Vance stepped back, withdrawing the knife.
Lucien spun around, his sword in his hand, and faced the man. Vance was looking around, seeking help or an escape route.
“Don’t make me run you down,” the Monk said. “Where do you live? Is it far?”
Lucien knew that he had the upper hand. His heart was stuttering as it tried to keep pace with the rage coursing through his body, the madness that discarded pain like so much sweat. His face was flushed, the sword ready in his hand. Not long, he thought. Not long and you can sate this bloodlust. This one first-slowly, painfully, punishment for his presumption-and then the boy. He’ll sing his last on the point of my sword, and if any magic words escape him when he’s dying, I’ll stamp them down into the dust and shit on them.
“Your house,” Lucien urged. “We can talk there.”
Vance nodded, glanced around uncertainly once more and then slipped his knife into his belt, resigned. He turned and led the way.
AS SOON ASthey were through the door the Red Monk attacked Vance, kicking him to the floor, scattering empty wine bottles and smashing a wooden table into splinters. The big man tried hard to stand and protect himself, but Lucien’s rage was up, his legs spasming with the kicks, stamping on one knee until it popped and crunched beneath his boot. The man screamed and the Monk jumped on his face, kicking down until teeth broke into his tongue and cheeks, blood gushing into his throat and bursting out in a shower as he coughed. The attack went on. When Vance tried to sit, Lucien kicked him in the hips and the base of his back, cracking vertebrae. Vance screamed, and this time the Red Monk let him.
“Where is Rafe?” Lucien hissed, holding the ruined man by his beard and lifting him so high that they were face-to-face.
Vance could not speak. He shook his head instead, grimacing as something ground in his neck like shattered glass.
“Where?” Lucien shouted again. The sight of blood spattered across his red robe, sprayed across his hands, kicked into weird shapes on the wooden floor by the man’s thrashing legs… he wanted more. Every bloody splash took him closer to finding the boy.
Vance shook his head and Lucien let him drop. He hit the floor and writhed there, groaning, eyes half-closed, broken fingers splayed across his chest as he tried to hold his crushed ribs. He could not speak. That did not matter. Lucien knew he had to be quick.
He reached inside his robe and plucked a small box from a pocket, shaking it slightly to wake the thing inside. He heard the chitinous rattle of docked wings, the hiss as the insect tried in vain to fly out of the darkness that imprisoned it.
“You will tell me the truth,” Lucien said. He dropped the insect onto the wounded man’s chest, and used the tip of his sword to slash a finger-long entry hole in Vance’s neck. The creature scuttled across blood-soaked clothing and the man’s broken fingers. It smelled the copious blood, but the leakage from the fresh wound was different. Here the creature found what it desired most: thick, rich arterial blood whose flow would soon cease.
It burrowed inside. Skin and flesh parted, tearing around the cut Lucien had already made, and soon the lump that marked the creature’s presence disappeared as it drove deeper, attaching itself to the man’s spine with barbed claws, spreading its wing stumps so that other, finer limbs could extrude from its body. They delved through flesh and found what they sought.
Vance’s throat began to rattle, his voice box agitated by the creature. “I’m going to die,” he whispered hoarsely.
Lucien smiled, and nodded. “How true,” he said. “Now… where is Rafe?”
“Don’t know.” The hiss was strange, inhuman, a caress of chitin on bone.
“Has he been here?”
“Yes.”
“When did he leave?”
“Yesterday.”
“Has he come back?”
“No.”
“Where is he in the town?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he know anyone else in the town?”
“I…” The hiss blurred, as if confusion had set in.
“Does anyone else here know him?”
“A thief.”
“What’s his name?”
“Don’t know.”
“How do you know he’s a thief?” Lucien smiled at the man below him, because Vance’s eyes were open again now. He was fighting, that was obvious, doing his utmost to keep silent. His eyes were filled with untempered hate. It did not frighten the Monk.
“Saw his hands, he has a thief’s marks, he brought the boy to me, he… he…”
“So Rafe fled when he knew you wouldn’t help him. He must have realized you were useless. I’m going to find the boy and kill him.”
“No!”
Lucien stood and turned away from the dying man. The blood was running slower now, pooling on the floor and dripping down between boards, finding its way to the earth. With no sign of Rafe-not really any nearer at all-still he had someone else to look for. A thief. In a place like this, there would be hundreds.
“Kill you,” Vance hissed. “Going to…”
Lucien turned around, but the man was already on his knees, knife in his unbroken hand, arm swinging around. He buried the blade in Lucien’s stomach, slicing through, twisting it as the Red Monk stepped back, gasping. The men parted, Vance’s eyes already drooping shut from blood loss.
“Untrue,” Lucien said. And then he let his rage burst out.
Tim Lebbon
Dusk
Chapter 12
KOSAR AND A’MEERtalked long into the evening. Their closeness had returned, along with a sense of attraction and comfort that set them fully at ease. There were a few jokes, some flirting, some outright innuendos from A’Meer, but mostly the talk was serious. And mostly it concerned magic.
A’Meer had once fought a Red Monk. When Kosar started his story she mentioned it straightaway, trying to appear casual but knowing the reaction her revelation would invoke. Kosar, already drunk on Old Bastard and rotwine, leaned back in his chair and raised his eyebrows, waiting for A’Meer to continue. She had told him many stories during their time together, but never had she mentioned the Monks.
“I was traveling down through the stilted villages of Ventgoria. Everything is built high off the ground there, on wooden platforms set on the thick trunks of Bole trees. They try to make sure the villages-they call them villages, but usually there are no more than a couple of hundred people living in any one place-are built as far away from the steam vents as they can. The stilts keep them up away from the marshes and the gas floods that happen there sometimes, but really they’re frightened of the steam vents as well. They emerge here and there sometimes, unexpected, as if they shift underground and break out wherever they desire. Some of the villagers believe the vents are caused by giant steam dragons, living beneath the ground and burrowing their way through the loamy soil. And each time they need to take a breath, they vent their steam out through the ground. Who am I to doubt their beliefs?”
“Everything amazes you, doesn’t it?” Kosar said fondly.
“I’m Shantasi. We’re more receptive to wonder than you fucking Noreelan wasters.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Kosar drained his glass of rotwine and wondered whether he would wake up the next morning.
“I’d gone quite a way down through the marshes, doing a bit of hunting here and there, when I met him. He was riding a horse, but it seemed to know where to go without him having to guide it. I was on foot, so I stepped to the side of the trail when I saw him in the distance and started a fire. It’s something of a tradition in Ventgoria that when you meet a traveler going in the opposite direction, you take food and a drink together. Not many people have cause to travel right across that place-there’s not much there, especially for those who have no sense of wonder. So I was plucking a marsh goose I’d shot down a couple of hours before, gutting it, stuffing it with a handful of tumblespit I’d been drying in my rucksack. I had a bottle of wine too, from the village I’d just left. Kosar, you won’t believe the wine those Ventgorians can brew! Their grapes grow in the open on string racks, no earth, only the sun to give them sustenance, and the long, loving care of the roots by the growers. Believe me, it’s something to kill for.”