“Dear girl, how do you expect to snuff the brute if you can’t bring yourself to kill a few feather dusters?” He sighed through his nose. “No, not the birds. I won’t ruin you to them.” His fingers cupped her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye. It was the first time he’d actually touched her since he’d purchased her from the Snatchers. “You’ll practice on me.”
She startled, jerking out of his hold. “Have you lost your sense? I don’t want to kill you either.”
The emotion in his eyes stole her breath. It vanished in an instant. “Fear not, you won’t.” He turned from her, tugging his gloves free from his cuffs. “Please, do try not to scream too loud. It might bring the others.”
Safiya was grateful for the warning as he removed the gloves, a tongue darting from the mouth on his palm to taste the air. He set them on a nearby bench, unbuttoning his vest. She had to bite down on her tongue as he shrugged free from his shirt, stripping down to his black pants and boots, carefully laying the items out in a neat pile before turning to face her.
Her tongue bled. He waited for her to observe him, her eyes wide as she followed the toothy vertical slit between his pectoral muscles and the wide ominous seam along his abdomen, splitting his navel. His face, his palms, two at the front, and two seams along his shoulders blades, all baring rows of conical teeth.
The House of Seven Smiles.
He stood absolutely still, waiting for her as she wrestled with the primal drive to run. The taste of blood on her tongue grew sharp with bile, but beneath the icy stab of fear she saw his pain. Lord Wallach was a man who hid himself beneath a thick layer of cloth, who kept a small staff of trusted servants, and tried everything he could think of to banish their fear of him.
Safiya released her breath. “Are you sure about this?”
He nodded, stepping far from his garments to spare them any splatter. “You need to hone your skill against a living target or you will fail to kill him.”
It was his second mention of her desired revenge, one she never told him.
“How?” When?
He looked away from her. “I could taste your sorrow from miles away. The whole lot of them still reeked of death when I caught up, the blood of your blood still drying on his skin.” He turned to her, anger drawing his features tight. “There are rules we follow. They should not have gone through the wards of the witches.”
He’d known from the beginning. Lord Wallach had sought her out. “They brought a man with them. He had mouths in his hands like yours that ate through all their protections.”
The anger flared to rage, causing her to take a step back. He bit out one word. “Alive?”
Safiya shook her head. “My mother removed his bones.”
The anger drained from him, pulling at his frame. “If he were alive, I would rip them out myself. There are rules I must follow as well.” He straightened, keeping his hands lax at his sides. “They do not apply to you.”
The pieces snapped together for her. The Lord wasn’t only a man who obeyed the laws of Avergard. He enforced them. The Snatchers who’d destroyed the Mire broke those laws in some fashion, but he did not have the necessary proof to go after them, but she could.
By right of her mother’s spilled blood.
“The one who killed her would satisfy me,” she said.
His chilling smile returned. “With practice you can take them all.”
She closed her eyes and grasped the air.
***
The Lord did not give an idle boast. He recovered rapidly from damage, no matter what she threw at him. After the fourth night, she managed to execute her lessons without losing the contents of her stomach. After two weeks, she could complete them without flinching at the sound of tearing flesh.
A month into their sessions, he held up a hand as his body knitted itself back together. The mending didn’t even exert him. “I believe you may be ready,” he said, flicking an errant fleck of bone from his bicep. “There are some truths you must know before you set out.”
Safiya watched his face. “Such as?”
“I cannot stop you from seeking your revenge, but once you take it, I cannot accept you back into this household. The Snatchers do not take kindly to the slaughter of their own. It would be best if you disappeared.”
The words hooked into her skin. Disappear into Avergard? All the skills he’d taught her wouldn’t save her. The city had far more mouths and sharper teeth than Lord Wallach. “Where would I go?”
He closed the distance between them, leaning close to whisper in her ear. “Follow your birds, young witch.” If he noticed her lack of reaction to his proximity he said nothing, drawing away as she turned over his cryptic words. “The caravan returns to the city in a fortnight. You have until then to make your decision.”
***
Two weeks later, a figure entered the Snatchers encampment at the border of the city. Not a noise was heard in the night. No one woke. In the morning, the city guard found a single caravan slaughtered in their sleep. All but one were missing their spines. The clean, concise precision of the act spooked the lot of them. It wasn’t until they found the last member of the group they understood what happened. His face was gone, nothing but a bloody pulp, as if smashed with an enormous fist, reduced to a stump of shredded meat. Only revenge brought such acute fury.
The report went out to the various Lords and figureheads throughout Avergard in an attempt to locate the culprit. Lord Wallach smiled as he read it.
***
Safiya followed the birds for days. They led her straight out of the city into the wilds beyond.
She stopped once at a stream, to drink and rinse off the blood. The absence of noise caused her to look up. A pyguara eyed her across the water, sipping her scent from the air with a forked tongue. Its presence surprised her. She hadn’t realized they lived this far north. Whatever it scented caused it to draw back with a snarl and scurry away.
She kept walking.
The birds eventually led her to a dense forest. The trees were massive, towering growths, silent sentries who’d watched the world fall around them. One of them would be more than suitable to carve a home.
She found what she was searching for at the center of the wood, a fat trunk, quietly rotting at its center, easier to hollow out. She eyed her new home with satisfaction and set to work, the Snatcher’s teeth clicking together in the depths of her pocket.
The End
The House of Seven Smiles.rtf Page 2
