I didn’t move, despite every instinct telling me to.
The cold metal pressed against the bottom of my chin precluded any attempts to run. The slightest wrong twitch could have the wielder pull the triggers. Magic or not, there was little surviving a full load of buckshot turning my brain into scraps of flesh.
And in the hands of someone I knew to be twitchy enough to be quick on the trigger and interpret any movement as a reason to pull the trigger.
Alice Skall hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen her. Red hair and red skin, horns low and lowered like a bull’s. Two scars across her upper lip, a new one running along her right cheek. All softness in her face, opposite of my harsh angles, but she made it look intimidating, even though I remembered teasing that into giddy-
Do not let feelings intrude on this. Those had been buried long ago, messily, and all that digging them up now would lead to miscalculations. Don’t let sentiment take over when sentiment has a shotgun pressed against your forehead..
“Alice,” I said quietly. “You’re alive. Wish I could say that was a pleasant surprise.”
“That feeling’s mutual,” she whispered harshly behind me. “No one from old days truly stays dead do they?”
I snorted, unable to contain that brief burst of amusement at a sentiment I’d expressed earlier today. “Golvar’s dead. My half-siblings, outside Versalicci. That’s about all I can speak to.”
“Shut up,” she snapped, voice raw. “We’re going upstairs, and if you even look for a second like you’re going for some trap to blow the both of us up, I’m pulling the triggers and you can try speaking out your windpipe.”
I eyed the stairs, then looked pointedly down at the barrel of the shotgun. It wasn’t a new one, weathered but well-maintained and still capable of turning the inside of my head to mush. Alice snorted.
“Give me a spin,” she drawled tauntingly, pulling the shotgun back a little. “For old times sakes?”
She hadn’t pulled it back enough for me to dodge, but I was hardly going to twirl for her. I moved stiffly around, till suddenly the muzzle of the shotgun prodded the back of my head.
“Far enough. Up the stairs. We’re finding a table for us to have a little chat.”
There wasn’t much upstairs. I had a single bedroom, a reading room with books, and then a final room where I prepared and ate my meals. We ended up in the third, Alice guiding me into a chair before tossing a metal set of cuffs down on the table in front of me.
“Are you serious?” I asked, eyeing the handcuffs. She snorted.
“Yeah, it’s not going that way. Call them some extra insurance in case me having a shotgun leveled at your head isn’t enough. Now, unless you do want some buckshot there, handcuffs on.”
This was a problem. Sure, if the worst came to it, I could still cast in handcuffs, but restricting my movement meant even less chance of surviving the exchange.
Then again, that would mean dodging a shotgun blast. This had been decided the moment I didn’t notice her in my store, now only talking would save me. I attached both the cuffs to my hands, letting them click into position, eyes on the shotgun’s muzzle.
It didn’t waver once.
“You been real naughty since I last saw you Malvia,” she whispered. “First you let me think you died, then you borrow my name and get it involved in some very serious crimes.”
“Could you please not use that terminology?” I said as she leaned in closer. “Unless you want bite marks all over you by the end of tonight?”
“Promises, promises,” she chuckled. “No, not that kind of night.”
“Then drop the language,” I said bluntly. “Besides, you faked your death first, so you do not get to pass judgment on me for doing the same.”
Hells, mine at least had been something a little mundane, a collapsing tunnel on a corpse I’d biosculpted to look like me. She’d gone out with an explosion large enough it had turned a street corner to rubble. She’d gotten the Watch to chase her first, all the way into the edge of the Quarter before blowing herself up along with them. One final act of defiance.
Or so I’d thought at the time, and had wondered if certain actions on my part had led to it. Well, here was confirmation they hadn’t, and now that was worming in my gut, making me angry.
“You wanna say I should have told you?” Alice sneered. “You made it pretty clear beforehand what we were to each other. But you are right. Let’s not talk about the past too much. The hells are you dragging my name through the mud for? I’m not using it much these days, but I don’t appreciate it regardless. You never know when some fucker is gonna start digging through the past.”
Right. That. Damnations Tagashin, thank you for putting me in this situation with your improvisations.
“I didn’t involve your name in this,” I replied. “Someone else did because they’d rather I work with them than get executed for crimes I didn’t commit. How much did you read in the papers?”
“Oh, enough to get angry. And after…shapechangers. Seems like a chaotic mess I didn’t want to stick my hand into. But if you didn’t involve my name, who did?”
Alice seemed contemplative, and the temptation to blurt out the truth was there. However, ‘A kitsune impersonating Voltar said it was you so she could later have me enter the case as her assistant, oh and I also didn’t know it wasn’t Voltar’ did not seem a believable tale.
“It’s complicated and tied up with the entire mess,” I admitted. “The person ultimately responsible…well, aiming you at her I think wouldn’t do anyone any favors. She didn’t mean any harm by it.”
I thought so, although with Tagashin one could never be entirely sure. The possibility always existed that she had known, although I couldn’t begin to guess how.
"Not throwing me a name?” Alice said. “Not a wise move, and not like you.”
“A wise move when one knows how dangerous that name is,” I said. “I’ll name it if it means not dying. But I wouldn’t recommend going against her.”
Alice laughed. “I’m a better judge of that than you, I think.”
“You say that, but I remember having to drag you out of the Hells’ Own when you wanted to burn it down and Edwards started tanning you-”
Click went the flintlock of the shotgun. Shut went my mouth with a similar clack.
Eat her, The Imp muttered in my head.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I….such wise and sage advice. I was handcuffed, and the moment I tried to move I’d probably get shot.
Either do that or the other thing if you must, The Imp continued. I can hardly do anything from in here.
What was the ‘other thing’? Fight her? Kiss her? Stupid little devil!
“You look like you want to strangle that table,” Alice told me.
“Dealing with the third party in all of this,” I replied. “They are being particularly unhelpful about all of this.”
She snorted. “Still got the imp in your head I see. Those methods you were working on not pan out?”
“They did,” I replied. “I silenced it, made it sleep, although the process nearly killed me. But then life gave me a choice between dying and biting a throat out, so it’s awake again.”
“Life’s got a strange way of making sure you only got a choice between death and things like that,” Alice replied. “And you haven’t put it asleep again why?”
“Promises,” I said. “It’s quite a helpful little helper as long as you keep it fed.”
Her eyes widened, and then she chuckled. “Oh, you finally give up on that insistence you were abov-”
“Cows,” I corrected harshly. “And pigs. And other foods. Not people.”
Her lips quirked. “Stubborn about that, aren’t you?”
You have no idea, The Imp said inside my head.
I sighed.
“Moved up in the world,” she noted. “You got a new leash. New collar too. Imperial Government agent Malvia Harrow. You’ve moved down in the world from what I last saw.”
I scoffed. “Because having Versalicci’s around my neck was so much better. I’ll take the one that keeps me alive for now and isn’t going to kill me.”
“And it doesn’t chafe?”
“Of course it chafes,” I snarled, not caring if anyone was listening. If they were, they should have interfered by now. “It was either this or finding my head on the chopping block, or that falling blade device they claim is more humane. Penalty for the practice of Diabolism is death, Alice, back when we started this, and probably by the time my life burns out.”
“You started,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t given much of a choice in the matter, if you could recall.”
“I can recall, and it was more than I was given,” I said back. “More than I was given in this case too. I was free, no diabolism, no Black Flame, only to be dragged into someone else’s schemes and dealing with Versalicci again.”
“Simple solution to that you refused to take. Why are you even still in this city, Malvia?” Alice said. “Why not run away, make it as far as you could out of here? It’s what I did, and it took you dragging my name into this mess to draw me back.”
I didn’t respond. There was a simple reason, that being this was the only place with the resources within my reach that might finally wake up my mother. But there was only one person who knew about her in the Black Flame, and whoever my brother had chosen to share that information with, it hadn’t included her.
It hadn’t been the only secret kept from here.
She left the silence drag out a little while longer, then snorted. “Alright, keep your secrets. Ain’t like it’s the only one I found out you've been hiding. You ever going to tell me that you were Versalicci’s sister, Malvia?”
Only one place she could have found that out. Nice to have the confirmation.
“You want to talk to me about leashes and collars?” I shot back, not answering the question. “Seems like you’ve put one back on yourself.”
She laughed, a short harsh bark.
“Someone telling me what’s been going on in the city isn’t getting me back under their command. I came for a few pieces of business, then I’m back out of here. I would like to be out of this country if I can manage it. But for now, I’m not leaving till I get some debts settled. Yours on top of that list.”
I sighed, closing my eyes. If she decided it would be blood….one of my fingernails twitched, a little splatter of black ink falling onto the floorboards. It disappeared after a second, but it would travel to one of my stocks. Now, wyrmfire wasn’t intended to explode after you treated it, but given a spark it would happily ignite.
The trick was a little one I’d been practicing with the Imp, controlling Infernal energies after they’d left. I’d always been able to produce them like I had when finding the shape-changer's secret warehouse room. But controlling them after their release had been the focus of many practice attempts in my shop’s basement.
I had little control over it, but enough that I could make it burst into hellfire, and that would trigger the wyrmfire stocks.
Alice walked around the table, ending up behind me. I craned my neck trying to keep an eye on her.
“And how are going to settle that one?” I asked her.
“Still deciding,” she said. “Got a little whisper in my ear on the way in that’s tempting me first. Lots of other debts to look into as well. But well, even if I do believe you, can’t exactly leave you to tell others I’m back in town, can I?”
“Others are watching,” I said quickly. “Intelligence will have at least one person keeping tabs. Maybe they don’t want to tangle with a Diabolist, but they’ll definitely notice you’re here, and that ends with you as suspect number one for the murder.”
Her expression faltered, just a brief second of wavering before it reformed. “Murder? I just got into the city.”
“Unless it was later today, it still leaves you as a suspect,” I said. “There was a murder early this morning. A Tarverian priest in his church, half-transformed into a devil, most of his congregation destroyed. Very nasty piece of Diabolism. And all of a sudden, here you are. Convenient, isn’t it?”
She scowled, pressing the shotgun’s barrel against the back of my head, forcing it down til my horns were touching the table’s surface. “You’re lying.”
I chuckled. “I am not. If it’s not in the papers now, it will be by tomorrow. It makes your arrival right now very interesting. How long after Versalicci brought me to your attention did you come here? Almost immediately?”
The pressure on the back of my skull vanished. Alice was silent, and I held my tongue for now. Alice….we’d shared a bed, and a rooftop, and other places. We’d told each other things we’d never told anyone else but it had never been a strong bond. Always some things we kept close to our chests, some of which she’d found out about now, and I knew she’d hidden some of the same from me. We’d drifted apart, partially because even after months, I still feared what she might do. After that first night of her recruitment, she’d lived up to that reputation of the crazy one from the docks, Skall the Slitter. Even now, years later?
I didn’t know what she would do.
“It’s a very convenient story,” she whispered in my ear, one of her hands settling on my shoulder.
I tensed up. She could still be holding the shotgun. However, a one-handed grip would be weaker. I didn’t dare turn around to see though. No provoking. I tightened a finger, the wisps of Diabolism I’d sent down having wormed their way to my stocks. Just a thought and they would explode.
“Of course it’s convenient,” I said. “Hangs together on all the existing pieces nicely. Perfectly puts the blame on Versalicci for all your troubles and takes them off of me. However, was what Versalicci sold you any different? Either to tempt you here or once you got here?”
She was silent again, and then the whisper resumed. “I suppose you’re right. It might be best to get the lay of the land first.”
Her arm was suddenly around my neck, and I could feel her grip tightening. I forced myself to stay calm though, to not trigger the explosives. I was going to live.
***
When I woke up, my throat burned as I gasped for air.
I was in bed, covers on top, my room dark except for what little of the moon’s light could get through the evening cloud cover. I thrashed about some, gulping down sweet-tasting mouthfuls of air as the burning in my lungs lessened. My legs could move, but I could move my arms, tightly bound around my torso.
I coughed, my breathing pained and labored as I saw spots and felt a buzzing in my ears. I’d need a healing potion to make sure Alice hadn’t caused any damage with that chokehold. Assuming I could get out. I kicked the covers up just enough to see what restrained me. A straitjacket? We’d used them after the Black Flame had broken one of Versalicci’s human allies out of an insane asylum she probably should have been left it, and well not just for restraining prisoners all the-
I cut that line of thought off. Now was not the time to reminisce. There were ways out of this, but most of them relied on being awake when you were strapped in. Okay, were my legs bound? Some experimental kicks proved they weren’t, so I started trying to awkwardly get out of bed. There should be a corner or an edge I could use to start cutting myself out of this. There had to be. Worse case, I set it alight on the stove and hoped a quick potion would heal the worse burns.
I got out of my bed, and after hitting the floor with a rough thud eventually got my hooves back underneath me. Alice had left the doors open. Good. I headed downstairs.
So, this wasn’t ideal. At the same time, a murderous Diabolist had killed a priest who himself was a practicing Diabolist, who should waltz back into my life but Alice Skall, who should be dead. The chances of those two things being connected? I couldn’t see Alice befriending a priest, but Alice showing up right now? That couldn’t be dismissed. And given who had brought her in here?
I looked outside the front window of my shop as the stove continued burning. It was dark out, but I’d woken up feeling refreshed. Early morning? She’d left the front door unlocked, but at least she’d shut it.
So, Versalicci had brought her here? It may be time to look into whatever scheme my half-brother wanted to involve me in. Because either he’d brought a killer to the city, or a patsy, but either way he was up to his eyebrows in this, and had tried to drag me into this plan of his.
Time to find out what the plan was. Then figure out how to wreck it.