Vile

by Keith Crawford

  “I’m leaving,” Nathaniel said. “I’m going West to see what’s there. With my new eyes.”

  She had to get her eyes back. She had to get her strength back. But even as her vision returned, she could barely find her face with her hand. Nathaniel still hadn’t picked back up his sword. Instead, he stood, just a pace away, and reached out to her.

  “You could come with me.”

  “Better kill me now,” Elianor gasped. “Or that won’t be the only scar I give you.”

  And it was there, her mark, riding up his chin and into his cheek, red and livid. At least he had paid for his victory. She dragged air through her bleeding mouth and got ready to die.

  “If I come back,” Nathaniel said. “It will be for you.”

  He walked round her. She willed her arm to grab his ankle, but she had nothing left. He had stopped looking at her. He put his hand on the Black Dog’s cheek.

  “Thank you, Daniel, for everything you did to protect me.”

  The Black Dog whined. From Nathaniel, ‘thank you’ sounded like ‘get out of my way.’

  “I don’t need you anymore,” he continued. “You have to deal with our father.”

  It began to choke, trying to force its tongue into unnatural shapes, to push the air in its lungs through impossible patterns. But it couldn’t speak. It could only wine and cough.

  “Shhh,” Nathaniel said, reaching up to cup its ear. “It won’t happen. I’m stronger than you.”

  Nathaniel stepped past the fallen Elianor, the fallen Seren, looking briefly at the door through which the first Nathaniel had fled. Then he turned the other way. The Kindred left as silently as they had arrived.

  Elianor closed her eyes. A great weight pressed against her skull. Impossible to know how badly she was hurt. Maybe she was crippled. Maybe she had stood for the last time. The cold of the snow numbed the pain. Was it better to die here? Better to die having done all that was possible, than to go back and face Vile, go back and face Carada, go back and face her father knowing what he had done?

  No.

  Something wet touched her lips. The liquid burned, no, not the liquid, the places on her face and lips where the skin was broken, past which the fire flowed. She gagged, then drank, then swallowed.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  Nathaniel had come back. He had his bleeding, broken hand to her mouth. She had swallowed his blood.

  “That’s enough, I think,” he said. “Tell your master my incursion was youthful folly. Ask her to forgive. I may not agree with her plan, but I recognise her power to do as she will, and I’ve learned better than to interfere with her affairs.”

  Not Nathaniel. The Kindred Prince. Or was he something new now? He got to his feet and looked down at her. The black around her vision made him seem far, far away.

  “As for you, Elianor Paine, I’ll be waiting, when you’ve done what you have to do. You’re just as much mine as you are hers. Remember that.”

  Then he, too, left her behind.

  Chapter 69

  By the time Elianor got Seren and Begw to the monastery gate, both Nathaniels and the one remaining horse were gone. It had taken her too long; too long to recover from the fight with the Kindred, too long to be sure the Kindred had left, too long to drag Seren back out through the church. Elianor gaped dumbly at the empty stable, Seren draped across her shoulders like a sack of potatoes, and tried to find the strength to curse.

  “Begw. Go see if any of the monks’ horses survived.”

  You saw me drink Kindred blood, Elianor thought as she watched Begw retreat. You heard everything said between us and the Kindred Prince.

  She carried Seren into the stable and levered her onto a pile of old straw in the corner. The young woman put her hand to her face. Elianor ground her teeth. What was wrong with her? Why didn’t she get up and fight?

  Elianor dragged a wooden stool from one corner of the stable and sat heavily next to Seren. She took off her wet gloves, tossed them on the stone floor, and unstrapped her sword belt. As she dropped it to the stone floor, a sharp pain passed from the small of her back through her buttock and into her upper thigh. Her sword sheath span a few degrees when she dropped it. She had ditched her shortsword and taken Nathaniel’s longsword from where he had left it in the snow. It was clearly a superior weapon, but was that the only reason she had taken it? The blade pointed at Seren.

  Elianor closed her eyes and breathed through the pain, until her fingers stopped trembling, until she could move again. But the taste of the Kindred Prince’s blood was whiskey on the lips of a desperate drunk and its warmth gave her muscles strength where before there had been none. It was almost enough to wash away the taste of its last, triumphant kiss. His last kiss? How was she supposed to keep any of this straight?

  She unholstered her pistol. There was a new chip in the metal of the barrel, right by the breach. No damage worse than what the Black Dog—what Daniel—had done on the span her first night in Shadowgate. There was now, perhaps, a greater risk the pistol would explode if she tried to fire it with only one hand. She was getting used to risk.

  Elianor had come here with a mission. To extort a Vile to return to Lutense and vote on the Queen’s right of primogeniture, then subvert her master and overthrow the royalists. It seemed like a joke, this close to all the madness and death that infested Shadowgate. She remembered Anton laughing the night she had arrived in the castle audience chamber and wondered if this was how he had felt. It didn’t matter. Genevieve had told her to perfect the revolution. Forget about the Kindred Prince. It was gone. Focus on the facts as they have presented themselves.

  Things had changed. Nobody must know her connection to the conspiracy here. It would destroy any hopes she had in the Senate. Furthermore, the fate of the monks and Mabyn’s patrol made evident that the weak were polluted and then destroyed by Kindred blood. Elianor had a responsibility to clear this corruption at its root, to shred the bark, rip off the leaves, then throw the trunk at Lord Vile’s feet.

  She put the pistol down next to the longsword. Extortion would no longer be a problem. She had all the evidence in the world. The problem would be getting out alive. She had to salvage something from the fighting at the castle, from the fire they had seen consuming the town. Before she could do that, she had to find a way down the mountain. Even on her own, and with a horse, it would be a hard push to catch Nathaniel before he ruined everything. Without a horse and with two injured to escort, impossible.

  Elianor took the ledger from her satchel. It felt heavy, the weight of its contents defying its slender size. The absence of her book of law made the satchel roomy, empty, a cause without a purpose, but the thought of going back to recover it from the pit seemed unbearable and she doubted she could re-open the trapdoor. Seren was a little too still to be asleep. Fine. Take your time. Elianor opened the ledger and stared at the columns of neat writing, the pages of proof, and let them wash over her without truly taking them in.

  Whose tidy handwriting filled the pages? The Abbot? Lord Vile? How far did the conspiracy go? If Arbalest Vile hadn’t entrusted his secret to his own children, the circle would be small. Lena. Rees. Gwyion Garn. She doubted that Vile had told his conspirators the truth, not the whole truth. She had seen his contempt for servants when he had ranted about aristocracy and destiny in the Dead Garden of the castle: the zealotry of a convert. The Truthsense was at its least effective when a subject believed their own lies.

  And if the Truthsense wasn’t real, then nothing else made sense.

  Nathaniel was wrong. The Truthsense gave Elianor the moral authority to do what had to be done. A small circle of conspirators would be easier to close.

  Seren sighed from the straw.

  “You can wake up now,” Elianor said. “It’s safe.”

  Elianor stared at her right hand, her gun hand, flexed her fingers, and watched the tendons stretch beneath the skin. Then she tried to smile at Seren without looking like a crocodile.

  “What hap
pened?” Seren said. “Where am I?”

  “We’re still in the monastery, but the monks are gone. I am Elianor Paine, a Magistrate of the Peace. How much do you remember?”

  Seren’s eyes widened, and she shook her head. As well as the blows to her face and the marks around her neck, there were tight, swirling distortions on her skin where the Kindred blood had begun to work its change. Elianor kept her voice calm and level.

  “You worked a shift behind the bar at Nana Haf’s. You left a little after midnight to walk to the workers’ accommodation. Can you tell me what happened next?”

  Seren shook her head.

  “You didn’t arrive at the hostel.”

  Seren shook her head again. Her soft brown eyes filled with tears. Elianor sighed, unclenched her fists, and waited.

  “I was going to meet Mabyn,” Seren said. “Oh Gods, I thought I saw him on the roof.”

  So you were awake. How much did you hear? How much do you know?

  “You didn’t,” Elianor said. “It wasn’t him. What happened after you left Nana Haf’s?”

  “I was stopped by Rees. Sergeant Rees.”

  Elianor nodded. “Go on.”

  “He said I’d been causing too much trouble. Because of my father, and Uncle Tannyr. And then he said Mabyn was too good a soldier to ruin his career over a whore like me. But I’m not a whore. I work behind the bar.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I said I’d tell Begw, but he just laughed. Then he grabbed me. He put a cloth over my mouth, and when I woke up, I was in a prison, and Lord Vile came, and he—”

  “I know what he did,” Elianor said. “Tell me, who gave you the blood? Was it before, or after? Don’t lie to me.”

  “Abacus the first time. In the castle. Then the monks when they took me to the monastery.”

  Lena, then, was on the list. Elianor suppressed a bitter smile. The Truthsense had to be real, because the first Nathaniel had run rather than face what she would do next.

  “How much did you hear? When we rescued you from the cell?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m a Magistrate, Seren. I can tell when you are lying.”

  “I won’t tell anybody. I won’t tell anybody anything. I promise.”

  “I know, Seren.”

  Perhaps she had made a mistake, leaving her book of law in the pit. But she could still see the words on the back of her eyelids, without even closing her eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  Elianor put her hands on her knees and pushed herself to her feet. She looked at the girl on the floor, her hair fanned out on the straw, her red scarf close around her neck, and moved the stool. It would be messy either way. But if there was any chance that Seren was Kindred, then stabbing would not be enough. Elianor would have to put it down long enough to finish the job. She picked up the pistol, checked along its sight, and half-cocked the hammer.

  “What are you doing?” Seren said

  Only enough shot for two more rounds. She must have lost some in the various falls and scrapes, not to mention those she’d fired fighting the Kindred on the mountain. No matter. Two would have to do.

  “I have a duty to the Republic, and to the law.”

  “Please, put down the gun.”

  The damage to the pistol would make it inaccurate, even at this range. Better to aim low.

  “Do you know what the law says about people like you?”

  “Please. You helped me. Please.”

  “It says you should not suffer a demon to live.”

  Seren put her hand to the red scarf at her neck. “Mabyn gave this to me,” she said.

  The roar of the gunpowder explosion caressed Elianor’s face. Seren didn’t scream. She spat blood from her belly into the straw and up the back wall. Only one shot left. Best save it. Seren sobbed desperate swallows as she tried to breathe through the blood flooding her chest cavity.

  Elianor holstered the pistol and picked up Nathaniel’s sword. Suddenly Seren lurched, her eyes mad and wide, and tried to pull away the sword belt. Elianor, stunned that Seren had finally discovered how to fight, was still faster. Seren got the sheath, Elianor got the sword. She knelt on the girl’s chest, grabbed her by the hair, and banged her head against the floor. Her victim tried to bat her away with the sheath. Now she screamed, blood spurting up past her teeth. Elianor forced Seren’s mouth shut. Blood spat over her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she lied, “but you can’t live if you aren’t strong enough to control it.”

  Elianor tried to point the sword but couldn’t get her elbow up. There was so much blood she was swimming in the stuff, floating on it, wading through the morass to extinguish its source. With a heave, she got the tip of the blade under Seren’s chin and leaned. The scarf was severed. Seren went rigid. The sword slid into her brain pan. Her hands spasmed and then stopped.

  The blood did not. Elianor crouched over the body, wrestling to free the sword while balanced on the sticky mess. The stench filtered into her conscience and threatened to make her sick. Seren had soiled herself as she died. Finally, the sword jerked out. Elianor slipped, stumbled away, and fell on her backside, her feet still up on the straw pile, her weapon held high and Seren’s blood and gore running its length.

  Begw’s sharp intake of breath brought Elianor back to reality.

  “What?” Begw said. She seemed to be hyperventilating. “What did you do?”

  It was strange how quickly a corpse could stop looking human. Especially if it was you who had done that to it. Elianor had forgotten that Begw and Seren were sisters.

  “Seren was Kindred,” Elianor said. “She turned. I’m sorry.”

  It could even be true. The Kindred Prince might still be close. The thought of the mess on the bed moving, coming to life, reaching out with new teeth and contortions of tentacles or claws or whatever else made Elianor lower the sword and get up on one knee.

  “Come here, help me.”

  Elianor reached out, as if too tired to stand. Begw hesitated. Elianor swayed, pretended to fall, and Begw lurched forward to catch her.

  Elianor drove her sword through Begw’s chest.

  Back outside the cloister, the clean air lifted her spirits. The sun was now well above the monastery, driving away the shadows and delineating the real lines of the walls and the buildings. She was committed now. She knew the way to go. And her list was two names shorter.

  Elianor picked up handfuls of snow to rub into her face. She left long pink traces in the white.

  “I know you’re there,” she said.

  Daniel growled

  “Stop that,” Elianor said. “You need me as much as I need you. And you’re going to take me down the mountain.”

  He would turn on her if he knew what she was thinking. She just had to make sure she turned on him first.

  Chapter 70

  Anton stood before the blackened walls of The Last Chance. Around him, mercenaries and miners, come to fight the final battle, checked their kit before the march up the mountain. The stink of rain on charcoaled wood had driven them to take shelter around the stables. Brek’s mob had set fire to the tavern yesterday afternoon, after they had killed Edern and captured Gwyion, but in their rush to leave, they hadn’t considered that the walls were wet. Then overnight snow drifts had snuffed flame to smoulder, and by the time Anton and the others arrived, the fire was long gone out. The wall facing the garden was scorched black and part of the roof had fallen in, but it was nothing that couldn’t be repaired or replaced.

  Had the farmers hated this place so much? Had they really come to dance and drink and fuck, then returned home to boast that The Last Chance was an abomination that should be burned away? Were other people’s secret lives so pathetic? Anton was an artilleryman. He knew fire, knew it the way a fox knows the hounds, or a patient knows their cancer. Yet, when he tried to step closer, his foot didn’t move. Lieutenant Massen cleared his throat, hopped from the nearby wagon, and came to stand next to Anton.
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  “I took a look at your little toy in the wagon,” Massen said. “She’s a beauty.”

  “Made her myself,” Anton said, without taking his eyes away from the burned walls. “Can your soldiers do the maths?”

  It was painful to look at Massen, the flush of his exertion shining through his southern tan. Put him in a Republic uniform and it could be Anton, ten years ago, brash and confident on the eve of a war that would take all that away from him.

  “If you’re sure they don’t have artillery, then why not set up at the mouth of the bridge?” Massen said. “It would be an easier shot.”

  “They don’t have artillery. But we don’t need an easy shot if your team follow my instructions. I know the castle like the back of my hand.”

  He waved the back of his hand at Massen. The myriad of burn scars was like a technical drawing by a drunk. Massen laughed. He still had a fleck of someone’s blood on his nose.

  “Anything more you need doing before we move out?”

  “Make sure everyone eats. We won’t have another chance. When Gwyion comes back, hold him outside until I call. He’ll be angry.”

  “Not a problem,” Massen said. “You’re going inside?”

  “Yes,” he said, but his foot still didn’t move.

  “Anton!”

  “Speak of the devil,” Massen said. “Do you want me to get rid of him?”

  “Not yet,” Anton said. “Gwyion, you should be in bed.”

  Gwyion hadn’t seen Tannyr burn his home. When Persephone had dragged him away, he’d been delirious with pain, the bone from his broken leg pressing blue and black through the outside of his thigh. Now the determination that had kept him alive had turned into a grim despair that marked two thick grey lines across his cheeks and under his eyes. His hips twisted at an angle that couldn’t be right, and he struggled to take his weight on the crutch. Anton glanced up at the window on the top floor of The Last Chance and remembered what it took to survive an injury like that.