Behind Bars
Page 2
"What about her?"
"Are you going to turn her in?" he asked sharply. "From what you said, sounds like you're in so good with them that if you're suspicious, she's gone."
Pel sighed. "No. Not if there's no reason to," he said. "Keep your damn voice down. She's staying the night, you know. Probably several, maybe longer."
Bruant's chin jerked up. "You aren't even denying that you would," he said, shocked.
The gesture left a pang in Pel's chest, hauntingly familiar. For a long moment, Pel just studied his son's face, seeing the ghost of Phalene in the pale gray eyes, that brown skin one shade darker than his own, the delicate angle of his jaw. Pel himself was on the stocky side, an ex-guard with the build to match. The only thing his son had was his nose, strong and prominent on a thin and elegant face that hardly matched it. His body was much the same; he was strong enough to help out in the bar and little more. Phalene had been that way, too, and Pel, with his natural bulk, couldn't really understand how that must feel in an argument like this—he'd never make it a physical fight, but he'd also never had to deal with the inherent intimidation of it either.
"I'm not denying it," Pel said finally, carefully neutral.
Somehow, that made things worse with Bruant, like the fury that bobbed to the surface was pulled down by a stronger undertow of distress. "How many innocents have you handed over?"
Pel focused his gaze on his knuckles, tight on his mop, carefully swallowing his first reaction. "I don't know," he said. "Hopefully none."
"Hopefully," Bruant said. "That's the best you can do? The Inquisition hasn't given you numbers?"
"The Inquisition has said that all the ones I reported on were guilty," Pel said.
"You know that's impossible."
He knew.
Pel sighed roughly, feeling the force of it rough in his throat. "What do you want me to say, Bru? I'm not sorry. This is how this city remains safe. This is how I've kept you safe. We don't want to go to war again against monsters. We tried negotiation a long, long time ago, and you know what it got us? Dead civilians."
"This gets you dead civilians, too," Bruant muttered, hunched around his arm. At least he was keeping his voice down. "Do you think it doesn't, Dad? Anyone who acts in any way people don't expect, the Inquisition views as a threat. And you help them. Do you really expect me to join in on that?"
"If you want to take over the inn after me, the Inquisition will want its due." The anger inside him was welling more, brimming at the bottom of his throat, so every time he swallowed, every time he breathed, he could feel it hot inside him. Still, he only held onto the broom. He didn't move at all. "I told you that I help them because I thought you'd understand."
Bruant shrugged his jacket off violently, struggling to do it one-armed, throwing it at the peg and missing. There was indeed some kind of bundle, Pel noticed with that detached part of him that noticed everything, clutched in that other arm, protected by his body. Bruant just looked at the jacket on the floor briefly, then bent and hung it up properly, seeming almost more annoyed at himself that he was doing so.
"You thought I'd understand," Bruant said finally, still facing away, staring at the coat rack. "I'll tell you what I understand. I understand that you've spilled blood to protect me. I don't want that, and I won't do it."
That was it. Pel shoved the mop back into its corner with such force that it clattered to the floor and took the broom with it. "You should understand that I do this to stop people like your mother from dying!" He only just managed to keep it from becoming a shout; the words came out with force regardless. "Demons are beasts, Bruant. They're godsdamned fucking monsters who exist to feed off us. Whether it's blood or fear or sex or anything else, they eat us." He shuddered, remembering how empty Phalene had been in the last hours. "That's all they want. And humans will let them do it, if they have a chance."
"Torturing humans ourselves is somehow better?" Bruant demanded. He spun to face Pel again, and Pel saw the small black bundle in his arms turn its head, gold eyes wide, one paw stretched up with its small white claws hooked in Bruant's shirt. "You're full of shit, Father!"
The argument carried him forward; asking about the animal would force them to both stop. "Yes, it's better!" Pel said. "I hate it, Bruant, I hate it, but it's up to people to behave in ways so that the Inquisition won't target them. Because we have to live this way. Anyone acting suspiciously might have had contact with one. Magicians will call them here. They have to be stopped. Anything to keep those monsters out of our city. I remember when we started to relax our standards. The demon your mother met seemed nice enough to her. Right until it got hungry, and then—"
Bruant adjusted his grip on the cat, cradling it gently even in his anger. "Don't you ever," he said, low but intense, hunched around his find again, his hair falling over his face and casting strange shadows on it in the light of the flickering candles overhead, "use my mother's death against me again. I have a right to be angry—my father's a murderer by proxy."
"Bruant—"
Stalking for the stairs, Bruant spat words like darts over his shoulder, "Innocent lives aren't worth shit to you. Humans kill each other just fine. Just look at you! You think you're actually doing something worthwhile. Wonder what everyone who got tortured because you ratted on them would have to say about that."
Pel sucked a breath in. When they'd first argued about it, Bruant had seemed shocked and angry but not—this. Not genuinely disgusted. Rage and fear churned around in Pel, a thick, sickening sludge that sat heavy on his stomach. Anger: He had thought Bruant would have understood, would have at least had faith even if he didn't. Terror: Bruant was all he had left. What if he couldn't forgive this?
I can't let this get to me. He forced himself to think that, forced himself to keep moving, not letting Bruant out of his sight as they moved up the stairs. He has to understand.
"Bruant! Bruant. Get back here." Pel followed him all the way to his room, where Bruant was forced to stop just so he could get his key out and the door unlocked. He held out his hand between Bruant and the handle, palm open. "Look, I know you're angry, but you have to understand. I'm doing it to try to help others."
"I understand what you think you're doing," Bruant muttered through clenched teeth. The cat squirmed, and he ran a soothing hand down its back before using that hand to turn the knob.
Pel stared at the motion of Bruant's hand, how gentle it was despite his distress. "Fine," he said thickly. It was the closest he was going to get right now to any kind of resolution. "Now, care to explain what you're doing with that cat?"
"Giving it a home," Bruant said sharply.
"Bru—"
Bruant's gaze finally jerked up to his again. Those eyes, so much like his mother's, were equal parts guilt and anger, wild and so wide the whites were showing.
It's so hard, Pel thought helplessly, for a child to be angry at his parent, even when he thinks he's in the right. He had to remember that, too, and had to understand and forgive if he could expect even half of the same.
"I'm lonely," Bruant said. He'd probably only stopped himself from yelling it by the awareness that they had a guest staying only few rooms away. "I can save a street cat if I want to, can't I? I've been feeding it for weeks and it finally trusted me enough to come with me. Is that a problem, Father?"
What could he say to that? He opened his mouth, then closed it again wordlessly, letting his hand drop from between Bruant and the door.
The door was yanked open, and without saying anything else, Bruant stepped through and closed it behind himself.
"Fair enough," he answered finally, hoping that Bruant was still close enough to hear him.
Chapter Two
Pel got up at ten in the morning, a reasonable time considering the hours he always kept, to find that Bruant had already gone out. Pel checked his room, but there was no sign of either the boy or the cat. The window was open, so he could only assume the latter was off making its feline rounds.
Bruant would have to be more aware of the actual state of things now, Pel was sure. Every friend would be suspect. Bruant would find himself watching for their behavior and trying to decide if they were innocents. If they were Inquisition agents. If they were demon-touched. Knowing that the city was safe was a child's mindset. Knowing that people kept it that way was an adult's.
Knowing that it wasn't just the Inquisition who did it but your neighbors was a different type of experience altogether, and he regretted he'd had to be the one to give it to Bruant. It wasn't a great way to live. It was easy to be afraid of everyone. You couldn't know when you'd be the one to raise flags you hadn't even noticed.
After Phalene's death, the Inquisition had first approached him with the opportunity to prevent similar tragedies. He remembered the pain of trying to transition from the assumption that all his neighbors were trustworthy. He hadn't known what to do at first. He'd wandered around in a daze, looking at people and knowing that the world was split: Those who might collude with demons, those who might report the former, and those with little idea how fraught it all was. And him, moving from one group to another.
Pel pushed Bruant's window open wider and slid himself out it and onto the roof tiles outside, clucking his tongue to call for Bruant's cat. He scanned the horizon, glancing across the nearby rooftops; his inn was taller than most of the surrounding buildings, making it easy to see a good ways across the city, but trying to spot a cat in whatever chimney shadow it was hiding in was nearly impossible.
Still, he tried. It'd be harder for Bruant if his cat went missing after all this, and as fearless as cats were about heights, it wasn't like it was actually safe up here. He hadn't cleaned the moss from the roof for—
How long has it been since I came out here for anything but clearing out the eaves? he wondered suddenly. He'd had to repair some broken tiles a few years ago, he remembered, and there was the time he'd needed to remove a squirrel nest from his chimney. But he hadn't gone climbing around either time, and even then, he'd only been out here for work.
He used to come out on the rooftop with Phalene, during the day or at night after the bar closed. He'd proposed to her out here, late at night with the stars brilliant in the sky, the two of them lying back and making up stories about the constellations—Phalene's favorite hobby. She'd always fantasized about there being more to the world than there was. He'd described one of the constellations as being like a ring, glittering with gems, and when she turned to him grinning, he'd been holding the real ring out.
They'd made love up here that night, her father one floor below, and he'd surprised them right after by coming into her room. She'd had to come back in through the window and pretend to have been alone, while he climbed down the wall. He'd dropped the last ten feet and sprained his ankle.
Pel shook his head, smiling around that old ache. It had been a hard injury to explain away to his commanding officer, and he'd set himself to practicing climbing the training wall in the practice field for ages to avoid having it happen again. He still kept it up whenever he hit the field, though just for pleasure these days. Not much call for an innkeeper to go scaling walls, and he didn't have anyone whose windows he'd climb out of.
The cat still hadn't turned up, though, and the ache was growing. No point dwelling, he reminded himself, and climbed back inside.
He kept the window slightly open as he left Bruant's room and locked the door behind himself. If Bruant wanted a cat, then he wasn't going to shut it out. He doubted that it'd come back on its own, regardless of how many weeks Bruant had been feeding it—it was just a street cat, after all—but that was Bruant's problem to deal with. All he could do was support him.
After that, he moved down the hall, rapping on Tari's door. "Need your room cleaned?" There was no answer, and he paused, considering his options. After the late and busy night she'd had, she might still be in the room, sleeping. She's probably out, though. A traveler keeps sunlight hours.
Pel didn't bother to second-guess himself again. He opened the door with his spare on his key chain. If she were in, he could always apologize and stick to his original excuse of coming in to clean. 'I thought you were out,' would hardly be a lie.
Sure enough, the bed was empty, though she'd at least made it behind herself. The room smelled of sex regardless, an uncomfortably thick smell, and he opened the window as he searched.
She'd taken her travel bags with her. That by itself wasn't overly suspicious if she were trying to make a sale, though—she'd have to be able to check what she could ditch and what she'd need to resupply. But it made her harder to investigate; he searched around for any discarded clothes and found none.
Looks like she likes to keep things tidy. He supposed he could appreciate that.
'Nothing to report' was as good news as he was likely to get. No matter how angry Bruant was at him, it wasn't like he ever enjoyed having to pass his suspicions on to the Inquisition. Every time, there was the guilt. The fear that this time he'd condemned an innocent.
It was just that the risks of not doing so were too high.
He closed the window and let himself out of the room, then went to finish cleaning and get himself ready for the day.
*~*~*
Tari didn't return until it was starting to get dark, a couple of hours before the inn reopened for business, but he didn't expect her sooner as she'd have to get her midday meal out regardless; they didn't get enough patrons staying over to make it worthwhile to open for lunch, since most people worked through the day.
The cooks were due to show up to start getting food prepped, and he half expected to see one of them when he heard the door open. Seeing her instead was a strange shock. There was something incredibly physical about her, a presence that filled the room far beyond her actual size.
"Welcome back," he said, instantly smiling. "Enjoying the city?"
"Something like that." Tari shrugged but smiled back nonetheless. She came over to the seat nearest to where he was working and slung herself down, dropping the bag on the table. "Not much luck selling my goods. I was hoping things would go a little more smoothly."
It was said so lightly, so heedless of what it was actually like here, that he felt his stomach twist. "Well, you're a stranger."
The words just slipped out. He shouldn't be warning her at all—he knew that much. The Inquisition needed to be free to do what it had to without interference, if worst came to worst.
But what Bruant had said stuck with him, and maybe she deserved at least as much forewarning as anyone else in this damn city.
"What's that got to do with it?" she asked, her eyes fixed on him. "Most towns love traveling merchants."
"They don't know that your jewels aren't cursed or tainted," he explained, trying to keep his own tone light. "Owning that kind of thing puts the new owner at as much risk of being taken by the Inquisition as whoever sold it. Once a demon's influence has gotten onto something, it's there to stay."
Surprisingly, she laughed, tilting her head curiously and sending her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She looked at him from that angle, eyes even brighter than before. "Ah, so it's like that," she said. "But the guards let me in, so surely they all know I'm harmless? After that much questioning, I'd hope so."
"Sure," he said, "they deal with blatant intrusions. But if your business seems genuine, and you seem human to all their tests, they'll let you take shelter here. We're humans-first here, after all. They checked your belongings, right?"
"They did," she said. "For anything that was obviously some kind of enchantment." She tapped her forearm, hidden under a billowy sleeve. "And when they tested me, I bled red blood just like any other human."
"And they asked you questions about your history and your business to see if anything seemed off," he said, as agreeably as he could
despite how raw he felt about this all over again. "So they won't keep you from entering."
She spread her hands, grinning. The whole situation seemed to almost be delighting her, and his frustration welled up more thoroughly.
This isn't a game. People die.
"Then what's the problem?" she asked lightly. "I passed the tests. If I'm not human, your guards failed at their job."
"Yeah, and that's why people aren't buying what you're selling." It came out snappish. "There are things that can get around wards. Possession, something riding around in the back of your mind. A slow-acting curse. Demon-borne perversions and inhuman desires—"
"You make it sound so appealing, sir," she murmured in her husky voice.
Why wouldn't she take this seriously? She didn't realize the risk, that much was clear. He'd been working with the Inquisition long enough that he could tell an inquisitor that he suspected her, and she'd vanish just like that. She sounded so well-traveled—did she really not know what could happen? If she talked about demonic influence this lightly to the wrong person, it would be the last stop on her travels.
"People will test you in all kinds of ways. I think you should mind yourself a little better."
Whether it was the shortness of his tone or something else about what he'd said, she seemed to sober a little. Her smile faded, though her eyes seemed to grow more interested, intense and focused. If he didn't know the thought were insane, he'd think she was intrigued by the risk.
"Really," she said. "That's unnerving. But surely it's not as bad as all that?"
"It happens often enough." Pel reached for an example he hadn't been involved in, too sore to think about the ones he had been. "There was an old woman recently, Vautour. She used to come eat here sometimes. Well, she was getting older and she told her friends and neighbors about how afraid she was that she'd pass on soon."
Tari tilted her head. "A reasonable fear. Certainly one more human than demonic."
"Sure, but the more she talked about it, the more it sounded to people like she was looking for ways to stop it. Medicines, serums, those can treat the symptoms, but mortality is the human condition. Ultimately there's no way to permanently stop humans from dying. Age has its way with all of us." He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. At least she seemed to be taking it seriously now. "Not quite true, actually. There's one way."