The White Brand (The Eastern Slave Series Book 2)

by Victor Poole

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Now I have time to think."

  Delmar watched her make a neat pile of bandages. The sound of tearing fabric mixed in with the chirrup of insects, and the soft cooing of night birds that filled the air.

  "Why are you like this?" Delmar asked. His voice floated at her in the darkness; he sounded like a forest spirit.

  "I've always been like this," Ajalia said. She didn't bother to ask him what he meant.

  "Did something happen to you?" Delmar asked cautiously. "Something that made you like this?"

  Ajalia laughed. She put her body down onto the hollow on her stomach, and stretched the white scabs of her right arm out in front of her.

  "Are you going to cut yourself?" Delmar asked nervously.

  "Hopefully not," Ajalia said. "Did you clean up the wound on this arm?" she asked, turning towards Delmar.

  "I guess," he said hesitantly.

  "Fine," Ajalia said, suppressing a sigh. She thought that she would have to cut away the scabs on both arms, if Delmar had left the flaps of skin against her left arm when he fixed up the bandages. She knew she was going to be ill again, and she didn't trust Delmar to have to sense to keep her from dying of an infection.

  "What was inside that note?" Delmar asked. His eyes followed Ajalia's fingers closely. She laid down the knife and picked up a piece of fabric she had cut in a square from the cream shift.

  "I liked these clothes," she told Delmar.

  "What was in the note?" he asked again.

  "Business," she said. She put one corner of the cloth square in between her teeth, and pulled off the longest and nastiest scab. A crack in her skin was revealed beneath; it oozed blood and something that glistened thick and awful in the dim moonlight.

  "That one wasn't so bad," she said, dropping the cloth. She had been worried that a gush of blood would follow the peeling scab.

  "Are you okay?" Delmar asked. "Can I help you?"

  "Tell me about your father," she said. She coaxed her fingers under another thick white crust of skin.

  "Um," Delmar said. "What do you want to know about him?"

  "Everything," Ajalia said. She had an easier time with the blood and the sharp pain like this; she felt alive when her body was physically distressed. The moving nausea and the pounding black pit of fear were what frightened her.

  Delmar watched, a look of disgust and fascination on his face, as Ajalia slid the knife under a tab of skin that held the crusted scab to her arm.

  "Doesn't that make you feel weird?" he asked.

  "It was worse, last time," Ajalia said. "I should have died last time. This is fine."

  "I don't know anything about my dad," Delmar said. Ajalia pressed the square of cloth to her arm, and a pool of sickening slick blood mixed with pus rose up and soaked into the fabric. The night was dark, and the cloth made a ghostly shape against the pale form of her arm. The blood turned the fabric black in the moonlight that streamed in tiny shards through the boughs above. Ajalia mopped up the blood and examined her arm. She worked her fingers under another scab.

  "Should you be doing that?" Delmar asked nervously.

  "You wanted them to bleed again," Ajalia said shortly. "Look at them bleed." Delmar was so silent after this that she glanced up at him; he had a look so distraught in his eyes that she almost pitied him.

  "It isn't what I meant," he whispered finally, watching her raw skin. "I didn't mean this."

  "I know," Ajalia said.

  "I wanted you to be happy," he said. Ajalia stopped what she was doing and looked up at him.

  "Why would you want that?" she demanded. "Why would you care?" Delmar looked at her. He looked frightened, and sad, and alone. "Do you want something from me?" she asked angrily. "Are you using me? Is this about your parents?"

  "My parents don't—" Delmar broke off. His eyes were turned away, into the darkness. Ajalia waited, but he never spoke again. She turned back to her arm. A long time passed; she peeled away the dead skin, and pushed whatever ooze she could out of the old scars.

  "Can you get water easily?" she asked finally.

  "I brought the leaves," Delmar said quickly.

  "Water," Ajalia said, "I asked about water." Delmar watched her.

  "I could get water," he said slowly.

  "Thanks," she said.

  "I don't want you to run away again," he said. "What if I can't find you in the trees?"

  "Then I will find a way to live without you," Ajalia said curtly.

  "Jay," Delmar said.

  "Don't call me that," Ajalia snapped.

  Delmar reached out and took her outstretched hand from the bark; her palm was creased with dried blood and fragments of skin.

  "Don't touch me, either," Ajalia said, but she didn't pull away. Delmar's face changed. He caressed her fingers.

  "It doesn't look so bad now," Delmar observed, turning her arm gently in the moonlight. Ajalia had cleared away the dead skin and the crusted scabs, and her flesh was bare now, raw and red, but relatively smooth. "You're going to get better," he observed.

  "Well, maybe," she said. "Probably."

  Before she knew what was happening, Delmar had shoved his mouth up against her face. He was pressing his lips to her eyes and her cheeks. She pulled away, but his arms flashed out like fire and gripped her neck and her back. He kissed her hard on the mouth, and a melting sensation coursed through Ajalia's body. She softened in his arms, and his kiss became tender and coaxing.

  "Why are you kissing me?" Ajalia whispered against the movement of his mouth. He made a sound like a yearning star and held her closer. An engulfing wave of homesickness cascaded through Ajalia's heart; Delmar made a flashing warm light start up at the back of her skull. She couldn't remember how to be angry with him. His skin was like molten love; everywhere that his body pressed against her she felt no pain.

  "Hey," she said huskily; Delmar paused, his nose pushed against her cheek, his breath short. "Are you doing magic on me?" she asked. Delmar shook his head violently, and buried her up in kisses.

  For the first time since she had met him, Ajalia began to entertain the notion that Delmar might be useful to her. She could feel, amidst the overwhelming rush of heat and wanting that filled her up in Delmar's embrace, that the deep black walls that held back the monsters inside of her were shoring up; they were becoming stronger. Delmar was saving her from the darkness inside.

  For the first time since she had run away from home, Ajalia relaxed. Delmar felt the change in her; a kind of metallic framework seemed to melt out of her bones. He felt her spine loosen and give in against his hands. His kisses slowed. He pushed his mouth and nose against Ajalia's ear.

  "Are you okay?" he asked. Ajalia nodded slowly, and squirmed closer into his naked chest. "Hey," he breathed. She waited. "I'm going to make the bleeding stop," Delmar said softly. He reached around to her raw and scraped arm, and brought it gently into view. Ajalia's eyes had adjusted to the darkness now; she could see the glistening places where the old scars were open to the air, blood and a clear wetness shining in the scattered moonlight. Her right arm now looked as though it had been clawed by the teeth of a creature; something wild and animal-like was in the long scratches. She could see nothing of the black brand that had been burned into the skin. Ajalia tried to imagine what life would be like with perfectly healed arms, and no trace of her brands, and could create no images. She felt as though she no longer fit within her own skin.

  Delmar pulled the pile of bandages nearer; he wiped away the blood from her arm. Ajalia could see smears of wet dark stains against his skin; she had bled on him. She leaned against his body, her head tipped back into the curve of his neck, and watched him crush a pair of thick leaves with the hard red stone Card had sent her. Delmar had carried the leaf fragments to her pile of bandages when she had prepared to cut into her arm; the leaves were broad and thick; they released a tangy wet smell when crushed. He ground the leaves into one of the bandages, and wrapped the mass of smashed green on the cream fabric tig
htly against the wounds on her arm.

  "I feel like you hate me," Ajalia said. She could feel the sharp protuberance of Delmar's collarbone against her head. Delmar held the first bandage down and started with another strip. "You don't hate me," Ajalia asked, "do you?"

  "No," Delmar said, without looking up.

  "I'm never going to tell you anything about myself," Ajalia warned him. He ignored her. "And I'll break your heart," she added.

  "Can you reach those needles?" he asked, his fingers busy over her arm. Ajalia got the shredded cream shift with her free hand, and retrieved a needle from the inside. A small pile of objects lay scattered around the shift where she had cut them out in the process of preparing bandages. The coins and coarse gems gleamed a little in the moonlight.

  "Why don't you mind me?" Ajalia asked suddenly. She turned the needle over in her fingers; it was threaded with a length of plain brown thread, and had a neat knot at the end. Her right arm, the arm Delmar was wrapping with cloth, was giving out tingles of wickedly sour pain. Delmar took the needle out of her hand; his fingers, as they brushed against hers, were rough and warm.

  "The succilla pit will help with the pain," he told her. He put the red stone, which was wet with the juice of the crushed leaves, into her right hand.

  "How does it do that?" Ajalia asked. She wrapped her fingers around the red stone. Delmar shrugged; he made small stitches in the end of the bandage. He got the knife and laid the edge against the end of the thread where it stretched up from the stitching.

  A kind of whirlpool of dangerous black light, mixed with invisible hot things that emanated from Delmar towards her, was spinning around Ajalia; she felt herself going under the surface of the night that lapped against her collarbone. She opened her mouth, to tell Delmar that she was going to go away, that she couldn't talk, but it was too late. She watched with mixed vision; part of her saw, through a dim glaze, Delmar cutting stitches, and unwinding the old bandages on her left arm, while the rest of her was engaged in a kind of dance with everlasting night. She could not have named what power had her in its grip, but she could sense that it was Delmar protecting her, and the strangely intoxicating soothing nature of his love, or his bare skin, or his eyes that watched her with an attention she had never seen in anyone but herself; whatever part of him it was that protected her, she hid within in it, and she sensed that it kept her from madness.

  She could hear herself breathing again. She was not close to fainting, but she almost wished that she was. She watched through half-closed eyes as the last bandage came away from her arm; a sea of goo from leaves, and dark, dried blood was over her skin. Delmar got a new piece of the shift, and began to wipe away the mixture of leaves and blood.

  Dull pain echoed through Ajalia's elbow and her jaw; she could feel the cloth scraping, like gravel, against the raw skin. The right arm, the arm she had peeled and cleaned herself, was like a mild scratch compared to the mess that was her left. She realized from a distance that she was crying silent tears; Delmar picked her up from the hollow, and went out into the forest. She did not think to ask him where he was going. Shadows of trees and large bushes slid away from her eyes; a soft roaring was in her ears. She could feel her skin erupting into new agonies with every step that Delmar took. She wanted him to put her down; she told him so, but the words came out like squeaks. The comfort of Delmar's bare skin was no longer enough; she wanted to die.

  After what felt like a lifetime of endless jolting, and endless, grinding pain, Delmar set Ajalia down on the earth. She could feel the tickle of sound below her of a burbling stream. Delmar held her left arm into the running water, and shards of ice seemed to pinch her skin. Ajalia lay back on rough earth, and surrendered to the pain. She could just see, out of the corner of her eye, a blossom of golden light twisting out of Delmar's face towards her arm.

  "No more magic," she wheezed, but she knew he could not hear her. She closed her eyes, and felt long tendrils of burning heat, like rods of fire, pressing into the raw, exposed surface of her inner arm. She told herself, consolingly, that she would punish Delmar thoroughly for this betrayal, if she ever opened her eyes again. She blamed him for the blood, the heat, and the pain. If he had not, she reflected with annoyance, been so hell-bent on interfering with her life, she would still be in Slavithe, racking her brains for solutions to the unpleasant prospect of a household of untrained servants, and an aggressive government official.

  Ajalia smiled. Vague laughter shook her center without sound.

  "I guess I should thank you," she told Delmar bemusedly. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "Because now I don't have to deal with hard things."

  "What hard things?" Delmar asked. He was bent close over her arm. The water felt as though it was washing down against her bones. His eyes were fixed intently on the long red mess of her skin.

  "Well," Ajalia said, shifting her shoulders, "if it wasn't for you, I would be fighting with Nam, and working on the boys. I don't know," she said with a sigh, "what I was thinking. I could have sold most of the debts. I don't know why I collected them all."

  "You mean all the kids?" Delmar asked. She nodded.

  "I don't want them," she said. "I don't know. I set out for the houses, but then the people were there as well, and I went to see them, and then I got them together, and now here I am." She laughed. "Maybe," she said, easing up onto her right elbow, "Card will take everything, and I will become a wild person in the woods. Philas can tell master I'm dead." She closed her eyes; the water felt sickeningly brash and tight against her bloody arm. "It's bad, isn't it?" she asked.

  "Mm," Delmar said. He bent close to the stream and kneaded Ajalia's wrist. She hissed angrily.

  "Would you just let it be?" she demanded.

  "No," he said. "It isn't clean yet."

  "Well, if you hadn't put magic there in the first place, there would be no problems."

  "You weren't okay," Delmar said harshly. He looked up at her. The moon was coming in a straight stream from above them, and she could see his eyes. Delmar's whole face was contorted with violent anger. "You think you were just fine," he said, placing his palm a little above her arm, "but you weren't. You walked around as if you were dead, and you had no friends, and you won't tell secrets still. You keep everything to yourself, and you hurt yourself on trees. You're crazy, and you're sick, and I'm going to make you better."

  A rush of gold light gathered in Delmar's palm; he pushed it gingerly into the bloody arm, and Ajalia cried out. She felt as though a mat of wires had sunk down into her muscles, and wrapped around her bones. She tried to take her arm back from Delmar, but his great hand was wrapped firmly around her elbow.

  "No," Delmar said. "No more running away."

  "I wasn't going to run away," Ajalia grumbled.

  "This is not a joke," Delmar ranted. "This is serious. You're sick. You're so sick you can't even stand up by yourself, and you think you're just going to traipse away into the trees and live on berries or something. I won't let you."

  "You can't stop me," Ajalia said. She dropped onto her back and closed her eyes.

  "I can," Delmar said firmly.

  "Can't," she said again with a smile. Delmar let go of her elbow, and gripped her face. She opened her eyes.

  "Don't," he said. She breathed in and out. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a steep cliff; she could sense that she had the power to make Delmar angry, to hurt him. This power was a shiny new object to her; she examined it closely, turning it over in her mind.

  "Why shouldn't I go out by myself?" she asked. Delmar went back to nursing her arm.

  "The blood is cleaner now," he said. "It was lumpy before."

  "It feels like you're tearing out my muscles," Ajalia remarked lightly.

  "That's nice," Delmar said heartlessly. "You're the one who tore the scars open on a tree."

  "Yes," Ajalia said sagely, "but I didn't faint." Delmar lifted her arm out of the water and examined it. He put the dripping arm into Ajalia's lap, and spl
ashed water on the bloody marks she had left on his skin.

  "You're wet," she observed.

  "When you fainted before," Delmar asked, putting water into his face, "what happened?"

  "You were there," she said lightly. "You saw."

  "No," Delmar said at once. "The other times. The two times before." Ajalia sighed and turned her face away. She watched the silvery blue moonlight drift through the black leaves, and light up the trunks of the trees, and the long leaves on the ground.

  "I'd hoped you would forget I said that," she admitted.

  "I didn't," Delmar said.

  "Obviously," Ajalia snapped.

  "You don't have to be rude about it," Delmar said. "What happened before?"

  Ajalia watched a silver bird hop from a branch into the air; its wings flashed like mirrors in the moonlight.

  "Hey," Delmar said. Ajalia looked over at him.

  "What?" she asked. He put his arms underneath her, and lifted her up.

  "What happened?" he asked again. She blinked lazily at him.

  "I don't remember what the question was," she lied.

  "Jay," he said.

  "Don't call me Jay," she commanded.

  "Tell me," he said. They moved softly through the shadows of the trees.

  "Are you out here a lot?" Ajalia asked.

  "What happened?" he asked. "Did someone hurt you?"

  He walked for a long time through the trees, the shadows alternating with vivid splashes of silvery light. Ajalia listened to the crunch of his footsteps, and the chirrups of animals in the woods. Delmar's neck was splashed blue and white in the night. Ajalia watched his ear and his hair pass through the shadows.

  "I don't know," Ajalia said. "I can't remember."

  "You can't remember?" he asked. "Are you serious?"

  "Yes," she said. "I don't remember. I can't remember anything. I remember the times before I fell down, before it went black, but I can't—I don't know what happened for a while afterwards."

  Delmar walked through the thick growth that clustered between the trees. He stepped over a fallen branch. Ajalia cradled her arm, holding the bloody side away from Delmar's shirt that she wore.