Page 14 of Practical Boots

Davos smiled. His teeth were broad and flat and thicker, she thought, than human teeth, although they were arranged in a human-enough approximation that no one looked more than twice. "You didn't," he agreed. "But now you have a friend whose life depends on it, and so you're going to."

Rick whispered, "I'm sorry, Cat," but she shrugged and glanced down at him again.

"Wouldn't have given you the watch if I wasn't prepared to deal with what happened when you used it, mate." She'd never tried forging a cure-all from the Waste and didn't know if it was possible. Didn't want to think about the ethical implications if it was, either; there was a whole World out there that deserved it, if she could make one. But she was going to have to figure out something to keep people like Davos—people who'd realized there were two or three humans she was willing to go out on a limb for, and had no qualms about using them against her—from ever doing something like this again.

That was for later, though. For now, she said, "Tell me what you know about Savos's disappearance," and watched Davos's smile widen into something bordering on dangerous. Not just smug, definitely not relieved, but a cold kind of self-satisfaction that said he thought he now had Cat over a barrel, and that he'd be able to use her like this whenever he desired.

She was already looking forward to proving him very, very wrong, but he didn't need to know that, and neither did anybody else.

"She went back through the Waste ten days ago," Davos said.

"Why?"

His eyes narrowed. "Reasons. She's never gone more than a day, when she goes. I've been looking for you for a week."

"It's not easy to keep time lined up when you travel to the Torn, Dav. You know that. She's probably on her way back already."

"Not according to what a little bird told me. Somebody's been watching the Waste real close. Trying to catch travelers. And somebody else has been watching the watchers."

Rick muttered, "Look, if Dr. Manhattan shows up I'm outta here," and Davos reached through the bars, grabbed Rick's shirt, and yanked him forward to bash his face against the bars.

Cat grabbed Davos's wrist andstepped.

* * *

Davos looked different in the Waste: smaller, reedier, as if he drew sustenance from the World and with it, size. He was too dark to go pale, but shock dropped his jaw and, while he was off guard, Cat twisted her grip on his wrist and bent him where she wanted him to go. Rick went with him—Rick, who had been in Davos's grasp when Catstepped, and for whom Cat could not now spare a glance—Rick went with him, fell, and was released to lie gaping on the indefinable floor of the Waste. Mouth by Davos's ear, Cat said, "In a minute I'm gonna go do your bullshit errand and fetch your sister, but right now you're going to give Rick the antidote, and don't even try to tell me you don't have it on you."

"I don't—"

Cat twisted harder, and while he shrieked, drew a knife from her boot with her free hand. She laid the cold iron blade against his throat, smiled, and murmured, "Don't play with me, Davos. You feel it already, don't you? I can make it burn a long, long time before you even start to die, and that's not even taking into account the wither of the Waste. I could stay here forever, if I had to, but you can't. You need a world, whether it'stheWorld, or the Torn. Don't imagine I don't know that it's your sister who travels back and forth, not you. You lack the stuff to survive here. So you can save Rick now, or be a long time dying."

Davos's snarls turned to gasped whimpers of pain, between which words slid out. "You'll poison the antidote if you don't get that iron off me."

"You have less than a minute to make me believe that." Cat moved the blade away and Davos turned his head, green eyes full of loathing, to glare at her.

"There's a knife in my belt. I need to get it."

"Rick," Cat said, "get the knife from his belt."

Rick stuttered an agreement and crawled to his feet like a man who didn't believe the surface he moved across would hold him. Which was fair enough: the Waste could easily not, although with Cat nearby it was more likely to remain stable than it might have otherwise been. The worst of it, Cat knew, was that there was no visible difference between what they stood on and everything else. It didn't lend a sense of security to motion, although she'd always been confident of her ability to move through and across it.

But she was half of the Torn, and Rick was all of the World. He fumbled the blade from Davos's belt and held it out to Cat like he was afraid it would bite. She felt Davos's muscles tense and moved her iron knife closer to his eye. "I wouldn't."

His lip curled, but he relaxed again. Cat nodded toward Rick. "Cut him."

"What?" Rick's voice skirled and Cat gave him a tight smile.

"If holding the cold iron against him means poisoning the antidote, then his blood is the antidote. Cut him, and drin—"

"I don't wanna turn into avampire, Cat!"

"He's not a vampire," Cat said. "He's closer to a tree. Cut him. I don't have enough hands to do it myself, Rick."

Davos swore, extending his hand. "I'll do it. Give me the kni—"

Rick stuck the blade into Davos's palm, screamed, and fainted.

For a couple of seconds both the Torn-born stared at his pale, unconscious form. Then Cat, unforgivably, began to giggle. Davos struggled with his own expression, caught between multiple pain points and his helplessly giggling captor, and finally gave a snort that sounded like an agonizing attempt at snuffing out laughter. Rick's eyes rolled open and he lay there looking emotionally wounded at their laughter, which only made Cat laugh harder.

---