Fool's Gold (38 page)

She saw him doing the mental math.

“Don't ask how old I am,” she warned him. Still it was fun to watch him match the woman he knew to the girl she described.

“Did you…” He struggled with the wording. “Did you leave anyone behind?”

She nodded. “My parents. Four brothers. Two sisters. Six aunts. Five uncles. Twenty-seven first cousins. Couple of second cousins. I didn't keep track of all of them.”

She saw Will's eyes go wide, searching her for hurt. But there wasn't any. It was fifteen years gone since she had said farewell to them, and she had long had time to make peace with the decision.

“You miss them?” he said.

“I think their lives are more peaceful without me, and mine is less peaceful without them, which is how I like it.”

He nodded slowly. “I miss my parents every day.”

She rested a hand on his shoulder. “I chose to leave mine. That makes a difference.”

He nodded.

“Enough of this sharing, emotional bullshit,” she told him. “Let's go raise some hell.”

“The fuck you want to do?”

Lette forced herself to not grit her teeth. For “raising hell,” this was a poor start.

She and Will had managed to circle around to the back of the Consortium's army forces. Now they stood outside a bloodred tent, trying to look earnest, while a large sergeant at arms strode back and forth in front of them, succeeding mightily in looking like an arsehole.

“To enlist,” said Lette. She held her hands clasped in front of her. She made puppy eyes.

“Why the fuck I want to enlist two undisciplined shits like you on the eve of battle?” said the sergeant. He scratched at stubble, disturbing several flies that were sunning themselves on his pockmarked cheeks. “We outnumber those bastards five to one.”

“Well,” said Lette, as innocently as she could, “does it help that I can do this?”

She gave the sergeant credit that he managed to get his hand onto the hilt of his sword before she had him on the ground with a dagger at his throat. His Adam's apple bobbed painfully against the edge of the blade.

A few nearby soldiers whooped and hollered. None bothered to raise a finger.

“Erm.” The sergeant beneath her swallowed. “Sure. Yeah. That would probably… Yeah, we could use you.” She slowly stood up from where she had been straddling his chest, ghosted the blade back up her sleeve. The sergeant massaged his throat. He glanced over at Will, a little nervously. “What about you?” he said. “Can you…?”

“Me?” Will scoffed. “I was the one who taught her to do that.”

“Oh.” The sergeant considered that, and whether he wanted another demonstration of the skill. He decided against it. Lette tried to keep her sigh of relief inaudible.

The sergeant pointed. “Green tent, five rows that way. Tell them Gurn sent you. They'll kit you up.” He rubbed his throat. “Then just find somewhere useful to be at the front. We'll be setting up for the rest of the day. Take care of those bastards tomorrow morning, be roasting meat over their corpse fires by lunchtime.” He nodded. They were dismissed.

Keeping her smile tight and demure, Lette walked away, following a step behind Will.

He taught her how to do that.
She was going to kick his arse for that.

“Oh,” said the sergeant to their backs, and she went still.

Dagger to his throat, three more into the crowd at random. Sow confusion, then run. Use the tents as cover…

“One more thing,” the sergeant went on. “Stay out of the way of the trolls. Those wankers are fucking mental.”

Balur had never been a huge fan of deception. If you were wanting a fight, you were going up to a man and you were punching him in the face. You did not point one way, hope he turned, and sucker him in the kidneys. That was not a fight. That was not a test of your mettle. That was a way to show that you kept your balls in a little purse and had forgotten what you were meant to do with them.

And, this—what he was doing now. This posturing and pretense. It had sounded like a good way to stay alive. But now that it came to it, it was just deception and horse dung.

He stood astride Quirk's thaumatic cart. Jewels and furs were draped around his shoulders. Firkin stood at the foot of the cart, screeching and yelling. The thronging crowd pressed toward him, reaching up, trying to touch him.

He was their prophet. They adored him. They worshipped him. They would do whatever he said…

Before him, the dragon's skull—the deceptive, horse dung skull—made another pass of the crowd. The crowd screamed hate and adoration in equal measure.

Balur knew that many lives depended upon him sticking to the plan, upon him only playing the part of the aggressor, and never actually following through. But part of him yearned to give the order, to lead the charge forward, to immolate himself in the thrust and cut of combat. How many could he be taking with him? What was the size of the path he could be carving through their forces?

His willpower wavered. He felt the bellow building in his chest, the red starting to occlude his vision.

But Lette was over there. She was depending on him to hold the line.

He let the breath out.

On the plus side, at least he could spend his afternoon taking out his frustration by hurling the vilest insults he knew at the enemy.

Lette had to admit, the uniforms the Dragon Consortium supplied were damned fine. She had, over the years, been attached to a number of armies, controlled by a number of different men and women. City garrisons defending against barbarians, as well as rioting citizens. Bandit horse lords battling against members of their own extended families. Dukes and earls looking to expand their territory. She had even joined one army so that she could spend a year being promoted until she was in proximity to her assassination target.

In her experience, all armies, no matter their purpose or financial backing, had one thing in common: their universally shitty uniforms. They scratched, itched, hung wrong on your frame, bunched in inexplicable places, and generally only served to make you feel like an idiot.

The Dragon Consortium, however, seemed to exist at a greater tier of wealth than any she had previously been exposed to. The uniforms—black cotton with two batlike wings in gray stretched over the breast—fit neatly over the chain-mail shirt with which she had been provided. The helmet was well padded and snug. Even the boiled-leather boots fit her well.

Will clanked after her, moving as if wrapped in thick bundles of cloth.

“How do people fight in this stuff?” he whispered to her as they left the green supply tent and headed out into the army proper. “You might as well fight with a baby pig tied to each arm.”

Lette sometimes worried that being a farmer had damaged Will's analogies.

“How about,” she suggested, “you take off all your armor, I'll hit you with my sword, and then when you've finished scooping your entrails off the floor, you hit me with your sword, and we'll see who comes out better?”

Will kept his grumbling inaudible after that.

“So,” he said finally. “This is your territory. Where do we start with the lying?”

“One of the important things to remember about being a soldier,” she told him, “is that it's boring as shit. Bored people talk about anything they can. So we just need to find a gathering. Dice games. Cards.”

They found what they were looking for in less than a minute. A large group of soldiers gathered in a circle. Eight sat facing each other, one shaking a dice cup. Another thirty or so were all standing around, catcalling and placing bets.

Lette dug an elbow into his ribs. “Put everything you have on me.”

She enjoyed his bewildered stare as she stepped up to the circle.

“Any of you pussies got balls big enough to take on a girl?” she said with a grin, as she wedged her way between two large men.

They looked at her in much the way they would look at a turd that had fallen from the sky and landed between them.

“Closed game,” said one, cracking his knuckles.

She reached to her belt, detached a purse, and tossed it into the center of the dice circle. It landed with a heavy clink. As long as no one opened it and discovered it was full of copper sheks, then everything should go fine. And Lette had no intention of letting anyone get close to the coppers.

The other eight dice players were all staring at the purse.

After a moment the knuckle-cracker nodded. “Room for one more,” he grunted.

She took stock of the opponents quickly. Three others the same size, stature, and intelligence level as the knuckle cracker. A woman who looked angry that she was no longer the only person with a set of tits at the circle, and two men, built on more slender frames, but with no signs of any greater intellect to balance out the loss of muscle weight. Only one other man, who was watching her carefully. There was at least a flicker of intellect behind his eyes. Unsurprisingly, the largest pile of coins was in front of him. But he had also been careful not to take so much as to actually piss off those of a knuckle-cracking disposition.

She let her first roll of the dice fly randomly. But she judged their weight and bounce as she shook the cup. She watched how the dice rolled, how they landed in the dirt. A lord and two swords. Not a terrible roll. Not enough to win the round. She saw the other woman smile. Lette picked the dice up, rolled them in her palm, felt the weight, the imperfections in their sides.

The round concluded. She pulled the only gold bull left in her purse out, tossed it to the knuckle-dragger who had lucked into throwing three queens.

It took her three more rounds to be certain she could roll pretty much anything she wanted. None of them had eyes as quick as her hands, and while the other woman had a larger chest, Lette had undone a few more buttons.

She glanced up at Will. He was staring at her instead of betting. He had infiltrated an army raised entirely to crush him and everything he stood for, and he was still distracted by a bit of skin. Men were all idiots. She arched her eyebrows at him, picked up two of the silver drachs she had won, and rubbed them together slightly.

Will came back to life, leaned over to the man beside him, and started talking.

Lette didn't win much at first. Just enough. She played slowly, and methodically.

Then the opening came. The other woman couldn't bluff for shit, was grinning at her dice, and throwing gold bulls at the pot as if they were going out of style. Lette rolled, put her cup facedown, went all in.

A hush fell.

The other woman stared at her with hate.

She felt bad for the woman in a way. In other circumstances they might have had a lot in common. It was not easy to be a woman in this line of work. It required more skill, more dedication, and more strength of will than it required in men. As a rule, she generally liked women of the blade. But today she didn't need a friend. She needed all eyes on her.

The others ducked out of the hand. The woman pushed her stash of coin into the center of the ring with a curl of her lip. She lifted her cup. Three kings. A good roll.

Lette allowed her face to fall, picked up her cup.

Silence. Absolute and utter.

An emperor. A king. A queen.

The woman's specific accusation was lost in her scream of anger. The generalities were very clear, however. Lette was a cheat, and a whore, and had to die.

She had a knife out, was lunging across the circle. Dice, pots, and coins went flying.

Lette waited calmly. As the woman was about to strike she flowed to the left, caught the arm holding the blade by the wrist, twisted hard. The woman pivoted through the air, landed hard on her back. The snap of her wrist was audible to all. So was her scream.

Lette allowed the woman to scramble away, then calmly she took her seat and gathered her winnings.

All in absolute silence.

Then the man beside her clapped her on the back so hard her teeth snapped together. “That,” he said, “is how you play a fucking dice game.”

Laughter, cheers, someone passed her a drink. And now, now she had them.

As other soldiers gathered, brought there by the commotion, she started to talk.

“Good thing I found this game,” she said, taking a swig from her ale. “Not so many anymore. Folk getting worried.”

The man with quick eyes looked at her sharply, but didn't say anything. Another man took the bait, though.

“What you talking about?” he said. “Can't piss in this place without it landing in a dicing circle.”

She looked at them all, painting her face with confusion. “Ain't you boys heard?” she asked.

“Heard what?” rumbled one of the men beside her.

She shrugged. “Here I was thinking I was playing with some proper, hard-core gamblers, and instead I'm just playing with a bunch of deaf bastards.”

“Heard what?” the man rumbled again. The bass was deeper, and the goodwill was draining out.

She took a sip from her ale, dragged it out.

“Pay ain't coming,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“The fuck you say?”

A chorus of questions, expletives, and denials broke out at her statement. She took another sip, waited for them to die down. She could see what Firkin liked about having an audience.

When the general hysteria had softened to a dull murmur, she rolled her dice, tossed in a few silver drachs. She was planning on losing this hand.

The man next to her caught her arm in his giant mitt of a hand. “What are you talking about?” he said.

She shrugged. “All everyone's talking about over on the east side of camp. The Consortium. They're almost out of coin. We're getting stiffed next payday.”

“The dragons are bloody minted,” said another soldier.

There was enthusiastic agreement.

The next part made no sense to her, but Will had been insistent she make this detail very clear. She was tempted not to include it just to punish him for being a cryptic bastard, but the stakes were too high for pettiness now.

“You don't know?” she said looking round, incredulous. “You didn't hear?” And of course they hadn't. There was nothing for them to hear. “You know what happens when a dragon breathes fire onto gold?”

Shrugs, laughter, confusion.

“You get hot fucking gold,” said one man.

She shook her head, as if saddened by his naïveté. “Lead,” she said, dropping the word like the metal itself. “It all turns to lead. Worthless shit.” She shook her head as if disgusted. “And they try not to do it, but they're fucking dragons. They breathe fire in their sleep the same way we snore.” She was embellishing now, but they seemed to need more convincing. “And so it's taken a while, but now it's all lead. Why do you think they need to collect more of it each year?”

The volume of the murmuring dropped down a note at that. People shifting their gaze. Reconsidering their bets. And perhaps, just perhaps, reconsidering what the hell they were doing here.

And right on cue—

“You see that bloody great dragon's head they were parading about?” Will's voice rang out clearly in the crowd. “Didn't even know you could kill a dragon. Let alone chop its bleeding head off.”

The murmur was back twice as hard and fast as before.

“You can't kill a dragon.”

“Why the fuck we here then, if that prophet bloke didn't kill one?”

“Killed two, I heard.”

“Three, I heard.”

“Three?”

“I can't go without pay for another week. I already owe those fucking whores more than a month's worth. They'll chop my hand off.”

“They'll chop off worse than that.”

“Gold to lead. That's alchemy. That bitch is talking shit.”

“Alchemy is lead to gold. Gold to lead is all fucked is what it is.”

“The dragons have got to be good for it. Always are.”

“Always said we couldn't kill them, but look what's happened here.”

“Come on, ladies!” Lette bellowed through the crowd's confusion. “We playing dice here or what?”

But they weren't playing dice anymore. They were questioning everything. She took them all in the next two rounds, pocketed her winnings, and headed off to find the next set of dice players.

By early evening they were hearing the story back themselves. The pay wagons were full of lead, the dragons were full of shit, and the prophet and his band of nutcases were going to chop the balls off the Consortium dragons tomorrow.

“You know what?” said Will, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “I don't think Firkin could have done better than this.”

They had discussed bringing the old man over, but it hadn't seemed worth it from a number of angles. He was unpredictable at the best of times, even if he was curiously efficacious. And he was needed back with Balur to help keep the crowds in line and inspired. Plus not having him here meant they could avoid seeing, smelling, or hearing him.

“That is,” Lette told him, “honestly the only time I will ever allow myself to be compared to Firkin.”

Will grinned. “You're amazing. Where did you learn to roll dice like that?”

She smiled back. “A lot of people can roll like that,” she told him. “It's just not many who can roll like that and never get caught.”

“You were cheating?” He looked genuinely shocked.

“No, Will,” she deadpanned. “My life might be a shit show of death threats and madness right now, suggesting that all the gods in heaven hate me and everything I stand for, but actually I have been blessed by lady luck.”

His smile faltered. “Oh,” he said.

She patted him on the back. Given the scale and audacity of what they were trying to pull off, things were indeed going surprisingly well. Certainly people had told them they were full of shit, but nothing had come to blows yet. The plan to steal the gold would be looking considerably harder if they had been slapped in irons and were being pelted with rotting food matter.

Not insurmountable, but harder, to be sure.

“Quirk should be here shortly,” she said, glancing at the sun in the sky.

“Which is why,” Will said, “we are here.” They rounded a corner, leaving one row of tents for another, and saw a substantial crowd gathered about a hundred yards away.

“Oh by the gods,” Will breathed. “It's working even better than I thought it would.”

The crowd, from what Lette could tell, did not look like a happy one.

“What is that?” she asked.

“That,” he said, with a look of distinct satisfaction, “is a bunch of pissed-off people all around the pay wagons.”

“What?” Lette's eyebrows went up. She liked, at this point in her career, to think that she had more than a little experience in the fine art of purloining shit. And in her not inconsiderable experience, surrounding the aforementioned shit with an angry mob was not a great way to set yourself up for success. She explained this to Will using a significantly larger selection of curse words.

“Don't worry,” he said. “We need this crowd. Quirk has to have an audience. Balur's distraction will pull them away. He's been milking that skull all day.”