Chương 12: 1.11. Never Trust a Skinny Chef

A great streak of red slashed across a painting behind him of a naked lady with an appropriately gobsmacked expression for it.

"Right-o," Annalise said, into the new stillness. Seth clicked his tongue and opened the gun up again to load its empty chambers.

"I should have kept a tighter bead on him." Annalise shrugged amicably and gave his arm a pat.

"You're all right, fella. I'll get us out. Come on. Stick close." Seth followed her down the portrait hall, to the manor's doublewide front door. Annalise put her shoulder to one of its arch-point halves and shoved it outward into the face of a firing line.

"I want Chief Hermandat Carter," she announced, to the wall of guns and angry, fearful men. She tugged the door shut again before anyone could say anything or pull any trigger.

"Does Rohan have an office or anything?"

"He did. I already searched it." Seth held out the attaché.

"Put a bunch of stuff in here." Annalise's face lit up. She pawed through the bag.

"Oh, yes. This is brilliant. I love when they keep this many notes. Perks of organized crime, eh?"

"You can go back over it yourself if you like," Seth said.

"See if I missed anything."

"Nah. I trust you." She continued her exploration, heedless of the dizzy feeling those words had just knocked into Seth. She gasped as she uncovered the cigars.

"Ah, g'wan. Are these—""Madam Verdugo." A muffled voice through the door.

"You asked for me." Annalise looked up, face all business again.

"Carter?"

"Yes, Madam Verdugo."

"Rohan il Agante and his co-conspirators have faced the Legion's justice. I am leaving Prossimo now, and taking Seth il Gutierre with me." Annalise handed Seth the bag with a mouthed thank you and a thumbs up. He returned the gesture.

"Provided we can depart peacefully, there will be no further investigation or inquest. But if a single person deters me, or tries it, I will deal with them swiftly, then reopen my investigation into Rohan's organization. I will not leave Prossimo until I am completely satisfied that it has been disposed of, root and stem. I will ensure any illegally acquired property that can be linked to Rohan is seized by the Legion for penalty or redistribution. Am I understood, Carter?" Silence.

"Am I understood," Annalise repeated.

"Yes, Madam Verdugo."

"Brill. I'm coming out now, then." She beckoned Seth over.

"Look fearful, now. Like I'm dragging you off. Good work. I almost believe you're afraid for your life."

"That's me," Seth said.

"Great actor." He took a deep, stabilizing breath. Annalise swung the manor door open and strutted from the manor, sword on her shoulder, face-to-firing line.

"Give a lady the wrong idea with those guns, gentlemen," she said. Barrels swung haltingly down or skyward. Annalise favored the death stares with an unbothered smile, hooked a finger into Seth's collar, and dragged the cutpurse through the dusty street and its dusty crowd, and up to the stables and into the bloodstained hex-engine. Seth never set foot in Prossimo again. Unless you count the last little stop he made, to the widow Nuncia's cottage. He was glad not to see her, and didn't knock.

Just left the money on the stoop in a pile of crisp score notes and a letter on top saying thank you, sorry, and goodbye. This done he returned to Annalise, who was leaning on the hex engine door smoking a cigar. She raised its smoking ember to him in salutation.

"You want one of these, il Gutierre?" He shook his head.

"I don't smoke much."

"I try to keep it to one or two times a week, but these are Traluco Diamonds." She took out a cigar from the box on the hex-engine's hood and skinned its cap with Polecat's gravity knife.

"And you've earned one. Hell, you're the one who stole 'em."

"Normally they give these to people about to be executed, y'know." Seth took the cigar and gave it a sniff.

"I was given to understand my sentence is community service." Annalise was patting herself down for her matches. His words paused her. He glanced her way; she was looking at him with a thoughtful expression.

"It can be a sentence, sure," she said.

"Find the head and then we're off on our separate ways." She dug out her matchbook and struck one.

"But it happens, Seth, that I am hiring."

"You are?"

"I am, indeed." The match illuminated her pale face in the evergreen dusk and danced in her blackened eyes.

"Lean forward. Don't inhale yet. Just let her toast." Stolen novel; please report. He obeyed, and with her he watched the flame dance across the cigar. They stood like that for thirty seconds—close enough he could hear the slow, measured breathing through the straight prow of her nose—then she shook the match out and stuck her own stogie back between her glossy black lips.

"I'm going into the fall with some catch-up to play," she said.

"Owing to a few months spent learning my new territory and doing all the paperwork bollocks. Let it burn down a bit, now. Patience." He paused his inhale sheepishly.

"But I'm on track to squeak by without a visit to the Winter War, especially if I have a sure hand like yours in the retinue. So I'm hiring for the season, and maybe for more than just a nixer, if you show me you're right for it. Okay, now. Take a puff." Seth allowed himself a pull. He held the sweet, earthy taste in his mouth for a while, and pondered. Then he breathed his words out with the cedar smoke.

"I don't know." She lifted a brow.

"Don't know if I'd call myself a sure hand, I mean," he said.

"Or if I'm built for it. Just being honest."

"Take your shirt off," she said.

"Pardon?"

"Your hexentat. It's under your shirt, right? Think I caught a snatch of it on your back. Take it off. Let me see it. I'll hold your smoke."

"Kinda cold out here." Annalise just shook her head at this and reached for his cigar. Seth sighed, passed it, and hiked his shirt up over his shoulders, turning round to give her a look at his illustrated back.

"Look at that," she said, softly.

"Three rings. You could only afford one hexentat, but you got space enough for a dozen. Know what I call that?"

"Stupid." She laughed." Promise, Seth. I think you show a great deal of promise." Her finger poked his midsection.

"Also a great deal of ribcage. And if you'd let me, on our journey up to get my head, I'd like to bring one out and bulk away the other." He lowered his shirt and accepted his stogie back from her.

"That's a suspiciously kind offer." She sighed out a cloud of savory smoke.

"You strike me," she said, "as a boy who's been kicked and kicked all your life, and nobody has stopped it. And what you need's a big angry bitch with a sword to stand in front of the world for a while until you can stand up and dust off. Nobody ever comes for the hurting people in this world, y'know? Even if they see what's coming, they just keep their heads down and say not my business. Nobody ever makes it stop before it goes all the way bad."

Seth wanted to ask what that meant, but she was looking past him now, down the road they'd come from as if examining some dark edifice only she could see. She snapped out of it and smiled again.

"You're a cook, right?"

"Never trust a skinny chef, I know." He put a hand on his concave stomach.

"I haven't had so many chances lately."

"Not what I'm saying," she said.

"You ever see a cast-iron skillet that's been left with someone who doesn't know how to take care of it? And it's all dingy and rusted, and if you don't know what you're looking at, it's garbage. But if you have an eye for these things you see what it could be. What it should be, if it's in the hands of someone who recognizes its value." He didn't have a response he trusted, yet, for that; he busied himself with another inhale.

"I can swing a sword, I can sling a spell. But in matters of padding about, like you can, I am unfortunately befucked. That was pretty work you did, taking the box from me. And pretty work again breaking into Rohan's house. And you've notched your second corpse, now, and you seem steady." He seemed steady. He looked at his hands and remembered them spattered with Pritchard's blood. Like testing a sore tooth with his tongue. Still didn't hurt as bad as he'd expected.

"What do you think, il Gutierre?" Annalise leaned back on the hood of the car and crossed her legs. Her pale knee showed through the hole in her riding breeches.

"Do you want to keep trying at whatever that was back there, or you want to take a chance and throw in with your Verdugo for the rest of the year? Won't pay much at first, but there'll be a big ol' bonus at the end of the year, and you won't be sleeping in stables before then."

"I wasn't sleeping in stables. I had—" She smiled gently.

"You had straw on you, kiddo. Second day I saw you."

"Uh…"

"I promise you that's over with, if you sign with me." Her cigar flared brighter as she paused for another pull.

"It's nasty feckin' work. A lot of it. We'll be killing plenty of people. We'll be hunting monsters and madmen. Or I will, but you'll help me. You could call it an end-of-your-rope kind of job and I wouldn't say you're wrong." She leaned forward. Her chest pressed softly against the pommel of her sword.

"But I think there's something fucking excellent waiting to come out of you, Seth il Gutierre," she whispered, like she was telling a secret.

"And I swear to you. I'll see your value and use you right. I'll season you. I'll take care of you." And there was such a look of—of something on her face. Something so earnest Seth had to avert his eyes. Something Seth didn't have the word for, but if he'd ever known his mother, he might have.

"You'll oil me?" he asked. She laughed loud.

"If that's what it takes. I'll have Tiago do it." Seth's shoulders unbunched as the vulnerable moment's burden passed.

"I hear he puts too much on. Don't wanna get gummy."

"We can always strip you if it comes to that," she said.

"You've got the knack. I heard a muted trumpet tooting when you showed that ink off." Yes. That fucking fox again. Say yes. No. Don't say yes just because this little inky bastard told you to, Seth. And don't say yes just because she's beautiful, either.

"Yes," he said, and he had a lot of reasons, as a matter of fact.

"All right." She beamed.

"All right?"

"Why not, right? What's back there for me? More straw?" Her hand rose, and for one dizzy, dumb heartbeat Seth thought: Now Annalise is going to pat me on the head. But of course it halted at handshake level, and Seth took that, and spared a moment to wonder—as a joke, of course, grinning inwardly at his ridiculous brain—how a pat on the head from Annalise's big warm hand might have felt. He only remembered as their hands touched that she was an unlit.

And by then, her warm, calloused fingers had clasped around his, and her smile was huge, with that little gap in her front teeth, and fuck it. It'd take more than a handshake, anyway.

"Somewhere in these books you stole, we'll pick up the trail on the rat bastard who bought my head," she said.

"And we'll get it back. But on the way to wherever they are, I'm gonna be doing my job. And you're gonna be doing yours. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," he affirmed.

"Grand." She beamed at him.

"Now up next was supposed to be my first visit to Laramme, but the skywire says there's a seraph been spotted on the road to it. Tore up a trader and his whole escort last month. Sounds like a big one. Probably a red-feather if it's moving solo."

"Saints sanctify whatever poor bugger scouted enough to send that alert, huh?" Seth opened the passenger door.

"Where are we going instead?"

"Laramme, of course." He frowned.

"Thought you said there's a seraph."

"There sure is." Annalise detached herself from the hood and strolled to the driver's seat.

"We're gonna kill it."