Clockwork Boys (Clocktaur War, #1)

by T. Kingfisher

“Would you like to go on a suicide mission?” she asked instead. He smiled. It was the first genuine smile she’d seen all day. “I would be honored,” he said.

“I’ve been possessed, arrested, exorcised, and locked in a cell for four months. There’s a dead demon rotting somewhere in the back of my soul. What do you expect?” That does sound unpleasant. Hmm, I wonder what a rotting demon’s like? Maybe he smells it the way I smell rosemary. God, that’d be awful. Poor bastard.

He had not actually been flipping a knife, because hardly anyone really did that, but he looked like the knife-flipping type.

“Have you ever considered giving up killing people and becoming a tailor?” “Oh, yes.” “And?” “I don’t like people unless I’m stabbing them.”

Slate stopped thinking, stopped feeling anything. It was easier to do that. If she wasn’t there, she wasn’t feeling the horrible chafe against her thighs, the ache in her hip joints, the dryness of her eyes and nose and tongue. She went away inside her head for a while, in a kind of meditative misery. There was nothing but the horse. There had never been anything but the horse. Possibly she had been born on a horse. She was undoubtedly going to die on one.

“You better not snore,” she grumbled into the dark. “I don’t snore.” “Good.” “I gibber in demonic tongues.” “You’re kidding.” “No.” “Shit.”

“I don’t know why we even bother having wars,” muttered Slate. “The world’s trying to kill us fast enough as it is.”

If I ask, he will take command. He has seen carnage before. He will know what he is doing, and he will know that I am out of my depth, and I do not believe he will think less of me for it. I will not ask.

He knows I’m going to say no. We don’t have time. Slate sighed, and learned something else about command. If he was in charge, he’d say no, but because he isn’t, he gets to ask.

“Oh, come on, if your friends aren’t willing to strangle you, what kind of friends are they?” asked Brenner. Caliban turned away, shaking his head.

Then in the morning you had to get up and do it all over again, pulling saddles on and bridles and shoving things in horses’ mouths and tightening straps and then the horses would puff their bellies out so that you didn’t tighten it very tight, except that if you fell for that, Brenner generally slid off the horse an hour later, and there’d be a lot of swearing and brandishing of knives. Mules were worse. Mules were like horses who could plan.

Slate couldn’t blame her. There was something about that voice. I’d let him check my feet, too, if he talked like that to me. Hell, I’d let him check a lot more than my feet.

Why am I crying? I’m cold and exhausted and I don’t want to die, and someone just handed me a handkerchief. These seemed like excellent reasons.

Knight-Champion Caliban—who had indeed been known to recognize hints, and who was clinging to what was left of his vows by will alone—leaned his head back against the damp wood of the tree stump and waited for the rain to pass.

It’s an interesting conundrum, Slate thought, as blood pounded in her ears. I am more embarrassed because I have nothing to be embarrassed about than I would be if I’d actually managed to do something embarrassing.

Sonofabitch is patronizing me. Sonofabitch thinks I’m weak. Even Learned-bloody-Edmund is at least scared I’ll fry his genitals off. I suppose he thinks that I need to be protected from him. I pulled you out of a stinking cell where you flinched every time someone moved. I led you blind because you were afraid of the sky. And you dare—you dare—to call me weak? She did not say these things. They crashed in her heads like stones, and if she tried to get them out, they’d all fall out together like an avalanche, and god help her, she’d start crying again, because she always cried when she was really furious, and god damn if she was going to give him the satisfaction.

“You arrogant jackass,” said Slate, her voice clipped and calm and almost pleasant. He took a step back involuntarily. Slate felt a stab of triumph.

“I would never—” He groped for a phrase, found “randomly dismember Slate” on his tongue, and couldn’t get it out. Well, I wouldn’t.

“Shut up, Brenner,” said Caliban, who was learning why that was Slate’s favorite phrase.

“Should use gnole medicine, crazy lady.” “Gnole medicine?” “Lick it till it feels better. Then eat grass. Works every time.” “As your physician,” said Learned Edmund testily, “I do not recommend that.”

He snatched the book from her so quickly that he didn’t even seem to care that their fingers touched. His bowels were clearly not nearly so important as the journal.

“Oh god, no,” said Slate involuntarily. It was Caliban at her feet, but the Knight-Champion looking up at her. “The church cast me out. The city locked me away. And I prayed, when I was in the cell,” he said. “I prayed for weeks. And no one came and I knew the Dreaming God had turned his back on me.” Slate swallowed hard. “But you saved me,” he said. “And I no longer have a church to serve. So I will swear to you, instead.”

“You can’t. I mean, you really can’t! Dear god! A paladin swearing to a forger?” “You are my commander,” he said, unruffled, and bowed his head.

Am I supposed to say something? Apparently not, because he sheathed his sword and knelt at her feet and said “I am yours to command.” Shit. Shit. Shit. “What does that even mean?” He looked up at her again and even if he was using the voice, he had a small, sardonic smile. He knows perfectly well that I don’t know what the hell to do now. Dear god, I think he thinks this is funny. “I would give my life for yours. Your enemies are my enemies.” “They already were your enemies!” “Well,” he admitted, “that’s true. But I’ll be here if you make any new ones.”

“Wait, you’re not going to go around trying to defend my honor, are you?” “…I am a paladin.” “Yes, but I haven’t got any honor!” “I’ll try to keep the duels over your virtue to a bare minimum, then.” This was even worse than she’d imagined. “Um. Uh. Okay. Go take care of the horses, I guess?”

Still dreaming about tall, blond, and guilty? It’s a bad idea. Never date a man prettier than you, it never ends well.” Slate snorted loudly. “Are you daft? I never come between a man and his self-loathing.” “You’re a poor liar, darlin’.