by Ginn Hale
“Did the chain just break?” a man asked. “Where’s the end?” Several men jerked blindly against the slack length of chain, trying to pull free of it.
John hadn’t considered the other men in his cell when he had broken the chain. But now he realized that his escape might as well be theirs. The more of them who broke free, the more confusion they could cause within the prison.
“Stop jerking on the chain.” John raised his voice just a little. “Just stand still and I’ll get you all loose.”
“Who is that?” a man asked in the darkness.
“The new prisoner,” replied the wounded man who had hung next to John.
“My name is Jath’ibaye.” The name still sounded strange to John. “I’m getting out of here. You can come along if you like.”
John strode quickly through the room, snapping the other ten men’s shackles. When he stepped close to them, he saw them desperately squinting through the blackness at him. Some whispered thanks to Parfir. Last, John released the boy who had hung near the door. The boy stood, staring at John. John gently pushed the boy back behind him and then placed his hands against the iron door. It was solid and strong. There was something at the center of it that resisted John’s will. A spell of some kind had been placed on the door. John allowed a spark of his annoyance to rush over the spell. It splintered like glass and the iron door cracked and fell to the floor in smoking hunks.
Lamplight from the hallway poured into the cell. John rushed out into the hall. A yard ahead of him, two guards stood gaping. One drew his long fighting knife. Behind John, other prisoners staggered out from the cell.
The guard with the drawn blade stood his ground. The other guard turned and ran down the hall. He stopped at a set of double doors and jerked wildly at a pull rope. Immediately the morning silence was shattered by the loud clanging of alarm bells.
“Get back in that cell! I will strike you down!” The guard with the drawn blade took a step towards John. John charged him. The guard swung his blade up to catch John across the throat, but John spun aside and caught the guard’s wrist. John snapped the guard’s arm back and then punched through his throat. He felt cartilage and bone shatter. Blood welled up over his knuckles. The guard crumpled and John let him fall. John knelt quickly and grabbed the guard’s long fighting knife. He didn’t look at the man’s face.
The second guard bolted through the double doors. In moments there would be more guards.
John turned to the cell door opposite him. He saw where the Payshmura symbol of holding had been etched into the iron surface. He slammed his open hand against it and the door crumbled away into black smoking ash.
John freed the men inside and the prisoners followed him down the hall in shocked wonder as he broke open cell after cell, swelling their numbers.
Lafi’shir wanted a distraction. He would get a distraction. At least fifty men and boys crowded into the narrow hall behind John. He led them through the halls towards the front gates of the prison. The gates were the most direct exit and they lay far from the kitchen courtyard.
As he threw open a heavy set of doors John saw a line of guards in thick leather armor. They carried long hooked pikes and fighting knives. Behind them were more guards. Fifty, maybe sixty, crammed into a column in the close confines of the hallway.
Two guards stepped forward with bows already drawn. They released their arrows instantly. One split through John’s throat. The second plunged into his chest.
John choked on the hard wooden arrow shaft. His heart shuddered around the iron arrowhead. Horror and pain welled through him.
Then a searing fury engulfed John’s shock and pain. The air in the tight hall shuddered and turned dark. John felt the stones beneath him splinter.
John dragged the rage back into himself. A wave of burning, glorious power surged through him. His pain melted into ferocious strength. He ripped the arrows from his body and charged the line of guards.
Pikes drove into his flesh and he shattered them. He split guards open with a thrust of his fighting knife. They stabbed blades into his thighs and chest. John shattered their bones with his bare hands. He ripped their bodies apart as if he were tearing through paper.
Blood poured down John’s body. The floor was slick with it. But the pain fed him. Every wound became a rush of power. A wild, unnatural wind swirled and twisted around John.
He tore the weapons from guards’ hands and hurled them aside. Behind him, prisoners rushed in. They snatched up knives and pikes and butchered the fallen guards.
Suddenly there were only a few men left of what had been a column. The guards broke. They turned and ran. The prisoners behind John cheered and roared with excitement. The alarm bells continued to hammer at the air.
John sprinted for the gates. Prisoners followed him. At every door guards fell back as John advanced on them. He shattered the cross bars meant to hold him back and ripped doors from their hinges.
And then he stepped out into the cold morning air. Just above the horizon, the sun burned brilliant gold. Its light cast the tall brick buildings of the city into silhouette.
Prisoners rushed out all around John. Some grinned at him. Others stared, almost as terrified as the guards.
“Go, before more guards are summoned. Thank the Fai’daum for your freedom.” John’s voice came out in a rough, low rasp. His throat ached. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath of the fresh air. But all he could smell was the metallic odor of blood that hung on his body.
And then he caught the strange, familiar scent of searing ozone.
Suddenly a rending noise screeched through the alarm bells. Flames crackled in an arc and an ushiri stepped out of the empty air onto the prison steps. Wisps of his dark brown hair hung loose around his face, and instead of a cassock and coat, he only wore a pair of half-laced pants. The red scars on his right arm and chest stood out brightly against his pale skin.
“Who dares this insolence before an ushiri?” he shouted.
“Go!” John shouted at the men gathered around him. The prisoners fled through the gates and out into the snowy streets.
John remained where he stood, facing the ushiri. Ashan’ahma, the same ushiri who had given John his own delicate pen as a gift. John knew his eyes were light hazel and that he sang beautifully.
At the same moment that John felt this pang of recognition, he also took in Ashan’ahma’s state of undress. The girl who had been dragged to the iron bed, gagged and whimpering, had been there for him.
Ashan’ahma returned John’s stare. He hesitated for only an instant. John waited. Ashan’ahma shifted to a battle stance. The air above his right hand screamed as he tore open a Silence Knife.
“You traitor!” Ashan’ahma charged forward.
John let Ashan’ahma drive his Silence Knife deep into his chest. The edge of the Gray Space tore through him, grinding through his flesh. Pain jolted through John as if every bone in his body were shattering.
John wrapped his arm around Ashan’ahma, gripping him tight, so that he could not escape into the Gray Space. Ashan’ahma punched his Silence Knife deeper into John’s body, but John held him. As John lifted his own knife Ashan’ahma’s face went pale. Ashan’ahma clenched his eyes shut. John brought down the blade and slit his throat.
John felt the Silence Knife, deep in his chest, collapse. Ashan’ahma’s hand fell away. John lowered him to the ground gently. Blood spurted from Ashan’ahma’s throat and pooled around his head.
Above him the sky churned with dark gray clouds. A thin, biting sleet pelted down. John let it fall.
John stood, numb. His strength faded. He watched as guards gathered at the broken doors of the prison. They stared in shocked horror at Ashan’ahma’s bleeding body.
John turned and walked away. The guards let him go.
Chapter Ninety-One
John sat amidst the bales of hay and dried taye stalks, feeling the deep ache of the wound in his chest and taking in slow, steady breaths of the dry air
of Sheb’yu’s hayloft. Saimura scowled at the black bruises and red welts surrounding the wound in John’s chest. He rinsed the wound with yellowpetal salve and then rewrapped the bandages.
“What did this to you?”
“An old friend,” John replied.
“The ushiri you killed?” Saimura asked.
John nodded. Word traveled quickly and the death of an ushiri was not a trivial matter. Lafi’shir had clapped John on the back and would have embraced him if John hadn’t been bleeding so badly. The other Fai’daum had grinned at John. He had overheard them recounting the stories they had heard of how Jath’ibaye had shattered the prison doors and freed the city’s debtors. Fenn regarded him with open adoration now.
When John was among the Fai’daum, seeing the hope and pride in their expressions, the joy he felt almost overwhelmed him. Only when he was alone with his thoughts did he remember that dozens of men had died at his hands.
Saimura finished securing the end of the bandage but didn’t draw back. Instead, he left his hand resting gently on John’s bare shoulder.
“Is your chest hurting you too much?” Saimura asked.
John shook his head. It hurt, but not too much. It hurt the way killing a friend ought to ache and burn. It wouldn’t fade easily, as his other wounds had. It shouldn’t, John thought.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the hay bales. The sweet smell of the dry hay and feed drifted over him. After days of awkward conversation and distance, it was strange now to feel Saimura’s touch.
“It isn’t that bad,” John said. “It’ll heal. You should probably be looking after that girl.”
“Which girl?” Saimura asked.
“Any of them.”
There were so many beaten and bruised women now at Sheb’yu’s farm that John couldn’t keep all forty or so of them straight. Though he recognized many of their faces, most of their names were beyond him. They had arrived steadily over the last week, in rattling carriages, crouched in wine barrels, or rolled into carpets and thrown over the backs of tahldi. Three had appeared only that afternoon, stumbling through the snow on foot. A butcher had left them at the river and they had walked the rest of the way.
Some of them were no more than children, only twelve or thirteen years old. Others were grown women in their twenties and thirties. Many of them wore marriage tattoos across their fingers. Two of them were mothers whose daughters had been taken as well.
All of them were beaten and bruised. Deep cuts encircled their wrists and ankles as evidence of the hours they had all spent strapped down to the iron bed. None of them were at ease when men were in the room with them. Sheb’yu reserved the second floor of her home for the women. Of the men, only Saimura was allowed upstairs.
During the day the women helped with the farm work or in the kitchen. John saw them hauling firewood. Sometimes he overheard them laughing with Sheb’yu’s cooks. Some days everything seemed good, a little crowded, but peaceful.
But the nights were never calm. Violent nightmares tore shrieks and garbled pleas from the women. Their screams echoed down from the upper floor. Even during the quiet times, John could hear soft, muffled sobs. After a week even the men sleeping downstairs sometimes woke, crying out. In the morning they were all red eyed and exhausted.
Saimura lit charmed candles and spoke soothing incantations. He brewed sweet infusions to bring deeper, less troubled sleep.
John simply took his blanket and went to sleep in the stable beneath the sloping timbers of the hayloft. A dozen or so of the men, including Fenn and Lafi’shir, followed him. At night their bedrolls filled the cramped space completely.
Of Lafi’shir’s men, only Saimura had remained behind in the farmhouse, in case his skills were needed. Usually, they were.
“How are you holding up?” John opened his eyes and glanced to Saimura.
“Me?” Saimura asked. “I’m not even injured.”
“No, but you’ve been treating a lot of us who were.” John pulled on his shirt and gingerly buttoned it closed over his chest. “You don’t look like you’ve gotten much rest.”
“I’m tired,” Saimura admitted. He sealed the jar of yellowpetal salve and returned it to his leather bag. “But being tired seems like so little to endure when I think about all that those girls have been through.”
John wrapped his coat around his shoulders. In the stable below, he could hear farm hands pouring feed and fresh water into the tahldi’s troughs. The animals made soft, pleased noises. John thought he recognized the low tones of the buck he rode.
“Look,” Saimura said suddenly, “there’s something I should tell you…But I’m tired and I’ve just sorted it out for myself so I don’t know that I’m going to make all that much sense. Will you listen and just bear with me?”
“Yes.” A tense dread flickered through John’s stomach. Saimura’s last private, serious discussion with him at the Hearthstone had left him feeling like a molester. John didn’t know if he could stand another conversation like that one right now.
Saimura sat down on the hay bale across from John.
“At Gisa, I was angry with you because you awoke a feeling that was very intimate for me. I thought that you had violated me.” Saimura shook his head. “I had no idea what real violation was. I have an idea now, and you didn’t do anything like that to me.”
John relaxed somewhat. It was relieving to know that he hadn’t hurt Saimura the way the women had been hurt in Yah’hali Prison. Saimura reached out and flicked several pieces of yellow straw off John’s coat.
“I was a little scared of you after Gisa,” Saimura said, “but I was also jealous. I didn’t want to admit it, but half the reason I felt so betrayed was because I realized how much more powerful you are than me. I’ve studied witchcraft all of my life, but I could never do the things you do. Never.”
“You wouldn’t want to.” John couldn’t keep from thinking of Ashan’ahma’s horrified expression as John had held him.
“Are you joking?” Saimura looked up at John. “I would give my right eye to be able to shake off bullet wounds and break a storm. You tore open iron doors with your bare hands. You killed an ushiri. I can’t even imagine the kind of power you must wield.”
John frowned. Despite the yellowpetal, his chest ached.
“It’s too much power to ever let me heal another man’s wounds,” John said. “I can’t create charms or make someone sleep.”
“You’ll learn those things,” Saimura said.
“No,” John replied. “It’s not a matter of learning the words or learning control. The power in me is too much. It will never be any good for anything but destruction.”
“You really believe that?” Saimura asked.
John didn’t just believe as much. He knew it and he thought Saimura could read as much in his expression.
“Have you ever tried to heal a wound?” Saimura asked.
“Yes, I have, and you wouldn’t want to have seen the result. Even when I’m trying to heal, I’ll kill. Ji told me as much,” John said. He glanced to the black leather bag next to Saimura’s leg. He wondered how many lives Saimura had saved with his talismans, surgical needles, and medicinal poultices. Both Lafi’shir and Tai’yu had remarked on owing Saimura their lives. John guessed that many others did as well.
“Trust me,” John said. “As immense as it seems, you wouldn’t want the power I have. It’s no good for anything but war.”
“Perhaps,” Saimura replied, “but we are fighting a war right now. So let me be a little jealous, Jah—Jath’ibaye.” Saimura flushed at his slip and John laughed.
“I have a hard time remembering the name myself sometimes,” John said.
“I’m so tired I’m lucky I can remember my own name right now,” Saimura said. He leaned back against a grain barrel and closed his eyes.
They were both quiet for a few moments. John watched a weasel climb along the rafters overhead. Another smaller weasel scurried after it. From the floor below
John heard the scraping noise of a tahldi marking a wooden support with its horns.
“Jath’ibaye meant a great deal to Lafi’shir.” Saimura gazed up into the rafters. His expression seemed wistful. “I think he’s really proud that you’re carrying his uncle’s name.”
“It sounds so much more formal than Jahn,” John said.
“It suits you,” Saimura replied.
John glanced to him and saw that Saimura had closed his eyes again.
“Will you forgive me for what I said to you at Gisa?” Saimura asked.
“There’s nothing to forgive. I’m sorry if I harmed you,” John replied.
“You didn’t hurt me.”
John found that deeply relieving to know.
“We’re still friends?” Saimura asked.
“Absolutely,” John replied.
Saimura smiled but didn’t open his eyes. John watched one of the weasels from the rafters slink down the far wall and gather a clump of straw. It eyed John warily as it stuffed the straw into its belly pouch and then scurried back up into the rafters.
“Can I give you some advice?” Saimura asked.
“Sure,” John said.
“Stop opening that wound in your chest.” Saimura’s smile disappeared and he opened one eye. “A man who stabs you isn’t your friend. Stop punishing yourself for his death.”
John felt a guilty flush spread across his cheeks.
“Lafi’shir is counting on you to fight, you know,” Saimura said. “You can’t just be tearing yourself up. He needs you to be strong.”
“I know,” John said.
“Good.” Saimura relaxed back against the grain barrel. “There will be more than enough people tearing you up in combat anyway.”
“I suppose there will be.”
In a way, he was counting on it. The strongest surges of power came to him in the wake of those deep, terrible wounds. At the prison he had hardly felt the pain of blades and pikes as they’d impaled him. So much power had surged up from the injuries that they had almost become a joy. In the midst of crushed bodies and drenched in blood, he had felt wild and alive with strength and fury.
