The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Today's Headless Over Heels opened with a promise.

A bonus chapter for you all today because holy fuck we are #1 on best ongoing.

Caught ourselves a fox.

Seth hung by his wrists from the barn’s central beam. He’d stopped trying to shift his shoulders into some way that didn’t hurt. It all hurt.

The murani woman hadn’t come in with the rest of them. She’d rode off into the dark, probably to retrieve her stiletto from the smoldering roadhouse.

It had kept coming back to him. No matter where he’d left it. He’d thought it was some wonderful enchantment, and it was. But as his captors were so smugly eager to tell him, the wonder hadn’t been for him.

“Followed you the whole time,” said the biggest of them, a guy with a Sektoric mustache and height and brawn rivalling Annalise. “Had a twin blade, y’see. Pointing us right to you.”

“It’s a real object lesson, isn’t it,” mused the man who’d kicked the air out of him. He was familiar, too, though Seth was sure they hadn’t met. One of those faces, perhaps. “The cutpurse who gets a little too good a little too quick, and loops back ‘round to a gutterflied corpse.”

“I’m Seth, by the way,” Seth said.

“I know,” the man said.

“You got me at—” Seth spat blood onto the floor. “A bit of a disadvantage, then.”

“We do indeed, Seth.”

“It’d feel good to tell me, though, huh,” Seth said. “So I can know who got me. Right?”

“See, I thought it might feel good to punch you in the stomach again,” the man said. “Let’s try both, shall we?”

“Y—” Seth began, and then a fist buried itself in his gut, and another, and he rolled his head back and gasped for air.

A voice filtered to him through the pale haze of pain. “I’m August il Agante. And you’re my newest little project.”

“Ahhh,” Seth mumbled. “Okay. Yeah.”

“You really thought you could just fucking kill a patre of the Syndicate and gallop off into the sunset, il Guiterre?”

“Well,” Seth said. “I managed a couple sunsets, at least.”

“My uncle mentioned you were a wiseass,” August said. “He liked you. He did. But he said your problem is you talk too much.”

“He mentioned me?” Seth grinned a drippy red grin and blinked until the two swimming Augusts in front of him became one again. “Weird. He never mentioned you.”

Another punch. Another. A third. If they thought these were going to shut him up, they hadn’t met him. He’d faced down seraphs.

“Enjoy it,” he wheezed. “Enjoy me while you got me, August. She’ll find you. You’re fucked.”

“By she I presume you mean the new Central Plain Corridor Verdugo.” August il Agante accepted a cloth from one of his minions and wiped spat-up blood from his knuckles. “I understand you’re coming off a stint in her retinue.”

“I juh,” Seth said, and spat more blood up. “I just called her Annalise.”

“Made a friend, then?”

“A few.”

“And that, Seth, is why I won’t kill you quite yet.”

Seth was slowly turning like a trussed-up rotisserie chicken. The beam above him creaked. “Cause I’m friendly?”

“Get him facing me again,” August said, and rough hands stilled Seth and centered him. “I am going to keep you alive for a while,” he said, “while we come to terms with our new Verdugo. I appear to have something she wants. Something she wants very much, to hear the story from the other patrons.”

“Buncha bean-spillers,” Seth said, and August punched him in the face.

I’ve lost a tooth, he thought, as the darkness roosting at the edge of his vision receded again. He’s knocked my fucking tooth—wait, no. He’d already lost that. With Anna.

“Happily for me,” August said, “and for the memory of my uncle, alive is actually quite a wide net. You can be alive in all kinds of ways. And with all kinds of pieces missing.” He held out a hand, and a cleaver was placed into it. “And I think, Seth, to inaugurate the many weeks we will spend together, reducing you, we might send your big spooky girlfriend a greeting gift.”

Reflections off the torches in the corner of the barn studded the surface of the cleaver like stars. Its tip descended to rest between his eyes.

“Now normally you take a hand from a thief, but you happen to be hanging from them,” August said. “And for a guy like you, losing a hand is quite the depreciation in value. So we’ll save them for the first month or so, to give her some hope that there’ll be some Seth left in the thing we make out of you.”

The cleaver slid down the bridge of his nose.

August smiled big. Gold caps on sharp teeth. “I think it might be fun to start with the face, gents. What do we think?”

“I think,” Annalise said, “that if you’re looking for the nose of your uncle’s killer, mine’s hard to miss.”

She stood in the open door of the barn, her longcoat flowing in the autumn wind, her roadwarden hat dancing the shadow of its brim across her face.

“Evening, gents,” she said. “What’s the craic.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...147-august
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2473171/

Promises made, promises kept!

The Verdugo

Annalise lifted her face from her sodden and shadow-stained pillow, and took stock. She’d finally cried herself out for the morning, she reckoned. Finally, the well was dry and she could sit up and hydrate, for fuck’s sake, and get organized.

She’d send a runner round to the Corregidor’s, saying today was finally the day she’d get up and do her job and kill a few people. And while she waited for the scaffold to come up, she’d hurl Lisa’s skull against a wall until it broke. There’d be another fucking sorceress someday getting her head lopped off for some sorceress malarkey, and with any luck it’d be a warty crone with a hair lip and a gee drier than the Sarkani desert. And if she wouldn’t be able to disguise what she was anymore, maybe it was better that way.

She sat up and saw the bed on the other side of the room and remembered a night in a room like this with Seth il Gutierre, laughing with a hand full of cards and a heart full of hope.

You’ve probably been kinder to me than anyone else has, he’d said. Saints, isn’t that sad.

Through Lamenting

A broken croak of a sob shoved out of her, and she buried her face in her hands again. This beautiful, flighty little thing that had finally crept up to her welcoming hand, finally shed years of pain and betrayal, and what had she done to him? What had she done?

It’d have been one thing if Feeli and Sunshine had understood. If, when she’d gathered the family and with grim stoicism told them that Seth was gone, and it was better this way, for his own good, they’d nodded and said they understood. Maybe patted her on the back like aw well Annalise kudos to you for making the hard choice. But Tiago had let out this thunderous, annoyed sigh, and Ofelia had sorrowfully shaken her head, and when they’d asked why, all her reasons tripped over each other.

How bitterly had she fought against turning her kids? How insistent she’d been that her new life was to be lived alone. And how many times since had she felt that secret burning joy of kinship, despite her feigned regret? How often had she thanked every Saint that her son and daughter were alongside her? Without them she’d have turned into the exact kind of unfeeling blackheart they wrote all the cautionary Verdugo tales about.

Right. She was still crying, sure, but it was time to stand up and pick through the blown-up bits of her life until she found some new diminished piece big enough to float on. She dragged herself upright and fumbled into a snug pair of breeches, shimmying to fit them over her thunder thighs and her horsey hips and her stupid fat arse. He thinks you’re beautiful, a voice like Lisa said, and she knew she was ready to leave her room because that didn’t knock her back into bed.

She dragged herself across the hall and knocked on Tiago’s door. Then she knocked again, half a minute later. “Sunshine,” she said. “Hey. Shift yourself, boyo. Work day.”

A click and creak to the right. Ofelia poked her towel-bound head out of her room. “Good morning,” she said. “You really ought not to wear so much makeup if you’re going to cry all the time.”

“I can’t scrub my mascara every time I put on a new head,” Annalise said. “Not my fault my Darkness tarts me up.” She dabbed her eyes with the collar of her tunic. “Where’s himself in the next room?”

“Tiago? He’s gone.”

Annalise’s fist froze mid-knock. “Gone?”

“He took off last night.”

“Where?”

“I believe he’s gone after Mr. il Gutierre.”

Annalise raked her hands through her hair. “Fucking Saints. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I called it your way,” Ofelia said. “I suppose you were busy lamenting.”

“Fucking saints and fucking seraphs.” Annalise dashed back into her room, all slouchy sorrow forgotten, and re-emerged pulling on her longcoat. “Grounded,” she said. “Grounded for the rest of the fucking season. Bleeding barred. Both of yous.”

“Oh, no,” Ofelia said mildly. “No boys over, then?”

“None.” Annalise’s hands shook as she notched her sword belt tight. “Which way?”

“South along the corridor,” Ofelia said. “Tracking the thief. A very angry horse salesman pointed us the way.”

“You handle that?”

“Handled, yes. He demanded double.”

Annalise gave the wall a hearty kick.

“These are the things you miss when you lament,” Ofelia said.

“Aye, well.” Annalise thumped her roadwarden hat onto her head. “I’m through lamenting.”

She spent the day on horseback, pushing Demetrius as hard as she dared between trot, fast walk, and anxious, land-eating gallops. She kept her head low, walling off the stares beneath her heavy brim and her round sunglasses. Wide berths, always, to the pale goliath in black on the snorting warhorse, the wind whipping her coat out to display the sword and dagger at her waist. The traffic thinned from land-schooners and wagon trains to stragglers and lone riders as she passed Fontana’s perimeter.

The high sun beat down on the road and its rider. Demetrius’ ears folded upward—his sign of annoyance at the pace. But his breath was steady and even, and Annalise kept her lean forward. “I know, Meaty,” she murmured. “I know. But we’ve two idiot boys to find.”

The first idiot she found after sundown, riding the other way up the Fontana corridor. At first, the roadweary haze cloaked him from her; that’s a big horse, she thought dumbly. Looks just like Draco. But it was Draco, of course, and Tiago astride, his pale wave like a dove in the gathering dark.

Annalise pulled Demetrius into a grouchy standstill. “You’re grounded,” she barked.

“Sure,” Tiago said, cantering Draco alongside her. “I saw Seth.”

She tried to keep her frightened eagerness from standing her in her saddle. “And?”

“And he says if you want him, come and get him.” Tiago pointed behind him, down the road. “He’s at a roadhouse called the Sirloin. South on the central corridor till you’re past the old Tarry turnpike, then you go left at the marker for Tarrywood Ranch.”

“Don’t you go—”

“We need him, mom. He can do things we can’t, and he can cook, and he’s apt to get himself in trouble if we let him run off by himself.”

“Let me get a word in,” Annalise says. “You are a wee fucking weapon. You know that?”

“I know. Are you bringing him home?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Mom.” Tiago’s voice sharpened. “Don’t be fucking stupid.”

“You—” She sputtered. “You’re double-grounded.”

“You know where you’d be if it wasn’t for us?” Tiago tugged his eyelid. “If it wasn’t for unlighting us? You’d have self-hated your way into a seraph’s gullet years ago.”

“I wasn’t worth all this fuss,” she said. “Not from Seth and not from you. You and Feeli, you’re family, and you’re pigheaded besides, and I still regret—”

“You don’t,” Tiago snapped. “You don’t regret it. You know you should regret it and that makes you feel bad, but you’re glad, because you have people who love you, and you’re not alone, and you’d do it again. Admit it.”

Annalise’s tongue tied itself in a pretty bow.

“You think that your self-effacing stuff makes any of us feel good? It doesn’t. It’s for your benefit, because if you think you deserve misery, you don’t have to risk trying for anything better and getting hurt. Stop fucking treating the people who love you like they’re idiots for loving you.”

Annalise drooped in her saddle. “I’m sorry. I never meant—you’re right. I’ve been a silly old sod lately.”

“Please just let yourself adopt that mangy little weasel man,” Tiago said. “So that Ofelia and I can focus on something besides keeping you from hopping off a bridge. I promise we won’t haze him any worse than we already do. When you’re near him you’re happy. Like actually happy. You can’t fool us.”

“He’s not family,” she said. “I’ve known him a month. It’s mad, what he’s asking for.”

Tiago shook his head. “All the changes in this family have been sudden and catastrophic and dropped on top of us, and we keep surviving them. Maybe it’s time for a big step that you take, instead of letting the world step on you.”

“I’ll talk to him,” she said. “That’s all I can offer you. I’ll talk, at least, and we’ll…” She tightened her grip on her reins. “We’ll talk.”

“Fine. Talk.” He turned Draco’s massy head around. “I’ll head back to Fontana and if you come home without him, I’ll kick your ass.”

She scoffed. “Gobshite.”

“Love you.”

“Ah, fuck off.” She gave a firm flick to the reins and sent Demetrius into a grim-faced gallop. “Love you too.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...-lamenting
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2475168/