The Copper Promise Read online

  ‘Why should I tell you anything?’ spat Rin. He was frightened; Frith could smell it on him, a rank, insidious smell like stagnant water. The torturer’s brow was damp with sweat, and his fingers, fingers that had dealt so much pain to so many innocents, were trembling slightly. Frith tightened the grip on his sword and nursed the hate within him, just as he had once nursed the pain the mages had inflicted on him in the lake.

  ‘Because every second of life you have left is now a gift from me,’ he said. ‘You live now only by my sufferance. Where is the Lady Bethan?’

  Rin scowled, glancing from the blade at his throat to Frith’s steady gaze and back again.

  ‘Not here. I don’t know where she is. Off looking for something to line her own pockets with, no doubt.’

  Frith took hold of Rin by the collar of his greasy tunic and pressed the edge of the blade against the torturer’s throat. A thin line of blood oozed across the steel.

  ‘Don’t!’ Rin’s voice was a whine at the back of his throat.

  ‘Tell me where she is,’ said Frith. ‘Tell me where she is, you miserable worm, or I swear you will die screaming on these very stones.’

  ‘I don’t know!’ gasped Rin, and there was a genuine frustration in his voice. ‘After the mess at the castle Fane was angry, he sent her away. Far from Litvania, they said, far from Istria even. Fane knows, not me!’

  His revenge, so close it was an appetising scent on the air, had once again been torn away from him. She had been there, she had watched what they did to him, ordered them to shatter his leg …

  ‘NO!’

  A great pulse of yellow light swelled from the centre of Frith’s chest and filled the room in an instant. Rin was thrown up in the air and then, impossibly, stayed hanging there, unable to move. The knives and pliers and tongs from the bench were similarly suspended, as well as a number of bloody buckets and rags. They hung rigid and immovable, while Frith stood in the centre of it all, amazed.

  ‘What have you done?’ cried Rin. The torturer tried to move, his flesh tensing with the effort, but he was as stuck as a fly in amber. Frith, entirely unaffected by the strange pulse of light, slid his sword back into its scabbard and plucked one of the floating knives out of the air.

  ‘It seems, Rin, that you may not die on the floor after all.’

  35

  Roki watched the woman’s eyes widen with fear. He smiled at her as he reached over the stall and took the biggest apple from the meagre pile. Keeping his eyes on her, he bit into the slightly wrinkled skin. It would be good to be near her now, to smell the fear as it came over her. Women produced such a delicate scent when they were afraid.

  The apple was bitter on his tongue. Roki looked down to see a grub wriggling out of the brownish flesh, half its body missing. He spat the morsel onto the floor.

  ‘This is rotten!’

  He threw the apple at the woman’s head and it bounced off her shoulder, causing her to shriek and hold her hands up in alarm. Next to him, his brother barked shrill laughter and slapped Roki on the back.

  ‘You think this is funny?’

  ‘I think your aim is terrible.’ Enri picked up another apple from the pile and threw it with considerable force at the woman, who was now cowering behind her goods. Fane, who liked to witness their daily trawl through the market, boomed laughter at the pair of them.

  ‘That one was rotten too!’ said Enri.

  ‘I’m sorry, lords,’ she stammered, not quite daring to meet their eyes.

  ‘What about this one?’ Roki picked up a tomato from another pile and made a show of sniffing it before pitching it at the market vendor. The tomato, long since past its best, exploded in a shower of reddish muck, streaking the woman’s face and neck. This time she turned to run, her hands shielding her head, but Enri took his whip from his belt and brandished it at her.

  ‘My good woman! We aren’t finished choosing yet.’

  There was a splash, and suddenly Enri was soaking wet, his long blond hair sticking lankly to his cheeks.

  ‘I think you are,’ came a voice from behind them.

  Roki turned to find the scruffy red-headed woman who had eluded them previously standing behind them. She was holding an empty bucket and grinning. Instead of a helm she was wearing some sort of odd leather hat pushed up onto her forehead, with blue-glass lenses resting just above her eyebrows. Before he could speak, the woman threw the bucket and it struck him in the chest.

  ‘Guards!’ bellowed Fane. ‘Seize this woman!’

  Half a dozen guards appeared through the crowd, weapons drawn. The woman drew two long daggers.

  ‘I have a proposition for you, Fane,’ she said in a strong, clear voice. ‘I think you’ll be interested to hear it.’

  Fane sighed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I wish to fight your monsters here,’ she said, jabbing a dagger in the direction of Roki and Enri. ‘Not these useless guards. Anyone could gut them in a second. I want a fight worthy of the Copper Cat of Crosshaven.’

  Fane snorted.

  ‘Am I supposed to have heard of you?’

  ‘Not likely. This is my first visit to this delightful place. Next time I am short of ugly men, I shall know where to come.’

  Enri stepped forward, a grin on his face as sharp as a knife. Roki had seen that look many times, and it always meant a fight. He was pleased. The red-haired woman had a mouth on her, and he looked forward to beating it shut. He loosened his swords in their scabbards.

  ‘Let us play with the little girl,’ said Enri. He shook his head, showering the ground with droplets of water. ‘We like to play rough. Would you like that?’

  The woman rolled her eyes at him.

  ‘If you must,’ said Fane, picking idly at the scars on his face. ‘But keep her alive. This one knows where Lord Frith is, and I’ve still got a vault to find. Once I have that information we can give her to Bezcavar.’

  ‘Wait,’ she held up one of her blades and pointed at the black-clad guards still hovering behind her. ‘Send these away. I’m fighting the pretty boys here, and I don’t want a sneaky sword in the back from a fat old guard.’

  ‘Yes, send them away,’ agreed Roki. They would play, and then she would die. He wanted to see her eyes widen as he slid the blade home. He wanted to smell her.

  Fane nodded to the guards, who melted back into the crowd.

  ‘All the way back!’ shouted the red-headed woman.

  ‘An early night, boys,’ said Fane, smirking slightly, ‘and tonight we shall drink to this woman’s stupidity.’

  ‘For Bezcavar,’ said Roki.

  The enchanted gauntlet shivered next to his skin, as it always did, and began to glow. There was that delicious feeling of doubling, and a moment later a copy of himself stood by his side. And then another, and another.

  ‘You wanted to fight a monster,’ he called to the woman with the daggers. ‘Let’s see you fight a score of them.’

  So far, so good, thought Wydrin.

  She glanced up at the sky. It had been a largely clear day, with a few streaks of cloud dallying on their way to the west, and the sun was making its journey to the horizon now, staining everything crimson and lurid orange. It hung in the sky just above the tree tops, and the shadows were growing long.

  They were to light the fuses at sundown. Not much time left, thought Wydrin, but time enough to show these people that Fane and his ilk can be beaten.

  The Children of the Fog advanced, the gauntlets beginning the strange ritual of lights. As she watched they shimmered as though seen through a heat haze, and then there were four of them, then six, then eight. The one she had thrown the bucket of water over shook his head again, shaking droplets of water from his hair, and his fog-brothers all did the same. In the last of the daylight the drops were as ruddy as blood.

  Wydrin pulled the Secret Keeper’s goggles down over her eyes, and everything turned sea-blue, as though she stood on the bottom of the ocean floor. She had a moment to wonder wha
t her father would make of such a thing before Enri’s whip snaked towards her out of the air and smacked the air next to her ear. She slid away easily enough, but three of Enri’s copies made identical moves, so that the evening breeze was full of the crack of leather. They weaved and shifted amongst each other so that the real Enri and Roki were soon lost in the crowd of identical men, the wicked barbs of their whips glittering in the last of the sun, while the double swords shone like firebrands. And which of them was real?

  ‘Show me,’ she muttered under her breath, hoping this was the correct way to use the Secret Keeper’s creation. ‘Show me the truth.’

  And it did.

  She could see the Children of the Fog clearly through the lenses, their white-blond hair now a ghostly blue, could see their identical grins as they closed in on her, weapons shining, but now two of them burned with a strange, phosphorescent light. When she had been quite small, her father had taken her and her brother out on one of the fishing boats late at night, and a bloom of jellyfish had swarmed past their boat. They had shone with an eerie white light in the black water, and now Enri and Roki shone with a similar effervescence. The real Children of the Fog were now impossible to miss.

  After that, it was fast. Wydrin was not the strongest or the surest blade in Crosshaven, but she was always the quickest. Two of the illusory Rokis stepped up to her, twin swords slashing in a showy attack, and Wydrin slid past them, catching one blade on her dagger and turning it aside. For a brief moment one of the Rokis’ sides was exposed and she could have slid her dagger into the soft unprotected leather over his armpit, but to do so would leave her open for an attack from the other Roki, and besides, he was made of mist, so she kept going, letting her momentum carry her past them both. And then she was faced with two Enris, whips curling like sea-snakes in a swift current.

  One of the Enris was the true one, burning as bright as the sun amongst the blue. The Enri next to him, who now looked insubstantial in the sapphire light, snaked the whip out at her legs with a deafening crack, and she felt it wrap around her ankle and bite there. The pain was immense.

  ‘I think the Copper Cat has a thorn in her paw!’ cried Fane. There was laughter in his voice.

  Wydrin feigned an attack at the fake Enri, both daggers brought up to his face, and then she swung to the left, burying Frostling to the hilt in the neck of the grinning blond man. For the barest second it was almost as though he was too surprised to react, and then a spurt of blood poured from the sudden hole in his throat. Wydrin pulled her dagger clear and Enri, the real Enri, pressed a hand to his neck in confusion. He opened his mouth, whether to scream or make some protest Wydrin never knew, and blood flowed from his lips in a dark current.

  As he pitched forward to his knees, all the fake Enris, all the men made of mist and fog, winked out of existence. There was a shocked pause from everyone watching, followed by a ragged cheer.

  ‘No!’ screamed Roki, and all the other Rokis screamed in unison, their faces twisted with grief and rage. The real Roki, who was still burning like a candle through the crystal goggles, flew at her, swords a blur, but his outrage made him sloppy. Wydrin dropped one knee and avoided the onslaught, then brought her own wickedly sharp blade down on his unprotected hand, putting all her strength into the blow. She felt the blade travel down through his fingers and hit the hilt beneath, saw the crimson droplets leap into the air, and that was when the barracks exploded.

  For Sebastian, who watched Wydrin from the edge of the crowd, it was as though a huge warm hand came and pushed them all back.

  He staggered, almost falling over a smaller man behind him. Shielding his eyes with one hand against the sudden bright light he saw the barracks building on the far side of the market shudder violently, huge waves of orange flame with a greenish glow flashing at every window. There was a second cataclysmic rumble and the evening air was filled with screams from the guards inside. The floors have collapsed, thought Sebastian numbly. A second later the thatched roof was ablaze, and then all was chaos.

  ‘You can fight them!’ screamed Wydrin. She kicked the wounded Roki, who was staring at his severed hand in shock, and ran to a nearby stall. She climbed on top of it and pointed at the merrily burning building with her bloody dagger. ‘There are more of you, and they’re just men. Fight them!’

  A handful of guards fled from the barracks, all of them aflame. One dropped to the floor and rolled in the dirt, trying to put the fire out, but whatever chemicals Frith had used ensured it was not so easy. As Sebastian drew his own sword, a stout middle-aged woman ran to the guard on the ground and put a long-pronged hayfork through his chest. A few seconds later and other townspeople were getting the same idea. Men and women grabbed hoes and scythes and makeshift spears. Sebastian saw one heavy-set man stumble out of the crowd with a meat cleaver in his fist, his apron brown with old blood. The guards who had not been in the barracks had joined together at the end of the market, short swords at the ready. They looked nervous.

  He brandished his sword at the townspeople.

  ‘I am with you!’ he shouted. ‘For Pinehold!’

  There was a bloody slaughter then, fast and terrible. Fane took one look and ran, heading straight for the Queen’s Tower. The townspeople howled for his blood, and near rushed after him but a second group of guards headed them off. Sebastian cut through them swiftly, his superior training breaking every defence and sending each attack to its intended mark. His shoulders burned as though he’d been fighting for hours, but when he looked to the Queen’s Tower and saw it still standing, he knew it had only been minutes. Wydrin appeared at his shoulder, the goggles pushed back onto her forehead.

  ‘That,’ she said cheerfully, ‘is what you get for trusting in enchanted armour.’

  ‘The tower,’ he said. They found themselves in a brief empty space as the battle moved across the marketplace behind them. ‘It has yet to fall. Have you seen Frith?’

  Wydrin looked around them. The young lord with his shock of white hair should have been easy to spot. She frowned, pulled the leather goggles down over her eyes again and said, ‘Show me where he is.’ She looked around the market slowly, and when she finally got to the tower she swore very loudly.

  ‘The stupid bastard’s still in there!’

  ‘He can’t be.’

  ‘I can bloody see him, all lit up like a whore’s bedroom!’ She tapped the glass for emphasis. Immediately she made to run for the tower. Sebastian grabbed hold of her arm.

  ‘There’s no time!’

  She shook him off and pelted away, shouting over her shoulder as she went. ‘I’m faster than you. Win the day out here or I shall want to know the reason why!’

  36

  Fane elbowed his way past the guards at the main door of the tower. They were both staring beyond him, jaws slack with surprise, spears held loosely in their hands. No doubt their nostrils were full of the chemical stench too, and the light from the fire now burning out of control in the centre of town had thrown up an eerie glow against the fast-approaching darkness.

  It was time to get out. Everything had gone to hell.

  Fane could scarcely believe it happened so quickly, but he’d not survived so long without knowing when it was sensible to run, and that was just what he intended to do. There were a few valuables in the tower, some documents he couldn’t be without, and then he’d take the last of the guards, and Roki, if he was still alive, and make for some other godforsaken town in this mouldering forest.

  One of the guards caught at his arm as he passed.

  ‘My lord, what is happening?’

  Fane pushed him away, and then shoved him against the wall for emphasis.

  ‘Gather what you can from the storerooms and make ready to leave. We’ll look for the vault elsewhere.’

  The last Lord Frith, if indeed that’s who he was, could rot for all he cared. No doubt he was deep within the Blackwood by now, taken in by some dreadful peasants who thought he was their saviour. Perhaps he would become
a local legend, the long-lost lord haunting the forest and waiting for his chance to return. Fane’s lips quirked into a smile at the thought; the idea rather entertained him.

  Inside the tower he sprinted up the stone steps, moving with a speed that belied his size, and as he did so he passed one of the rooms they’d turned over to the torturer. The door was half open, which was unusual, and a strange red light spilled out on to the flagstones.

  ‘Rin? If you’re in there, grab your knives. It’s time to leave this piss-pot hole.’

  Fane pushed open the door. The instinct that had been whispering at him to run suddenly screamed in his ear. He shuffled a few steps back, his legs heavy and unresponsive.

  The young Lord Frith turned to look at him. There was blood on his cheek, almost black against his dark skin. There was blood on his hands, up to his elbows, in fact, and there was blood in the air, floating like a heavy mist and turning the light from the oil lamps crimson. Beyond him Yellow-Eyed Rin hung suspended above the floor, although yellow was no longer the colour he brought to mind.

  ‘You,’ said Frith in a flat voice. He dropped the scalpel he’d been holding. ‘Perhaps you could tell me where the Lady Bethan is? It turns out Rin doesn’t like answers nearly as much as he likes questions. I have a friend like that, you know.’

  Fane’s hand hovered over the hilt of his sword, uncertain. He could cut down the slim man in front of him in a few strokes, but the power in the room that was holding Rin and his instruments in the air was a palpable presence, thundering and dangerous.

  ‘YOU WILL ANSWER ME!’

  Frith watched Fane’s retreating back as he turned and continued his flight up the steps, and all at once the force that had been holding everything up in the air departed. There was a soft pattering as the blood that had so entertainingly flowed from Rin’s body to hang in droplets came back down, falling on the flagstones like rain.