The Silver Scar Read online

  “Yeah.” A pause. “They’re gonna kill you today.”

  “I said I’d yield if it comes to it. It will. She’ll get someone good to fight me.” Seth, probably. He’d thumped Seth before in sparring. Not this day, he thought. The words sparked the unhappy memory of Father Troy.

  Reine shook her head, jingling the chains in her locks. “I still can’t reckon why you’re doing this. You’re one of them, not one of us.”

  “No. I’m neither,” he said.

  Their horses slogged through mud-strewn snow of the ramshackle war camp. Indiscriminate fires burned hot against the gloom. Recruits lingered around the flames, warming cold hands and clutching blankets over their shoulders. Most weren’t armed beyond knives more suited to eating than killing. No archwardens clad in black armor; no marshals with worn fatigues and well-fingered weapons. The parishioners looked like migrant poor rather than an army. The weight of their collective stare felt a physical thing, crawling under his armor and over his skin, taking in his Christian tattoos and his armor marked with Wiccan protection sigils. Even out of sight, the silver pentacle carved in his chest felt like ice.

  Many crossed themselves at his passing, and a few chins dipped in acknowledgment. He did his best to stare straight ahead, telling himself most of them likely had no idea what this was about or who he was. I’m doing this for you, he wanted to tell them. So you don’t have to. But he wasn’t sure if it was the truth.

  He wondered if Marius would display his body if he pushed the fight that far. The pentacle on his chest bared for all to see, his skin sliced, throat cut—for that was surely the blow that would kill him—maybe his head severed. It all felt unreal. He wasn’t frightened or angry or any of it. His mind kept straying to mechanical problems and solutions. The reach of his sword. His knee he favored. Various faults in different archwardens he’d sparred against. Roman’s training had paid off after all.

  Reine shook her head. “This is what we’re scared of?”

  “They outnumber the Indigos by at least five times, maybe ten,” Trinidad answered. “And she would have armed and trained them, given time.”

  “If she’d done, you wouldn’t have got the chance to stop her,” Reine said.

  Trinidad had been inside the prison a half-dozen times over the years and he’d always been glad to come back out. The prisoners were kept in inhumane conditions, shivering when the winter laced the air with ice, sweating when summer seared its way through Boulder Valley. They never were fed enough and the most dangerous were kept meek with shock collars, tiny cages, and regular beatings. Gang warfare ruled with a deadly hand. Priests and others had sometimes brought them little bits of food, whatever the parish could manage. Prisoners bowing their heads with Father Troy in prayer always seemed a mystery to Trinidad. Why pray when your life is a ruin?

  Trinidad had been fullsworn only a month when Troy first brought him to the prison as one of his guards. Trinidad had guessed at the nature of the prison bartering system, but that day he saw it firsthand: younger men and women pleasuring stronger, usually older prisoners in plain view. The priest had ignored it, walked by as if it weren’t happening. But Trinidad, shocked, had protested the abuse. He started a fight that took ten guards and a forty-eight-hour lockdown to contain.

  Later, back at the church in the candlelit chapel, the priest took Trinidad’s hand. “I know. It’s frustrating. But you can only do what you can do. It will make a difference. You’ll see.”

  Trinidad had jerked away. He was an archwarden, trained from childhood to defend Christendom with his skills and his body. All he’d been able to do was earn a few bruises and cause a riot. “When does that happen, Father? When do we actually make a difference?”

  The old priest had given him a gentle smile. “Someday, son. Not this day, but someday.”

  He should have known the memory would sneak back up, coming here. Trinidad blinked it away and looked around the little room where he’d been put to wait for the fight, an interrogation chamber replete with chains and bloodstains. He’d sent Reine and her fellow spirit kings off, not wanting their anxiety to nerve him up. They’d gone without protest to wherever the archwardens said they could watch from.

  He sank down at the table and let his forehead fall to his clasped hands. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed aloud, prayed more than a few fleeting hopes amid all that had happened in the past days.

  “I don’t know if I deserve to live, or even if You want me to. But I give myself to Your will.”

  Paltry, but all he had to offer. The only answer was his own heartbeat. He traced a cross over his breastplate and noticed the Horns Castile had painted there. He supposed he ought to be having a crisis of faith, but he believed in Christ even if He wasn’t making Himself known.

  He’d seen magic, he couldn’t deny roving was real. But what he felt in church and with Father Troy was just as real. Christianity had its own brand of magic. His archwarden vows bound him like a living thing, not something he could forsake. Even though all this, even when Indigos and others looked upon his marked head and hands with revulsion, he’d never felt a moment’s regret.

  Except for one thing, one person. He closed his eyes and let his forehead rest against his palms.

  He heard a sound, scrubbed at his eyes, and raised his head. Seth opened the door, face and hair white against the black of his armor and cloak. He was clean, his cloak freshly brushed. “They’re ready.”

  Could he really have forgotten just how enormous Seth was? “Are you fighting me?”

  “No.”

  It must be one of the bishop’s personal guards then. Not entirely unexpected. Trinidad pulled on his gauntlets, rested his naked sword on his armored shoulder in the traditional battle-ready gesture, and followed Seth into the hall. He’d passed some time warming up his muscles for the fight; his every motion cut the still air like a knife. Honed. Contained. Ready.

  A dull roar started in Trinidad’s ears, clogging off the sound of his heart, dragging his steps. Not until he had trekked halfway across the field did he realize the roar was hundreds of voices. Prisoners rattled cages, guards and marshals clanged weapons. The place stank of sewage, smoke, sweat, and blood.

  The Barren smells like nothing, he thought.

  He might be there soon, his scoured bones joining the rest of humanity’s. He wondered what gods had built the tombs. If their work was finished or if they made more. He wondered if his tomb would be engraved with a cross, a pentacle, or nothing. He wondered if his dying would make the slightest difference. If it would change a damn thing.

  Someday, son. Someday. But not this day.

  Except this was his last day.

  Marius stood near one of the rusted chain-link cages where prisoners took their air. Someone had cleared the snow and smoothed the ground inside for them, readying the dirt for spilled blood. There were fewer immediate witnesses than he expected, the bishop amid four cloaked archwardens. Reine d’Esprit and the other spirit kings hung to the shadows.

  Marius wore armor. Her scar glowered at him, bright as a star against the grim sky. She held two helmets in her arms and one of them was his. He recognized the scratches.

  He jerked his chin toward the spirit tribe leaders. “Will you give them safe passage back to their people no matter what happens?”

  Marius lifted her chin. “I agreed to the terms, did I not?”

  She held out his helmet and he took it, surprised he didn’t fumble it with his stiff fingers. Her gaze flickered downward to the horns painted over his breast and back up to his forehead, inscribed with Christ’s cross. He wanted to tell her he knew it was wrong, he knew he should choose. But how could he choose between the remnants of faiths culled from a broken life? Never mind. The time for sorting it all out was over. Trinidad swallowed hard and blinked at Marius’ boots, looked up as he heard footsteps in the slushy mud of the prison field.

  Roman, armored and cloaked. His strong legs carried him with ease and grace. He res
ted his bared sword blade against his armored shoulder, signaling he was ready to fight.

  Trinidad shook his head. “You can’t—”

  “I can. I am.”

  Trinidad looked from the bishop to Roman. “This is crazy. This isn’t his fight.”

  “Never has been, boy. Didn’t stop me from making a living off you fools before and it’s not going to stop me now.” Roman gestured toward the open gate of the cage. “After you.”

  She’d paid him off then. Gold for Trinidad’s life.

  Roman could win. He could beat Trinidad. He was the only one who could, for certain, kill him in an evenly matched fight. Roman had an ambidextrous grip; he liked to surprise his opponents with his left. Roman’s reach outdistanced his own. Cutting inside the bigger man’s guard was damned near impossible, and Roman had years more fighting experience.

  But Roman had trouble defending below the knee because of an old back injury, his left shoulder had a bullet wound that stiffened in the cold, and he left his right flank open on certain forms. Trinidad knew how to slip his point where Roman’s back-plate gaped from the old-style skirting over his hip during a backswing. He’d done it before, a few times, catching his armsmaster off-guard in practice.

  He knew all Roman’s strengths and flaws, just as Roman knew Trinidad’s. This fight would be less a contest of strength than a contest of perfection. Roman had never given an inch, even in practice. Trinidad’s first mistake would be answered with blood. Marius had chosen her champion well.

  Tension knit his spine into a knot. He squared his shoulders and settled his helmet over his head, dampening the jeers of the prisoners, and led Roman into the cage.

  FORTY-NINE

  The dark prison tunnel swallowed Castile, digesting his counterfeit bravado. He was in a passageway used to bring illicit goods inside. Every prisoner knew it. The guards let it go on as long they were paid off. About once a year someone used it to escape. They were inevitably captured and brought back as an example. Castile shuddered. Any hopes of escape had been destroyed by the sight of his first “example” hanging by his wrists, screaming as his guts spilled from a deep slash in his belly. Not long after, Windigo had spoken of what he knew of Castile’s past, and Castile had belonged to him thereafter.

  It wasn’t long before he realized maybe he’d chosen the worse of the two options.

  Windigo is dead, he reminded himself. Killed by Hawk. Also dead.

  The reek of his sweat drifted from under the armor constricting his chest. Sewage fumes permeated the air—prisoners were forever working on the ancient, faulty plumbing. Herne knew he’d done his time in the bowels of the prison. At least no one down there had rape or murder on their minds, or anything other than getting out as fast as possible.

  “Great fucking balls of Herne,” he muttered, annoyed with his nerves. “Never thought I’d be breaking into the damn prison.”

  He instantly regretted speaking and stopped to listen. A whistle of air and the press of stale cold dogged his steps. He’d brought some Alteration to buy his passage inside, but found the gate unmanned. He puzzled over that for a second before realizing the prisoners were on lockdown for Trinidad’s fight. No need for a gate guard.

  Good old Trin, causing a stir wherever you go.

  He drew the knife from his belt, felt the comforting weight of a coven rifle across his back. Before, he’d had only his wits and fists as weapons. Now it was different.

  They’d be down on the field in one of the run-pens. Castile trotted hard, trying to breathe evenly, circling the arena at ground level in a back corridor left quiet and dark from lockdown. At some point, he’d have to pass through cells to get out to the field. He’d have to face the metallic stink of the bars and the taunting of the prisoners inside.

  He’d forgotten how loud the prison was, even in lockdown, the never-ending voices of thousands of prisoners and their guards. But a sudden dull roar, like a bomb going off a few blocks away, stopped him short. It had begun. He ran harder. He had no illusions it would last long. This wasn’t a spectacle for show, it was a fight to the death, meant to stop a war. An assassin’s double-tap. He thought of how Trin looked when he lifted his sword, no hatred, no emotion, only death in his eyes, movements mechanical, strategic. At one point he’d hated and feared it. Now it was his only source for hope.

  He skidded to a stop. Most of the entrances to the field had been closed off and blocked by cells as prison population grew; there were four with actual doors that led to the field below, all lined with cells. They were privileged areas, cleaner, brighter, open to the daylight but more protected from the weather. Deep inside there were no windows, and out on the stands the prisoners were at the mercy of the heat and cold in makeshift cages. He’d spent his first months deep inside, living with the rats down there, until Windigo …

  He stared down the passageway, his passageway, to his and Windigo’s cell. He stayed in the shadows and held his breath. No guards, as usual. The guards used to leave Windigo pretty much alone and seemed to have kept the habit for this block.

  Still, felons stirred in their cages, ears pricked. They knew he was there, felt the foreign presence like he felt their own familiarity. They would jeer at him, shiv him if he got close. Nothing lifers hated worse than the guy who got out.

  He didn’t want to go down that hall. He didn’t want to see the cell he’d shared with Windigo, who had paid off guards to get Castile moved. He thought of those rough fingers wound in his hair, pinning him to a demanding body …

  He blinked at the patch of dreary daylight at the other end of the stained concrete. Coughs rattled, so rampant in winter. Chapped hands gripped the bars. Probably trying to get a glimpse of what was going on. They wouldn’t have been told, but the tide of rumors would have swept the truth of it through the prison population. They knew about the fight.

  Without his realizing it, his feet were carrying him down that hall, toward the gray light. Toward Trinidad. His heart pattered out a rhythm. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.

  A low whistle. “If it isn’t Windigo’s bitch, come back from the living.”

  “Fuck are you here, Cas?”

  Castile kept his stare straight ahead.

  “Cassie.”

  Castile startled and spun, yanking his knife from its sheath. No one called him that. Not Trin. Not anyone. Only one person, and he was—

  “Dead,” he whispered. Aspen had said Windigo was dead.

  The inmates fell quiet. This was a better show than a couple of fool archwardens trying to die on each other’s swords.

  Same crooked, fist-flattened nose between small eyes. One meaty hand emerged to grip one of the bars of his cage. Castile couldn’t help staring at that hand.

  “Ain’t dead, Cassie. I ain’t dead, baby. And here you come to get me, like you say you would before you got out.”

  Castile opened his mouth and closed it.

  Someone hissed low, behind him, and Castile moved forward quick, instinctive. Get close to the bars and someone could kill him. But not too far forward. Not within Windigo’s reach.

  Windigo smiled, a slash of red tongue against fleshy lips. “Ain’t you nervy? No one’s gonna jump you with me here, Cassie.”

  Windigo had broken the neck of the last guy who’d tried to kill Castile, four months after he’d taken Castile into his bed. After Windigo had choked the attacker to the death, Castile had felt a vicious gladness that he was dead.

  “What is it?” a sleepy voice muttered from the shadows of the cell. Rustling. Someone shifting on the hard lump of mattress Windigo called a bed. Better than a lot of inmates had.

  Windigo turned his pocked face away from Castile. “Don’t concern you, bitch.”

  “You got another one—” Castile bit down on the words, hating the way he sounded.

  Early days he used to whine when Windigo fucked anybody else. It was all fear back then, terror that he’d been discarded. Windigo used to slap him around for the whining. Not hard
. He liked Castile pretty on the outside.

  Windigo pressed his face between the bars. Deep lines creased the skin around his small eyes. A new red scar slashed his pocked cheek.

  “Got to keep warm at night, Cassie. Ain’t like you, though. I missed you, baby. You look good, baby. Beautifuler than ever.”

  A knife twisted in Castile’s belly. When he crooned like that, he used to hold Castile, pet him until he fell asleep. It was almost nice. But Castile never knew what he was waking up to.

  Windigo smiled, baring jagged teeth. “You brought us a weapon, huh? We gonna do a little damage on our way out?”

  Another collective shout roiled from the field below.

  “I’m not here for you.” And then, because he wasn’t sure he’d said it loud enough, or really said it at all: “I’m not here for you.”

  Windigo’s face hardened. The speed at which Windigo could move from gentle to cruel was the source of every nightmare Castile ever had.

  “What did you say to me, bitch?”

  Castile stepped back, signed the horns at Windigo. Hunter, help me. “You heard me. You can fucking rot.”

  A hiss down the hall, dull laughter turned into a cough.

  Windigo stared at him with eyes flat and deadly as a snake’s. “You better hope I never fucking get out of here. You’ll pay in blood. I’ll flay your fucking skin off your bones and stuff your cock down your throat. You hear me? You’re gonna—”

  Click. Castile slid his rifle under his arm and chambered a bullet. His hands were shaking, but he was able to meet that hateful stare with level eyes. “You’re the one in the cage, asshole, and I’m the one with the rifle. So just keep talking shit to me.”

  Silence. Windigo stared at him, speechless for once.

  Castile blinked, steadied the gun, aimed it at Windigo’s chest.

  The sound outside burst to a deafening level, like snowmelt crashing through a canyon. He turned his head. Trinidad. What was it Trin had told him? You can only do what you can do. Yeah, well, he could do better than this. Trin was out there, maybe dying, and Castile was in here wrangling with the past. He had better people to put bullets into than Windigo.