you go from stealing paperwork to a sentence of death?”
She smiled. It was a surprisingly charming smile. “So if you alter the wrong papers, they charge you with aiding and abetting the enemy. Who knew?”
His eyebrows went up. “And they sent you out on this jaunt anyway?”
“It was years ago,” she said defensively.
“I was young and dumb and didn’t know better than to fool around with defense contract paperwork.
I haven’t done that for years, but some bright young clerk—may his pens leak eternally—managed to trace my handwriting.
I hadn’t learned to disguise it very well back then.
” She shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal, really—tampered with some paperwork to make it appear to be under budget, but—well, anyway.
With the latest war on, they apparently have people going through all the old contracts, and… you know.”
Caliban did indeed know. He would have been very surprised if they’d gotten so far as executing Slate. Skilled forgers were too valuable to waste.
She took another bite of bread. “So anyway, I got charged with a count of treason, and I thought they’d hang me, but the Dowager had this wild idea.
I lived in Anuket City for a few years, so I’m supposed to know the lay of the land.
” She dismissed the land and its lay with a flick of her wrist. “Never mind that I was gone long before the Clockwork Boys were invented…or grown…or discovered…or whatever.”
“So they chose you.”
“Uh-huh. I think she figures there might be some complicated recipe for making Clockwork Boys, and I might need to steal it.”
“Is it likely to be a recipe, do you think?”
She shook her head. “It could be anything. It could also be a person—some kind of sorcerer or wonderworker or something—and we’re hoping Brenner can kill him. Or her, or them. It could be an artifact, in which case one of us can probably lift it.”
“What if it’s a process? Something that a lot of people know?”
Slate shrugged. “Well, then, we try to learn it, and come back and tell the Dowager. Maybe her pet wonderworkers can figure out a weakness. Maybe they’d all melt if you throw live chickens at them or something.”
“They’re supposed to be eight-foot-tall killing machines. Do you really think chickens would work?”
“I don’t know that it’s been tried.”
Caliban contemplated this for a few moments. “This all assumes we can make it to the city at all, now that there’s a war in the way.”
“That it does.”
“Can we make it?”
She grinned, looking almost like Brenner for a moment. “Do you believe in miracles, paladin?”
He grunted.
They ate in silence for a while. Caliban had another glass of wine, and poured her another one too. She frowned at it.
“So how does one get to be a guerilla accountant, anyway? What’s your family like?”
Slate stopped frowning at the wine, and frowned at him instead. Caliban almost smiled. Despite a full day, and seeing several other women, the mobility of her face still intrigued him.
Slate took a swallow of wine, as if to fortify herself. “Not much to tell. My mother was a very high-class courtesan who counted her fertile days by the moon. Her beauty was impeccable, her math skills were not.” She swept a hand at herself. “And here I am.”
“And you became an accountant.”
“She could afford very good tutors. Since my beauty was not impeccable, I made sure my math skills were above reproach.” She took another slug of wine.
There was an old hurt there, Caliban could tell. It wasn’t hard to decipher. He wondered if she thought she was hiding it.
“The rest is the usual story,” said Slate. “Got married when I was too young to know better. It lasted about six months, and then he went off with a blond from the Weaver’s Quarter and I went off to Anuket City. And came back eventually, of course.”
“What an idiot,” said Caliban, because that was what you said to this sort of thing.
“You’re well rid of him.” Privately he wondered about the wedding-ring scar on her hand.
Had she tried to burn the ring off? Slate did not strike him as the sort for impractical romantic gestures, but one never really knew.
“It made things easier,” she admitted. “So. That’s me, anyway.” Slate set the wineglass down. “So what’s it like to slay demons?”
He grunted. “Messy. Someone comes into the temple with a report, and you ride out to find it. If it’s in an animal, you kill it.
Usually it’s an animal. If it’s in a person, though, you try to convince them to go back to the temple.
Usually they’re fighting it, and they’re happy to go along. Sometimes you have to kill them.”
“How do you know if they’re possessed, and not just…?” She trailed off and waved a hand to indicate any number of options.
It was a fair question. Caliban stared into his wine.
“Most of the time, demons are pretty stupid—they start babbling in no earthly language, or levitating or something. The smart ones are a lot harder, some of them speak the language very well, have experience puppeting a body around, but they’re rare, and you get a feeling—they usually have a kind of accent, and they don’t move right.
But it can be hard. You learn to do it after a few years, but the old ones, the smart ones can still catch you out.
And if the human host works with them willingly, which does happen sometimes…
well, they’re nearly impossible to spot until they make a mistake. ”
“Not a lot of sword work, then?”
“Enough of it. If they realize what’s happening and don’t come quietly—or if they get a big animal, like a bull or a boar—well, it gets ugly.”
That was putting it mildly. The last bad demon he’d dealt with had taken a draft horse, and had killed two men before they’d sent him out after it.
Running around a field with a solid ton of demon in hot pursuit, panting out the ritual of exorcism and trying to cut the thing’s legs out from under it one by one… no, “ugly” didn’t quite cover it.
“How can you tell if there’s one in an animal, if it’s a matter of accent?”
“They’re generally not good at hiding it. You ever hear a cow speak in tongues?”
She giggled. He hadn’t actually been joking, but he’d take the giggle. It was much better than having her frown all the time.
She sobered. “So that voice yesterday, in the Captain’s office—”
“Ah. Yes.” Now it was his turn to fortify himself with wine. “It talks sometimes. The demon’s dead—genuinely dead, the temple certified it—but the body’s still in there. If that makes any sense.”
Slate frowned. “An actual body?”