Bounty (34 page)

If his head was already spinning anyway, what was one more impact of his choice? Besides, he was tired of Ossen’s spiteful monologuing and bitter interjections that disrespected his mother, and surely Ossen’s skull wasn’t as hard as stone anyway.

Ramming his head forward, he caught Ossen’s face in the collision and forced him back in relent. “If you touch her in
any
way, I will carry out my worst threats and then beat your heart until it revives you, raw and shattered in ways that will never heal and haunted with mindless terror that will never abate, and then I will ensure that you live forever,” Godren revised, relaying all the ruthless sincerity in the world.

Then he turned persistently and started once more for the Underworld that waited so morbidly for his return, wondering at his determination to get there.

*

“
Where,” Mastodon asked very pointedly, “have you been, Godren?” Her dark gaze was unblinking and penetrating as the inevitable interrogation befell him. “I acknowledge that you have requested I not make unfair assumptions based on Ossen’s tattling, but I am also aware of some inconsistencies in your manner that grow increasingly harder to ignore in good faith.”

Godren stood before her desk with his feet spaced apart for stability – and confidence – and his hands clasped rigidly behind his back. He stared at the wall behind her as he received his due confrontation, face completely stony.

“I’m going to give you a chance to be honest with me,” Mastodon informed him. “Of course, depending on your honest answer it could just as easily condemn as promote you, but we’re going to overlook that detail for the sake of sustaining my gracious image. So, let’s have it. Where is it you’ve been?”

“In contact with Her Royal Highness Catris Vandelta,” Godren replied mechanically.

If Mastodon was surprised by his claim – or his honesty, if she could tell it was the truth – she didn’t show it. One had to wonder if she would even blink against the wind.

“And what, pray tell, are you doing in contact with the princess of Raven City? I presume you have a
very
good excuse.”

“I contrive to eliminate being expendable, my lady. I see those who occupy advantageous angles in your favor as competition. I seek to assume their positions.” The wall kept his attention as he spoke, anchoring him. His rooted stance and matter-of-fact responses were the only way he could hope to stand against Mastodon’s perilous judgment. Manner was the only thing left to earn him points.

This time, his response seemed to prove thought-provoking – or at least interest-piquing. Mastodon considered him a moment.

“And you think you have a better chance with her than Ossen?” the raven-haired woman inquired.

“I think Ossen is little more than connections,” Godren replied.

Mastodon seemed to appreciate the come-back. Her eyes smiled. “Do you?”

Clearly, he was supposed to elaborate. “He has too many people to prove things to, my lady. It distracts him. He is also far too explosive; if he loses his temper with
her
, she may be dead sooner than you conspire and carelessly enough to be traced. Less dramatically, if he becomes disagreeable, her Highness could take measures to keep him out, and there goes your connection. Simply because Ossen’s mood has its own ambitions. And if he can’t control himself one way, who’s to say he won’t get attached in the opposite extreme?”

“And you – you wouldn’t get attached?”

“I am numb to the world, my lady. You claim no heart, and Ossen claims no soul, but I have nothing. I don’t suppose you can empathize with returning from the death of your poison, but it has sapped me of everything except breathing.”

“Then why go on? Especially for a cause not your own?”

“Because I still bleed. I have not forgotten what I signed in blood, and I do not care to doubt the extent magic would go to cause me pain. I also do not care to doubt how promptly you would contrive to come down on me should I have thoughts of breaking our agreement. I find myself unable to risk entertaining the confidence that I might be quick enough to take my own life before my punishment was activated.”

Mastodon absently scratched her neck with a thumb. “That would be a wise precaution. You flatter me putting such stock into my charms.”

“I may have nothing left to live for, for myself, but purpose ranks higher than suicide in my book – even if it’s a commitment to a cause not my own, so that’s where I stand.”

Leaving it at that, Godren waited for the results of her acceptance. He tried to block out the anxiety of all the cards being on the table and out of is hands, but the best he could do was keep a neutral face.

Intruding on the suspense, Ossen burst into the room.

Mastodon’s only response was the shift of her eyes. “Ossen,” she acknowledged flatly.

“He’s been with the princess,” Ossen blurted an accusation.

“I know, Ossen. Aside from not being stupid, he just told me himself.”

Instant suspicion took form in the silence that resulted. Godren could imagine Ossen sputtering behind him, at a loss.

The door flew open a second time. At the commotion that followed, Godren broke his gaze with the wall and glanced over his shoulder, and found Seth hauling Ossen out of the room. The two tousled like very deadly immature boys, scuffing and scraping – and cursing, on Ossen’s part – but then the door closed and Godren was alone with Mastodon once more. When he turned back to her, she was considering the door.

“I see what you mean about him,” she commented thoughtfully. “Too much to prove. And that temper…”

29:
Slaves

O
nce again, he had managed his precarious situation. But in establishing a new position, he had done away with the old one. And he saw it as the sacrifice that it was. He had salvaged his position in survival’s favor, but he had directly aimed his wicked side at the princess of Raven City and invited Mastodon to pull the trigger. He did not intend to ever lay a finger on Catris again, but he realized things could spiral out of control very quickly with the way he had set things up, and he knew he could easily find himself compelled to do things he’d sworn himself against arranged such in Mastodon’s manipulative hands.

He realized this could not last. He was finally in too deep.

Unfortunately, he was all too aware of the truth in the reason he’d provided to Mastodon for carrying on in her service. There was no simple out, no place to hide from the bonds of magic. It might very well come down to him having to resist a direct order to threaten the princess in some way, and then all he could do was suffer the consequences. He swallowed, imagining them. Did anyone have the will to endure magic just for the sake of their morals prevailing? Was compassion and a sense of right and wrong enough? Did…
love
even have the strength?

Despair filled him like water rushing in. Was there no way out? Could he not even sacrifice himself to spare others? – to spare them
his
violence? Suddenly it terrified him. If he resisted, would he lose his free will? He could see it being crippled and shackled by the unimaginable pain of magic, something unendurable that drove him mindless and helplessly submissive, to be manipulated and used like a puppet on violent strings.

A mindless vessel for the purposes of everything I don’t believe in,
Godren lamented, trying not to lose his head at the very thought. He could never allow that. Yet, he had no power to oppose it.

If only there was a way to speed the process of his agreed term, to eliminate the bounty hunters in one epic swipe and bow out of Mastodon’s services before she could compel him into additional deeds that he wanted no part of.

Godren struck the wall.

It didn’t hurt.

His numbness, his fearlessness, had aided him – had been a gift that accommodated that wish – but it didn’t make him any more able to track them all down at once; it still wasn’t enough. How could he have so much ironically on his side, and still find himself helpless when it really mattered?

Godren traversed the Ruins as he struggled to come up with something – anything – that could help his case, figuring he might as well apply himself to duty the only way he knew how until he thought of something better. It was an increasingly unlikely method, though; at this point there weren’t scads of bounty hunters eager to blaze into Mastodon’s domain seeking her head. The civil war she had unleashed among them made them cautious of running into their kind during such a mission that was so hot on the market. Too, word of the protection she had hired had gotten around. Godren’s own reputation had served as some dissuasion, he knew – Mastodon had proudly informed him of its development, tipped from ‘sources’ throughout the city. It was gratifying to know, but not something he could quite be proud of. The last thing he wanted was his name to spread, tied to more offense. Perhaps he was hopeless now, but it would be just like his ill-humored luck to see him escape Mastodon after all only to prove stuck fast and doomed by the reputation he had earned in her service.

A spark of irritation abruptly absorbed the raging sea he was wallowing in. Sometimes all the despair went past overwhelming and, as if jaded, tipped him over into something entirely more shallow. The despair became suddenly not worth its own weight in grief, and he became only annoyed with it. It was the only way he could find relief, he supposed; his body taking over and providing a mental block where he was unable to guard himself anymore. It was hard to guard yourself against what was aspiring to thrive inside you – the only way to achieve such a thing was to conceal it, to give in to a mood and fool yourself with it.

Godren’s absentminded emotional rampage had taken him through a rough completion of scouting the Ruins, and, having not found anything, he surfaced to the edges and stood surveying the proximity. Did any bounty hunters hover in waiting here on the outskirts? Nothing stirred as he gave the area a calculating once-over. Supposing he was satisfied, he turned to find his way back.

A shimmering flicker disturbed the air before him, and he dedicated his attention to it immediately. By the time he looked up, Alice was standing there. Right there.

Godren did not leap back, as was his initial impulse, but he had a knife out and in his aimed hand before he realized he had reached for it. Gods, his reflexes had gotten incredible. It almost scared him, so unexpected was the appearance of a weapon.

Alice just stared into his face, eyes keen and penetrating, pupils widening as her nostrils flared.

“Insensitive for a god,” she observed. “You ought not let yerself be snuck up on, lovey.”

Oh no – another episode of enduring her mannerisms. That inconvenience occurred to him before the chance to bring her in did.

“Madam,” he acknowledged flatly, wondering what he should do. Was there a way to handle her?

“Can’t tell me t’ clear out this time,” Alice boasted. “I’m cleverly free o’ yer jurisdiction, yes I am.”

“I wouldn’t be so accommodating this time,” Godren replied, staying stoic.

“No?” A curious impulse sparked in her eyes, and she experimentally shifted her wooden leg past an imaginary line that would have marked the boundary of the Ruins’ commencement. A delighted gleam in her eyes dared him to show her the consequences of being so bold.

Godren glanced stonily at her extended appendage, and stonily back at her. He said nothing.

“Well, yer no fun, are you?” Alice pouted.

“Now, Alice,” a new voice said disapprovingly, and a figure moved closer out of the corner of Godren’s eye. “Don’t be too hard on him; he’s new and still takes his job a little too seriously.”

That voice. Godren knew that voice. He couldn’t quite place it, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off of Alice lest she pull another disappearing act and be gone as swiftly as the first time.

Alice glanced at the newcomer, and then considered Godren in a new light. “More than seriously, I’d say,” she observed, and her face scrunched into an expression halfway between sympathetic and mocking. “You look
weathered
. Are the elements plaguing you, dearie? Let ol’ mother cripple give you a hint: in this manner o’ storm, ye must grab the elements by th’ horns.”

“One does not ‘grab’ wind, Alice,” the un-named character pointed out – and in that moment, Godren identified him. That eloquent way of speaking – it was Damious’s.

“Oh but one
must
,” Alice insisted, disregarding Godren’s knife to turn and face the other man.

“One
can’t
,” Damious stressed patiently, coming casually closer.

“Oh, Damious, don’t be so disagreeably literal. One must be
come
the elements then,” she revised over her shoulder for Godren’s benefit. “An’ surely, as a god, ye can contrive to do that.”

“Well, that’s sound enough advice,” Damious allowed. “And really, you can’t be picky about where the good advice comes from, when you can’t trust anyone. Better to take it how it is. And that itself, my boy, is a very good piece of advice all its own. Trust me.”