The blade met the side of the snapper’s head and kept on going. The snapper’s eyes rolled back. Jasaan pulled at the axe, using its weight and the snapper’s momentum to lever himself out of the way. That was half the trick, not getting crushed.
The axe stuck. Jasaan let it go, spun out of the way, lost his footing, rolled and was up again in time to see the monster’s legs falter. It ran for another three steps before it fell, sliding through the leaf mould and what little undergrowth there was. Jasaan swayed. He was trembling. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t help but stare. He’d killed it. Hadn’t expected that, not really.
Behind him Hellas shouted a warning. When Jasaan turned to look, he saw why.
That was the thing about snappers. They hunted in packs.
50
Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum
She sat beside the Adamantine Man. He was snoring. Drooling. She had a knife in one hand, the fingers of the other on the pulse of his neck. It would be so easy. A little cut in the right place, he’d bleed out and never wake up. She sat there and thought it through. Thought about how he deserved it and how she’d feel after it was done. Would it change anything?
‘You don’t need him any more,’ whispered a little voice that might have been Siff, except when she turned to look the outsider was sound asleep so it must have been her own little voice.
He wasn’t ever going to change. Not that it mattered now. He’d served her need for him. The question was whether she left him alive or left him dead. She reached into her blood and looked for the ties that bound him to her. They were still there, still strong. It must have been the wine then. He’d been scratching at his head while she’d been trying to make him stop. Was that it? Had he been too drunk to notice the screaming in his head commanding him to leave her alone? No one had ever told her that that was how it worked, but then alchemists never got drunk. Most of them. Except for her.
After a while she got up, took the last bottles of wine and smashed them. She shook Siff.
‘Get up.’
He rolled over, so tightly tied he could barely move. His eyes were alert. He hadn’t been asleep after all.
‘Get up,’ she said again.
‘You’ll have to untie me. I can’t move. Good with knots, your doggy.’
She looked at what Skjorl had done, but she couldn’t see where to start. In the end she simply cut the outsider free, everything except his hands, which stayed tied behind his back.
‘I can’t exactly walk like this,’ he complained.
She poured a little water into an old glass flask. Then cut herself and dripped a drop of blood into it. She made sure Siff could see everything. ‘Drink?’
‘And make me like your doggy? No thanks.’
‘You were no better than him last night.’
He looked away. ‘Wasn’t I? Thing is, I don’t remember.’
‘You were… You weren’t you.’ She turned away too. Thing was, she wouldn’t have untied him anyway, and he already had her blood inside him.
‘It happens sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know why. I don’t want to hurt you. You got me out of there.’
He was lying. She was a means to an end, that was all. She could see that in the way his eyes gleamed, in the little smile that played at the corner of his lips when he glanced at the Adamantine Man, still snoring on the floor. A means to an end. That cut both ways though.
‘Don’t honey-tongue me, Siff.’ She climbed the steps and pushed open the trapdoor. The last greys of dusk filled the cellar.
Siff spat on Skjorl with careful precision. ‘You just going to leave him?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know he won’t let you. He’ll come after us when he wakes up. You know that. He’ll cover the ground faster too. He knows where we’re going. He will find us. You can’t just leave him.’
‘Yes, I can. You can come with me now or we can wait until he wakes up. You choose.’
‘I saw what he was like.’
‘I saw what you were like.’
Siff ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘You’re an alchemist. Suppose that means you haven’t ever killed someone. I could do it for you, if you want. Doesn’t bother me.’
‘Yes. I’m an alchemist and I deal in blood every day. I know exactly where to cut a man, Siff. If I wanted to kill him, I’d do it myself.’ She dealt in her own blood, never the blood of another. That was a line an alchemist never crossed, the line between alchemy and blood-magic. She’d given herself the chance to bleed out the Adamantine Man already and found she hadn’t the will to do it. Letting Siff do it for her now seemed weak.
‘If you say so.’ Siff shrugged and Kataros shook her head. The outsider was trouble enough on his own. Neither of them understood what he had inside him and neither of them could control it, but even without that she had to believe he’d turn on her the first chance he got to escape. Skjorl had been her shield.
She gave the Adamantine Man a last glance as she stood at the top of the steps. ‘Are you coming then?’
Siff struggled his way up the ladder. ‘This would be a lot easier with hands.’
‘The Yamuna will lead us to the Raksheh.’ They’d be under the trees by dawn and the canopy of the Raksheh would hide them from the dragons. They could walk by day and sleep at night again. They’d follow the river to the Aardish Caves, however far that was, and then Siff would show her what he’d found. Maybe they’d fight each other for it or maybe they wouldn’t, but they had to get there, that was the first thing.
She looked about. Once Siff was out of the cellar, she closed the trapdoor and piled stones from the ruins on top of it. There were plenty of them.
‘I’d help if I had hands,’ said Siff. Kataros ignored him. She piled as many stones as she thought would hold the Adamantine Man inside the cellar, and then piled on as many again until the door was nearly buried.
‘Would have been kinder to kill him with that knife,’ said Siff when she was done.
‘I don’t mean to kill him. Only to slow him. I don’t think you’re right about him following us, but just in case.’ She pushed past him. ‘We’ll go as fast as we can, if you don’t mind.’
Siff followed her. ‘I’d walk quicker with hands,’ he said.
‘There are a lot if things you could do better with hands. Most of them won’t help us.’
‘When I need a piss, are you going to hold it for me?’
He was close behind her, so when she suddenly stopped and turned, he almost walked right into her. She had her knife pressed to his throat while he was still blinking in surprise. For a moment she almost did it. Alchemists are considered in all things. An alchemist acts with thought, always, never on impulse. Which had been her downfall, had been a flaw in her large enough that they’d never have made her what she was if the Adamantine Palace hadn’t burned, if Hyrkallan hadn’t killed half the order at the Pinnacles, if she hadn’t been the one to dive down into the waters of the Fury and pick the Adamantine Spear out of a dead dragon’s mouth, if any of those things hadn’t been so.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, she was having to bite back tears for the one other outsider she’d known, for Kemir.
‘Don’t,’ she hissed. ‘Just don’t.’ She put the knife away slowly, then turned and started to walk again. ‘When you need a piss, you can work it out for yourself or you can piss in your breeches.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘No.’
There wasn’t much to be said after that. They walked in silence under the clouds. A drizzle started, a cold cloying dampness that stuck to Kataros and wrapped her up as though trying to steal all her warmth. No matter. She had potions now, powders and herbs and blood and water, everything she needed. She fed a drop or two to Siff.
