Blood of Fate

by Dan Sugralinov

  Thoughts of money were overwhelmed by the dull ache in her back and the soreness in her knuckles from where they’d rubbed on the washboard. She’d done nothing all day but drag buckets and press sheets heavy with water, and she’d half broken herself hanging them all up.

  Kora thought for a moment as she stood by the door to the inn, and failed to notice another danger: Karim’s crew had appeared from around a corner. To the right of him walked Fat Peter, the fish merchant’s son, cackling, with gleaming smooth cheeks. A little farther away, to the left, Jamal bared his rotten teeth. Not a single glimmer of intellect showed in his grubby face and idiotic smile. Sometimes Kora thought that Jamal could easily gut his own mother when he bared his teeth like that.

  “Well, whore, is your cripple of a brother still alive? Or did they put him out of his misery?” Karim laughed at his own joke.

  Kora jerked as if slapped. Anger boiled within her. She could have just spat and run away, but she’d missed the moment and now she was cornered by three boys in a very sour mood.

  The girl thought feverishly about what to do. She couldn’t run, that’d just spur them on even more. They’d have fun chasing her down, grabbing her, they’d twist her arms, grope her, maybe even kick her. And she had no time to get hurt now! She had to somehow outwit them.

  “Hah! He isn’t a cripple anymore! He got into a good home! His new master feeds him real meat, not that disgusting gruel your dad thinks of as food! Luca has good clothes and his own room! Maybe I should even thank you. Or should I throw stones at you too? Maybe Master Yadugara will take me in then as well. I wouldn’t mind hanging around all day and eating my fill!”

  Karim’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared. He must have painted himself an entirely different picture, one of Luca being whipped to death in the mines. But this version worked for him too. The boy roared in laughter.

  “The cripple has gone to Master Yadugara? Idiot girl! Everyone knows his slaves die quickly!”

  Fat Pete grunted like a pig behind him, and Jamal rumbled a low bass laugh. Kora always started fuming quickly when it came to her family. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. She took deep breaths like her mother had taught her, tried to steady herself. This wasn’t the time for a fight, and the odds clearly weren’t in her favor. Measuring all three with her baleful gaze, she tried to squeeze past the boys.

  “Out of my way, Karim, I’m in a hurry.”

  “I’m not done with you yet!” The big guy shoved her so hard she barely stayed upright.

  “Get away from that girl!” said a sonorous, authoritative voice as if from nowhere behind their backs.

  The boys, not expecting such insolence, clenched their fists and turned around to teach the clever interloper a lesson.

  It turned out it was a girl. Tall, full-figured and very beautiful. All three stood dumbfounded with their mouths hanging open.

  “Close your mouths. You’ll catch flies. Kora, come on! Hurry!”

  Kora didn’t need telling twice. She dodged around Fat Pete and quickly ran behind the strange girl’s back.

  “Who are you anyway?” Karim got enough of a grip on himself to say, but with none of the previous confidence in his voice.

  “I live in Master Yadugara’s house, you grubby little lout.” The girl laughed deliberately, baring her fragile white teeth previously hidden by her full lips. “You just try touching me, you’ll get torn to shreds!”

  The girl turned around with a flourish and walked away, with her head high, back straight and hips swaying. Karim’s gang were still struck dumb, whether by the mention of a man whose dark reputation preceded him, or by a woman more beautiful than anyone in the slums had ever seen.

  In the meantime, the unknown girl quickly scampered down the street, away from the inhospitable inn. Kora barely kept up with her.

  “I’m Reyna,” the girl said, turning. “I have some news from your brother Luca.”

  Chapter 19. Activating Countermeasure

  FOR THE REST of the trip to the palace, Luca prevented his ability from spending any energy at all. Based on his traveling companions’ stressed faces, he guessed the purpose of taking him there. That pity in Yadugara’s eyes that the boy had seen was merely the regret of losing a slave, it wasn’t sympathy.

  The carriage stopped when they reached the palace walls. The guard post reported the healer’s arrival and they had to stop at the side of the gates and wait to be met. Yadugara was clearly nervous the whole time, and even lost his temper with Penant, whipping him with his cane. Luca was willing to bet that he was the first choice of target, but bruises from a fresh beating on the boy’s body would probably not improve the healer in the eyes of those taking the slave.

  The chief imperial medic, Master Lentz, came for the boy personally. He looked strict and youthful, had a bald spot on the back of his head, and wore glasses. He greeted the newly arrived healer dryly and asked just one question.

  “Where is he?”

  Yadugara ordered Luca to come out, pronounced the words required to transfer the slave to the property of Master Lentz, and tried to pull the highly ranked courtier aside to add something important. Lentz tried to wave him away, but Yadugara was persistent. In the end, Lentz allowed himself to be drawn away a few paces, but Luca’s traveler-enhanced hearing caught every word. The key words were about “exhausted coma”. Parts of the puzzle began to make sense: the metamorphosis required energy to work and protect its carrier.

  While the healers talked, with Yadugara heatedly trying to convince his colleague of something and achieving nothing but boring Lentz and making him want to leave, Luca looked around the area.

  He saw the palace gardens beyond the gates, with a broad cobble path winding through them. Its tortuous path led upwards to the palace itself, and an imperial guardsman stood every twenty paces along it. It was nothing to do with tradition or romantic ritual. It was more from the numerous coup attempts, both by the aristocracy and by people’s rebellions from the poorest districts.

  The last attempted coup was in the year Luca’s father died. Many spoke about it at home, and the little Luca had been horrified. The life of the emperor seemed to him the most important life there could be in the Empire. How could someone try to kill him?

  “Follow me, Luca,” Lentz enticed him in using his name.

  It was unexpected, but nice to hear his own name. The boy followed Lentz.

  As he walked through the gates, he turned back. Yadugara pierced him with a reptilian gaze, the veins in his temples pulsing. Penant, still leaning out of the carriage window, frowned and gnawed on his fingernails. Dezisimu felt no hatred for either of them. From the rational point of view he’d inherited from Esk, they’d acted correctly. They hadn’t even broken the country’s laws! But nonetheless, Luca had no plans to let them go unpunished. He wouldn’t go out of his way to take vengeance against them, but if they happened to cross his path again, he’d repay them a hundred times over.

  “Are you hungry, boy?” Lentz asked as they walked. “You are worthy of the honor of sharing part of your health with his imperial majesty, and that means you need plenty of it. Don’t worry, the procedure is absolutely safe!”

  Luca cast a sidelong, distrustful glance at Lentz. Lentz merely stared ahead and spoke, not turning to the boy. Would he not even try to hide the fact that he planned to extract the boy’s life? If Esk were with him, he would have laughed, but Luca just shook his head in amazement. Worthy of the honor indeed! Oh, if only he could say what he thought about his majesty and the safety of the transfusion procedure. But instead, he answered simply.

  “I am hungry, Master.”

  Lentz stopped for a moment, looked at him, nodded, then resumed his rapid pace.

  In the palace, the chief medic handed him over to his secretary with orders to wash him, disinfect him and feed him. It would have been better if the food came first, because ‘wash and disinfect’ took a lot more time than the boy Luca could imagine.

  He was s
haved again, although his hair hadn’t really had a chance to grow since the baths, and covered in something that smelled so strongly that his eyes streamed tears. Then they covered him in a burning powder and forced him to suffer it while his metamorphosis screamed about the aggressive influence and toxic substances all over his skin. Luca forbade his ability from synthesizing the neutralizing compounds that it planned to release through his pores, wanting to preserve energy. I can handle it, he decided.

  Once the burning powder was washed off, he was taken to the bath. Some fat old woman with nothing but an apron over her naked body dealt with him there, wheezing as she trimmed his nails and rubbed him with sand and a bronze scraper, raking off not only dirt — or indeed, no dirt at all, just skin. Then his metamorphosis reacted without warning, both regenerating his skin and absorbing part of the scraper.

  The fat woman couldn’t understand how the scraper had worn away so quickly. All she could do was mutter to herself.

  “Looks like I overdid it...”

  Her mouth agape, she looked the boy over for injuries, but found nothing. Luca carefully kept his eyes away from her pendulous breasts and didn’t complain.

  After his ablutions were finally over, he was sent to a separate room in the servants’ wing. Then dinner was brought in, in two trips. Nothing too refined according to the traveler’s tastes, but a divine feast for the yesterday-healed poor cripple. And more importantly, there was lots of it!

  He’d never eaten such tasty food, and Koerlig — assistant and Lentz’s secretary, a small nimble man with mischievous eyes and a face mottled with pox scars, — had let slip that Lentz wouldn’t take him to the procedure looking so ragged, and that he’d be fed for three more days.

  And so it was. The morning began with giving various samples for analysis: blood, urine, feces, spit. All this came with a mechanical examination of the body, measuring his chest size and lung volume, comparing his height and weight with the standard for his age. Lentz was trying to figure out how many years Yadugara had taken.

  Then he was brought a hearty breakfast, after which Koerlig took him to the ocean and forced him to swim.

  Luca overheard Lentz saying to one of his colleagues, “This will strengthen the body and increase the possible transfusion volume.”

  At first he joyfully floundered around within thirty feet of the shore, the water only up to his knees, but over time he got braver and started going farther and farther out, trying to stay afloat on the surface. And so he discovered the ecstatic experience of weightlessness, when, lying on his back, he felt his body floating on the waves, the salty water stroking him.

  His Metamorphosis ability used the sea water in full, pulling in and absorbing salt for some goals to strengthen him that only it knew.

  Then, again under Koerlig’s tutelage, the boy ran along the beach, where sand had been brought from the south of the Empire. He breathed the salty, pure sea air and felt his heart beating, growing and becoming stronger and more enduring.

  Unfortunately, there was no way to escape from the palace without them coming after him, so he just used this gift of idle time and relative freedom to restore his strength and study his own ability. Or rather, abilities — after all, even the most ordinary actions of which his body was capable were new to the former paralytic.

  Even Lentz was astounded by how quickly Luca gained strength, boosted by his metamorphosis. Phenomenal! he said. It’s a shame we don’t have time to study him in detail. The emperor is in a hurry...

  Every morning, as soon as he’d woken up and before he’d even gotten out of bed, His Imperial Majesty would summon him and demand that the transfusion procedure be performed immediately. He couldn’t wait any longer.

  In his forty two years, Ma Ju Ro the Fourth felt like a rickety old man. Many ill-judged nights of drinking, the Tassurian weed prescribed by First Advisor Naut, and steady gluttony were killing the emperor faster than new donors could be found.

  Another problem was his indiscriminate attitude to women, who could carry hidden diseases sent by Two-horns the Tempter. Sure, Lentz checked the regular courtesans almost every day, but Ma Ju Ro could point to the first lady he liked the look of at a ball and she’d be immediately dragged to the throne so that the ruler could satisfy his lust before the eyes of a public that was no longer surprised by anything...

  By the end of the week, His Imperial Majesty’s patience ran out. The reason for this was the embarrassment that arose in him when, despite all the efforts of three of his courtesans who were enacting a truly unthinkable fantasy with surprising success, his primary weapon failed him.

  So the next evening, right after dinner, Koerlig took Luca to Lentz in the medical wing.

  Then the boy was laid down and the chief medic injected him with a depressant that was guaranteed to turn any person into a limp vegetable for at least twenty-four hours.

  Luca’Onegut, realizing that the important thing right now was not to screw anything up, ordered his metamorphosis not to fight the intruding substance, to let it work and neutralize it only when the previously identified transfusion procedure starts. He had been studying his abilities systematically over the last few days, and he’d practiced this a few times, initiating something when certain conditions are in effect.

  Luca fell unconscious with those thoughts, and when he woke up, Lentz was gone. He himself lay in full darkness, with someone breathing heavily and loudly nearby.

  Shining text before his eyes told him that the psychotropic and anesthetizing agents in his bloodstream had been neutralized, because an ‘unsanctioned withdrawal of energy reserves’ was detected.

  Activating countermeasure...

  Redirecting flow...

  Accelerating interchange processes...

  Luca decided to wait for as long as he needed for the procedure to end, and lay listening patiently as the breath of the man nearby steadily grew quieter.

  The emperor didn’t have much life left in him, and by midnight, Luca had regained only part of what he had lost, gaining youth at the cost of the now late Ma Ju Ro the Fourth. Or rather, soon to be late. His numbers were all under ten percent.

  Without catching the tethers, Luca sat up on his cot and thought of what to do next. He knew he had to run, but where to? His knowledge of the Empire’s lands were limited to the district in the slums where he lived now, and the district of his parents’ former home. What lay beyond the capital? How large was the Empire? Were there other islands nearby? Did there really exist a land of mutants somewhere beyond the mountains? That was where, rumor had it, all those infected with Two-horns’ curse in the mines were exiled.

  Luca either heard or imagined some sound, and immediately after it, messages filled up his vision.

  Operation successful!

  Absorbed: 5.27 years of life force.

  Tsoui points: +21. Current balance: 22.

  Metamorphosis: +1.

  Ability level two reached!

  Gained the capability of copying other lifeforms of the same kind.

  To avoid abuse and for the sake of universal balance and harmony, this ability may be used only once a year (in Wheel time).

  In the moonlight, Luca looked over at the body lying nearby and smiled.

  * * *

  The morning of the new day had long since faded into noon, but Yadugara was still in his bed. No, he wasn’t sick. On the contrary, adrenaline still rushed through his veins from the sleepless night he’d spent in the company of the passionate Reyna. Each new transfusion procedure overjoyed him like an exquisite and rare treat, each representing another extension of the time left to him. He savored his newly obtained youth and the vibrant health and roiling hormones that only it could provide.

  But this time everything was different. His body wasn’t just younger. It was as if he had soaked up all the thirst for life and passion for the novel and unknown that the country boy Dezisimu had. He seethed inside. His body demanded a new dose! More, more, more! These long-forgotten feelings
were so heady and intoxicating. But it was harder to find a new donor with each passing year.

  His brain released the torpid tendrils of disappointment into his veins. They stretched toward the mage’s heart, entwining it and squeezing the life out of it. His prey had fallen from his grasp and gone instead to that fat bastard! Ma Ju Ro was unworthy of transfusion! Better he lay down and die, that spineless, dull pig!

  Yadugara anxiously suppressed his seditious thoughts and looked around. There were whispers in the palace that the emperor’s carefree mother may well have borne her son by a man other than her husband, but there was no point in thinking about that. The watching oracles — old women who survived through their wisdom — might intercept his rebellious thoughts. Of course, nobody believed them to be effective, but the healer had always prided himself on his caution. You never know.