Chương 10: 1.9. Crud

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way," Seth said, as the Verdugo patted Polecat's headless trunk down.

"But I didn't take you for someone who'd bother looting corpses." Annalise's carved rhomboids bunched gracefully as she shrugged.

"A brace is a brace. And this is a nicely balanced cutlass." She held up Polecat's chopper.

"Good starter blade. You want?"

"Not really."

"Take it anyway. Sell it, maybe." Annalise sheathed the weapon with a silky shik and held it out by its cupped handle.

"Trade you for those cuffs." Seth hesitated, then took the blade. No blood on it, at least. Annalise clipped her cuffs to her belt.

"You really fucked these quick."

"You should get some double locks," he said.

"Can't shim a double lock."

"Double-lock cuffs? Too bulky."

"Not Passkey Standards," Seth said.

"Now those are some cuffs."

"Those are some expensive cuffs."

"Pick a few more dead men's pockets and splurge." Annalise chuckled.

"I don't suppose this fella's…" She knelt in front of Prichard and the chopped meat of his chest.

"Well, four'll do, I suppose."

"Sorry, Madame Verdugo."

"Ah, no worries. You're the reason I got a crack at them, anyway." She stood and wiped the grime from her knee.

"Couldn't expect you to swing the headtaker around in a pinch. Only reason I do it is so it can harvest hexis, and I'm stingy about letting the stuff go to waste. If it's not the Verdugo sword it doesn't count, y'see. Otherwise, I'd keep the fuckin' thing in the carriage. Or an attic."

"It does seem cumbersome."

"Now this little beauty." She plucked her side sword from the ground." This is a sword. Got it forged custom in—hmm." She took it by the blade and squinted at its handle.

"That a tooth, you think?" Seth squinted.

"Maybe a piece of one." Annalise flicked one of her knives from her baldrick and set about prying the sliver from her sidesword's handle.

"I talked with Charlie about reforging the two-hander into something less stupid a few times. I mean, wouldn't a nice hand-and-a-half suit better than a fuckoff bluntheaded fucker? Takes a head just as clean if you know what you're doing."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Anyway he said awh well ya know Annalise 'tis a relic from a Promethean age of yadda yadda. And they're afraid to touch it. We don't know how to make hexis dynamos this tiny anymore, I suppose." Annalise replaced her dagger and dug the splinter the rest of the way out with two fingers.

"Definitely a tooth."

"Charlie?" She buckled her sidesword back on.

"Charles il Nekropoli, Fifth Sorcerer-General of the United Legion Territories."

"You call the Sorcerer General Charlie?"

"When I wanna impress muddy little cutpurses, I do." Annalise wrapped a sinewy arm around Polecat's middle.

"Anyway, you did just fine, discounting that little runner you tried for. Now help me get 'em out to the road, if you please." Seth searched for a good grip on Prichard.

"We're not just leaving them here?"

"Corpses in the rain in the woods'll get nasty quick. The kind of nasty that can lure unearthly things out to the Prossimo perimeter and then give 'em a taste for people." She flipped Polecat up onto her shoulder.

"Might as well return the poor feckers to people who'll care about them." She lay the dead muran across Demetrius' back. Living murani did not get along with horses; Demetrius was just as unenthused by a dead one. Annalise glanced over at Seth while she strapped the corpse in.

"Need help with that one?"

"I can handle him." Seth gave Prichard's ankles a yank to tug the corpse over a half-buried root; its gnarled topography lifted the shredded shirt as the dead man skidded. The rain was already washing the blood away and the wounds were dark crescents in the pale flesh. A tinge of quiet concern colored Annalise's musical brogue.

"That your first body, Seth?"

"Yeah," he said, and added, off her face: "I'm alright, though."

"You sure?"

"He called me a—" Seth tried to recall it.

"A fucking nothing fucking rat man. Something like that."

"He did? Not neighborly." Annalise gave Prichard a disapproving nudge with her boot.

"But I more meant is that your first time dragging a body."

"Oh." Seth felt his ears color.

"Yeah."

"Try the armpits," Annalise said.

"Gets the most meat off the ground."

"Like this?"

"Straighten your back out and square your shoulders."

"How's this?"

"Ace as a brace." With a grunt, Annalise mantled Nikolas onto her shoulder.

"Get him by the road." They carried the dead goons to the roadside. Demetrius took two, his rider took two, and Seth, to his vague shame, dragged one. Annalise dropped the dead men with a sodden thump and whistled appreciatively at the ride they'd been delivered in. A real landcruiser in gleaming chrome, with two rows of plush rum cherry leather seats.

"Whoa, now. This is flash. Might have to replace you, Meaty." Demetrius huffed an unamused snort.

"Right." The Verdugo wiped Nikolas' blood from her deltoid.

"Help me pop the dead bastards in the boot." They both bent for the first body at once. His hand brushed against her forearm and he snatched it back like it had touched a stove. Bare skin contact with an unlit. That never happened to people this far from the Necropolis, not outside of sweating stress-dreams. He examined his knuckle. Was it a little discolored? A little pale? A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He looked back up at Annalise, and for a brief sliver of a second, her face had the saddest, loneliest expression he had ever seen. Then she was grinning again and he wondered whether he'd imagined it.

"Sorry for the scare there." She retrieved her coat from Demetrius's saddlebag and stuck her arms through its sleeves.

"Takes a lot more than a little prod to even start unlighting you, y'know. We could hold hands for an hour and you wouldn't even get a discolored big toe. But safety first, yeah?"

"Yeah," he said, and, because his gut was twisting into an apologetic knot, for some reason, over this huge black-clad killer, "Sorry." She blew a tuckered-out raspberry between loose lips. Sounded a bit like Demetrius.

"It's all right."

"No, I—that was ignorant of me." She chuckled and shook her head.

"Ease up, Sethy. No harm, no foul. Let's get yer one here shifted." She took the dead man up again.

"I'll grab the heavy end. You get the legs." She helped him fold the corpse into the trunk. Nikolas joined Prichard in its tight confines. Neither man complained. Annalise dusted her hands off.

"We'll put the rest in the backseat, and then you'll—you know how to drive?"

"Yep."

"You'll drive, then, and follow me on Meaty. Who can outrace that thing even when it isn't loaded with corpses, if you catch my drift."

"I'm done trying to run after that," he said.

"Promise."

"Good lad." She gave him a friendly shove to the driver's seat and set to loading back onto Demetrius. He settled behind the wheel. The only hex-engines he'd ever been on were big lumpy flatbeds and farm haulers with top speeds in the neighborhood of a brisk jog. This, in comparison, was a muscular, beautiful monster. But he'd already met one of those today, and so far his head was still on his shoulders.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"First we're gonna go get my kids, let them know I'm not dead, and we'll have us some lunch because I'm famished, and Ofelia's conked out. And we'll have a chat about what to do."

"About Rohan?"

"Yeah." She sucked air through her teeth.

"The Rohan fella. He's the one who put you up to thieving from me. Right?"

"Right."

"Well, Seth, I do reckon I'll execute him for that."

"I do reckon you should," he said.

"Sounds like it's settled."

"If we are going back to Prossimo," he said.

"Can I ask for a loan? I don't think I can stick around after and I have someone to pay off."

"Who's that?"

"This old widow." He buckled his braided seat belt.

"She was giving me a place to sleep at night. I let her down pretty badly. I should at least pay her up."

"Oh yeah?" She bobbed a brow.

"Seth the ladykiller?" Seth's face heated.

"She was, uh, old." The other brow joined the first.

"Okay."

"Quite old."

"Not judging."

"What I'm saying is I didn't sleep with her."

"Well, speaking as a fellow member of the old women delegation, we'll get her paid regardless, eh?"

"Thank you, Annalise."

"You are most welcome, Seth il Gutierre."

"No, I mean—thanks for that, too. And for today. Uh." What did you say to someone who actually believed in you? Seth had run out a good while ago.

"I won't let you down."

"I know you won't, kiddo." Her smile bloomed bigger in the shade of her roadwarden hat.

"Cause if you do I'll cutcher head off." Seth pulled the start knob and a popmite in the hex-engine's dark guts died beneath a snapping trap. The spark of hexis flooded the dynamo and kicked up the dormant death of whatever chicken was hastily killed at the chase's onset, and the spindly wheels whirred to life. Demetrius snorted and cantered along the drying road. Seth's new wheels bit into the mud for an embarrassing heartbeat, and lurched into motion behind the Verdugo.

And it was a lovely ride, even if it was back-heavy with dead men. And the rain was in retreat, the puddles developing a viridescent sheen as the sun found its view again through the clouds. The sky had dried entirely by the time the black carriage and its two huge hauler-beasts came into view, and the thirsty earth wasn't far behind. Annalise's kids were parked on fold-out wooden chairs in front of the carriage, on either side of a paraffin stove.

The son—Tiago, Seth recalled—stood and jogged to take Demetrius' bridle while his mother dismounted. He gave the same whistle his mother had at the engine.

"Saints preserve. You two steal a Dusthof Model 3?" Seth swung the driver's side open.

"I don't know. Not mine." Annalise unloaded her dead men from Demetrius' back.

"We ain't keeping it, so drool while you can." Tiago sighed.

"All right. Are we keeping him?"

"Sure." Annalise chuckled.

"Meet your foster brother." Seth chose to treat that with the same light jokiness Annalise had brought to their acquaintance so far. He bowed.

"Seth il Gutierre, at your service." Annalise indicated her gaunt, spindly son and her silent, staring daughter.

"Seth, meet Tiago and Ofelia al Ydris. Officially this time."

"Charmed." Tiago held a hand out. As gray as his mother's. Seth hesitated. Tiago shook his shaggy hair from his face.

"One handshake's not gonna bleach you, buddy."

"Right. Pardon me." Seth took Tiago's hand and shook it, and tried not to wonder about how cold it felt; was that just the weather, or was that how an unlit felt?

"Hello, Seth," said Ofelia, in a wisp of a voice.

"I am Ofelia, as Mom mentioned. I am not good at engaging in small talk and I prefer to remain as clean as possible when traveling, so outside of the conducting of town business and the rare opportunities our travels take us to hygienic locations, I like to stay inside the carriage. I enjoy revel music, reading, and full moons. Because I'm unlit, I can taste lies, and am twenty-four years old despite appearing to be in my middle teenage years. And I am homosexual."

"Okay," Seth said.

"Is that because you're unlit, too?"

"No," Ofelia said.

"Okay."

"Well, I didn't think so," Ofelia said.

"But now you have me in my head about it." Annalise gave an affectionate scratch to the snout of Draco (or maybe Draka), then pulled a fourth fold-out seat from the carriage's boot.

"Seth here's done kitchen work. You ready to impress him?"

"Sure." Tiago returned to his chair.

"Have some lunch, thief." Seth examined the skillet atop the stove, and the dark gravy caked into it.

"What are we having?"

"I would describe it as a form of crud," Ofelia said. Tiago scuffed a little clod of dirt at her with his boot.

"You said you didn't wanna cook, so I cooked."

"What's in it?" Seth tried.

"It's like a stew," Tiago said.

"And there's barley and there's beef. What do you call that?"

"I suppose I would call that a beef and barley stew."

"Hear that, Feeli?" Tiago pointed his pewter spoon at his sister.

"My crud impressed the chef." Seth hadn't said that, but he accepted a bowl from Annalise and spooned a few glutinous, glistening bites of the crud into it regardless. It tasted edible. He chewed, and sat on his rickety chair, and let Annalise's chatter with her kids wash past him while he thought again about the man he killed. Should he be feeling some type of terrible about it? Should he be replaying it in his mind? Why wasn't he guilty? Or was he guilty, and this was how guilt over killing a man felt?

He looked at Annalise. She looked back, wiped her mouth, and grinned.

"Not exactly haute cuisine, I know. But it's hot cuisine, at least. Eh?" Tiago stuck his tongue out at her.

"Your turn next, then. See what you can make."

"Fine, long as you clean the skillet."

"Fine."

"And oil it again after."

"I know."

"And put it back over the heat til it just starts smoking."

"I know."

"And don't use that much oil, right? Don't need the seasoning to get gummy."

"Mom, I know."

"Okay. Cause it's older than you, y'know."

"I do, in fact, know." Seth looked again at the skillet. It was a nice skillet, beneath Tiago's crud. He was impressed. A piece of him wanted to prove Annalise right about him. Wanted to impress her. He drummed pensively against the leather-bound steering wheel, and felt that thought pacing at the half-lit edge of his mind like a starving hound looking for a spot by the fire wondering whether and when he would let it in.

"Once you're done with that," Annalise said, "we're hitting the road again. Back to Prossimo." Ofelia's nose wrinkled.

"Not bathing first? You've got blood on you, still."

"I know," Annalise said.

"They've met the unbloody me already. You two can stay here with the horses and the house. I reckon I only need il Gutierre and the fancy engine for this." Seth scraped a last spoonful from his bowl. He was hungrier than he thought.

"Need me to drive again?" She shook her head.

"Don't be greedy now. My turn."

"Can I take shotgun? The back's a bit stained." She chuckled.

"Fraid not, il Gutierre. And not the back, either." Seth frowned. The crud tarried on his tongue. Annalise stood from the warmth of the stove and strolled to the back of the hex-engine. She winked at his dismayed face. Then she popped the trunk.