"Scared?" Maroto felt his cheeks flush, and then a fury that only escaped its bonds in his blood on the rarest occasions. But before the lordling could push him over the edge, Purna sat down on a rock, dropped the mace, and buried her head in her hands. Maroto watched her shudder with emotion for long enough to confirm that she wasn't laughing at him, and after having a gander over the far cliffside to make sure the beast was truly dead, he fetched the cougar milk to pour on their wounds. Neither had suffered a bite, but even so, godguana claws were nasty enough to carry nine kinds of plague.

When he came back Purna was sitting up straight, the mace propped against her knee, and Maroto did his best not to be too obvious in his ogling as he washed her wounds in booze. With her makeup sloughed off by the righteous trinity of blood, sweat, and tears, her stupid wig gone, and her cropped black hair spiky with lizard ichors, she looked a sight better. Not that he felt anything but scorn for the puffed-up little dandy, but few folk didn't look good with blood on their tits and a weapon at the ready.

There was a thought to please the devils. Maroto amended his musings: it wasn't that he liked the idea of an injured woman, gods no, just that warriors always looked better bloody than clean, and warriors always looked better than anyone else. Nothing wrong with thinking the truth.

"I think you've got it pretty well sorted," said Purna, standing up, and Maroto realized he'd perhaps been overly diligent in his application of the absinthe-soaked rag. "Come on, let's get you washed and then we can go after it."

"After it?" He winced as he applied the cloth to his wrist. He'd almost scraped it to the veins, riding that lizard's rough neck. "I checked; thing's busted open on a ledge fifty feet down. Even if she wasn't, though, you don't follow a wounded animal unless you have to. You think that monster put up a fight, see what one would do if you cornered her."

"Sure, sure," said Purna, fiddling with her shredded vest until she could tie a strip of it into her collar, giving her a beggar's modesty. "I just want its head. To, you know, mount? That's the whole reason we're out here, isn't it, for this sort of thing? What's the point in battling monsters if you don't get a trophy?"

"Come on," said Maroto, getting up. "We're going back before another one shows up."

"I'm not leaving without my trophy," said Purna. "If you don't climb down and get it, I will."

"Fine," said Maroto. "Good luck. I'd say I'll meet you back at camp later, except I probably won't because you'll slip and break an ankle and lie on some spit of rock crying until something comes along to eat you."

"What's your price, barbarian?" said Purna, sounding as simultaneously bored and annoyed as a noble buying their bratty kid out of trouble. "To get me the head, how much would it cost me?"

"More than you're worth," said Maroto, but he couldn't help but feel the itch in his least honorable organ: his purse. It hadn't looked to be too hard a climb down to the direlizard... "Ten thousand rupees."

"Let's make it twelve," said Purna with a smile, which was how Maroto found himself cleaning off the mace he had almost lost, along with his life, and descending to where the godguana had fallen. She had begun to cook in the morning heat, and the stench made him gag as he broke through her ridge of spines and the bones beneath, mashing her shoulders into reptilian paste. Would've been a sight easier with an ax instead of the dubious duo of mace and dagger, but then it would've been a damn sight easier to just tell Purna where to stick her twelve thousand rupees. He was half-baked himself by the time he rejoined Purna on the summit, whereupon he discovered she had drunk all his water while he was doing her dirty work. Yet not even the realization that to get them both down safely he'd have to carry her on his back compared to the frustration he felt when they were at long last back on the under-roads, returning to the caravan, and she said, "So twelve thousand rupees will take some doing, but while we were climbing I hit on the perfect solution."

"While we were climbing?" Maroto tried to keep a level tone; until he had the money in hand it wouldn't do to spook her. "You promised me something you couldn't pay, Tapai Purna? I thought you nobles were reliable about paying your debts."

"If we were there would be far fewer of us," said Purna. "My shoulder really hurts, are you sure it's all right?"

"I'll stitch you up at the camp. But only after I've been paid."

"Ah, yes. But see, I don't have the money yet."

"When will you? I'd be quick about it, personally. You want those sewn up right away."

"That depends on you," said Purna. "We could have it as soon as tomorrow."

"Depends on me," said Maroto, a cannonball sort of weight settling in his guts.

"As I said, I wanted no part in their vile little wager. No part. Bleh." Purna stuck out her tongue. "But I can go back to my chums and enter a share, saying that after our adventure today I've warmed to the beast, and decided to take a chance on seducing it myself."

"Seducing it? The beast?"

"Yes, that's what they call you. Not me, though. I always just call you the barbarian."

Some improvement. "So you lay a wager, then later today or tomorrow we go off and have a screw and-"

"No, no, no!" said Purna. "What sort of a person do you take me for? I lay the wager, then we sneak off and pretend to fuck, preferably tucked away in one of these canyons where the echoes can reach the rest, just so there's no room for doubt. Then I get paid, and in turn you get paid."

"Absolutely not," said Maroto. "Under no circumstances. I have pride, girl, a word unfamiliar to you so-called civilized folk, but one dear to me as the true name of any devil."

"Have it your way," said Purna. "I think the pot's closer to twenty thousand, so I'd go so far as to give you fifteen and keep a modest five for the injury to my reputation, but if you'd rather be silverless and proud, then-"

"All twenty," said Maroto, dropping Purna's reptilian trophy in the sand. The wagons were just ahead. "All twenty, and you have to tell them that you convinced me you weren't actually part of the wager before I agreed to fuck you. I won't have it said I'm a whore or a rich lord's plaything."

"Seventeen, and agreed on your condition," said Purna, squatting down and hoisting the lizard head herself. Her arms were shaking but she managed it. "Final offer."

"Eighteen."

"Seventeen-five, and you're no whore nor rich girl's plaything."

"Agreed," said Maroto, though he was no longer so sure about that last bit. They returned to the campfire, the coterie of coxcombs squawking and hooting at their bedraggled appearance and Purna's prize. Revolting a scene as it surely was, Kshaku Koz's valet revealed herself to have both a barber's bag and the skill to use it. Purna was treated first, naturally, while Maroto fended off the demands of the rest to be taken on a dragon hunt at dusk. Later, he overheard Purna's version of events over brandy and cigars while his significantly worse injuries were tended to. He told himself that declining the valet's offer of a centipede prior to setting in was a victory, albeit a small one, but every stab of the needle and tug of the thread reminded him of his weakness, his failings; here was a man who couldn't even trust himself to take a painkiller before undergoing surgery, lest he backslide into his old ways. And after the day he'd had, all he had to look forward to was a make-believe tryst on the morrow.

There was a time when Maroto wouldn't have entered the Panteran Wastes for the far more lucrative and enjoyable proposition of raiding just such a party of wealthy fools, a time when he would have laughed in the face of anyone who suggested he might end up playing Great Barbarian Hunter for a bunch of second-rate fops. There was a time when Maroto would have gestured at his priceless armor, his witch-touched weapons, his lands and titles and holdings, to say naught of the bloody devil that served his will-here was a man with everything silver could buy, and many things it could not.

When he squinted into the past, he could almost make out that man through the mists of bug- and drink-filtered memories and increasingly poor decisions. The simpering choir of the nobles carried on into the early hours of the night, and sleep was as elusive as dignity as he lay on his too-soft cot in his too-nice covered wagon, dreading the future every bit as much as he loathed the past. He told himself that once they were out of the Wastes he would never again debase himself so... but he'd broken that promise many, many times before and he would, sad to say, break it again.

CHAPTER.

7.

It was long after midnight when Choplicker caught up to Zosia in the high country. Hearing him crash through the low ring of deadfall she had piled around her camp, she drew away into the junipers, into the darkness, into the focused wrath that was the only thing that let her rioting mind relax into silence... and when the miserable scavenger appeared across the fire, she pulled her bowstring back even farther, and loosed her arrow straight at his muzzle. The missile veered off course and disappeared into the night, just like she knew it would, but she nocked another anyway, storming out of the shadows at him.

"Why?" Zosia's voice broke as she drew her bow again, just across the small fire from the beast now. "Why the fuck didn't you take it? I know you could've, I know it would've been child's play for you to honor the terms I offered, so why?"

Choplicker whined at her, keeping his wagging tail low to the ground the way he always did when he knew he was in trouble. This, this right here was how he'd lulled her into thinking they were all right with one another, this grotesque charade was how he'd convinced her that she had nothing to fear from him. That they were friends. And then he'd as good as murdered Leib.

Zosia almost fired her second arrow but then she noticed that Choplicker had not returned alone. The arms of a child were wrapped around his furry neck, its bloody back limp atop his own. Even freshly fed, it must have taken some effort for the old beggar to drag a corpse all the way up the mountain-and just to rub her nose in it.

Zosia relaxed her bow and tossed it onto her bedroll. Then she stalked around the fire, meaning to take Choplicker apart with her bare hands, when the child slid down his haunches, letting out a moan as he collapsed onto the cold, moss-cushioned earth. Cursing, she hurried to the boy and rolled him onto his side, the firelight turning his bloody tunic to molten gold. He moaned again as she tore the cloth and prodded the wound, a rude, deep puncture that had narrowly missed the base of his spine.

"Mayoress." The boy's voice was raspier than the junipers in the wind that stalked these heights. "It hurts."

Zosia sighed, letting out as much of her pain and rage as she could. It would only distract her now, and after the events of the day it wasn't as if she was in danger of exhausting her stores in this lifetime. She bit the inside of her cheek, focusing herself as best she could. The wound was deep, no doubt from a spear, and his long, jostling ride up the mountains couldn't have done him any boon. It would have been better if the boy had never woken up, if Choplicker had just dragged him into the underbrush and torn out his throat rather than delivering him to her. Which was the point, she supposed, and, hearing his slobbering, she scowled at the scavenger. He was licking the boy's face, plastering the lad's hair up, and if the wounded child hadn't obviously welcomed the diversion from his pain she would have murdered the beast then and there. Or tried to, anyway.

"You'll be all right," she said, straightening up. She had recognized the boy, for all the good it would do her to know his name. "I've got something in my bag to heal you, Pao Cowherd, just don't go making any trouble while I get it. Lie very still."

"Yes, ma'am," Pao whispered, trying to pet Choplicker. "Sorry, ma'am."

"Should be," said Zosia, her voice almost catching. She'd grown soft, all right-the stone was still in her somewhere, but she'd buried it so deep under years of easy happiness that she couldn't seem to find it. Tending a badly wounded child was not the time for grief or doubt, and once she would have been able to smother these things, if she felt them at all... once, but ages past. Now the deep coldness inside her teemed with a hundred different splashing, thrashing thoughts and memories and emotions, and try as she might she couldn't find the placidity that once came as natural as breathing.

Fishing in her pack, she took out a wool shirt and brought it back to the boy, cutting into it with her deer knife as she hunkered back down. He was pallid as a corpse already, and trying not to cry. "Tying off a nanny goat's tail is a dark deed, boy-you recall what I said I'd do if I caught you up by my place again?"

"Said you'd... beat the devils out of me." Even half dead, the boy grinned at her. There was blood shining between his teeth in the firelight. "Ain't my fault, ma'am. Your dog... he brung me up here."

"Well, I suppose it's all right then," said Zosia, rolling the boy farther over to examine the wound before plugging it. There hardly seemed a point at all, but he was still talking, so who knew, maybe there was some hope... "This will hurt, but it's got to be done. Then I'll stop the wound and you'll be right as rain before you know it."

"I feel sick, I-" But whatever the boy might have said next was lost as his voice turned into a gasping, gulping sob. Zosia had peeled back the soft crust that had formed over the wound and slid her index finger in, making sure there wasn't a broken arrow or spear point lodged inside. Something hard and sharp met her fingertip, but she couldn't tell if it was a piece of weapon or bone-too long since she'd rooted around in a body. Nothing she could do about it, anyway, wedged that firmly in there, alone on a dark mountainside. The boy was sucking the cold air in catfish gulps, his body basted with sweat, and she slipped her finger out.

If he lived through the night, come morning she'd clean and cauterize the wound, but for now she would spare him that ordeal. Rolling a scrap of shirt into a plug, she quickly packed it in the wound. He found enough air to let out a wail at that, then fell totally silent. She tied the remaining woolen strips tight, the boy shivering as she hoisted his hip to get the bandage all the way around his waist. Cinching it, she watched his wracked face, wondering if this was it, if she had gone and killed the boy.

No. His face was still locked in a rictus, but his shallow breathing was evening out, his almost imperceptible whines growing in strength even as the rest of him weakened. She stood back up, the speed with which she had gained the high country after dealing with Hjortt and setting the house aflame catching up with her in a series of twinges and aches. Devils below and devils above, but her left knee was angry with her. She wanted to rinse the tacky blood off her hands, but, knowing they'd like as not be bloodied again before the night was over, decided not to waste the water just yet. She held her hands over the diminished fire, the drying blood dark on her fingers. They were still shaking. They would be shaking a lot in the nights to come, with winter on the wind that gutted her blaze.

"I'm thirsty," Pao called with more strength than she would have expected. He had curled into a ball despite the pain it must have caused to bring his knees to his chest, and she brought him both a waterskin and her flask of enzian. He coughed more on the sip of water than he did on the slug of bitter booze. "Those soldiers... they killed everyone."

"That's what I figured," said Zosia, taking a pull on the enzian herself. She gave up on trying to keep the inevitable at bay and let herself remember harvesting the plants with Leib. While she excavated the roots from the flinty alpine soil, her shirking husband strung her small, pungent crowns from the yellow flowers, setting them with the rare purple bloom. A jewel for her diadem. The smell of earth and root, the feel of cold hands slipped under the back of her blouse to provoke a squeal. She took another aromatic dram, thought of the pot-still bubbling away in its hut behind the village's communal longhouse, and wondered if the murderous Imperial soldiers were even now toasting with pillaged bottles of the same spirit. If she started back down now she could be there just before dawn, when even the sentries were caught in limbo between being drunk and being hungover...

The boy-Pao, she told herself, his name is Pao Cowherd, though she'd called the rascal other things in the past-started to cry again. She forced another drink down his throat, then sealed flask and waterskin and went back for her war hammer. Twirling in her hand, the fist-sized face and icicle-shaped pick became a steel cyclone that caught the boy's attention, and Choplicker's, too.

"Will I... am I dying?" the boy asked.

Yes.

"No." Zosia released the spinning hammer and caught it in her other hand, the familiar sting of the handle against her palm making her grimace. "I'm a witch-many times as you've called me that, I'd think you'd believe it! And enzian's a medicine, isn't it, so even if I weren't possessed of dark powers you'd be on the mend already. You'll live, boy, you'll live, and then you'll go after those soldiers who did this to you."

"I'm scared," said Pao, shuddering.

"Only because you're green," said Zosia, reckoning she'd been even younger than he was when she'd first taken up arms. "I was green once, too, but you'll firm up. Don't think we'll go after them tomorrow! Need to train you in the sword, the hammer, the bow, everything you ever pestered me and my Leib about teaching you. Need to turn you into a warrior!"

She was sure this would have cheered him, but he just stared off into the blackness between the junipers, his back to the fire. The bandage had already soaked through. Glancing at Choplicker, she could tell it was taking every drop of what little self-control the beast possessed not to lap at the sodden wool.

"You're special, Pao Cowherd," Zosia told him. "You're not like anyone else out there in the whole world. You're destined for this, boy, destined to be the one to change things, to make the Star a better place. And you do that with a sword. A magic one. That's your destiny."

That got his attention. The boy turned his head toward her, winced, the desperate hope on his shadow-cluttered face sickening. "A magic sword? My destiny?"

"That's right," said Zosia, feeling Choplicker's eager eyes boring into her but refusing to look at the beast. "Why do you think you survived, eh? Why do you think Chop brought you to me? You're a very special child, Pao, and your father trusted me to look after you, to wait until you were old enough and then teach you sword craft. To help train you up so you can rid the world of devils, restore peace, that kind of shit."

"My dad," whispered Pao. "But you always said he was a drunk asshole and that's why Mama ran him out of town."

"Of course I said that," said Zosia, seeing the resemblance to his good-for-nothing father writ in the boy's thick brows and broad nose. He would've grown up to look just like the man. Still might, she thought, but scarcely believed it. "I was trying to teach you some humility with that yarn, wasn't I? For all the good it did. Couldn't well tell you he was really a great knight and that someday I'd take you on a quest to retrieve his special sword, could I? You gave me little enough peace as it was, can't imagine how awful you'd have been if we'd told you the truth."

"I couldn't..." Pao's eyes were half-lidded, the boy drifting into some dark depth that only time would reveal to be slumber or death. "Mama..."

The wind stirred up a plume of embers, the coals pulsing, and she tucked the hammer in its loop on her backpack, put more wood on. Pao shivered on the bare, rocky ground, eyes clenched as tight as his jaw. She only had the one bedroll, and if she gave it to him it would likely be soaked in blood by morning. Choplicker rose from where he'd lain beside the fire and went to her side, his ever-thirsty tongue going to the hand that hung limp at her side. She numbly let him clean the blood off her, staring at the boy, and when he was done she offered him her other hand.

"And here I thought you hung around because you liked me," she said sadly, meeting his canine eyes and trying to convince herself this was all his fault, instead of hers. "No fool like an old fool, I suppose. Lie beside him, unless you're itching to see just how much of your wickedness I'll abide in one day. Not much more, devil, not much at all, I promise you that."

The thing that pretended to be a dog went to Pao. Even in the flickering light of the campfire she could see that all the white had left his coat, the black had left his teeth, that he was as young as when she'd first laid eyes on the fiend. Didn't take much to keep him going, didn't take much at all, but he would never be sated, not as long as the sun and the moon danced their way around the world. Maybe not even after they stopped.

Zosia left the camp, left the junipers, stumbled up the night scape of shrubs and stones above the tree line, until her fire was a distant devil's eye beneath her, and above her burned a thousand more, silver instead of gold but just as remote, just as cold. She rubbed her hands, turned, and looked down the ridge, down the mountain, down the starlit valley, out toward the highway, out toward the world she had left behind... the world that had followed her trail even to this distant hiding place.

So Choplicker hadn't taken her offer after all. In all her years, she had never heard of a bound devil turning down its freedom, but seeing was believing. She didn't claim to be the expert on the monsters that some of her old confederates were, but still, it didn't get more basic than that: you bind a devil, it has to protect you, and if you offer to set it loose, it will grant any wish. Any fucking wish. The songs were full of cunning mortals who received whole empires in exchange for setting a devil loose, and all she had wanted was to leave an empire behind.

"Just keep us safe." She repeated her wish to the darkness, the words echoing out from her broken heart twenty years after she had given them voice. "I just want to grow old with Leib, for both of us to live safe, boring lives until age claims us. Your freedom for our safety."

It was all Choplicker's fault.

As if wanting a thing was enough to make it real-didn't this whole fucking tragedy prove that wishing for something wasn't enough? No, the truth of it was that this wasn't Choplicker's fault. It was hers. After all she had seen and done when she'd led the Cobalt Company, she'd still gone and trusted her future to a devil? Trusted her husband's life to a monster the likes of which not even the craziest sorcerer on the Star wanted to treat with? Zosia had captured the Carnelian Crown of Samoth, controlled the whole Crimson fucking Empire, schemed and plotted against the most devious minds on the Star to achieve her ends, and yet she'd made the most amateurish mistake imaginable-she'd stopped watching her back.

Even when those Imperials had shown up at her door that very morning, she hadn't believed it, had held out hope that Choplicker would magically solve her problems. If she had attacked Hjortt and his two weirdborn guards before the order was given to kill everyone in Kypck, maybe the whole village would still be alive. Instead, she was so convinced that a devil had granted her wish that she'd just sat on her fat old ass and let the worst thing imaginable transpire under her nose. Choplicker deserved some blame, oh yes, he fucking did... but she deserved even more.

Except-and it was an elephantine exception-neither she nor her devil had beheaded Leib. In twenty years of living here, neither of them had harmed a single citizen of Kypck. Both Zosia and Choplicker would pay for their crimes eventually, but there were others to share the blame, and until then guilt would only distract her from some very important business. Devildamn every one of those responsible for this... but of course the devils never minded, so it was dependent on her to do the damning.

She should have killed Colonel Hjortt instead of leaving him for later, she knew this, and she should have lain in wait at the house until that Sister Portoles had returned and then killed the weirdborn, too... It was sloppy, very sloppy, leaving things like this. They hadn't seemed to know her real name, though, and she had burned the house with all its evidence, so if she bided her time before going after the soldiers who had massacred the villagers there was reason enough to hope that this incident might not draw the full scrutiny of those who might identify her.

They would know her name before it was over, that they certainly would, but the longer it took them to put the pieces together, the less prepared they would be to meet her retaliation...

Except this couldn't just be an unhappy accident, could it? Every hamlet on the Star did the same as Kypck had done, trading supplies to whomever came knocking. Yet of all the remote towns in the Empire, hers was the one they selected to make an example of? They hadn't even sent her a worthy enemy, just some half-grown nobody of a noble, an errand boy charged with delivering her an unmistakable message... and Zosia had a fairly keen notion of who had sent it.

She hated that it almost felt good, to realize Queen Indsorith must be behind this. Choplicker wasn't the only monster Zosia had made a deal with, and the more she thought about it, the more obvious it was that the Crimson Queen had orchestrated this entire attack. Now that it had transpired, Zosia saw how inevitable it all was-she'd been an even bigger fool to trust her successor to the Crimson Throne than she had been to trust her devil.

Quick as the flash of illumination and flush of excitement came, it was gone again, leaving Zosia cold and melancholic. Going after the sovereign of the Crimson Empire had been hard work when she was a whole lot younger, when she had her Five Villians and the rest of the Cobalt Company behind her, but now? Now she had nothing. Less than.

It should have been the boy. How many had she met who claimed to share his lot, how many songs had she heard that began this way? The sole survivor of a tribe, driven by a need for revenge, all their strength ahead of them, young enough to learn, to prepare, to adapt. Young enough to succeed. It should be this boy, who didn't deserve anything worse than a mild ass-beating for his frequent trespasses.

It should be the boy. If she had been a witch, like that idiot Colonel Hjortt had thought, if she could have given her life for his...

And predictable as a water clock, there was Choplicker, padding between the small bushy willows that sprouted here, when all other trees fell back. A smile tilted at her mouth. All she had to do was say it, My life for his, and then it would be done, wouldn't it? An innocent child in exchange for her black heart would entice a deal out of any devil within hearing range, especially one who despised her as much as Choplicker must, to have refused her before. The jackal-dog's eyes glittered like the stars as he approached. My life for his.

Maybe such an oath would work this time around, and maybe it would be but more noise on a wind-lashed mountainside, but Zosia wasn't taking any chances. She couldn't afford to, not until she had her revenge. She swallowed the sentimentalizing and cuffed Choplicker on the back of the head as she returned to camp. He snapped at her but knew better than to land a bite, just as she'd known better than to strike him as hard as she'd wanted to. They would be working together for a little while longer yet.

Sleep never arrived as she lay on the rough ground, letting her body rest even if her mind declined the offer.

In the morning the boy was dead, her only bedroll frosted with his frozen sweat and blood. She carried him to the top of the ridge and laid him out for the animals. After erecting small cairns at his head and feet, she removed the severed head of her husband from its satchel and set it next to Pao Cowherd, so that their cold brows touched. Zosia offered no prayers, only curses, and then she turned away, into the clouds that enveloped the upper reaches of the Kutumbans.

It was time to begin her last, bloody work. The thing she hated most about herself was how warm the prospect made her. Choplicker would feed well before it was over. All the devils would.

CHAPTER.

8.