it seems good to you, for your country. I will not fail to reward you.”
What did he have to lose? Nothing, not any more, not since Kacha… Enough of that. It was done and gone, and it was all he’d had left to lose. Other than a pathetic job he’d taken because the prelate had convinced him, he had nothing but some money, and not enough to do him any good if the country fell to war. Instead perhaps he had a chance to avert that. Sabates wanted the king on the throne again, and with sound men to advise him, men like himself, perhaps the country might not fall. Perhaps Egimont might even get to be the hero he’d always dreamed about being.
His head felt foggy and his thoughts indistinct, except one – that denying a magician wasn’t a good idea. Whispers at the back of his head telling him what would happen if he refused. The pictures on Sabates’ hands seemed to dance in front of his eyes.
“All right,” he said at last. “When it seems good to me.”
“A wise choice,” Sabates said. “Licio wants the chest back, and so do I for more reasons than he knows. But not just that – I want the people who stole it. You know who they are, as do I.”
“Kacha and Vocho.” The words seemed yanked out of him.
“Indeed. Find the chest but inform me before you do anything. I think I may have plans for those two. A suitable revenge for you, I think? As the prelate’s fall will be for me. I have a very personal grudge against him. I believe you saw some of the magicians die during the revolt. Too many died, too many, and one in particular. My son, killed by the prelate’s own hand. Oh, I have as much or more reason for revenge than you do. Let us exact it together and for the good of your country.”
Revenge. On Vocho for being an insufferable pumped-up little tit, for always beating Egimont in duels no matter what he did, what tricks he tried. For being such a bastard to Kacha. On the guild for abandoning him to his present miserable fate. On Kacha, yes maybe even a little on Kacha, for cruelly leaving him for no reason that he could see, for humiliating him.
Egimont found he was smiling.
Interlude
Nineteen years earlier
Vocho couldn’t recall being quite as excited about anything. Not even the sword swallower at the fair in the summer, or the fire breather, or even when his da said he was old enough to go out with Kacha onto the jetties, docks and wharves that surrounded the one broken-down room they called home. He could barely contain himself as he, Kacha and her friend sneaked past the dead statue of the Clockwork God and into one of the smithies that overlooked the big square.
The vast rooms inside echoed with the sound of hammering, of water hissing as metal was cooled, the huff-puff of giant bellows it took three men to work.
Up a rickety set of stairs rife with cobwebs and rat droppings and out into the air. The roof wasn’t empty – far from it. Vocho’s da said it was all because the city was growing, finally recovering from the Great Fall, when the old Castan empire had cracked apart like an egg into all the city states and petty kingdoms, taking knowledge with it. A long time ago, Da had said, people had known more than they did – known how to make a city click and clank every three days as it turned on its axis, how to make the city spin and turn and change, how to make great clocks that were the symbol of Reyes and rang out every quarter in a helter-skelter of bells that echoed along different streets depending on what change o’ the clock it was. How to make a whole clockwork city that was the envy of all the other provinces, even though the Castans had left different marvels elsewhere. They must have been dead smart, Vocho thought, to do all that.
The old empire had died because the Castans got too arrogant, Da said, tried to make clockwork to rival the god himself, tried to make their own gods. Now Reyes was moving ahead, relearning smithing tricks, making better swords, better ploughshares, remembering old things or inventing new things, like metal crossbows with winches on to pull the string bit. Not much clockwork though, only little