The Skewed Throne
Page 8
I waited, watching Bloodmark’s eyes, sensing his movements. I knew if I waited long enough, he’d attempt a strike.
It didn’t take long. It never took long.
He tried to control the lunge; I could see it in his eyes. I stepped to the side, attempted a counterstrike across his torso, under his reach, but he twisted, sidestepped, and cut back. His dagger whipped through empty space and I tried another lunge, but he was being careful now. We feinted and parried and lunged for what seemed an eternity, fatigue beginning to set in, but Bloodmark’s anger began to override his caution. His thrusts became more erratic, sharp and loose.
When I thought his anger had built high enough, I exaggerated my fatigue, thrust forward and stumbled, presenting Bloodmark with an opening along my side.
He took it, stepping in close as I’d done before, driving the dagger home sharply. But I wasn’t there. Instead, I twisted, fell down hard on my side, and cut upward, tapping his leg lightly with the flat of my dagger. I grinned.
“Strike and match! For Varis.” Erick’s voice held a note of controlled respect.
Bloodmark snarled, then fell on me with a roar of hatred, hand clutching at my shirt, pulling it up in a bunch as he straddled me. I gasped in surprise. I heard Erick bellow, “Fall back!” and heard his voice approaching, but it came from a distance. Bloodmark’s eyes had fixed my attention, his dagger descending toward my chest.
My hand lashed out, caught his wrist and halted it, both our arms trembling. I felt a flicker of rage deep inside, hot and tingling.
“Fall back!” Erick bellowed, voice close now. It sliced through my rage, severed it. The tension in Bloodmark’s arm loosened and he made as if to pull back.
I relaxed.
Then Bloodmark hissed, “Bitch,” too low for Erick to hear, and the Fire inside me flared up sharply.
Bloodmark’s dagger flicked outward, the motion small, and nicked my forearm. I hissed at the pain and my hand snapped out, hitting Bloodmark square in the chest, thrusting him away.
He yelped, landed with a thud, but scrambled up into a crouch in the space of a breath.
“That’s enough!” Erick roared, interposing himself between us both. “What the hell happened?”
“The bitch shoved me off her, even though I was moving to get up.”
I shot him a dark glare. “He sliced me with his dagger. Drew blood.”
Erick’s eyes instantly darkened and he turned toward Bloodmark.
“It was an accident,” Bloodmark spat. “I didn’t mean it.”
Erick hesitated, uncertain. “Don’t let it happen again,” he finally said. “Either of you.” Then he glanced toward the sinking sun. “That’s enough for today. We’ll continue with this tomorrow.”
Bloodmark rose, brushed himself off with a sniff, then headed out into the warren of the slums. But not without a sly glance and a sharp grin back at me before he left.
Erick knelt as I shifted into a sitting position and pulled my arm out to inspect the cut. He frowned down at it. The blood had already dried, the pain gone.
“He did it on purpose,” I said, even though I knew it was useless. “Why do you believe him?”
A look of annoyed anger crossed Erick’s face and he dropped my arm. “Because he’s useful.”
“He hates me. And he’s vicious.”
“And you aren’t?” Erick countered, standing. He motioned to my dagger. “What about that? A guard-man’s dagger. We don’t part with them lightly. How did you get it?”
A surge of fear stabbed deep into my gut. For a moment, I was eleven again, felt the ex-guardsman’s fingers dig into my arm like spears and wrench me into the alley, crushing me to his chest. I had no time to react, no time to scream.
Got ya, little one, he’d breathed, the words a rumble in his breast. Got ya.
And then he’d laughed.
I looked up into Erick’s eyes, the fear hardening into anger. “He wasn’t a guardsman.” I pointed to where the Skewed Throne symbol was stitched into Erick’s shirt in red. “The stitching had been torn out.”
Erick frowned. “A deserter, then. Did he have a scar along one cheek? From the corner of one eye down to the jaw?”
I nodded, pulled my knees up to my chin, not looking at Erick. I could smell him—the man that had taken me back then—could smell the stench of ale, of dirt, of the Dredge and things deeper. I could taste the mold of his shirt as he cupped one hand on the back of my head and pressed my face into his shoulder.
Don’t tremble, he’d breathed, voice as soft as rain. Don’t tremble.
I shuddered, heard Erick kneel down in the dirt of the old courtyard beside me. I felt him hesitate. Not because he didn’t want to hear, but because he wasn’t certain I wanted to relive it.
“Tell me what happened.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, stifling a sob as I laid my head on my knees, facing away from him. I sat that way a long moment, then felt Erick’s hand on my shoulder.
He tried to pull me in closer to him. I resisted at first, then shifted back and leaned into his chest, still turned away.
When I finally spoke, my voice was muffled, distorted with the effort not to cry.
“He caught me in an alley,” I said. “Crushed me to his chest so that I couldn’t breathe.”
And that was all it took. I was eleven again.
And the ex-guardsman had me.
I could not see where he took me. I struggled at one point, but he only crushed me harder, all the time whispering, chest rumbling, breath coming in short, anticipatory wheezes. “Don’t tremble, little one. Shhh. Shhh. Not far. Not far now.” Then a low laugh, almost inaudible. “Not far.”
Grunting, and sudden jolts, as if the man were fighting his way up stairs. Then he turned and crushed me between himself and a wall, one arm—the one holding my head—retreating. I jerked my head back from his shirt, gasped in a deep breath with a small cry of desperation, the air still filled with the stench of the Dredge, but with traces of night air as well. The man cursed, jerked hard on something unyielding that finally gave with a rotted crash, and then the hand was back, pressing even harder, and the flash of night sky vanished and I tasted rot and darkness again. He lurched back from the wall and now his wheezes were gasps, sharp and uncontrolled. His voice had deepened, grown dark and harsh. Now I could hear the death in his voice. No words, no hushes, only guttural needs.
And then the man shoved me away from him, drove me from the crushing darkness of his shoulder into a mud-brick wall. My breath rushed from my body even as I tried to gasp it in. My head cracked into stone.
The world swayed as I crumpled. I could see the stars, the moon, the narrow ledge where we had stopped. The wall I’d hit formed a second floor, smaller than the first, the ledge around its edge only five steps wide. Large enough for the gasping man to crush me where I’d fallen, hand pressed hard against my chest. He hit me, grunting as his fist connected, my head snapping to the side so that I looked along the ledge and over its edge. Dazed, the man moving atop me, scrabbling at my clothes, ripping them, I saw the city of Amenkor across the harbor. Not the Dredge and the slums, but the real city. I could see the waters of the bay, flecked with edges of moonlight. I could see the docks, the masts of ships, the strange angles of the rooftops and buildings as they rose slightly toward me. On the far side of the city, the layers of the palace glowed with firelight, faint and unearthly. I could feel a breeze from the water, clean and pure.
The motions of the man didn’t register. Mind foggy, I stared at the water. I knew what was happening, what was going to happen. I’d seen it before, in the slums beyond the Dredge, in narrows and niches and empty holes. I’d heard screams, seen knives drawn, seen blood flow. I’d lived eleven years beyond the Dredge, spent one of those with Dove and his street gang of gutterscum, just long enough to learn how to survive on my own, how to steal without getting caught. I’d become numb to the death, to the disease, to the depravity. I felt nothing. Yet I was crying.
Except the sun rose in the east.
I frowned, and for the first time that day, the world began to fade to gray. The man crushing me to the rooftop slipped into a smear of red, his grunts as he struggled with his breeches slipping into the rush of wind. The world collapsed to the brightening line of white on the horizon, spreading north and south, growing in a long arc until it filled the night. It rushed out of the west, faster than the sunrise, a pure, brilliant white. And as it came closer, as the night brightened, I suddenly recognized it.
The White Fire from the legends.
It was exactly as the street-talkers had described it. A wall, filling the horizon, the flames reaching high, higher, reaching into the heavens, swallowing the stars as it came. Relentless, and so terribly swift.
The man atop me froze as the Fire entered the bay and scorched its way across the moon-flecked waters. The shadows of ships on the water and along the docks appeared against its whiteness and then were consumed by it as it swept forward. The docks were swallowed by it, and then it struck land and began sweeping through the city. As it rushed toward us, as it engulfed building after building, street after street, I heard the man atop me draw in a choked, horrified gasp.
Only then did I realize that there was no sound. The Fire was utterly silent.
In the moment before the Fire engulfed us, the instant before it descended onto the roof, I felt the clench of terror. My heart halted, my body tensed—
And then it was upon me, passing through me. I felt it scorch deep down inside me, deeper than the fear, deeper than the terror, deeper than anything I’d ever experienced before. It burned through everything, left everything exposed.
Through its whiteness, I saw the man atop me, saw his frayed clothing, his torn shirt. Something had once been stitched to the breast of his shirt, a symbol, the holes where the stitching had been torn out ragged and unraveling.
The Skewed Throne.
He’d once been a palace guard.
I glanced up into his face, frozen against the whiteness. His eyes were wide in shock, his attention turned inward. His mouth had parted, as if he’d been punched. Grit lined the corners of his eyes, his mouth, and mud streaked his hair.
I felt anger uncoil like a snake. Deep anger, resentful anger.
And then I saw the dagger.
The man’s shirt was undone, the dagger exposed. Without thought, with a swiftness I’d learned long ago in the depths beyond the Dredge, a swiftness that had been honed while in the company of Dove and his gang, I snatched the dagger from its sheath.
And then the Fire passed beyond us. Night slammed down, harsh and hurtful.
There was a moment of stillness, filled with the man’s tattered gasps, one hand still pressing down hard onto my chest, the other still tangled in the ties of his breeches.
Then the terror in his eyes faded as his attention shifted back to me. Shock twisted back into a snarl. His hand clenched on my chest, fingers digging deeper—
I slashed the dagger across his chest. A black ribbon of blood appeared, slick and smooth, and he lurched back. I didn’t give him time to react further. I slashed again, the motion awkward and childish but purposeful. It caught his arm, a gash opening up, blood gushing outward, splattering hot across my face and neck. I slashed again, catching him in the thigh, and this time he screamed. A hideous, wet, animal scream that shattered the night.
My last slash caught him in the throat. Blood flooded down his neck and he lurched farther back, one hand jumping to the wound, the other grasping at air as his back slammed against the wall he’d thrown me against earlier. He hung there, mouth gaping wide, blood slicking his shirt, until he slipped down the mud-brick and sat. His mouth began to work, opening and closing, and still the blood flowed. Guttural, rasping sounds emerged, ragged and torn.
I rolled into a huddled crouch. He grasped at me with his free hand, fingers closing on air. Blood coated the hand at his throat, until it glistened wetly in the moonlight. His grasping hand shuddered, its motions slowing. It began to lower, fingers still clenching, until it rested on the ground. And still the fingers spasmed. The muscles in the arms relaxed and the hand slid from his throat, leaving a second trail of blood down his shirt, a mark on his breeches. Blood dripped from the fingertips.
The guttural, rasping sounds continued, then degenerated into wheezing gasps of air.
Then these ceased as well.
And I fled. Back to the depths. Back to the Dredge.
Back to my niche, the dagger still clutched in my hand.
In the courtyard, Erick wrapped his arms around my shuddering form and drew me in close, rocking me back and forth. The motions were awkward, as if he were unfamiliar with how to hold someone, how to comfort them. But I barely noticed, too absorbed in the memory of the Fire . . . and what had come after. I leaned into him and cried soundlessly.
I hadn’t told him everything. I hadn’t told him how the Fire had left part of itself behind, inside me, curled and dormant, how it flared up in warning when I was threatened. I didn’t tell him that sometimes the Fire still burned.
After a long while, he gripped my shoulders and drew me away so that he could look into my eyes.
“He’s dead now, Varis.”
I nodded, sniffling, wiping at the tears streaking my face with both arms. “I know.”
Erick stroked my hair, squeezed my shoulder once before standing. “Good.” He glanced out into the night. The sun had set, the slums now dark except for the starlight. He sighed and turned back to me. “Are you going to be all right?”
I nodded again.
He hesitated, as if he didn’t believe me.
I gathered myself and stood before him, looking him in the eye. “It happened almost five years ago. I’ll be fine.”
He held my gaze, searching, face grim, but finally nodded. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. I may have another mark by then. Someone for you and Bloodmark to search for. Together.”
I grimaced but said nothing.
We never searched for the marks together.
“Have you found him yet, Varis?”
I started, Bloodmark’s voice emerging from the night shadows at my back. He’d twisted my name, Varis coming out as a vicious hiss, with a tone like that of the wagon owner so many years earlier who’d called me a whore. And somehow, Bloodmark’s voice had the same force as that wagon owner ’s kick, sharp and bruising.
Bloodmark laughed when he saw me start, then settled into a crouch behind me that was uncomfortably close.
I shifted forward. My hand rested on my dagger.
“So have you found him? The ‘pug-nosed man’? Is that what you call him?” Even whispered, Bloodmark’s tone was mocking.
I frowned in annoyance, then lied. “No. And I call him Tomas.”
I’d seen him the day before, but not on the Dredge. In one of the narrows. I’d tried to follow but had lost him almost immediately. He’d had no scent, like Garrell, and there were too many doorways, too many paths he could have taken. If the mark was out of sight, I couldn’t find him using the river unless he also had a scent.
And I did call him the pug-nosed man.
I felt Bloodmark staring at my neck, felt my skin prickle, but I did not turn. I kept my attention fixed on the Dredge before me, shifted uncomfortably again.
“Liar,” Bloodmark said softly. I could hear the smile in his voice. It sent a shudder down my back, forced me to turn and look at his eyes, cold and empty in the darkness. His birthmark was black in the moonlight.
He held my gaze without flinching. His smile widened slightly.
He knew—knew that I’d lied, knew that I’d found the pug-nosed man . . . or at least seen him.
I felt the faint sensation of a hand pressing against my chest, the sensation limne
d with the frost of the Fire. It closed off the base of my throat, made it harder to breathe, to swallow.
I pulled away from Bloodmark’s gaze with an effort, focused on the street ahead.
Bloodmark did the same, shifting far enough forward I could see his face out of the corner of my eye.
“What are we watching?” he asked, and this time he was genuinely curious.
My eyes flicked toward the white-dusty man’s door involuntarily, toward the loose stone to the right of the doorway, and I saw Bloodmark’s gaze shift, saw him frown as he settled back slightly.
The sensation of the hand against my chest grew. I suddenly didn’t want Bloodmark to know about the white-dusty man, didn’t want him to know about the bundles of bread the white-dusty man left beneath the stone outside the door if I left a length of linen there . . . and lately I’d needed to leave the linen more and more often. The slums were becoming even more crowded, the food more scarce. People were being less careless, had become more wary. If not for Erick and the white-dusty man . . .
I stood, startling Bloodmark enough he had to catch himself with one hand. His eyes flashed and his frown deepened. I stifled a brief surge of satisfaction at his reaction.
“Nothing,” I said down to him. “Nothing at all.” I suddenly didn’t want Bloodmark anywhere near the white-dusty man’s house.
I turned, retreated back into the alley, leaving the white-dusty man’s empty doorway and Bloodmark behind. But I paused at the end and looked back.
Bloodmark still crouched near the alley’s entrance, his gaze fixed on the white-dusty man’s door. Though distant, I could see the frown on his face, the calculating, narrowed look around his eyes.
The hand of frost pressing against my chest flared, then died as Bloodmark shifted toward me. His frown dropped away and in a teasing voice that echoed strangely in the alley, he said, “Shall we hunt ‘the pug-nosed man’ tomorrow, Varis?”
Then, in a darker voice, “Yes. Yes, I think we shall.”
I saw Bloodmark twice the next day. Each time he stood across the Dredge, back against a wall, arms crossed over his chest. His birthmark stood out a startling red in the sunlight. Each time he grinned and nodded, then pushed away from the wall and joined the flow of the crowd, turning into the nearest alley with a backward glance.