Bone Gods

go somewhere, preferably in one piece. Things were looking positively sunny. Pete shook her head to Abbot’s request. “I don’t think so. You’ve got something to tell me, you can do it now or not at all, because I’ve had my quota of shadowy errands for the day.”
    Abbot sneered. “I wasn’t offering you a choice, miss.” He pulled aside his coat to showcase a truly impressive knife sheathed on his belt. Abbot made his point by pulling it an inch out of its leather casing, the pure liquid gleam of the silver blade catching the low light. Pete had seen knives like that before—silver over a cold iron core, repellent to Fae and to most other things roaming the Black that would require a stab in the first place. Jack’s old flick knife had been similar, if a fuck of a lot subtler.
    She called up Jack’s face in response to Abbot’s show, in her mind’s eye, his sneer and his screen of contempt that let the rest of the world bounce off. Hoping her expression at least managed to be unimpressed, she shrugged. “I guess you don’t care if everyone and their mum knows you’re compensating, then?”
    Abbot pulled the full length of the blade. It was wickedly sharp, curved at the end to more effectively hook on to flesh and organs, and wrought all over with thread-fine engraving that danced and swirled under Pete’s gaze before settling.
    Whoever they were, the Git Brothers knew their way around spellcraft, and that negated all the positives Pete could find to her situation. Nobody was going to stop Abbot from using her as a replacement sheath for his great pigsticker, if he took the notion into his head. Nobody but her.
    “Look,” she said, trying one last time to do as Jack would have done and talk her way free. “I’m sure you’ve got me wrong. I don’t have anything you want, and if I do, I’m sure we can work it so no one ends up in hospital.”
    “Oh no, Miss Caldecott,” said Dreisden, as Abbot advanced, waving the knife like he was a small boy who’d just discovered his own penis, “we know exactly who you are, Weir. Whore of the crow-mage.”
    Fuck. They did know who she was. And didn’t seem very happy about it.
    “As to your condition, orders are to deliver you alive,” piped up Abbot. “Beyond that, we have no further instructions.”
    So much for silver tongues. Pete managed half a heartbeat before Abbot lunged at her. He grabbed the front of her blouse and shoved her against the wall of the pub. Pete felt buttons give way.
    “There you are. There’s a good girl.” The knife stroked the side of her cheek, perilously close to her ear. “Don’t scream,” Abbot hissed. “Be sweet to me and I’ll be sweet to you.”
    He trailed off when Pete grabbed the hand holding her shirt and bent it backward, applying pressure to the wrist and the heel of the hand with her thumb and forefingers. She’d found the threat of a broken wrist at least made men, no matter how large, drunk, or enraged, reconsider whatever they were holding on to. Winning a fight wasn’t about being big. It was about being mean, and Pete had no doubt that when it came to her bad day versus the Git Brothers, she cornered the market on meanness.
    Abbot let go of her as Pete forced him loose. For good measure and perhaps a bit, she admitted, from spite, she put a knee into his bollocks. Abbot collapsed, and Pete kicked his knife out of reach before she turned on Dreisden. He was faster and less interested in her tits, and silver and iron appeared in his hand without missing a step. This time it was a straight razor with an ebony handle, more of the liquid spellcraft wrought into it. Dreisden clearly knew this dance, and he came in with a backhand slash that would have opened Pete from crotch to neck if she’d been any slower.
    She was small, had always been the smallest in any given class or training during her Met days, and she used her size to duck inside Dreisden’s reach, safe from the razor, pushing her arm into his elbow joint to break his stance and throw him off balance. Pete hit Dreisden one sharp, short punch just under his sternum with her other hand, angling her fist up, and he let out a wheeze like she’d stepped on him.
    She jabbed him once more in the hollow of his throat, and that was that. Dreisden fell to his knees, dropping the razor to attend to the pressing matter of not breathing. He looked up at Pete with bulging, accusing eyes as his mouth flapped like a trout’s.
    “Oh, calm down,”