by C. A. Bryers
“Revenge.” He nodded his understanding, fixing his eyes on Orrock’s. “It’ll be my pleasure.”
***
After a frustrating practice session focusing on offensive tephic techniques without the aid of a bracer, Joht was ready to head to the showers and wash today’s exercises from his memory. Nothing had gone right. Memories of his altercation with Tallas Corso, the aggressive scolding Orrock had given him and seemingly a hundred other things merged into a swarm of nagoflies buzzing through his skull, tearing apart his focus. It was a further eroding of his confidence and another blow to the fundamental reason Trigg, Kanoh, Ciracelle and the others followed his lead in this House.
Beneath his sweating brow, his eyes gravitated to Tallas, who also was finishing up his session. Seeing the slump in the other man’s shoulders and his tired, slackened face offered little comfort. Of course Corso’s day hadn’t gone well. This was the first full day of training he’d managed to see through to the end.
For his own sorry performance, there simply was no excuse. A scattered mind was a mind wide open to be taken advantage of, after all, and his was a mess.
Pushing his way through the double doors, Joht felt his skin prickle as he welcomed the cool, damp air of the foyer. He heard the door thump open several more times as others followed him to the showers. Once inside, Joht was first to peel away his gray uniform and deposit it into the laundry cart. A pinprick of pain lanced through his toe, and he glared downward. On the cracked and broken tiles beneath his feet lay a spot of blood.
I hate this place.
With a disdainful snort, he headed for the nearest shower stall. Others started filling the stalls, the hisses of spraying water issuing out one after another. He pulled the chain dangling overhead to activate the antiquated shower, feeling the thousands of cold knives leap out to try to penetrate his flesh. Muscles tensed as if his chest and abdomen acted as a shield against the frigid water, and Joht waited for the warmth to come. When it did not, he spat into the cold pool gathering at his feet and started cleansing himself.
Two extra weeks, he thought darkly, hurrying his movements as he felt his core temperature begin to drop.
Once finished, he walked back near the entrance, grabbed an old, threadbare towel, and dried himself. Behind him came the sound of wet feet slapping the grimy and broken tiles. When Joht turned, Ciracelle was there, hastily covering her nakedness with a towel of her own. He flicked a brief nod her way before averting his eyes back to the stained tile wall.
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, Joht,” she said. “Nice work in there, by the way. Glad to see I’m not the only one who’s off lately.”
The remark stung. It was an affirmation that Orrock had been right about his group’s loyalty slipping. If he let things keep progressing in this downward trajectory, they would see him as their equal, not their better.
“Just a fluke, Ciracelle.”
After a moment’s silence between the two of them, he turned to her. She returned the look, her already pallid complexion seeming paler than usual, almost matching the near-colorlessness of her blond hair. He still found her to be beautiful—so much, in fact, that he found it difficult not to recall better days, days when his eyes could drink up every inch of her splendor for as long as he desired.
He kept his gaze on her face now, however—round with a slightly pointed chin, full cheeks, and large, deep brown eyes that always reminded him of what they had once shared. But the playful smile that often teased the possibility of rekindling their illicit affair had been absent these last weeks. She looked tired and drained most days, a dull shadow of the vibrant and tempting woman with whom he had once been infatuated.
He shook his head, damp hair dripping water. “It’s that new one. Corso. Just thinking of him and the fact I didn’t pound him right through the floor…it’s been burning me up all day.”
Ciracelle took the towel from her body to dry her hair. “You can’t let him get to you, Joht. What you’re trying to achieve—”
“What I’m going to achieve, Ciracelle.”
She stopped drying herself in response to the rebuke but was quick to resume. “Fine, Joht. What you’re going to achieve here, it’s worth a lot more than some schoolyard squabble like this. I don’t want to see you throw away your dream for a nobody like him.”
He nodded with a heated sigh. “I know you’re right. I need to refocus on what’s important.”
“Joht!” called a laughing voice from behind. “Heard Lochmore’s kicking you back down to ijau after today’s session. Get a few noodles bumped loose in your head from that scrap you had yesterday?”
Joht turned, lips tightening, brows knitting as his anger spiked.
Cutting through the dry room, Kanoh pushed his way between Joht and Ciracelle, snatching a towel from the wall before walking away. “Looking good there, you little blond duvoberry, you.” He turned back to face them, sniffing the air emphatically. “I don’t know about you, but this hungry ruho-mah is smelling new blood in the fight for that tasty archsentinelship. Everybody hear me?” he bellowed, his two open palms smacking loudly against the golden-brown skin of his own chest. “Hey, somebody’s got to take a bite of it when big man Tav is gettin’ slapped down by some mouthy little budojalesca.”
Joht’s eyes flicked to Ystolt, one of his most ardent followers here in the House of Falling Rain. She stood there half-dressed, gaping at Kunoh’s flagrant show of bravado. Her pale blue eyes turned then to meet his own, watching to see what he would do. Others followed suit as an almost electric current of tension began to crackle through the stiff silence of the dry room.
For Joht, there was no choice in the matter—not if he wanted to reclaim the loyalty that was clearly wavering amongst his small band. Though he counted Kanoh among his band of loyals, Kanoh was nevertheless looking to capitalize on this perceived moment of weakness and take Joht’s place of esteem in the House of Falling Rain.
Joht tightened the towel about his waist, moving in slow, cold pursuit of Kanoh. A smile was fighting its way to his lips, but he kept his grim demeanor intact. Through his bravado, Kanoh had given him exactly what was required: an opportunity to regain some face. Yes, it would result in another fight that might well land him outside Lochmore’s quarters again, but Orrock would understand.
A restrained chuckle bounced in his chest as he amended the thought. Orrock would applaud.
When Joht was only a few paces behind Kanoh, his prey slowed, turning about. In that instant, the swagger drained from Kanoh’s poise and his expression. In the center of the showers, the smaller of the two took a step back, a fragile, uneasy smile cracking across his lips.
“Tav, come on now.” His words were kept quiet so none could hear the unmistakable quavering in his voice. “Joht, please? You know I was just playing around, big brother.”
Joht shook his head, his mouth a hard line. “Sorry, Kanoh. Not this time.”
18
A day after his fight with Kanoh, Joht’s muscles were nearing their exhaustion point. Sweat beaded and streaked his exposed torso as he hefted his body weight up to the gritty, rusted lateral bar jutting from the eastern wall of the House’s Iron Grounds. Forty-five repetitions later, he at last gave his body the reprieve it demanded. The grass was damp as his bare feet made contact, and at once, Joht surveyed the grounds for his next routine.
The Iron Grounds was yet another leftover from the House of Falling Rain’s days as a prison. Completely encased by stone walls that ended some forty feet overhead, it was the sole place left in the entire facility that offered a glimpse of the outside world. There were bits remaining of the rubberized flooring left from the old days, but most of what the aging, rusting equipment stood upon was dirt, sand, and grass. No roof existed, offering a square window above to the freedom the night sky represented. Tonight, the stars and moon were buried behind dense black clouds from which a cool mist descended.
Head cocked skyward, Joht basked in the minimal b
ut refreshing precipitation. He wiped the sheen of dampness from his face, and his eyes settled upon the nearby resistor slide. He wrapped his hands about the grips on the T-shaped bar, shaking it to make sure the long slot that ran alongside the wall wasn’t clogged with sand and other debris. Before beginning the push, he glanced across the yard at the others honing their strength and endurance.
All loyals, he thought with an approving smirk. Even Kanoh was there—face bruised, one eye swollen almost completely shut, and body bulging with a fresh trio of painful-looking welts. Of his followers, only Ciracelle was missing. But as he was preparing himself to start his push on the resistor slide, she appeared through the single doorway.
Joht thrust his body forward then, arms and shoulders fixed and straining as if in a mortal struggle with a charging tuskhog, legs, shoulders and back powering the antiquated machine along its track. From time to time, he felt the bar catch on the grit that had fallen into the slot, but he forced the bar through it until he was at the end of the line. Turning the bar, thereby resetting the resistor slide to run in the opposite direction, Joht repeated the process.
Back now where he had started, Ciracelle stood waiting for him with a coy smile. “Heard you had another appointment with Lochmore about your scuffle with Kanoh. I take it you’ll be spending even more time in the House with us because of it?”
“Hardly. Lochmore pushed for three extra weeks this time, but Orrock told him to eat it.” He straightened himself, wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked back out across the yard. “Everything’s almost back to normal. Only one thing left to do.”
“Tallas?” Her lips turned into a worrying frown. “Joht, I told you to just let it be. Lochmore can put you in here longer, or even have you expelled from the Order if he wants to. All he has to do is go over Orrock’s head and find a Chamberman who’ll agree with him that you’re becoming a problem.”
“No. Not letting it go, Ciracelle. That stinking puddle of whale muck will absolutely pay for daring to—”
“Come on. The guy had practically just walked into the House for the first time, Joht. He didn’t know who you are. He didn’t know any better.”
Joht looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Do you think that matters? It doesn’t. Kanoh would’ve been only the first to question me if I didn’t shut it down, and that Tallas is still out there walking around with no consequences for raising his hand against me. If I let that go, Cir—”
“If you let that go, life goes on, Joht.” She touched his face, visibly tired eyes imploring him to see reason. “What we have is over. I know that. It doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. You’re still important to me and I don’t want to see you throw your future away because of someone who doesn’t matter.”
He returned the delicate touch, his mind fumbling for the right choice of words. “I—well, I feel the same, Ciracelle. But something has to happen. You don’t understand because your future isn’t the archsentinelship. Mine is. That title belongs to me. The way you, Trigg, and the others look at me is an important part of that. It’s vital. Clout can’t be bought, and I intend to have a hurricane’s worth of it when I challenge for the archsentinelship. That’s why I need every fool who so much as said two words I didn’t like tied up, thrown into a barrel full of holes, and dropped into the sea.”
“But don’t you see?” She tentatively laid her hands on his chest. “If you do something to get expelled from the Order, that’s all gone. Someday being known as Archsentinel Joht Tavross…that’s never going to happen.”
Joht wrapped his hands about her shoulders, tipping his head down to look her squarely in the face. He grinned. “They can’t expel me if they know I had nothing to do with it.”
Her face, damp now from the mist, wrinkled in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I still love you, Ciracelle.” His delivery of the words was more convincing than he had expected. “I need you to do this for me.”
She withdrew a pace. “Do what? I don’t know what you mean.”
A tug brought her close again. “We’re not going to solve this with another fight. You said as much. We need to get inside his head, and only you can do that.”
Ciracelle still looked uncertain.
His thumb slid over her cheek, wiping the dampness away. “Please, Ciracelle. I need your help.”
She swallowed, eyes unblinking despite the misting rain. A moment later, she nodded. Joht leaned forward, giving her wet lips the gentlest of brushes before pulling away with a smile. He could almost see her melt just a little.
“What do you need me to do?”
“That’s my beautiful girl.” He peeled away a few strands of damp hair from her face. “Tonight, when everyone is asleep, make your way over to Tallas’s bunk. Read him. Orrock looked through his whole file and told me it was incomplete. He thinks Delflore is protecting Tallas, hiding information for some reason.”
“Why would she do that? Why would Lochmore allow it? He saw the file too, didn’t he?”
“Of course he did. I don’t know why Delflore is hiding something from Lochmore, but it has to be something serious, otherwise why take the risk? That’s what I’m counting on, that whatever secret is being kept hidden about this Tallas Corso, it’s big enough that no one, not even Delflore, could defend against it. If we can expose it, that’ll be the end for him.”
Ciracelle shook her head. “I don’t know, Joht. I don’t think I can.”
“Your future won’t be in any danger, I promise you. If what we find in Corso’s head is bad enough, they’ll probably thank you for your suspicions and diligence in—”
Her head shook more fervently this time, wet hair flailing about. “It’s not that I’m afraid for myself, Joht. I don’t think I’m up to it. I mean, look at me. Do I look well to you? I’m tired all the time, my tephic isn’t even a shadow of what it used to be, and even tephic implants aren’t doing much more than opening my pinhole of a connection to the tephic flow another pathetic degree. And by the end of the day, Joht? That’s gone too. I’m bottoming out, here. I’ve got nothing left.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself, Ciracelle. Tephic is a gift in you like it’s never been with me, even if it’s not as strong as it was.” He held her tighter in his grasp. “This is the only way I know how to get rid of Tallas that doesn’t involve another confrontation, that doesn’t threaten my future. You have to do this.”
A pained wince shone on her face. “I don’t know, Joht…I don’t know. I feel so weak. I need rest, something to get me feeling like myself again.” She closed the distance between them, letting her head fall against his chest. “If things keep on like this, Lochmore’ll have me out of here, out of the Order.”
Joht wrapped his arms about her. At once, hers clutched him tight as if without his support, she would crumble to dust. He looked out into the Iron Grounds, feeling conspicuous and exposed by this unseemly show of compassion. Trigg and Kanoh were both watching. Near the sparring posts, Ystolt and Ota’s match had slowed to a halt as both leered at the sight. He shut them away with a pinch of his lids. This was necessary. Ciracelle was fragile, but she was also the only one of his crew whose talents skewed in favor of tephic manipulation over physical strength.
“Ciracelle, you know as well as I do that Lochmore is the last man in the House you need to worry about. You’re not going anywhere.” He kissed the top of her head, tasting the rain in her hair. “Just this one night. I won’t ask it of you again.”
Her head withdrew from his body, eyes gazing up at him. “Okay, Joht. I’ll try.”
19
That night, the barracks became a sounding chamber for the fitful thrashes of her fellow Majdi and ijau interred within the House of Falling Rain. Throughout the room, worn springs underneath limp, flattened bedding squealed with each movement. Coarse sheets rustled as bodies shifted for comfortable sleeping positions which were elusive, if not sometimes impossible to find. But over the next half hour, heavier breaths a
nd a few snores began rising into the air all about her as sounds of movement tapered off into stillness.
For Ciracelle Belfair, remaining awake was a losing battle. Her eyelids felt so heavy, her need for sleep so overwhelming that nothing seemed able to hold it at bay for long.
“Stay awake. Stay awake,” she mouthed the words time and time again.
It was no use. Sleep conquered her at last, taking her in its comforting embrace and dragging her down into the black depths of a blissful rest her body was only too eager to accept.
***
She woke again with a jolt, staring out from her bed, searching the darkness about her. When her eyes started to adjust, everything was cast in shades of bleakest gray. From her upper bunk tucked in the corner, the still, presumably sleeping forms about her began to take shape as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She had no idea how long she had slept, no idea if she was the only one awake. Letting her head fall back on a pillow that felt more like it was filled with dead vermin than cotton stuffing, Ciracelle struggled to find her focus.
Long moments passed in a lethargic crawl there in the stillness of the barracks, but eventually, she felt the stirrings of tiny strands of tephic gather, ready to be used. She deployed it before it had the chance to dissipate, extending her will in search of even the subtlest signs of wakefulness in the room.
She waited. The tephic had been sluggish to arrive, and the first traces of it were sluggish to return. When it did, the remainder of her focus fell to pieces all about her, replaced by frustration. Kanoh was sleeping, but the pain from his altercation with Joht kept his wakefulness lying just beneath the surface. Ota was asleep. Wescusi and Gavon as well. The Esharic girl, Ystolt, was uncomfortable and awake, however, the climate here in the archipelago so different from her homeland that she slept nearly naked most nights to remain cool.
