Marvin Atcitty’s splayed the archer out on her back, tied and staked spread-eagle. She’s got a skull bandanna stuffed in her mouth, and her eyes roll wildly between Atcitty, the other Thirsty Boy, and now me.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I expected them to have the prisoner tied up and ready to take back to Tse Bonito to be turned over to the police or the Law Dogs or whoever’s in charge of paying out the bounty. “Why is she staked to the ground?”
Ben rises to her feet. The front of her shirt is covered in blood I know isn’t hers.
“Maggie,” she says. Her voice is a teary whisper. Her eyes are red-rimmed and so hard to look at that I have to stop myself from turning away.
“Maggie?” she says again, but this time her voice is heavy with a question. More than a question. A demand.
She wants something from me. Something terrible that I recognize. Hastiin must have told her stories about me. About the bloodthirsty monsterslayer. About the indiscriminate killer.
And now she’s asking me to be that person for her. To kill the archer.
But it’s a request that I have no interest in fulfilling. My stomach hardens like a rock. My jaw clenches, the frustration so acute that I dig my fingernails into my palm for relief. I relax my hand, but the tiny moons shallow with blood stay carved in my flesh.
“No, Ben,” I say, my voice firm. It’s not her fault that Hastiin misled her, but I won’t be that monster for her. I can’t.
She whimpers. Looks to my hip where my Böker is sheathed.
“Ask Atcitty,” I tell her, somewhere between weary and angry. “Or that other guy. I don’t owe you this.”
“My uncle said it would be you. If I got in trouble, I should ask you. That the Boys weren’t . . .”
“Weren’t what?”
“Killers.” She looks right at me as she says it. Hard, uncompromising. Older than sixteen.
I must have looked the same way when I was her age and faced down the men who killed my nalí. It’s not a good thing.
I curse. Something crude enough to make Atcitty shuffle his feet uncomfortably. The archer between us writhes in her bonds, looks at me with big brown eyes, pleading for her life. A cut mars her cheek, blood smeared across her face from where I punched her.
“Don’t ask me this, Ben.”
“I have to.”
“You don’t.”
“I—please.”
I flinch back like she hit me. So dumb. Such a small word, trite even. But I can’t ignore it. My surrender must show in the set of my shoulders, the way I shift on my feet, because Atcitty comes forward to unstake the archer’s hands and legs and pull her up on her knees. He stretches her arms up high behind her, pulls her head back, exposing her throat.
So easy.
I glance at the other Thirsty Boy, but he’s looking down into the valley where somewhere below us Lake Asááyi glitters in the late-morning sun. “Coward,” I mutter, and watch him recoil.
As I come to her, the archer’s strange wings flare momentarily. They look like spun lace in the sunlight, fine and delicate. Atcitty struggles to hold her. I lay the tip of the Böker against the delicate skin in the hollow of her throat. She stills, wings drooping to her sides.
One cut, one small thrust of my hand, and the blade is in her brain. But I wait, pull the bandanna from her mouth, and ask instead, “Who are you?”
She opens her mouth, and I tap her chin with the tip of my knife. “Words,” I warn her. “I hear singing and it’s the last noise you’ll make.”
“What are you doing?” Ben shouts, confused. “I don’t care who she is. I want her dead.”
“We need information,” I say. Not a lie, but I’m definitely stalling. “You want to know about the White Locust, don’t you? We won’t know anything if she’s dead.”
“I don’t care about—”
“Ben,” Atcitty says gently. “We should find out.”
Ben stares at him as if he’s betrayed her, but she quiets anyway.
“You seek the White Locust,” the archer says, her voice ringing, “but he is gone. You will get nothing from me.”
“Break her wing,” I instruct Atcitty.
The archer makes a strangled cry and Atcitty glares at me. I shrug, unimpressed with his disapproval. “It’s either that or I just kill her outright,” I tell him, “but if you want her to talk . . .”
Atcitty twists the thin wire at the top of the membrane, and the archer’s wing crumbles. She screams and buckles, folding her body over her right shoulder as if she could protect it. We wait until she calms, her breath coming in slow, painful pants.
The other Thirsty Boy, Curley, curses darkly and walks away. Fucking cowards, all of them.
“You won’t find him!” the archer says, barely above a whisper. Her face is slick and fevered with sweat. “You’re too late. You can torture me, but it won’t matter. He’s gone!”
“Gone where?” I ask.
“To call for a reckoning. To cleanse the unworthy from this world.”
“Original,” I say.
“She’s not going to—” Atcitty begins, and then cuts off abruptly as Ben rushes forward.
“Do you know who this is?” Ben screams in the archer’s face, spittle flying. She thrusts a finger in my direction. “She’s the Monsterslayer,” Ben hisses. “Have you heard of her? If you’ve heard of her, then you should be afraid.”
I stare at Ben. What exactly did Hastiin tell her? Do I even want to know? I want to tell her I’m not some sort of boogeyman, no matter what her uncle said.
But Hastiin’s niece won’t look at me. Her eyes bore into the woman kneeling in front of her. “She slit the throat of Coyote because he double-crossed her, and she buried alive Naayéé’ Neizghání, the hero of Dinétah, even though she really loved him. She shot a powerful medicine man through the heart. So, who are you? Who are you that she won’t slit your throat? That she won’t bury you alive? Or slice off your wings inch by inch? Or cut out your tongue out to make sure you never sing again!”
Holy fucking hell.
The woman looks at me, eyes huge. She mouths something I can’t quite follow. Again, less than a whisper. Again, growing louder until I can make out what she is saying.
“Godslayer.”
“Godslayer,” she says again, louder, as she starts to tremble.
“Godslayer!” she screams. She shakes, spasms of fear juddering through her body. She shrieks the word again, bending in half and convulsing painfully. Her good wing flares, and she jerks forward. Ben stumbles back, thrown off-balance.
The archer wrenches away from Atcitty. And for a moment she’s free.
Ben surges forward to meet her, something in her hand. She thrusts her arm forward. Blood sprays, hitting me in the face. The archer falls.
The knife, the flimsy little knife the archer had before, is planted in her lower torso. The woman gasps, hands grasping for the hilt. But Ben falls on her, grabbing the knife and stabbing her again. Twice more until the knife breaks off at the handle. And then Ben starts beating her with her bare hands.
“That’s enough!” I yell, dragging her off. “Stop it, Ben! Enough!”
I shake her until she stops struggling. Her hands tremble, palms coated in blood. Her face is drained of color, and she looks at me with huge lost eyes.
Dammit.
Atcitty’s eyes meet mine, and he glances down at the archer. Shrugs. Not dead, despite Ben’s best efforts. A belly wound with a knife like that may cause a lot of blood, but it will take more than that to kill.
“I never killed anyone before,” Ben whispers, head against my chest.
“Of course you haven’t killed anyone,” I tell Ben, trying to sound soothing. I don’t have the heart to tell Ben that the archer will probably live if the Boys can get her medical care in time. I nod to Atcitty, who nods back in understanding.
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead Ben away, down the mountain, careful to keep her turned until we’re far enough away that she can’t look back.
“I—I was just so angry,” she sobs. “And she was going to get away. I—I had to kill her, didn’t I? I had to.”
Probably not, to both of those, but no need to tell Ben that now.
“My uncle’s going to be so mad.”
I close my eyes. “Ben . . .”
“Oh.” She nods. “Right. He’s dead.”
Her knees give. I catch her just before she hits the ground.