CHAPTER

1

In the end it took three barbers, seven varieties of bugs, and twelve hours of surgery to save Zosia’s life. All that, and the assistance of the beefiest militia thug in that quarter of the castle to remove one of the arrowheads from where it was lodged in the Stricken Queen’s clavicle. The oak shaft had splintered off before either steel or bone would yield, requiring the brawny volunteer to wrench it free with pliers after none of the surgeons were able to wiggle it loose. That arrowhead, along with the rest, were reverently collected so that they could be later incorporated into the memorial statue raised to all of Zosia’s countless victims; the five crossbowers she had murdered with her hammer before succumbing to her wounds in the Upper Chainhouse were the final martyrs of the revolution.

Or so the story went. Boris suspected the actual arrowheads were already on the black market, priceless relics to the right collector, or potent components to would-be witches or alchemists. Everything else she’d touched—or that had touched her—was probably long gone, too, he assumed, though even with his connections he hadn’t been admitted to the royal residences of Castle Diadem, where she had left all of her things while attending that fatal first council meeting.

Ah, but he did know where her hammer was—that was going to be used during the public execution, once both queens were recovered enough to be skinned alive.

“Flayed with a hammer?” Zosia asked him and the three heavily armed guards who were her constant companions in the cell where she lay loosely shackled to a cot. “Cruel and unusual, and also a decent metaphor for your revolution’s back-asswardness.”

“Ah, no, the idea’s they break your feet with Sister Portolés’s maul, but you’re chained upright so you can’t help but have your weight on ’em, and then the skinning starts,” Boris clarified, leaning back on the stool he’d brought along this time. “Indsorith’s got some treasured sword they’ll use for the flaying, make sure you’re both taken apart with your own weapons.”

“Subtle,” said Zosia, not looking up from the lump of briar she was carving, the vise clamped to her bed frame making her whole cot shake, her lap scattered with tools and wood shavings. She’d been a little surprised they’d granted her last request, seeing as it involved pointy things, but Boris smirked at her reaction when he’d brought the pipe-making kit—as if the revolution had anything to fear from her. With the guards always watching her and the carefully supervised packing up of the tools and vise at the end of the day, it would have taken far more effort than it was worth to properly shank one of the bastards. And knowing how hard they were managing the story of Cold Cobalt’s final hours they probably wanted her to try to kill herself, just so she could fail and be proven a coward. “Think once I’m done with this you can bring me a navy twist? Some folk swear by straight burly or red vergin leaf to break in a briar, but I always like my cake with a sip of rhum … or is letting me carve a pipe but denying me tubq part of the torture?”

“I don’t expect you’ll live long enough to see that thing through,” said Boris. “Briar’s the toughest wood there is, aye? Now that you’re strong enough to properly turn it I expect you’re fit enough to pay for your crimes.”

“Oh,” said Zosia, setting her rasp down as her hands began to tremble. So that explained it.

“Don’t let me stop you,” he said, popping another piece of the roast chicken he’d brought her into his sore-marked mouth. He’d already eaten most of the small bird, as he usually did before leaving her with a plate of greasy bones. “I’m but the eyes of my betters, not brains nor mouth—just ’cause I think you’re fit for the flensing hardly means the council will agree. They might want you able to dance before they call you out on the floor.”

“No brains, but plenty of mouth in my experience,” said Zosia, the words leaving her lips as easily as the shape of the briar revealed itself in her hands, despite how foggy headed she felt.

“You ever experienced my mouth you’d show me a bit more respect,” said Boris, licking a dimpled piece of skin off his fingers as he turned to the guards crowding the cell. Zosia’s accommodations were so dank and small she suspected it might be the same dungeon she’d rescued Indsorith from. “You know this old she-goat wanted to hit up a brothel tent just afore we came over? Tells you what kind of a person she is, the thought of blood and fire and the deviltry of the First Dark getting her randy as a spring ram.”

The guards were too well disciplined to ever participate in the little man’s nonsense, but as usual they looked on with a mix of amusement and embarrassment at his treatment of the prisoner who had once been the very symbol of their uprising. Zosia cocked her head at him, considering. There wasn’t enough give in her shackle to actually reach Boris, but if she flicked a file at his face she might just get lucky and take out an eye.

“Yeah, I’m such an asshole, offering to buy you a lustworker before asking you to stick out your neck,” she said, deciding to wait until she was definitely losing her tool privileges before going after him. “No wonder you don’t like me, Heretic, all I ever did was treat you ill.”

“Told you not to call me that,” he said, slurping on the end of a drumstick.

“Right, only your war nun girlfriend got to use that pet name, I forgot,” she said, which got the fucking stoat to drop the bone back on the plate and stand to leave.

“Always a pleasure, Yer Majesty,” said Boris, offering a ridiculous bow as he rolled the chicken carcass off the plate and onto her sawdusty bedding. “Enjoy your dinner, and we’ll see if tomorrow brings breakfast or a pair of broken heels.”

“I’m on pins and needles,” she told him, which was true enough—besides having painful, itchy holes sewn up in her chest and shoulder and hip and bicep, the rest of her was near-constantly tingling.

“Ah, and almost forgot,” he said as the guard posted outside unlocked the barred door of the cell. “Indsorith prayed me deliver a message to you.”

“Mmm?” Zosia tried to remain unreadable but the hand that had reached for the ruins of the bird was shaking worse than ever. On his first visit she’d made the mistake of asking what had happened to Indsorith and Choplicker, but when it became obvious he was only going to fuck with her she’d stopped giving him the satisfaction.

“Aye, and it sounded important, so maybe if you’re nicer to your only friend the next time I call I’ll remember what it was.” Stepping out into the corridor, he blew her a kiss, and then was gone.

And that’s why you don’t help strangers. Zosia cleaned what meat and marrow he’d left her from the mess on her sheets, trying to remember just how long she’d been down here. Tried to remember what she had ever seen in Boris to make her think she could trust him, and why she had thought it was important to stick around to help fix things here in Diadem, instead of just cutting out with Indsorith as soon as they opened up the castle. Tried to remember what Kang-ho’s stupid daughter was named, General Tip-of-the-tongue still not showing up with the Cobalt Company to liberate Diadem. Zosia tried to remember a hundred other little things, and gave up on the lot, focusing on scavenging enough flesh from a scrawny chicken carcass to keep herself going until her enemies came to kill their enfeebled old nemesis. She couldn’t stop them from trying, and in the meantime she had a briar beauty to finish. She would be devildamned if her last smoke was out of a corncob fucking pipe.