CHAPTER

7

To one who measures her life in bowls of briar, a pipe is the ideal timepiece. Not because the span of time it takes to smoke one is by any means a cold constant; quite the contrary, what makes the pipe so perfect is that it grants its owner a warmer, freer hour than they have ever known. Theirs is not the miserly unit of the hourglass, every crumb of a moment doled out with a merchant’s intractable exactitude. The puffer’s hour is as generous as it is forgiving, and blissfully disdainful of the mortal compulsion to treat time as a greased pig at a country faire, forever trying to seize it fast and hold it still. If time is a great invisible river that runs the course of our lives, then the pipe is a briar raft on which we bob merrily downstream, while those who put their stock in clocks wade along trying to slow the flow by catching it in their mechanical nets … but when has a net ever captured a river?

The River Enisum boasted the most colorful freshwater reefs in the Empire, and the great Tinsky built his shop upon its banks so that he might better study the coral and replicate its beguiling patterns upon his pipes. Or so the legend went, but after Zosia overcame the last of the many challenges that had weeded out every other would-be apprentice who had ever supplicated themselves at his doorstep the master artisan had told her the truth: he’d chosen this particular bend of the river because of how good the fishing was. Tinsky loved to fish. And when he’d revealed the secret technique of his glorious coral rustication it had turned out to be just as unexpectedly humble: bang four nails through a sawn-off broom handle, grind them short and sharp, and then drag the tool all over the pipe until you like the result. Easy as that … except as with all things that sound easy to an amateur, from tying a fly to rusticating a pipe, the more time you put in the more you realize you have yet to learn.

Of course, for all its craggy beauty the coral technique was still a cover-up, something to enliven a pipe lacking in grain or pitted with sandspots. That was the riddle of briar, right there, that the most promising blocks could prove drab at heart and in need of adornment, and some that seemed dull hid incredible grain waiting to be set free. That’s how this pipe had gone, the rich bird’s-eye and cross grain demanding a smooth finish, deep red stain, and gold wash to really make it pop. Now it was done. She tried to show her mentor but Tinsky was out on the river, casting his line for all infinity …

They must be drugging her, Zosia decided as she turned the finished pipe this way and that in her sore hands. She was loopy as a cat’s cradle, unable to really focus on anything for long … or maybe just focusing on the same thing over and over again, repeatedly forgetting she’d been thinking about it in the first place. Must be something in her water, since her guards had learned from Boris’s bad example and taken to sharing most of her wine and food. Something in her water or something in the air down here, ancient miasmas leaching up from the vaults of the dead volcano, still carrying poison even after all the centuries since those fires were quenched with deviltry.

Diadem’s influence had even wormed its way into the pipe, a unique shape emerging from the briar that had the swooping contours of a volcano and the flared rim of a cauldron. It was one hell of a job, but her deft hands had retained their memories better than her head, and their focus as well. Devils only knew where Boris had scared up this ornate saddle bit stem, a curve of black amber with a cobalt crystal set in the top of the saddle and a tiny silver star inlaid in its underside. It was as if it had been made just for her. All the elements came together perfectly, and while she couldn’t remember how long it had taken her to carve the pipe she knew Boris had promised to bring some nice ruby vergins to inaugurate it with when last he’d visited. Zosia loved her navy flakes, but Tinsky or Cornell Reeves or Rusty Owlet or some other eminent briar philosopher insisted red vergin was the best tubq for breaking in a bowl, the sweetness in the leaf coming through in the char, and the richness of its cake preventing the wood from developing a weak spot and burning through.

Choplicker was with her often now, the specter of her devil lying dead and cold at the foot of her bed, staring at her with wide black eyes, and no matter how many times she told the guards getting rid of him wouldn’t work they still carried him off, and no matter how many times they carried him off he’d be back there again in the wee hours of the night or day, it was hard to tell which with the purple gas lamps always burning in the cavern of her cell. When she stirred in her sleep and felt him against her, under the blankets, she would smile to herself, keeping his secret until one of the screws noticed, and then she wasn’t allowed to have blankets anymore. But it kept happening anyway, or maybe it just happened the once and she’d dreamed the other times. She wished she could dream of Leib, instead, but he was all the way down in Geminides plying his merry trade, and she wouldn’t let him risk himself by coming here to serve as royal consort … not when everyone was trying to poison the queen.

Indsorith had had the same problem, apparently, learning in the worst way that lovers have a way of either meeting horrible accidents or revealing themselves to be undercover assassins. Usually during intimate moments. They’d had a dark laugh at that, the two queens, when Zosia said she didn’t know which of those two scenarios was worse, but they hadn’t laughed long, because they both knew, yes they did. As a result Indsorith hadn’t taken a lover in years; she’d made the tipsy admission after Zosia complained of how long it had been since she’d done more than polish her own helm, and that just went to show there’s always someone harder up than you.

Sometimes that someone is awfully fucking fit, and there’s real tension there, but you don’t know if it’s the sexual kind or if it’s because you murdered their whole family and made them the monster they see themselves as. And so even though you’re fucking aching to see if those plump lips taste as good as they look you just refill her cup instead of lapping at it. And really, now that you’ve actually made such a great new confederate why would you want to behave like Maroto and queer everything by trying to make it more than friends?

Then again, after helping Indsorith wash herself and being unable to keep certain thoughts at bay Zosia had come to the conclusion that she’d been far too hard on Maroto. Well, maybe not far too hard, all things considered, but a little too hard, definitely a little too hard. Sure, he’d been relentless with his flirtations, but then he’d flirted with everyone back then, even Hoartrap. And being honest with herself now, she’d been game to flirt back on more than one occasion, when she was of a certain mood, even though she’d suspected how strongly he felt about her. They were otherwise such great friends it had seemed fun enough at times, and totally harmless—charitable, even—but now she realized it must have been anything but, giving him encouragement when she should have just sat his ass down and explained once and for all that she wasn’t playing hard to get, she simply wasn’t interested. At the time she thought it would hurt him too badly, that it would permanently damage their friendship to have such a difficult conversation, that Maroto could never just be pals with someone he fancied … but now that she recognized how tight his and Purna’s friendship was, Zosia had to admit that she might not have been giving him enough credit. Just went to show you’re never too old to learn something you should’ve known all along—always give your friends the truth, no matter how heavy it seems, and trust them to decide how to carry it.

Like that time when Maroto drunkenly told Zosia she should’ve stuck to making pipes instead of making war—she might not have been as good at it, but briar brought a lot more happiness into the world than battleaxes. A hard truth she had easily laughed off, but now she found herself drifting through fantasies of that other, quieter life … the one she didn’t deserve. She floundered out of the current of her daydream before it could carry her away, clinging to the important thing: Maroto might be a goon at times but he was without a doubt the most loyal person she’d ever met, and smarter than he sometimes let on. The next time they met she’d give the old lech a great big wet kiss on the cheek, tell him she was sorry for being a hardass, and then they could get down to the long-delayed business of being best fucking friends. And since you only live once in this devil-blessed world she’d follow his example, too, tempered with a bit of her own wisdom—the next time they got a little time alone together she’d just ask Indsorith point-blank if she fancied something more than a back rub. Zosia was still pondering the age-old question of whether to fully rub out her flakes or just fold and stuff them for the pipe’s all-important maiden voyage when her jailer arrived.

“And how is Yer Majesty this evening?” asked Boris. Zosia’s irritation at his insistence upon calling her that despite how many times she’d told him off brought things into sharper focus. He was wearing the orange robes of the People’s Pack, as Diadem’s new council had dubbed themselves … to a serious fucking snort from Zosia. She would show them a wolf if they let her out of this evil bed, where every day her strength seemed to flag instead of swell. “My, that looks nice—shall we swap for a moment?”

He’d never before offered her first pass from the dinners they shared, and she eagerly exchanged her new pipe for the silver tureen piled high with fried bean curd, eels, and wild rice. She was always so hungry and there was never enough to go around, the fragrant steam making happy tears run down her face. As she emptied his bowl he filled hers, packing the pipe from a roll-up kidskin pouch, and she corrected his sloppy method through a mouthful of mush, simulating the proper technique by biting the head off an eel and then packing some rice into its neck. It didn’t work out so well as she’d expected but he seemed to get the idea, doing a better job when he packed his own pipe, a cheap little clay cutty. That was Boris all over—finally made the big time and he still had to make a show of how he hadn’t really left the streets.

“Our queen seems occupied with her feast, perhaps one of you could do the honors?” he said to the trio of guards who shared her cell; not a one of the thugs had ever spoken a word to her except a command, and they were all young enough and bland enough that she could scarcely tell one from the others. The real question was where they slept, when hers was the only cot in the cell and … and … Boris handed her pipe to one of those curs! Her new fucking pipe!

“I’m done,” she said, wiping her mouth on the back of her increasingly spotted hand, the manacle at her wrist hanging as loose as one of those bangles Singh had given her to commemorate their first victory in the Raniputri Dominions. “Give it over, it needs to be broken in right.”

“You’re a master pipemaker, isn’t that right, Yer Majesty?” said Boris, raising his eyebrows at the guards as he applied his coalstick to his cheap tavern pipe.

“I’m a fucking legend,” she said, not with pride but as a statement of fact, glaring at the kid holding her new pipe. “That’s not for you. That’s for me. First pipe I ever made just for me. So don’t even fucking think about—”

“This tubq is the very last of the Crimson Queen’s private reserve,” said Boris, talking through the cloud of peppery smoke he blew into Zosia’s face and passing over the coalstick and the tamp to the kid with her caldera, as she’d come to think of the pipe. “It’s twice as old as you are, lad, and worth more than all of our lives put together, so enjoy in good health—hers!”

“Don’t!” Zosia wasn’t superstitious about much, but the first light of a new pipe, well, that was a ritual as sacrosanct as any practiced by the Thirty-Six Chambers of Ugrakar or the Burnished Chain … and this rough-necked ape just fucked it all up, the flame kissing the wide rim but somehow missing the tubq entirely. When he did finally get it going she could tell at a glance he was going to smoke it too hot, his mouth breaking into a dopey grin as he tasted what must be a finer blend than most mortals ever knew. Zosia wished they’d skinned her alive instead. “Fuck, come on? Really?”

“Mmmm,” said Boris, putting his feet up on the side of her bed as he savored his smoke. For such a fancy new fop he still hadn’t bought new hobnails, his primordial brown boots worn through in the toes. “I almost wish I hadn’t lit this. Regular leaf’s ruined for me now.”

The first guard groaned his assessment as he exhaled through his nose. It was somewhere between a sexual exclamation and a cow lowing. He passed the pipe to his fellow, and then they all took turns getting their sloppy mouths and sharp teeth all over that pristine stem. Even the guard on the other side of the door took a hit through the bars; the gal wasn’t normally a puffer, she said, but once in a lifetime, what? All the while Boris talked up the exquisite, life-altering experience he was having right in front of Zosia, holding court on all the notes and flavors he kept picking up, the guards loosening up enough to join in for a change.

“Is it … chocolate?”

“Not chocolate. No. Fuck no. Cocoa. With cream. No sugar, though.”

“Carob and … cherries.”

“Carob is shit. Cherry is close. Cocoa is off. Semisweet chocolate. Blackcurrant.”

“Leather.”

“Old leather.”

“An old leather strop what’s just had the razor warm it.”

“An old leather strop what’s just had the razor warm it, with a hot bowl of soap at the ready, but instead of lye, right, the lather’s been frothed up out of almond cream … almond cream, and the tears of a grieving mother whose daughter won’t never be coming home from the front.” Boris tried and failed to blow a smoke ring, looking around for approval. But the three guards who had sat down on the floor were all silent, as was their friend on the other side of the cell door. Still awake, it seemed, but staring off at nothing, with glassy eyes and goofy grins.

Boris stood and stretched, then spiked his pipe on the stone floor of the cell. Clay shrapnel bounced off the guards but didn’t rouse them from their spell. Smacking his lips at Zosia, he said, “Notes of brushfire tinged with rancid butthole. How the devils do you people smoke this stuff?”

“Boris?” Zosia blinked, the shattering of his pipe bringing her back to the moment; she had been cods deep in visions of bloody revenge against the screws who had stolen her pipe. It took her a moment to confirm the here and now, but sure enough, the guards were all doped out of their minds and Boris was unlocking her manacles. As the chains fell from her limbs some of the haze lifted from her mind as well, the cool air on her blistered wrists and ankles as bracing as a splash of spring water. Digesting the first real meal she’d had in far too long had to help, too. “This some kind of head game, Heretic? You letting me think you’re helping me escape, but it’s all a trick to get my hopes up before the big finish?”

“I’m getting you out of here, Zosia, and I aim to sneak you clear out of the city,” he said, looking scared enough that he might just be telling the truth. “But you’ve got to do exactly as I say, understand?”

“Contrary to my reputation, I’ve been known to follow a plan in my day,” Zosia said as he helped her sit up, the aching of half a dozen bolt wounds almost as bad as her arthritis after all this time locked down in a bed. The pain was good, it was keeping her in the moment, but what a moment it turned out to be: looking down at her bloodstained shift and crusted bandages and jaundiced skin, it seemed like less of a miracle that she was still alive and more like a curse. “Just … give me a minute.”

“I’m not asking you to follow a plan, I’m telling you the only way I’m taking you out of here is if you do something for me first,” said Boris. “You don’t promise to help me, I walk out of here and lock the door behind me.”

“Ahhhh, that’s more like the Boris I know,” she said as he shook out his sling bag onto the foot of her bed. A blousy shirt, breeches, and belt fell onto her musty cot, along with an orange tabard to help her pass as a member of the new militia. A bundle of documents with official-looking seals. A fake beard. Basic prison-break kit. “You had me worried for a minute there, I was beginning to think you’d actually decided to practice what your revolution’s been preaching. I’d rather deal with a realist than an idealist, so what’s the price for my freedom?”

“You swear to go away without hurting any more people,” he said, twitchy as an itchy ferret. “Your promise to leave Diadem and never come back, and not cause any mischief on your way out the back door. You do that and I’ll help you escape.”

“That’s it?” Zosia lowered her feet to the floor. Her legs wobbled and she would have fallen if she hadn’t clung to the padded vise clamped to the bed frame, her injured shoulder singing a very angry song but her arms still tough enough to hold her up. Carving briar is hard work, had kept them strong even as the rest of her was failing. “What’s in it for you if this knock-kneed old crone shuffles quietly away into the darkness?”

“A good night’s sleep for a change,” said Boris, and now he stopped his fidgeting with the disguise and held her gaze. “We made some mistakes getting to this point. Big ones. We’ll make more, I expect. But in the end it’ll be worth it. It will. People will be better off.”

“Would that be the royal we, Boris?”

“The People’s Pack isn’t like a queen or a pope. It’s made up of people, and people make mistakes. They … I … they shouldn’t have betrayed you the way they did. I didn’t know that was coming, I swear I didn’t. It’s wrong. You helped them. You could have helped them more, and you would have, if they’d let you. And instead they’re doing to you just what you did to Sister Portolés, and it’s wrong. It’s wrong. But if I set you loose and then you turn around and start murdering everyone who double-crossed you, then where does it end?”

“It doesn’t,” said Zosia, remembering the look on old Domingo Cavalera’s face when he had told her who he was … and she’d realized that by killing his son back in Kypck she had set into motion the events that had led to the massacre of thousands and the return of Jex Toth. “It never ends, Boris, and the sooner you understand that the sooner—”

“Wrong,” he snapped. “It ends here, one way or the other. Either you swear on that devil of yours to do no harm and follow me out of Diadem this night, and never come back, or you lie back down on that cot and wait to be executed. Either way Cold Zosia is done with revenge, she breaks that chain here and now.”

Zosia thought about it, testing her legs again. They were steady enough to carry her. Or so she hoped. The suggestion that she should just let Eluveitie and the rest of the treacherous council go on running Diadem as if nothing had ever happened soured her stomach. She could turn the tables on Boris in a hurry, snap his scrawny neck if she had to and slip out of the cell on her own, then hunt down every member of the People’s Pack … but she might not get very far at all in her state. Especially without Choplicker at her side to show her the path … and clear it when necessary.

And more than doubt over her ability to execute the sort of violence this situation demanded was the fact that Zosia was just so, so tired. Of everything. Situations don’t demand anything, she reminded herself, people do, and it was long past time she took the small but oft-ignored step of taking what she wanted instead of what she felt she needed.

“Indsorith,” Zosia decided, and the resolution to let go of everything else made her legs stop shaking and her back stop hurting. She stood up. “Help me spring her, too, and you have my word. We’ll go away together and seek no vengeance against those who wronged us.”

“Zosia … Indsorith is dead.” Boris put a hand on her shoulder as she felt her throat close up, the volcanic floor of the cell shuddering beneath her. She steadied herself but was too numb to speak, staring at him in horror as he told her the rest. “I … I’m sorry. They executed her already. They took another vote and decided to do her first, instead of the two of you together. Stretch out the affair, make it more than just a day’s entertainment, and—urk!”

Zosia grabbed Boris by the throat, muscles made thick from years and years of working materials harder than flesh or bone standing out as she squeezed, his eyes bulging … and then she shoved him backward. Plopped back on her cot with her head in her hands, the room spinning. What had she expected? Boris to produce a devil from his pocket and wish everything better, Zosia and Indsorith free and safe and hitting the road for fresh adventures? Fuck.

“I know you’re upset,” Boris eventually murmured from the world beyond Zosia’s dizzy, grief-mad head, “but if we’re going to go we have to go now.”

Where would she go? Why would she go? What did she have waiting for her in this world? Why not just stay here and accept what was coming to her? Why not get it over with already?

Why?

Because giving up was what the world wanted her to do, and fuck the world.

“Let’s go,” she said, swaying back to her bare feet and taking a faltering step toward the blissed-out guards sitting on the floor. Figure out which of these jerks had the best boots to steal, get dressed, and a sharp exit—that order. “I’ll swear to whatever you like, Boris, so long as you get me out of this fucking dump.”

“Good,” Boris said as she retrieved her new pipe from a slack hand, then took the guard’s belt pouch so she’d have somewhere to carry it. “Good. But save your swearing for until we have your dog back. No offense, but a word’s just a word, unless it’s pledged on something like a devil.”

“Choplicker?” Zosia turned to Boris, the candle that had almost guttered out in her breast now blazing high as a bonfire. “Choplicker’s alive?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Boris, looking a bit queasy. “But I know where they’re keeping what’s left of him, and I want you carrying it out of here with you when you go. Got enough ghosts in this city as it is.”