“Today, though, I’m just a simple courier with a simple message,” he said. “I know you. So, too, does my employer. But for ease of communication…”
He stepped closer. The moonlight showed his face more plainly, revealing eyes too young for the man who wore them.
“Feel free to call me Jero.”
In my line of work, if you can call it that, a face you can trust looks different than you might think. Someone who cowers when you approach them, who flinches when you raise a hand, who snarls when you speak—those, you can trust. They don’t know how to hide their problems behind grins and pretty voices.
And Jero’s voice was quite pretty.
Hence why I didn’t take his hand when he offered it to me.
“Of course,” he said, lowering it and offering a helpless shrug. “You wouldn’t be the woman the stories spoke of if you were quick to trust, would you?”
“I suppose I wouldn’t,” I replied. “Of course, there are no stories that say it’s a good idea for strange men to show up in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere, either.” I stared down my nose at him—as much as I could, anyway, since he was roughly my height. “How’d you find me?”
He blinked, then looked around at the charred remains of the living room, replete with the charred remains of Cassa’s boys, then back at me.
“Seriously?” he asked. “You left six villages in various states of mildly to completely fucked in your wake. I just followed that all the way here. Before that, I followed rumors of a name, a Revolutionary deserter by the name of Cavric Proud.”
My eyes narrowed. The heat of the Cacophony called my hand to his hilt.
“Cavric,” I spoke sharply, “is a name you and I would do well to keep out of our mouths. He left the Revolution for something better, and if you’ve done anything to him…”
I didn’t need to finish that threat. The collapse of Jero’s face told me as much. And I know we just met, but I hope you won’t think me a shit to admit that it gave me a cold, bitter smile to see that I could still shake someone to their core with a few words.
“I assure you, the man isn’t even aware of my existence,” Jero replied. “He wasn’t who I was instructed to find. You were. Granted, I lost your trail briefly in Lastlight.”
His grimace deepened. My blood went cold.
“But a lot of things were lost in that city, weren’t they?”
Yeah. A lot of things were lost. A lot of wine bottles from vintners who’d come to that city to sell their wares and never came back out, a lot of stuffed animals and toy soldiers left broken or half charred in the fires, a lot of shoes that couldn’t run fast enough, rings pried from corpses’ cold fingers, blades slick with blood, streets seared black, houses torn apart by cannons, by magic, by fighting, by screaming, by—
I felt the Cacophony’s heat at my side and realized the cold that had begun in my blood had cloaked my body. It did that, sometimes, when I thought about Lastlight, whenever I heard stories about it. There were plenty, after all, about that thriving trade city, its beneficent baron and its happy people.
And none were more famous than the one of how Sal the Cacophony had walked through its gates and turned it to ash in the span of a day.
I focused on that heat at my hip, that burning pain that reached out and held my hand with searing fingers. He did that, sometimes, when he felt me going cold, when he knew I was slipping into some dark place inside my head.
Sometimes, when I couldn’t find company or drink, he was all that reached out to me. And sometimes, when the dark grew dark and cold enough, I felt like reaching back.
Of course, I didn’t. That would be insane.
He was a gun. It was weird enough that he had a sex.
“He doesn’t blame you.”
I scarce recognized the man when I looked back up at him. His smile was gone, his face hung lower, and he looked so very tired.
“If it’s any consolation,” Jero said.
“Who?”
“Two Lonely Old Men,” he replied. “Not that he was thrilled about your part in his city’s destruction, but he knows that one woman alone can’t destroy an entire freehold.” That grin crept back across his face. “No matter how legendary she might be.”
“Well, you’ve put me in a bit of an imposition, sir,” I replied. “As you’ve come all this way to tell me that, I feel as though I should give at least one fuck. But as you can see”—I gestured to the vast darkness around me—“I’ve got nothing but corpses.”
I pulled my scarf a little closer around my face, grunted toward him.
“Kindly offer my apologies and regards to Two Lonely Old Men, would you?” I turned and started walking. “If he cares for neither, kindly offer him the nicest spot on my ass to kiss.”
That might have seemed rude and perhaps a touch hasty. After all, it isn’t often I get approached by strange men in dark places who aren’t trying to kill me. I’d forgive you for thinking I was being a little too quick to walk away from him. And I promise, I’d indulge you in that argument once I finished finding that one name on my list.
At that moment, though, my thoughts were on other things. Cassa had been my best lead. She had known where Darrish the Flint was. And she had taken that knowledge to the black table with her. Now I was left with no leads, no hints, nothing but a—
“She didn’t tell you where Darrish was, did she?”
I paused. I turned around. Jero was idly cleaning his nails with a broad-bladed knife.
“What?” I asked.
“Hmm?” He glanced up, almost disinterested. “Oh, sorry, did you have something else to offer my employer? A different part of your ass, maybe?”
“What the fuck did you just say about Darrish?”
“I couldn’t begin to fathom what I might say about a Vagrant like Darrish the Flint.” He tapped his cheek with the tip of his blade. “I suppose I know as much as anyone. A promising Wardmage, defected from the Imperium to go Vagrant, currently hunted by a woman with a giant fucking gun, last seen in the company of Cassa the Sorrow, who died without telling you where she was.” He blinked. “That sound about right?”
“Your blade is far too small to be this coy, my friend,” I growled. “If you know something about her—”
“I can say, in all honesty, that I don’t.” He flipped the blade deftly in one hand, returning it to a hidden sheath in his coat. “No more than what I just told you, anyway.” He winced, catching himself. “Well, that and one more thing.”
That grin returned to his face, sharper and keener and so bright it almost lit up the living room.
“Two Lonely Old Men knows where she is,” he said. “He can tell you exactly where, in fact. He can pinpoint her precise location, down to the last step she took. He’ll give that information to you.”
Jero’s hand slid into his coat. When he drew it out again, he held a sheaf of papers delicately between his fingers, secured with an elegant silk string.
“And more.”
He approached, tentative, and held them out to me. I glanced from his hand to his eyes. He shot me an imploring look and I hesitantly took the papers from his grasp. By the dimmest light, I could make out the details of what was scrawled upon them in impeccably written ink. Some elaborate maps, some lengthy logs detailing movements and locations, a few profiles. I couldn’t make sense of any of it until I saw a name printed in bold letters at the top of a page.