Experienced with war, are you?
“I’ve played all the war-games, tested my strategies—”
With toy soldiers. Nacht gave him a pitying look. Look around you. See any toy soldiers here? Your toys don’t shite and piss and bleed and scream when they’re wounded. They don’t miss their families. They aren’t worried that, if this little war isn’t over fast enough, they won’t make it back to Selbsthass in time for the harvest.
“Nice speech,” said Morgen. “War is like anything else. I can improve upon it.”
Going to make the perfect war, are you?
Morgen couldn’t help but feel he missed something in that strange question. “I war in cause of perfection. If I—”
Have to get your hands dirty along the way, then so be it?
That was not what he was about to say. “So be it,” he agreed.
There’s a Mirrorist blocking me, said Nacht. She’s very powerful.
“I don’t care. I don’t need you and I certainly don’t trust you.”
I still see glimpses of possible futures.
“Go away.”
King Dieb Schmutzig knows you’re coming. Unbrauchbar is now a walled city.
“Walls won’t stop my Geisteskranken.”
True, agreed Nacht with a toothy grin. It will get…interesting in Unbrauchbar. Educational. But you won’t make it to Gottlos.
“Nothing can stop me.”
One thing can.
Morgen eyed his Reflection. “And that is?”
You.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
If there is a golden centre to the city-states, it’s Geldangelegenheiten. If there is a shite-stained cancerous underbelly, it’s also Geldangelegenheiten.
—Anonymous
Zukunft nudged Bedeckt with a toe and he stared up at her from the tavern floor. Did she look even better from down here? Certainly this angle did interesting things to her breasts. Her nipples, erect from the cold, looked like they were trying to escape the damp shirt.
She raised an eyebrow, noting the objects of his attention. “You’re bleeding.”
Bedeckt did his best to look somewhere else but his eyes betrayed him. “I need a doctor. Someone with battlefield experience.”
“In this town? I doubt it.”
How could she be so damned calm?
Bedeckt moved his hand, exposing the wound.
Zukunft paled. “Shite,” she said, eyes widening.
Exactly what I wanted to hear. Gods, he was so thirsty. “Get me ale,” he said from the floor. Sitting up to drink seemed like too much effort and he figured he’d upend the flagon over his open mouth. With some luck most of it would wind up in his belly. Hopefully it wouldn’t all leak out the hole in his side.
“Wait here.”
He watched as she dashed to the bar, searched behind it, and returned with several crusty rags stinking of stale beer, and a bottle of something cloudy and foul smelling.
“I don’t think—”
She pressed the rags into the wound, soaking them in blood. “Hold these in place,” she said.
Bedeckt did as commanded, trying not to think about how filthy the rags were. What were they last used to mop up? Puke, probably.
Again Zukunft stood and Bedeckt envied how quiet her knees were. Not to mention the shapely curves of her calf muscles. Stupid old man. This time she went outside, leaving him alone with the corpses. Going to be one soon. She returned in moments, kicking the door open and leading her horse into the room. What the hells is the horse going to do?
Throwing the saddlebag opened, she searched through it, cursing, and scattering her few possessions about the floor. Finally, she drew out the mirror, and stood staring into its surface.
“You lied,” she said to the mirror, eyes widening in fear and understanding. “You have to save him.”
“Stop it,” said Bedeckt. “You’re a shite Mirrorist. Your visions of the future—”
“Shut up,” she said, without glancing in his direction. “I have to see.”
Nodding to whatever she saw in there, she placed the mirror atop a table, using a mug to prop it up. After once again searching the saddlebag, she drew forth a set of needles and twined thread.
“No no no,” said Bedeckt when she turned to face him.
“I can do this,” she said.
“No.”
“It’ll work.”
“Just like saving that boy—”
“Shut up.”
Zukunft bent at his side, her hair falling across his face and tickling his nose.
“You smell like a wet dog,” he said.
“Don’t distract me.”
“That’s the wrong kind of thread.”
“It’ll work.”
Something deep within was damaged. This wasn’t a simple surface wound. “I’ve sewn myself closed enough times to know—”
“Shut up.”
Biting her bottom lip, she pulled his hand away from his side, examining the wound. He felt exposed, open. Cold.
“Rings of your chain armour are driven into the wound,” she said. She set about digging them out with her fingers, dropping them, one at a time with a dull plunk, on the floor at Bedeckt’s side.
“Get them all,” he said through gritted teeth.