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  He had gone at her then. With all that was left of his fury and strength. Great swipes of his claws that sent her leaping back, crashing off ancient architecture. She scrabbled up a wall, a column. He beat it down. She rolled free, and he stomped with a foot. She leapt out of the roll. He grabbed a scholar, bit deep, trying to recover his strength. She flung a knife at his eyes. He used the scholar as a shield. She had closed the distance, struck at his hamstrings. He kicked her away. She flew, but rolled as she landed.

  So it had gone. On and on. Trading nicks and cuts but never landing a killing blow. And then the scholars were forgotten. Even the dead ones leaking out precious fluid into the sands. It was just the dance of combat. Just the testing of skills. Just the two of them, feint and counterfeint. Seeing who could deliver the mortal blow. Seeing whose strength would falter first.

  And then finally his strength would carry him no further. He fell. Waited for her blade to follow suit.

  When he had the strength to see why it hadn’t, he saw her on her knees, panting, unable to get up.

  They had lain there, side by side, while around them the sand began to howl.

  A week later they had crawled out of the desert together. And they had been together ever since.

  Tribe.

  And now…

  “What are you thinking?” he rumbled. Subtlety had never worked for him. He treated conversations like he treated fights. Hit hard and directly until something cracked and leaked.

  “It’s a good plan,” she said quietly, still not looking at him.

  Balur considered. “You are sneaking out here to be staring morosely into the middle distance so that you can be thinking about what a good plan it is?” He nodded. “I am believing that I am smelling the odor of bull’s dung.”

  “What if I told you I didn’t want to talk about it?” She sounded petulant. Probably because she knew she would not win this fight.

  “Tribe shares with tribe.”

  “Your tribe is dead.” She knew pretending to misunderstand this point annoyed him.

  “My old tribe was exiling me. That is making me anxious to not be repeating the experience with my new tribe.”

  She turned finally. There was a tightness about her eyes. “That gold we had was a new start, Balur. It was a way to get started in Kondorra, away from gods, and kings, and wars, and backstabbing, and bullshit. It was a different kind of life. And now it’s gone. And we’re back to doing the same thing.”

  Balur nodded. “So we will be making more gold. We will be finding that new life in a short while. Maybe somewhere that is having slightly fewer dragons after all.”

  Lette shook her head. “I know that. That’s not what worries me.”

  “What is it that is worrying you?” Balur had enough respect for human syntax that he worked hard to avoid sounding like a pirate.

  “That now that we have a plan—a good plan—I’m glad we lost the gold.”

  Balur was not subtle, but he knew how to kill silently, how to slip into an enemy’s camp without being detected. And that was how he kept the smile in his heart hidden.

  “I am thinking,” he said, “that this is being less to do with the plan, and being more to do with the planner. I am thinking that you are out here to be trying to put out the flame in your britches.”

  Lette hesitated a moment, then grinned. “The only one with flaming britches is you after that whore in Vinland.”

  That killed Balur’s smile a little. He nodded in acquiescence. “That was being a miscalculation,” he conceded.

  Lette grinned, teeth pale in the waning light. Balur grinned back. Behind them, Quirk’s voice rang out. “Potion’s done.”

  “Come,” said Balur. “Night is falling. Potion is being brewed. And you are having a whole village to fuck up.”

  10

  Mugging Ethel

  The problem with high-risk adventuring, and other acts of derring-do, Lette thought, was that they mostly involved just sitting around on your arse. No ancient and mysterious cult had ever bothered to build its temple within an easy morning’s ride of a city. No long-dead king ever bothered to be buried anywhere near where he had actually ruled. And considering the frequency with which terrible beasts terrorized villages, they tended to live remarkably far from them.

  Even the more lowly adventurous acts—mugging two soldiers and a cow, for example—seemed to involve lurking in a yew bush for such an inordinate amount of time that several bards would start composing ballads about the pair of you.

  The soldiers in question, and their truculent bovine captive, were half a mile away. The road—little more than a loose mixture of gravel and mud—wove drunkenly down a hillside and up another before disappearing out of sight toward the local village. On either side, barren pasture spread out, pockmarked by a few sagging trees. A few sheep observed the scene, as morose as the day’s weather. Rain seemed on the cusp of falling, but had yet to gather its nerve to properly pour down.

  Like the pregnant clouds above, Lette’s impatience was growing.

  “I was telling you to be taking a nap this morning,” said Balur, who it seemed had decided to do an impression of her mother. “You are always being cranky after early morning crimes.”

  She looked over at Balur, squatting beside her in the bush. Well, mostly on top of the bush. The bush was not really up to concealing the lizard man. But when he was sitting still enough, and curled up on himself, Balur could look remarkably like a piece of the landscape. A particularly stupid piece of the landscape.

  “Did I say anything?” she snapped. “Any complaint?”

  “You were breathing angrily,” Balur deadpanned.

  “Is this more tribe bullshit?”

  “You are breathing very shrilly when you are being angry,” Balur told her, still without inflection. “I am thinking you have a tendency to narrow your nostrils. It is likely being related to why you so often lose at cards. Too many tells.”

  “I’ll tell you where to shove that tail in a moment.”

  It would be easier, Lette reflected, if Balur was wrong. But she had been up early. And she was cranky.

  With Quirk’s potion brewed, the next step had been to introduce it to the villagers’ morning bread. And if there was one career worse than mercenary and itinerant adventurer, it was, in Lette’s most sincere opinion, being a gods-hexed baker. Up at the arse crack of dawn. Before it even. Not even the arse crack, but instead that strange mutant tuft of back hair that announced the arse crack. That moment when the rooster rolled over and thought, Fuck it, everyone can hang on another fifteen minutes or so.

  She was sincerely glad that Balur had not taken her up on that particular career path.

  What was worse, she had needed to wake up not only in time to be at the baker’s at the same time as the baker, but in time to travel the two leagues from the cave in the Breccan woods so she could be at the baker’s at the same time as the baker. The whole thing had almost gone to the Hallows when she’d nearly alerted the baker to her presence by yawning at considerable volume. Still, when the baker had stumbled blearily into his storage closet to investigate the noise, she was up braced against the roofbeams, and the fool had never even looked up.

  She had dropped down behind him, slugged the base of his skull with a weighted cosh, spilled some milk on the ground to make it look like he’d slipped, dosed the dough, and bugged out.

  And then she had not napped. And now here she was waiting to steal a cow, and regretting it, and unable to complain about it because for some gods-hexed reason she had decided to make her closest friend in the world a smug, sarcastic arsehole.

  There again, thinking about it, that was probably why he was her closest friend in the world.

  She sighed. She wanted a better life, but she was having a very hard time being the better person that required.

  She watched the soldiers, watched the cow, watched the sun rise in the sky. She cursed each one in turn.

  There was rustling from behind he
r. She grimaced. She would have preferred to leave Will, Quirk, and Firkin far away from this part of the heist, but Will and Quirk needed to be here so they could change into the soldiers’ outfits after the mugging, and no one was willing to leave Firkin alone to his own devices for even a second.

  She turned around to see which one of them was trying to ruin everything. It was Will. Despite herself she felt the harshness of her expression soften.

  And then he went and ruined it by opening his mouth.

  “Ethel?” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes. “No. Lette. We’ve been hanging around each other for the past two days.”

  “No.” Will shook his witless head. “I know that cow. That’s Ethel.”

  Lette closed her eyes. I know that cow. She’d suspected that Kondorra would be rural, but this…? This is why she liked working in cities. The fetishes were a little more predictable there.

  “I am not supposing that means you can be talking it into being our accomplice?” Balur asked.

  “Do either of you remember,” Lette hissed, “the part where we’re supposed to be ambushing people?”

  “That’s my cow,” Will said obstinately.

  “Technically it is not being your cow.” Balur insisted on dragging this out.

  “I raised her from a calf,” Will objected.

  “The reason we are being here in the first place,” Balur pointed out, “is that the dragon Mattrax was confiscating your farm, including”—he paused for just a fraction of a moment—“Ethel.”

  For a blessed moment, Will held his tongue. Then he appeared to reconsider the whole being-sensible thing. “But they’re taking her to be eaten,” he said. “For Mattrax to have as some sort of pre-dinner snack.”

  “Yes,” Lette hissed. “That’s precisely why we’re taking her, filling her full of drugs, and feeding her to him. It’s your cursed plan.”

  “But,” Will said yet again, “she’s my cow. I raised her.”

  Lette clawed at her face, and checked the road. The soldiers were very close now.

  “Get back in your hexed bush,” she hissed at Will.

  But instead of doing that, Will seemed to take it into his head to step into the road.

  “Hey,” she heard him call out. “That’s my cow.”

  She exchanged a glance with Balur. “Maybe,” he rumbled, “this is being a very cunning distraction.”

  Lette considered. “Him being gutted by two soldiers is a cunning distraction?”

  Balur paused. Then, “It would mean that we are only splitting the haul among four instead of five.”

  Out on the road, things were not going so well. A prime example of that being that both soldiers had drawn their swords. They regarded Will with a mixture of suspicion and disbelief. As if watching a mouse saunter out of its hole, climb up onto their dinner plate, and politely demand the cheese.

  “You fucking what?” said one.

  “He said it was his cow,” said the other.

  “That’s funny,” said the first.

  “Not that funny,” said the second.

  “He don’t look like Mattrax,” said the first.

  “He didn’t even have a punch line,” continued the second.

  “And this is Mattrax’s cow.”

  “Now your mother’s face, that’s funny.”

  “And unless you is, Mattrax—” the first went on, addressing Will now.

  “And that,” said the second, “was a punch line.”

  “—then you better get the fuck out of my way.”

  They were dissimilar men. One short, one tall. One fat, one lean. One with lank, greasy blond hair, one with tight brown curls. One pale-skinned, one dark. In fact, the only thing uniting them was the same look of growing contempt on their faces.

  “That,” said Will, enunciating clearly, “is my cow.”

  The first soldier looked at the second, then back at Will. “You,” he said, “is one stupid fucker.”

  Lette couldn’t say she disagreed at that moment.

  “We could,” Balur whispered contemplatively beside her, “always use him being gutted as a cunning distraction, whether he intended it or not.”

  Lette sighed. Part of her was tempted by Balur’s suggestion. Yes, Will was a good-looking young man, but there were plenty of good-looking men in the world, and many of them could be bought with coin. Except this was Will’s plan. And while his knowledge might not extend to the simple mugging of two idiotic soldiers, it almost certainly extended to the layout of Mattrax’s castle and how best to get a drugged cow from the entrance gates to Mattrax’s cave.

  Also, allowing her newfound companions to be killed as a distraction was probably not completely in line with her desire to be a better person.

  She stood up, pushed out of the yew bush, and made for Will. The guards started back. Which, she noted with a tinge of professional pride, meant that they had had no idea she was there.

  Then Balur rumbled to life. “Fine then,” he grumbled, as he unfolded to his full height. At this the soldiers started considerably more. Lette’s mood stopped brightening.

  “What the fuck is this?” said the first soldier.

  “This,” said Lette, looking up and down the empty road, “is bloody amateur hour apparently.” She pointed at Will. “Get back in your bush.”

  “But we can’t…” he started. “She’s my cow.”

  Lette shook her head. “Yes,” she said. “I know. You have made that point repeatedly. But we need a cow, and”—she pointed to the empty fields all around them—“we are a little light on them at the moment. So we need that one. So please get back in your bush and let the grown-ups take care of this.”

  “You clear this bloody road now,” said the second soldier, waving his sword vaguely at them. “This is Mattrax’s business. And it don’t need to be interrupted by… by…” He considered Balur. “Things like you.”

  Lette turned to him. “Can you just be quiet, while I talk some sense into my colleague here for a moment?”

  The soldier opened his mouth.

  “It is being best to just go along with her,” Balur said. “There is being no reasoning with her when she is being like this.”

  The soldier shut his mouth again.

  “I would like,” Lette said to Will, “to say that I am very sorry that this cow once belonged to you. But I’m not. I legitimately don’t give a shit. I just need a cow. Because doing so will allow me to get my hands on so much fucking gold, I can actually smelt it down and make myself an entire herd of golden fucking cows, should I so wish. So you are going to get out of my way, stop interfering with my cow thievery, and get back in the gods-hexed bush. Do you understand?”

  Something in her tone must finally have broken through. Will looked away from his cow, and back to his bush.

  “Thievery?” said the first soldier. “You think you is—”

  Without looking, Lette flicked out her arm. A dagger appeared in the guard’s throat, buried to the hilt. He dropped to the ground gurgling.

  Balur shook his head. “I was warning you. I was being very clear.”

  The second soldier’s mouth was open. For a moment only air hissed out. Then with a howl he flung himself at Lette.

  Or, to be more accurate, he flung himself into the head of Balur’s war hammer, which was traveling toward him at considerable velocity.

  He also dropped to the ground. There was no gurgling this time.

  Lette looked at Will still frozen on the path. “Well?” she said.

  He looked from the bush to the dead and dying soldiers. He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to be much point going back in there now.”

  Balur pulled Lette aside as Quirk and Will started to put on their purloined outfits.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Are you being all right?”

  It took Lette a moment to realize that Balur was genuinely concerned. “Yes,” she said, almost bemused enough to stop being irate. “Of course. Why?”

/>   Balur’s narrow tongue tasted the air. He glanced at Will. “You were saving him,” he said. “You were not waiting for them to attack him, for them to be being distracted. You were standing up and putting yourself in danger.”

  Lette looked at the two guards, now both dead and naked. “Danger?” she scoffed.

  “It was not being much,” Balur said with a shrug. “But it was being a little. An unnecessary amount.”

  Lette shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. He was getting at something, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “So what?” she said.

  Balur shrugged again. “Maybe it is being nothing,” he said. “I am only thinking that the Lette from outside the Kondorra valley would not be doing what you were doing.” He stared up at the sky, gray with clouds. “It is just being that things like that, they make me worry that you are becoming a better person.”

  He left her with that. And she took it with her, as she left the others and climbed up into the hills that would lead her to the mouth of Mattrax’s cave.

  11

  Nom Nom Prophecy Nom

  When Balur was finally of the opinion that Will was suitably cowed, would stop bellyaching about Ethel, and would just go about feeding her drugged arse to Mattrax, and when he was equally convinced that Quirk’s ardor to get up close and personal with a dragon would cause her to keep the farm boy in line, he grabbed Firkin by the scruff of the neck and steered the tottering drunkard toward civilization. Or what was trying to pass itself off as civilization in this arse-end of Kondorra.

  Balur had not seen the village himself, but after visiting the baker’s this morning, Lette had described it as “a blackhead of humanity, waiting for the fingers of oppression to burst it.”

  Firkin, for his part, seemed happy to be pushed and prodded along. He muttered to himself. Balur braced his mind for the open sluice gate of cloacal verbiage, and attempted listening for a moment.

  “—concerned with money. That’s their problem. Shiny stuff. That’s what they think about. I can make stuff shiny. Shine it up real good. Bit of fish oil. Shine myself up. Glistening in the sun I’ll be. They’ll all be wanting me then. Mattrax will take me home and call me his dandy. And he’ll feed me all the livery bits of all the cows. Shiny as a button. And they’ll fight for me. And then I shall say to dance. Dance for my favor. And round they’ll all go. And then they’ll try to put their hands on me, but they won’t be able to. Slippery, fish oil is. Slippery and shiny. Twice as good as gold, fish oil is.”