Act One, Scene Thirteen
“So? What seems to be the problem?” Just drawled. He was hardly a shape to inspire fear in his enemies; not all the padded shoulders and armor spikes his couturiers could design would leave him with the frame of a warrior, not with his thin arms and narrow head and pot belly, not even sitting (as he was) on a throne that raised him above the ground with a helm that was mostly padding to bulk out his frame. But now he was Count Just, even if he’d been seventeen when the Tyrant broke him out of prison after his first scam went wrong, the man who knows whatever there is to be known, master spy of the Gulf and lord of blackmail from east to west and (why not) ruler of a scrap of a city to lord over. Ilderia’s rebellion had been a fine opportunity for a man with sense, and Just was as loyal as anyone else.
“Pyre, my lord.” Nate wasn’t even a knight, just a goon. Just didn’t pay his knights to run messages, he paid them to kill people.
Just’s eyes narrowed. “Really.” A man must keep up standards. The princelings had already started passing him in the wealth rankings, even with all the war damage they needed to clean up, and Just had no plans to let Pyre do the same. “That savage?”
“His messengers bring demands.” Nate licked his lips. “They claim that rebels stole his property and brought it into your district. That you are sheltering them. “
“And you turned them away at the door with a whipping, I trust?” Why, hurrah for the rebels if they keep me in eleventh instead of thirteenth place.
“There was no whip to hand, my lord.”
They brought capes, he translated. “So I see,” Just said, narrowing his eyes. “In that case, why, what choice do we have but to invite them in?”
“They’re planning a counterattack,” Devastator warned, and Just laughed. He’d spent a while working on his laugh, studying the Tyrant’s as a model, and was quite proud of how brilliant it sounded. “Well,” he said. “You’ll have to do something about that, won’t you?”
- - -
“Count Just will see you immediately,” said the woman who was escorting them, with a nasty smirk. They doesn’t want to miss the fire, Crush thought.
Nicator was carrying a duffel bag. Crush and Thunderer were both attempting to hide behind him.
The woman lead them into a large hall, then backed off, the expression still on her face. There was a throne, there were balconies lining the walls filled with people - some of them knights - and it generally looked like an attempt to recreate the Hollywood image of a medieval throne room except in the little details, like the lightbulbs in the giant chandeliers. In the big chair was a short, fat man with a permanently distant expression, flanked by two others: a woman with grey skin and glowing hands and eyes, and a slim young man with a constant smirk.
Nicator strode forwards ahead of his ‘fellow knights,’ dropped the duffel bag with a loud thump, and kicked it so that it spun down the floor to come to rest in front of Just’s throne.
“You won’t even bow?” Just said.
“No,” Nicator said coolly. “I have decided to settle this with blackmail, since it is legal in your district.”
“What am I supposed to be blackmailed over?”
“Your interactions with the Ilderiites, SALF, SAIL, and all the other outlaws. You have kept your hand open, Count.” Just’s expression didn’t change. “Three months ago you hired Zero to go after Mincemaker.”
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“Copies,” Just said. Crush couldn’t see any signs of him projecting his vision, but whatever his clairvoyance was it was enough to scan every page in there. “You intend to keep the originals.”
“To imply I wouldn’t would be to insult your intelligence, Count.”
“And you present a payment plan with which I’d settle my alleged debts to Count Pyre,” Just said smugly.
“Yes,” said Nicator.
Silence stretched. Crush looked from one person to the other. Looked up again at the knights guarding Just. Two by his throne, another two off to the side, plus security robots, plus non-powered people who probably had death rays or rocket pistols or something in case they had to deal with powered people, and Crush didn’t see any escape routes. The Thunderer was watching, amused, as if he were trying not to clap.
“Really,” said Just after a while. “You aren’t joking. You’re trying to…” he smirked. “... to Just me. I know everything about you. I know that locket you carry and who’s inside it. So old fashioned, a locket. The normal ‘picture on a cell phone’ is safer, isn’t it really? And I know your face, Constantine, and an ugly one it is. I don’t think that’s a secret you’d want getting out, would you?”
Nicator laughed in Count Just’s face, a harsh, metallic sound, and Just flushed.
“Ugly little bitch,” he snarled. “Why would I even let you leave alive? You’ve insulted me and flouted me, and, why…” His complexion began to return to normal. “You arrived in the city so recently, your registry as a knight hasn’t even gone through. Don’t you think I’m willing to pay the fine?”
“Let me spare you a fine,” said Nicator, proffering a hand. “Me and your best knight, one-on-one. To the death. If you win, take the bag off my corpse. I mean to live; there’s no apres moi le deluge for me. If I win, you pay your debt.”
Just laughed, a long, horrible, high laugh, and Crush stared in horror. “Nicator -”
The knight jerked his head in acknowledgement, and Crush’s eyes were focused on Just’s guards. Just wasn’t a fighter, but Devastator wasn’t the kid he looked like - he’d taken tank fire, back in the war, and peeled the armor off of Allagi and squashed his head like a grape. And Nicator was going to challenge him?
The Thunderer put a hand on his shoulder. “Why do we care about Nick?” he whispered. “Let’s see the flames -”
Just kept laughing. “Devastator!”
The slim young man standing by his left side stepped forwards.
“I think you should accept his offer, don’t you?”
“Why not?” The voice started as a boyish treble, and then transformed as he changed. When he started the sentence, he was five foot three. He was nine feet tall when it ended, a mass of bone plates harder than steel over tightly-packed muscle, spikes coming from his fingertips and blades running all along the backs of his hands.
“You want to take that offer back?” Just asked. “Because you can’t expect I’ll let you.”
“Clear the room,” Nicator said calmly, stepping back to the center, Devastator moving with him, while Thunderer and Crush pulled all the way back to the doorway by which they’d entered. The witnesses were quietly placing bets. Only one of them seemed willing to bet on Nicator, and the others were more than willing to cover him.
“Go,” said Just.
Devastator charged, a tank the size of a man. After four seconds he was going thirty miles an hour and Nicator timed it perfectly, tripping him as he went by to let him skid a path of ruin across and through the floor. An armor-blade sprang out of Nicator’s right gauntlet and the knight charged after Devastator as he slid across the floor trying to rise, all of Nicator’s momentum going into a single right-handed strike into the back of the giant’s skull.
The giant spasmed, and Nicator put his right foot on the body to give him the leverage to remove the embedded blade, pulled a cloth out of his armor’s utility belt and began wiping Devastator’s blood and brains off it. It wasn’t the first time Crush had seen the blood drain from a man’s face, but it was the first time he’d seen it happen to a count.
“What are you?” Just whispered.
“A professional,” said Nicator.
“I can outbid Pyre.”
Nicator said nothing and the Count flinched.
“He’ll have his money,” whispered Just. “Now get out of my house. Get out! GET OUT!”
Nicator reached down, picked up the bag, and walked out, the other two knights following.
Behind them, on the balconies, they could hear money changing hands.
- - -
“Done,” said Nicator as she strode back into Pyre’s palace, watching the count’s expression with boredom that her helmet’s lack of expression turned into stoicism. Two more tasks had been checked off the list.
“You’re done already?” Pyre breathed.
She nodded once. “He will pay.”
“Since you’ve dealt with Just, I think it’s time to handle those heroes. My s-friend says you’re a cape-killer.”
“I am.” Pyre had been count for less than a year, and was already proving himself worthless . Fools never lived up to her expectations.
“Take care of it.”
“I hear and will obey,” she said.