Page 7 of To Clutch a Razor
But Niko isn’t here to threaten anyone. He was summoned, so he came, even knowing how…displeasedLidia and the others must be. Just a few weeks ago, he foiled their attempts to steal the mythical fern flower from Dymitr and Ala, and Lidia hates when people interfere with her plans.
They’re beneath the boxing arena, in the building that’s a factory by day, its supranormal elements cloaked by magic. Specifically, they’re in the bar where Niko pulled off Dymitr’s fingernail to use it to aid their escape. The low red lamps are dim enough that he can’t quite see his cousins’ expressions, but he can guess they’re full of malice.
“I want to apologize,” he says to Lidia, even though he doesn’t.
“Whatever for?” she says.
She’s small and waiflike, Lidia Kostka, with that kind of pale skin that’s borderline translucent. Like a woman—no, agirl,really—from an impressionist painting. Her dress is from another time, a white, fringed shift that makes her almost glow in the dark. She’s far older than she looks, and far older than he is. He needs to be careful of her.
But he’s not defenseless. The zemsta oath—the oath he took to seek vengeance against the Knights of the Holy Order—has its advantages. Chief among them: he’s always capable of substantial magic, thanks to the sacrifices he’s made for his people. He won’t be quick to provoke the Kostkas again, but Lidia won’t be quick to provokehim,either.
“I owed Aleksja Dryja a debt. She helped a friend of mine,” Niko says. “That’s why I prevented you from taking the fern flower. I didn’t enjoy it, but it had to be done.”
“That didn’t sound like an apology to me,” Lidia says. She looks over her shoulder at the Kostka cousin closest to her, a tall woman with a perpetual grin who’s perched on the edge of the sofa, her arm draped over the back. “Did it sound like an apology to you, Iga?”
“More like an excuse,” Iga replies. “Spoken in an unrepentant tone, no less.”
“It was anexplanation,” Niko says. “I haven’t gotten to the apology yet.”
“An explanation for why you chose a zmora and a mortal over your own family?” Lidia’s voice is smooth and pleasant. “I’m afraid that if a simple debt is your explanation, your apology is bound to be insufficient.”
“Then maybe you can just tell me how I can make amends. I’m eager to make it up to you.”
“As it happens, that’s why I’ve summoned you here, my dear boy,” she says. “I have a special target in mind for you.”
His job, as zemsta, is to hunt down members of the Holy Order on behalf of his people—and on behalf of all not-so-human people, really, since they’ve all been wronged by Knights at one point or another. He takes specific requests from anyone with a sincere desire for vengeance. They tell him who they lost and how, and they give him all the details they have about the Knight who took their loved one from them. Then he finds them and eliminates them.
This is not a request. This is a demand.
“Oh?” he says. “Which Knight has particularly offended you?”
Lidia smiles, enough to show off yellowing teeth. Though Niko’s own smile stays plastered on his face, fear spikes in his chest. If Lidia is smiling, this is going to be bad.
“I think it’s time someone does something about Brzytwa,” she says.
Verybad.
“You want me to hunt the Razor,” he says.
Not all Knights get a nickname. Only if they’re particularly prolific, cruel, or long-lived. The Razor is all three, a monster among monsters, one of the most ferocious Knights alive. At the mention of the name, the entire room goes still, like they’ve spotted a predator and are contemplating taking flight.
“Yes,” Lidia says. “Does that trouble you? I have the utmost confidence in your abilities, Niko. You haven’t failed us yet.”
If I had, I’d be dead,he thinks. You don’t justfailto kill a Knight—you die trying. That’s the way every zemsta before him has gone: bloody and sudden.
If Lidia has decided his next target is the Razor, it’s because she wants him dead.
“Trouble me?” he says, and he forces an even broader smile. “Of course not.”
The gangway between Ala’s apartment building and its neighbor is so narrow the brick walls scrape Niko’s shoulders as he walks. Dymitr’s guitar case bumps against his back. He nudges the gate open and steps around the herb garden to the back stairs.
As he climbs, he sends Dymitr a text message.Out back. Come get your bow.
At first, after Dymitr’s transformation, Niko came by every day. Though they were little better than strangers, they’d all gone through something intense together, toldeach other things they hadn’t told anyone, and it didn’t feel right to just return to his normal life after that. But eventually, once Dymitr was set up with a burner phone and a little stack of clothes fresh from the nearest resale shop—the T-shirt with three wolves and a moon on it was Niko’s favorite, though it smelled musty even to his average strzygon nose—Niko had to admit there was no reason for him to hang around quite so much anymore. He lives across the city, after all.
But he’s leaving tomorrow, so he wants to see Dymitr before he goes. Just in case. Danger is an inevitability for a zemsta, oath-bound to hunt the Holy Order in pursuit of vengeance. And this mission in particular…
Well.
