Vile

by Keith Crawford

  She gave the gate another pull and it fell forward off its hinge.

  “If we make it through the night,” Nathaniel said.

  Day 5

  22 Ventros 1682

  To return to the Capital in time, Elianor must complete her mission and leave Shadowgate in one day.

  Chapter 55

  First, there was the pain in Arbalest’s arm. It spread, a flood, a tsunami, subsuming everything else. Then it vanished, as quickly as it came, in a song of strychnine and sourness. He kept his eyes closed, sucked in air, and held it in his lungs. He knew what was coming. She had done this to him before.

  The surge came hard. Arms, legs, fingers, toes, it shocked his spine and blasted every part of him. His eyes shot open, the aqueous pushing against the irises. The west-facing window glowed with soft-dawn sunlight but felt as violent as a thunderbolt to his overexposed retina. He was in his room. He was in his bed. His spine arched and sweat dripped from his back to his nightshirt to the sheets below. This pain will end. All pain must end.

  He swung his legs from the bed. It always took him a moment to recognise them. My legs. An old man’s legs. Fine white hair did nothing to hide old scars and wrinkled skin. The blood palpably moved within him. There were tight bandages wrapped around his chest. By now the gunshot wound would be gone. He put his hand to his biceps. There was a small cloth wrap in place. A spot of blood stained the linen.

  “What did you do?” he said, by way of showing her he knew what she had done. He could see the bottle, half empty, the last of the thick black liquid in the bottom.

  Lena sat by the bed, the hypodermic needle and rubber strip still in her hand. She counted, silently, as if in prayer. Her shawl was wrapped tight around her shoulders and the cloth of her dress pressed close around her thin arms. He knew every curve of those arms. He rose from the bed.

  “I want you,” he said.

  He kissed her on the mouth. She stared at him, her eyes did not widen; she did not stand and did not part her lips. The needle and tube pressed into his belly.

  He let go of her arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s the blood,” she said. “Breathe through it.”

  He wanted to tell her: it’s not the blood, it’s you. I always want you like this. She reached up and patted him on the head. He couldn’t balance the feelings inside him. His body felt as though he could leap through the window, crash back through the door, grab her back into his arms, and make her want him. But the awful weight in his chest was not carried by his body, and the illusion of strength could not overcome the reality of his feelings. Lena looked at him the same way she looked at a piece of meat in the kitchen.

  “You’ve never really believed, have you?” he said. “Believed I am a Vile.”

  She tidied the rubber tube and the syringe into the wooden box. His shoulders heaved as he tried to slow his breathing, slow his heart. He touched the place in his chest where the bullet had taken him. Another scar. Something had happened, then. Something had forced her to wake him.

  “The blood you’ve given me. That much blood will kill me.”

  “You’re not that easy to kill, old man,” she said, but there was a shadow under her eyes. Was that a tear? Sentiment? Impossible.

  “Something has changed.”

  “Anton rebelled,” she said. “He’s captured the town; he has most of the miners and townsfolk along with a small force of mercenaries. They had a stockpile of firearms; goodness knows from where.”

  “If he has firearms, then he made them himself. Who else would he trust?”

  Arbalest remembered a room not so different from this one, higher in the mountains where the light streamed in through the open window and the confused, tiny baby Anton grasped his father’s finger and looked everywhere with wide-open eyes. His wife lay on the bed watching him watch his son. Her face was pale and drawn, her condition worsening. Throughout the pregnancy, she had dutifully taken the medicine in tiny, diluted doses from Lena’s long needle. And still did not understand why she was dying. Bright blue eyes and tiny little fingers.

  “Was it Anton who had me shot?”

  “Anton wouldn’t hire someone to kill his own father.”

  “Paternal respect? Human decency?”

  “He wants to do it himself.”

  Arbalest kicked round with his foot until he found his breeches and pulled them on. His armour would be in the audience chamber.

  “He’s coming here with his little army?”

  “You should talk to Rees.”

  Arbalest stopped. “Anton isn’t the reason you woke me.”

  “Nathaniel has gone to the monastery. He took the Magistrate with him.”

  “You let him go?”

  “What makes you think he’d listen if I told him not to?”

  Arbalest stopped buttoning his breeches.

  “You were right, Lena. He’s unstable.”

  She put her hand on his arm.

  “I’m sorry. Maybe next time.”

  Now he took her in his arms. She rested her head on his chest. He raised his hand to touch her hair, but stopped, powerless, unable to penetrate the barrier of the past.

  “Kindred are in the mountains,” he said. “We fight with what we have.”

  Lena hissed and pulled away.

  “You can’t possibly mean to let Anton kill you!”

  “You said I should give him a chance. This is his chance. Where is Persephone?”

  “I don’t know. Rees thinks Anton killed her.”

  “Fair enough. You put Rees in charge of the guard?”

  “He got back before sunup. He says most of the town is on fire. I’ll send him to you.”

  “Tell him to meet me on the walls, then bring me my sword. I want to see for myself.”

  He put his hand on the door. She called after him.

  “I don’t care who your father was. You earned the name. You are Vile.”

  He wanted to believe she said this with a tear in her eye, but there was too much time between them, and he didn’t look back to see.

  Chapter 56

  Anton stood musing in the town church. He took the hot tin mug and raised the steam up to his face. It took him a moment to recognise the smell, remember buying it from silk-robed foreigners in the street markets of Lutense. As soon as he did, he smiled at Lieutenant Massen. Coffee. When was the last time he had drunk coffee?

  Massen and his Dragon Helms had been waiting at the mines when Anton arrived with the cart. Their Captain had refused to come himself, calling it a fool’s errand, but Massen’s sense of shame and desire for revenge had convinced a good number of fighters to join him for the job. Good, Anton had said. I have plenty of weapons ready. Massen had grinned like a child on his birthday. Anton had been much the same age when he’d gone to fight for the Republic against the North. Had he looked so young to his officers? To the men he led? The men he had killed?

  Earlier that day, after he’d dealt with Persephone, they’d met back up in town. There wasn’t much fighting. He’d arranged the miners in a line from the well to the church, passing buckets to put out the pitiful fire that had cleared out the interior but never really threatened the walls.

  “Why did Tannyr want to burn the church?” Anton had mused out loud.

  “Beats me,” Massen said. “There are holdouts in the Post Office. They don’t have firearms. But the building is on fire and we can’t put it out without going in to get them.”

  “Is Tannyr there?”

  Massen shrugged. To Islanders like the Lieutenant, Mainlanders all looked pretty much the same.

  “I think one of his sons is.”

  “Dale is the only son he has left,” Anton said. He thought for a moment. “The building’s free standing. Let it burn, then snag them as they come out the back door.”

  And that was the end of the battle, done and dusted before sunset left the night sky to the glow of the ashes and the cold regard of the stars
. Anton gathered everyone at the church. He debriefed the mercenaries, sent Olwen, Zach, and Haf back to Nana Haf’s, and told them to get as much sleep as possible. But the only one who slept was Gwyion, and this because Haf had filled him with enough laudanum to fell a horse. They had found the patriarch of the Garn family abandoned in the back of a cart, so much of his blood soaked into the straw they thought he was dead. It seemed wiser not to drag him back up the hill, so they had wheeled the cart into the church and done their best to patch him up there. If he didn’t move too much, he might even live.

  Anton raised the mug of coffee to his lips and took a sip. Coffee had been expensive in the capital. Maybe the end of the war had lowered the price. Maybe Lieutenant Massen had brought coffee beans with him from his homeland. Maybe the world had changed since Anton had locked himself up here in Shadowgate. He edged away from the fireplace, picked up his blanket, and stepped out through the door of the church into the pink light of the early dawn.

  “You look how I feel,” Gwyion said.

  Anton dropped his mug. Coffee splashed his leg. Gwyion was leaning over a gravestone, wiping a trail of vomit from his chin. Although laudanum could be injected, it was usually drunk straight—like whiskey but without the benefits of a civilised delay before the hangover. Gwyion tried to keep talking but doubled over and heaved again.

  “As long as I don’t have to feel how you look,” Anton said, while Gwyion caught his breath. “Need a hand to sit down?”

  “I don’t think I’m done throwing up.”

  He wasn’t. It was hard to keep Gwyion steady without compressing his broken arm or ribs, and his leg looked like it was only being held on by the splint. The puke splashed in a growing puddle behind the gravestone.

  “I can’t believe Persephone threw me out of a window,” Gwyion eventually managed to say. “You know she killed Edern? Didn’t even let him explain.”

  “Yes, I know.” Anton picked his mug back up. It hurt to bend. His swollen lip stung as he sipped the surviving dreg of coffee. “She’s always been a bad loser.”

  He didn’t want to think about Persephone. He had thought he would feel better, finally telling her how he felt, after all these years ashamed, after all these years reliving lying paralysed in the bed as she put her hands under the sheet and did as she pleased with him. But when he’d told her, she’d looked at him as though he was an idiot. As if he was making a big deal out of nothing. None of this was how revenge was supposed to feel. It felt like laudanum.

  “You’re still alive,” Gwyion said. “I guess that means you talked her out of killing you?”

  “Something like that. I’ve got her locked up in the town gaol.”

  Gwyion laughed, then coughed, then threw up again.

  “How much of that are you planning to do?” Anton said.

  “Enough to get all the bloody laudanum out of my system. Horrible stuff. Better to hurt.”

  Anton took the blanket from his shoulders and wrapped it around Gwyion.

  “If you feel strong enough, you should go home. Someone has to manage things from there.”

  “You can trust Haf to do that.”

  “Can I?”

  It was horrible watching Gwyion try to lie. Anton held up his hand before Gwyion could start.

  “At least tell me how Uwen got the Magistrate’s rifle. How did he end up dead on the battlements?”

  Gwyion shook his head but didn’t answer.

  “What did Haf do?” Anton said.

  “Does it matter anymore?”

  The light from inside the church made the outside cold and uninviting, but the stars opened the heavens above them. Despite his disappointment with revenge, Anton felt lighter than he had done in years.

  “I suppose not,” he said. “I asked around among the prisoners. Apparently, the Magistrate and my brother have gone up the mountain to get help from the monks.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Perhaps Arbalest is dying after all. Either way, it gives us a window.”

  “What about Tannyr?”

  “If we’re lucky, he got caught in one of his own fires.” Anton helped Gwyion to his feet and led him to the church door. “More likely, he’s hiding back at his farm. It doesn’t matter. He’s beaten. Forget Tannyr.”

  Chapter 57

  Tannyr Brek was drunk in the farmhouse kitchen. His finger chased spilt ale along the grooves in the table, the same grooves in which he had chased Dale’s blood such a short time ago. Imbedded in the wood was the handwriting of the countless children who had passed through the ministrations of the Brek women. There was Uwen’s. There, Dale’s. There, his own, he thought, laced through and over by the children that came after. All those children were gone now. Uwen killed at the castle. Dale captured by the mercenaries. Even silly little Eira had got lost in the flight from town, from the flame and the ruin and the failure.

  Tannyr’s finger wandered off the table. He watched the digit sway back and forth. The survivors of the battle had returned here to sleep and mourn and weep among the moans of the injured and the mutters of the bereaved. Now the sun rose on the new regime, where Gwyion Garn would rule from his brothel and Anton Vile from the castle. What was left for Tannyr Brek?

  “Is it over?” he muttered at the finger. “Are we done?”

  “No,” Ifanna said.

  He span, but the room span longer, and he almost fell. How long had she sat there in her rocking chair? How long had she stared over her round cheeks with those beady little eyes?

  “I didn’t ask you,” he snarled. He put both his hands around the kitchen sink in the hope it would stop the spinning. There were strands of sliced cabbage gathered around the sinkhole. “Persephone Vile. It’s her fault. She abandoned us, and her damned brother tricked us, and now everyone is dead. Our children our dead, Ifanna. It’s over.”

  Ifanna got up on a forward rock of the rocking chair and squinted at him through bristly eyelashes.

  “It is not over. We are not done.”

  “What do you know?” He growled.

  “Eira isn’t dead,” she said.

  He meant to sit on the chair, but missed, and somehow ended up on the arm rest.

  “She’s hurt, but she made it back,” Ifanna said as she advanced on him. “The Dragon Helm Lieutenant is sentimental when it comes to sparing women.”

  “And Dale? Was she with Dale?”

  “Eira doesn’t know what happened after they took him at the Mayor’s office. But she says Anton is taking his army to the castle.”

  “So what?”

  “He wants a showdown with his father. He’s not looking where it’s important.”

  Tannyr had never heard her talk like this. When he sat their heads were on the same level. She leaned in until her nose almost touched his. Had he ever seen her blink? Look down, look away, cover her face after he’d hit her, yes. But blink?

  “Who is protecting Gwyion’s home?” She said. “Who is protecting the mine?”

  The mines. The source of the Garn’s wealth, their advantage, the tipping point that had brought the outsiders and the invaders and changed the town and taken his children away from him. And the brothel. And Haf. The light of his anger reflected like a spark in her beady dark eyes, and he was torn between the temptation to push her away or to leap up from his chair.

  “This time, you burn until there’s nothing left. Take everything he has.”

  Abruptly she pulled back; lifted from the waist like a curtain drawn back from the stage at a theatre, like a master of ceremonies ceding the space to the star. Tannyr stood. The spinning didn’t seem so bad.

  “Yes,” he said. “Burn everything he has.”

  Chapter 58

  The stable shuddered with each gust of wind, the straw provided more filth than insulation, and her blanket was pitifully thin. Elianor gave up trying to sleep and pulled herself up to her feet. Faint shafts of light peered between the gaps in the stable roof. When she pushed open the door, a shower o
f ice shards fell from the roof, hissing like the spray from a broken tap.

  It was the morning after their battle with the Kindred. They had spent the night at the Waystation, the last manned post before Demon’s Pass. There were still stars in the sky and the first fingers of dawn were washing the darkness into dirt and abandonment. A stockade enclosed the station. The barricade was thin, and the gate was broken. A piece of frayed rope flapped uselessly where it had been tied to a wooden post and left to rot, a thin layer of frost turning its weave white. Captain Persephone claimed her guards kept regular watch here, but the barracks, where patrolling guards supposedly spent nights, had collapsed on one side and were filled with snow. From up above in the watchtower, Elianor could hear Nathaniel murmuring to himself. She climbed hand over hand up the ladder.

  The watchtower dwarfed the rest of the compound. It was a freestanding structure, a wooden pavilion elevated four metres up into the air on four long wooden poles. The ladder oscillated in the wind. The tower granted a view all the way down the mountain to Shadowgate Castle, and up the mountain towards Demon’s Pass. She didn’t look. She was moving too fast to feel vertigo. The ladder ended in a gap in the low wooden wall that separated the pavilion from a long fall. Nathaniel had taken shelter there.

  “Are you there, Mother?” he whispered to the West. “Can you hear me?”

  Elianor wrapped herself in her blanket and sat as far away from him as possible. From her satchel, she took out the Magistry report, the one Genevieve had given her, and pretended to read.

  “What is that?” Nathaniel said.

  She didn’t lower the documents, although she hadn’t read a word.

  “The Magistry report on your father, from after the revolution.”

  “Which revolution?” Nathaniel asked.

  “The Glorious Revolution. The report was written in 1661.”

  “May I see?”

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. You show me yours first.”