Page 12 of The Devils

Empress or Death

Alex sat on a damp bench, Empress of a yard full of muddy corpses.

The fires were mostly out, at least. The rain had mostly stopped. She wriggled her shoulders under the scratchy shirt she wore. She’d swapped clothes with the girl who’d been drawing water by the well, who looked way better in Alex’s slightly singed but very fine dress than Alex ever had. Though it did spoil the cut a bit that her body was facing down while her head was twisted all the way around to stare baffled at the sky.

Jakob’s idea. So anyone else sent to murder her might think she was dead. That was her highest ambition, right now. Everyone thinking she was dead. She’d never had the manners of a princess. Now she’d even lost the clothes.

All she had left were the enemies.

Baptiste had cut the old knight out of his tunic and he sat hunched, sinewy and lopsided, a stick wedged in his jaws, grimacing as she dug the arrows out of him. The man was more scar than man. Star-shaped punctures, criss-crossed gashes, mottled burns. Alex doubted this was his first impalement, let alone his first arrow-wound. There was one mark she kept coming back to, all the way around his arm. Gave her the mad feeling it had been cut clean off then stitched back on.

‘So … you’re one of them?’ Brother Diaz was still mud-caked, still gripping his holy circle white-knuckle tight. Like he was hanging off a cliff and that was his one handhold. ‘One of my … congregation?’

Jakob of Thorn prised the stick from his mouth. ‘I was cursed by a witch and – God damn it!’ As Baptiste wrenched one of the arrows out.

‘Sorry,’ she said, tossing it away.

‘I was cursed by a witch, and I cannot die. God knows I’ve tried – gah!’ And he wedged the stick back in his jaws as Baptiste started to slit the skin around the other shaft.

It hardly bled. Like cutting a wax dummy. Any other day, being cursed by a witch so you couldn’t die was a story that would’ve left Alex with a question or two. Today she just sat there, staring at nothing. She felt something pressed into her hand.

‘Here.’ It was Sunny. Giving Alex that snake-carved dagger she’d thrown away. ‘You might still find a use for this.’

It felt strange in her palm. Everything felt strange. Like a dream. Or maybe she’d been dreaming till now, and this was how waking up felt. She wiped some tears on her sleeve. She didn’t really feel like she was crying, but water kept coming out of her face. And her nose. And her mouth. She was leaking all over, like a pauper’s roof.

‘You hurt?’

Alex shook her head. Scuffed and bruised. Few scratches on her arms where she’d crawled through her dead maid’s broken bottles. Nothing compared to the dead maid herself. Nothing compared to most of the survivors. She wiped her eyes again. She’d always thought she was so tough. ‘Can’t stop crying,’ she muttered.

‘You get used to it,’ said Sunny.

Alex’s eyes crawled over the burst remains of animals, men, and things in between. A couple of enterprising crows had flapped down to make an early start on the windfall. ‘Not sure that’s a comfort,’ she whispered.

Only one of the guards had lived through the carnage, likely by hiding, and now he sat huddled beside the stable boy, both staring at the woman – or the wolf – who’d done most of the killing. Vigga, they called her. She stood by the well, stark naked, but with shoulders back and feet planted wide like she couldn’t have cared less, humming tunelessly to herself, washing blood from her great tangle of black hair. Pink water streamed down a muscle-knotted back tattooed with wolves, dragons, trees, suns and moons, circles and snaking lines of runes, every gap filled in with warnings. One muscular arse cheek had DANGER written across it.

Brother Diaz shielded his eyes with one hand. ‘For Saint Agnes’s sake, could she dress herself?’

She flashed a great grin showing four glistening, doglike fangs. ‘If your God made all things, didn’t he also make …’ And she turned to give everyone a full view of her front, as densely muscled and painted as the back. ‘All this ?’

‘Have you no shame ?’ The monk clapped his hands fully over his eyes, though Alex did wonder if he might’ve left a gap between the fingers to peer through.

‘What’s wrong? Worried you might forget your vow of …’ Vigga frowned at the sky, scratching her tattooed stomach, which had a streak of black hair down the centre. ‘What’s the name of it?’

‘Chastity,’ murmured Sunny, rooting through the saddlebags of a dead horse.

‘God, no!’ squeaked Brother Diaz, turning his back entirely. ‘Just … please , cover yourself, before I have to invoke Her Holiness’s binding!’

‘Fine, fine, take a fucking breath.’ And Vigga dumped the rest of the bucket over her head, blew a mist of drops, shook herself like a dog, and strode off to sniff at the corpses.

‘Is she … safe ?’ whispered the monk, peering horrified around one hand.

Baron Rikard snorted. ‘ Absolutely not. Can’t you see all the warnings?’

‘I have a survivor!’ Balthazar stumbled from the ruined inn, half-carrying Duke Michael, both of them smeared with ash and blood.

Alex caught his hand, a new wave of snot leaking from her face. She’d been thinking of him as a mark in a swindle. Now she was pathetically pleased to see he was still breathing. He’d saved her life twice now, after all. He was on her side, and she couldn’t say that of many people. Or any, really.

‘Alex,’ he gasped, sagging on the bench beside her. ‘Thank God!’

‘I ran,’ she muttered, pointlessly. ‘Well, crawled —’

‘You’re alive. That’s all that matters.’

‘Saving wounded men?’ Baptiste cocked an eyebrow at Balthazar as she knelt beside the duke. ‘Didn’t have you down as the type.’

‘Far from my typical modus operandi.’ The magician glared at the brown mark on his wrist. ‘But Her Holiness said we had to be nice .’

‘Are you trained as a healer?’ asked Brother Diaz doubtfully as Baptiste flicked out the blade of a tiny knife.

‘Spent some time as assistant to the barber of a mercenary company.’ She started to slit Duke Michael’s trouser leg. ‘Which is why I give a very passable wet shave, as it goes.’

‘And that … qualifies you … for this ?’

‘We did the surgery, too, but mercenaries much prefer facial hair to fighting, so we weren’t often called on for that. Still, if you reckon you’re more qualified … feel free to step in.’

She peeled open Duke Michael’s trouser leg. His calf was stained black and purple all over, bent one way below the knee, bent back the other above the ankle.

‘I will stick to the prayers …’ murmured Brother Diaz, queasily shielding his eyes again.

‘I think it’s broken,’ croaked Alex.

‘We need no barber to tell us that ,’ said Baron Rikard.

Balthazar was busy bragging. ‘The princess was set upon by a member of the deceased Eudoxia’s coven, a pyromancer of considerable puissance, but, fortunately for our royal charge, and indeed our entire endeavour, Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi was on … hand … to … there appears to be a very large naked tattooed woman over there.’

‘Werewolf,’ said Baron Rikard.

‘Ugh.’ Balthazar wrinkled his nose. ‘A proper Norse one?’

‘The massacre was in large part her handiwork.’

‘Urgh!’ Balthazar rolled one of the corpses over with his boot, where it goggled at the sky with unnatural fox eyes. ‘What are these hybrid monstrosities?’

‘Eudoxia’s experiments,’ said Duke Michael through gritted teeth as Baptiste felt at his crooked shin with her fingertips. ‘She wished to discover the location of the soul.’

‘A conundrum that has confounded philosophers for centuries …’ Balthazar squatted over the creature, eyes narrowed with curiosity. ‘So she merged human and animal in an effort to solve it. Ingenious …’ He dragged back the lids to peer at one of the creature’s bulging eyes at close quarters. ‘I have seen sarcomancy practised before but never with such precision …’

‘People have accused Eudoxia of pretty much everything,’ muttered Duke Michael, ‘but never of being imprecise—’ He gave a ragged moan as Baptiste snapped his leg straight below the knee. Alex pressed his hand, and he pressed hers. Wasn’t much more she could do. Nothing needed stealing, and no one needed lying to, and it was hard to see how losing at cards would help, so that was her whole skillset exhausted.

‘We need to move.’ Jakob was up, growling as he stiffly worked his bloodstained tunic back on.

Brother Diaz nodded eagerly. ‘I could not agree more. We head back to the Holy City at once—’

‘No!’ gasped Duke Michael. ‘They knew where we were. Someone in the Celestial Palace may have betrayed us.’

‘Well, we have to send for help, at least—’

‘We don’t know who we can trust.’ Jakob fished up the bloodied copy of the Papal bull. ‘No one was meant to know the princess was even alive until she arrived in Troy.’ And he crushed it in his hands.

‘Every time.’ Baron Rikard gave a long sigh, stretching his arms above his head. ‘ Every time.’

‘Marcian’s brothers may know about Alex, too.’ Duke Michael forced the words through his gritted teeth. ‘There’s only one place she’ll be safe now.’ He looked at her, and the silence stretched, and a broken gutter drip, drip, dripped.

‘On the Serpent Throne?’ she said, in a very small voice.

Brother Diaz gave a desperate snort. ‘Well, we can’t get the princess to Troy!’

‘You must.’ Duke Michael waved towards the one surviving guard and the one surviving stable boy. ‘These two can help me back to the Holy City. The rest of you will have to go on. Oh God !’ And there was an ugly crunch as Baptiste wrenched his foot into position.

‘We seven?’ Brother Diaz waved at his flock. ‘A vampire, an elf, a werewolf – can she please dress herself?’

Vigga had been stripping the clothes from a dead guard but she’d got distracted catching raindrops on her tongue.

‘A knight who can’t die, a sorcerer—’

‘Magician.’

‘—a monk who never even wanted to be a bloody monk, and …’ Brother Diaz waved helplessly at Baptiste, ‘a former assistant barber to a mercenary company!’

‘Among other things,’ she muttered as she fixed two broken lengths of spear to either side of Duke Michael’s leg with dead men’s belts.

Baron Rikard frowned. ‘You never wanted to be a monk?’

‘Are you all insane ?’ howled Brother Diaz.

‘I reckon none of us planned to attend a fucking massacre !’ Alex screeched back at him, starting up off the bench with her fists clenched. ‘But here we are!’ Suddenly everyone was looking at her. ‘They want me dead? Well, fuck them ! I’m going to Troy!’

Brother Diaz had turned very pale. ‘But, Your Highness—’

‘It’s fucking decided!’ she snapped.

Sunny shrugged. ‘There it is, then.’ And she started to round up the surviving horses. As luck would have it, the sun chose that moment to break through the clouds and bathe the scene of slaughter in warmth.

Baron Rikard turned his smiling face, a good deal less lined than an hour before, towards it. ‘Nice weather for a trip.’

‘She swears a lot, for a princess,’ said Vigga. ‘I like it.’ She’d finally got some trousers on, muscles squirming in her painted arms as she did up the straining buttons on a studded leather vest. She grinned down at Brother Diaz, who must’ve been half a head shorter than she was. ‘Look at that! Modest as a nun.’

He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Oh, sweet Saint Beatrix …’

Alex swallowed, the brief flood of anger or courage or whatever it had been quickly draining, leaving her with the dangers, and the enemies, and the miles to go, and a growing suspicion she’d made one of the worst mistakes of her life. And she’d made some real howlers.

Every time. She was the cunning loner, the selfish user, the ruthless swindler, till anyone did the smallest thing for her. Then she’d have to be their hero, and end up shitting all over herself.

Her knees felt weak as she dropped down beside her uncle. ‘Go back. Heal up.’ She forced on a smile. Did her best to sound confident. ‘I’ll see you in Troy.’

‘My dear friend Lady Severa will be waiting for you there. I’d trust her with my life.’ Duke Michael smiled as he touched Alex’s cheek with his fingertips and, God help her, she wanted to press her face into his hand. ‘I knew you had it in you,’ he whispered.

He didn’t say what she had in her. Shit, maybe. Lies, probably. Doubts, definitely. But she, the stupid arse, had to make the big gesture. So, at least till she found some way to wriggle out of it, she’d cut her choices down to two.

Empress or death.

She regretted it already, of course. Just like always.

But now she was stuck with it.