“The tattoos. You don’t recognize them?”
He squinted at her inked forearms. “Vagrant tattoos. She’s a rebel mage?”
“Not just any, you fool,” Sindra whispered. “You haven’t heard the tales? The warnings? That’s no outlaw.”
She pointed a baleful finger at the woman.
“That’s Sal the Cacophony.”
And a cold deeper than winter wrenched his spine.
He’d heard. Everybody who ever hoped to help people in the Scar had heard of Sal the Cacophony. The woman who walked across the Scar and left misery and ruin in her wake. The woman who had killed more people, made more widows, and ended more townships than the fiercest beast or the cruelest outlaw. The woman who painted the Scar with the remains of her enemies—Vagrant, Imperial, Revolutionary…
Sal the Cacophony, it was said, had tried to kill one of everything that walked, crawled, or flew across this dark earth.
And maybe that was true. Maybe all of it was. Maybe she had done even worse things than what the stories said.
But at that moment in that ash-choked field, Meret did not think about what may be. He thought about the only two things he knew to be true.
First, he should definitely turn around, start walking, and keep going until he forgot Littlebarrow’s name.
Second, he was not going to do that.
“Meret.”
Sindra, a woman who had once screamed the whole town awake when she thought someone had touched her sword, sounded strange, whispering his name as he started walking toward the white-haired woman. She didn’t go after him, making little more than a fumbling reach for his shoulder as he headed deeper into the ash.
Sindra, who had once slain a Bittercoil Serpent by leaping into its mouth and cutting her way out, was scared to draw the notice of this woman.
Truth be told, maybe he was, too. Or maybe he thought that the closer he was to the damage, the more he could keep it from reaching Littlebarrow. Or maybe some dark part of him, the morbidly curious part that had driven him to come to this war-torn land, wanted to look into the eyes of a killer instead of a corpse.
He didn’t deal with what may be. He dealt with what he knew to be true.
Someone was injured. And he could help.
“Madam?”
His voice was so timid he barely heard himself over the mutter of nearby fires and the groan of fragmenting metal as the gunship’s remains continued to crumble. Sal the Cacophony, breathing raggedly and staring out into the distance, did not seem to notice. He came closer, spoke a little louder.
“Are you hurt?”
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t even seem to notice the fact that her immediate vicinity was almost entirely on fire. Trauma, perhaps; he’d seen it before.
“We saw the ship come down…” He glanced toward the ruin of the machine, wearily sighing plumes of flame. “I mean, everyone did.” He looked back to Sal. “What happened—”
Or, more specifically, he looked into a gun.
A polished piece of brass, its barrel forged to perfectly resemble a grinning dragon’s leer, stared at him through metal eyes. Steam peeled off the cylinder, almost as if the thing were alive and breathing. A polished hilt of black wood clung to her hand—or she to it—as she leveled the gun at his face, finger on the trigger, and pulled the hammer back with a click that carried through the sounds of hell.
Including the sound of his own heart dropping into his belly.
Meret stared into the weapon’s smile, into that black hole between its jaws. For every story about the woman, there was another one about her weapon. The Cacophony could set fires that never went out. The Cacophony warped metal and broke stone. The Cacophony sang a song so fierce it killed anyone who listened to it.
He hadn’t heard as many stories about the gun. But even if he hadn’t heard a single one, he would have believed them.
Weapons ought not to look at people.
Not like that.
“Imperial?”
A ragged voice caught his ear. He looked up the barrel to see her looking down it. Her blue eyes, no longer so distant, were fixed on him. A long scar carved its way down the right side of her face, and a cold stare punched through him just as cleanly as the gun’s brass eyes had.
“W-what?” he asked.
“You Imperial?” Sal the Cacophony asked again, with the slightest variation in tone that suggested the next time she asked, it would be to a corpse.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Revolutionary?”
“No. I’m just…” He, without taking his eyes off the gun, gestured in the direction of Littlebarrow. “I’m from the village over there. Unaffiliated. Neutral.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Slowly, her eyes slid to the gun with an expectant look, like she expected it to weigh in on whether he was lying or not.
Could it do that? Was there a story about that somewhere? He thought he had heard something like that once.
“You know this gun?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You know what it can do?”
He nodded.
“Am I going to need to use it?”
He shook his head.
She either believed him or realized that she could probably wring his neck just as easily as shoot him. The gun lowered and, with a hissing sound, slid into a sheath at her side.
Without the threat of imminent death by firearm, he had a chance to take stock of her. Her breathing was steadier and she seemed unbothered by the wounds decorating her. Was that part of her legend? he wondered. Did Sal the Cacophony simply not feel pain?
“You a healer?”
Apparently not.
He noticed her eyes on his satchel. “Y-yeah,” he said, opening it. “I’ve got salves and… and stuff.” He swallowed hard, looked over her wounds. “What sort of pain are you feeling and when—”
“Not me.”
He looked up. She stepped away, pointed down to the earth.
“Her.”
There, nestled amid the wreckage, was a woman.
Pale, slender, dressed in clothes that weren’t Revolutionary, weren’t Imperial, weren’t anything special. Her black hair hung limp around a face peppered with cuts and scratches. Her skirts were torn and her shirt was stained with blood and soot. A pair of shattered spectacles rested on her chest.
She didn’t look like a Vagrant. Or anything that the stories said Sal the Cacophony was interested in. She was just a woman. A plain, ordinary woman you might find in a plain, ordinary place like Littlebarrow.
Why, Meret wondered, would a monster like Sal the Cacophony be around her?
“Help her.”
A good question. One he’d answer someday, if he had the time. But that would be another day, another place, another person. Right now, he was here, the only one who could help.
He knelt down beside the pale girl. He performed all the tests he had been taught: moved her as gently as he dared, listened to her breathing, studied her many cuts. He did not look back up to Sal the Cacophony, did not dare give her hope. Whatever monster she was, right now she was like any of the other fretting people who doted over their injured. She did not need hope. She needed information.
He could give it to her.
“Her breathing’s difficult,” he muttered. “Probably not surprising, given the fall. But it’s dry. No internal bleeding that I can tell.” He looked down at her leg and winced. “Thighbone is broken. Her left arm, too. And I’d be shocked if that was all.” He dusted the considerable amount of ash that had gathered on his clothes as he rose. “And that’s without however many cuts and wounds she’s got.”