Except sometimes they did.
One against three, thought Clay as the monk hit the ground.
Matrick was dancing, bouncing on the balls of his feet, weaving like a snake charmed from the basket. He was smiling in earnest now, obviously enjoying himself, and when the next monk drew close Matrick only snapped his teeth and the fellow jumped back in fear.
“Ha.” Matrick straightened and gave his knives a spinning flourish, and dropped them both.
Yep. Both.
Clay didn’t see what happened next, since a woman’s harsh laugh demanded his attention. Larkspur was standing over him, Umbra slung across her shoulders. Something about her gaze—sidelong, appraising—was distinctly avian.
“You’re a hard man to kill, Clay Cooper.”
Despite the nagging pain in his legs, back, feet, neck, head, and arms, and notwithstanding the sense of overwhelming hopelessness that bloomed like a black flower in his gut, Clay found it surprisingly effortless to fashion a dispirited smile of his own. “But I’m easy to hurt,” he said.
Her face slackened. Her eyes drifted to the bloodied stump of his left arm. She opened her mouth, but clamped it quickly shut, as though afraid an apology might escape unbidden. He could see the muscles in her jaw working, and could imagine her knuckles whitening beneath those sharpened steel talons. She looked, for half a heartbeat, like the woman with whom they had endured the trials of these past weeks, and Clay wondered which of the two—Sabbatha, inquisitive and empathetic, or Larkspur, the cruel and callous manhunter—was the greater affectation.
Which are you, Ginny whispered in his head, the monster or the man?
Looking up at the daeva, Clay could see her struggling with the same question, the same self-defining choice. He could have said something, he knew. He might have urged her to spare him, and in doing so, to preserve whatever vestige remained of the girl she’d once been. But he knew as well that a wrong word could simply goad her into deciding too quickly, or else concluding, rashly and wrongly, that she had no choice at all.
One hand scraped down the length of her weapon’s haft, a noise like a raven’s claw scratching at a tombstone. The light went out of her eyes, and Clay suddenly wished he’d said something, anything, to forestall this moment.
“I—” was as far as she got before the bolt slammed into her chest, launching her backward. She crashed in a heap several yards away, unmoving. Clay gaped at where Larkspur had been standing a moment before; there were only feathers now, spinning on the wind as another skyship dropped from the sky.
The glare of gold sunlight forced Clay to shield his eyes. Squinting, he scanned behind him and saw Matrick wrestling with the last remaining monk. Their struggle lapsed as the shadow of the arriving ship enveloped them, but Matrick quickly seized the advantage. He wrested one of his knives from the other man’s grip and knocked him out with its pommel.
“You boys need a ride?” someone shouted. The voice was gruff, familiar. And so, when Clay could finally see well enough to make it out, was the face to whom it belonged.
Barret was perched at the Old Glory’s rail. He was holding a crossbow, the source of the bolt that had nailed Larkspur seconds earlier.
“That depends,” Clay called out. “You heading west?”
Vanguard’s frontman looked despairingly at Ashe and Tiamax, both of whom loomed behind him. The arachnian waved four arms at once, and Clay raised his remaining hand in salute.
“I’m afraid so,” Barret said.
Chapter Forty-seven
New Hands, Old Friends
Clay was leaning out over the Glory’s rail, watching the skyship’s shadow ripple over snow and stone. The wind stung tears from his eyes, tussled his hair, and tugged fitfully at the fringe of his bearskin cloak. It was fiercely cold, and it made the wound on his face itch like the Summer Lord’s flea-ridden beard, but good gods it felt great.
He was alive. Matrick was alive. They’d been improbably rescued by old and faithful friends and were now skyborne, speeding toward a reunion with their bandmates, who no doubt assumed they were dead.
Oh, and he had a new hand.
“I can fix that for you,” Tiamax had told him shortly after takeoff. They weren’t going far, since flying over mountains at night was about as safe as sharing a bathtub with an alligator, but they were in a hurry, and even a dying sun shed light by which to see.
Clay had been fussing with his makeshift tourniquet, which had soaked through with blood and constricted as it dried. “You have bandages?” he asked.
“Of course. But I meant your hand. You want a new one?”
Clay frowned, trying to decide if the arachnian meant that as a joke, but it was difficult to glean anything like mirth in those insectile eyes. “You can make me a fake hand?”
Chittering laughter. “I can grow you a perfectly new one.”
Clay sat waiting for the punch-line, but Tiamax only watched him expectantly, so he decided to take the bait. “How?”
“The solution is complex, but the procedure is easy enough. You’ve been out of the game a while, Slowhand. We’ve come a long way since you and yours sheathed your swords. I can have the unguent ready within the hour if you’d like.”
Either the arachnian was being serious or he was hopelessly inept at pulling off a joke. “What’s this … unguent made of?”
Three pairs of segmented arms shrugged. “Quite a few herbs, actually, plus a bit of troll, a dash of starfish, and some people.”
“People?”
“People,” said Tiamax flatly.
“Is it magic?”
“It’s medicine. Also, there’s a pinch of orc to help the bones mature faster. Did you know an orc can grow more than two thousand teeth over the course of its lifetime?”
Clay hadn’t, but he was too aghast to say so at the moment. Eventually he tipped his head to indicate the medic’s broken mandible. “Why not use it on yourself?”
Tiamax made a clicking noise. “Doesn’t work on us hatchers, I’m afraid. Besides, I think this makes me look tough.”
Ashe, who was sharpening a blade on the couch across from Clay, scoffed quietly.
“How long will it take?” Clay asked skeptically.
“Several hours,” said Tiamax. “I’ll give you something to help you sleep. The regenerative process can be somewhat painful, I’m told. Also it’s quite unsettling to watch, as you can imagine.
Clay sighed. He had little to lose in trying, he supposed, and if this miracle unguent spared him from explaining to Ginny why he’d left the house with two hands and come home with only one, then it was worth a shot, no question.
“Then again,” Tiamax mused, “‘Nohand’ has a certain ring to it.”
Barret, on lookout from the opposite rail, was the first to spot them. “There! Edwick, bring us down.”
“Down we go,” shouted the bard, his hands moving lightly over the steering orbs.
The airborne dhow swooped low over rugged foothills, and as it swerved to land Clay caught sight of his bandmates. Gabe and Ganelon stopped to watch, but Moog hiked up his robes and ran at a sprint to meet the craft as it touched down. The owlbear cubs loped behind him, nipping at one another in an effort to be nearest the wizard’s heel.
Matrick loosed a whoop and leapt past Clay. He and Moog came together in a tangle of wild laughter and a great deal of jumping.