“Let me go.” The pitch of her voice hinted at pain.
“I’ve passed?” Whatever she said, it might be lies.
“Yes.”
Being this close to her, watching the movement of the muscles at her neck, the swell of her breasts as she breathed, smelling her, made him realize how much she had affected him. He cursed inwardly. Sexuality – the temptation was always there. He could resist it. There was more to attraction than pure sex and this woman was the very opposite of someone he could like.
He let her go.
She spun and stepped away, smiling. Her lips had the barest tilt.
Revelation struck him. This had been planned. Rope instead of steel. Why was she happy playing games with death? What made her own life so easy to throw away?
The door swung open and five soldiers stepped through, their gheist weapons aimed at Samos. Tatiana quickly waved them away. “It’s not needed. Niko!” One of them nodded. “Make sure the crew knows. This man...” She cocked an eyebrow at Samos. “...is loyal to me. Aren’t you?”
As if a frail curtain had blown aside for a moment, Samos heard sadness in her voice, then it was gone and there was only wry amusement. He inclined his head. “Yes, I am.”
The boy, Joss, entered. His hair was wet as if recently washed and his face glowed pink and clean.
The barest hesitation slowed Samos. “Hello, Joss.” Realizing he was still crouched on the timber bench top, he carefully laid the knife flat and slid off the bench. Teo and the soldiers watched warily.
“Why is Joss here?”
Tatiana pulled over a new chair and sat, both booted feet on the ground, hands propped on her thighs. “He...is my informant.”
“Ah.”
“It’s not so bad as that. I had already figured out who you were. I think he just thought it was a nice thing to tell me.”
Joss grinned. Whether the woman was lying or not, the boy was here... And blaming him was pointless. There was no guile or evil in this child.
“How are you, Joss?”
The grin widened. “Good, Samos. Really good.”
Samos turned to Tatiana. “You take care of him. You hear me?” He took a deep breath. “Please.”
She shrugged. “It’s done.”
“Why are you sick, lady?” The question from Joss silenced them all. Perplexed, the boy looked from Samos to Joss and back to Tatiana. “You are sick, aren’t you?”
Her eyelashes flicked closed and open. For once, Samos thought, she was the one truly surprised. “Yes. I suppose, I am.”
C H A P T E R T E N
The death of the creator means the death of the trinketton.
*****
Heloise sat on the grassy slope just inside the brick, cemetery fence and watched as the last of the mourners gathered into small groups or couples. A few of them stayed on their own. Some already trickled out through the gates. It had surprised her how many had turned up for Leonie’s funeral. She’d moved away and stayed up here on the slope for the duration of the ceremony. The smoke from the pyre had drifted up toward her and made her eyes water horrendously but she’d stayed put, sure that her presence would be misconstrued.
Drager had family and friends. She guessed some would have come purely through old association rather than current friendship. Addicts tended to lose their connections, or so she’d been told. During the week since that night, she’d asked questions. Learned about Drager, about Somm, about anything that seemed relevant. As if somehow, in all that information, she could discover why this had happened and find a reason for the deaths.
It hadn’t helped.
The monuments around her shielded her from the mourners. None had seemed to see her up here. To the left was a gray stone plinth topped by a soaring eagle, to the right a series of family tombs overgrown with ivy. Inside would be the bones and ashes of people long dead and forgotten.
Below a priest swept around the pyre. Next he would select bones and ashes from the pyre and place them into a ceramic box that would be buried wherever Drager’s ancestors kept their dead.
She felt cut adrift from the world. No matter what Uncle said, she was quitting. So, no job, and half her friends were gone. Dead.
At least Kane had stuck by her though he’d muttered something about her lying to him.
As if she ever had.
She stood and dusted the dirt and twigs from the back of her black hose then straightened her black satin frock coat. Overdressed maybe but it was her best black. She tucked her hands in the coat pockets. This was the last day she would mope around with her stomach in knots and a headache from worrying. Tomorrow she’d forget all this and start planning for the future. A new job. A new everything. Almost anyway.
The overgrown tombs beckoned her into their shade. The sweat at her neck dried instantly as the cool air enveloped her. She ran a finger under the coat collar to open it up.
Creepers had bridged the gap between a few of the roofs. Tendrils had reached across the space and curled round the carved leaves and relief animals on neighboring tombs. Other tendrils had followed until a roof of creepers formed. Stray shoots dangled down and brushed her hair, whispering gently, as she walked between these dwellings of the dead. Her feet crunched on the skeletons of dry leaves and fallen blossoms. The day would soon be over.
It was time to go home.
The stench of rot wafted to her. To her immediate left, a dark shape unfurled from within the shadowed doorway of a tomb. A flutter of movement. She flinched, threw up an arm, leaned away. Something hard as stone thudded into her temple. She fell, her legs crumpling. The ground whirled beneath her and she tried to grasp at something to bring it to a halt but it ate into her hand, her arm, fraying...she was being blown away, bleeding into the edges of the world.
“Bitch! Demon! Bitch!”
Something cold stung her neck, sliding through her flesh and down into the depths of her soul. And the last of her was gone. Gone into darkness.
Gone...
****
As blood trickled from under the hair and across the temple of the demon, Thom stared. He had to remember this face. Know the face of evil. This had killed his daughter. The anger seethed through him, demanding an outlet.
“How?” He cocked his head. How had the demon killed? “I don’t know that.” He needed somm. Couldn’t think right without it.
His body shook from head to fingers and down to his legs. Things flared white as snow then cleared and his head buzzed inside. He held himself until the noise and the shaking went away.
He looked around the tomb he’d broken into. The tiers of niches in the stone walls were like ladders. It was quiet in here. He looked down.
From the bruised gash in the forehead the blood ran across the eyebrow, into the eye socket, round the closed lid, making a small red lake.
Did demons bleed? Thom frowned. The angel wing tattooed on her arm was a lie. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the leather wallet with the twenty-four needles. Twenty-five, including the one already in the neck. He counted them often. He unrolled the wallet and admired them. He tapped his teeth then went and pulled and wrestled until he’d dragged the coat off the demon, pulled the arms and legs out for better access. Now he could see skin and the shape of the body, the bumps of bony tubercles and the curves of muscles. Needle placement needed anatomical exactitude.
The anger rekindled and he rammed his fist into the nearest piece of stone, and his elbow. Stone thumped against skin. Spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. How dare it hurt him! How dare she! How dare they! Then he closed his eyes and ground his teeth together until he felt the rage fill him, up to the very top.
Twenty-four. He would need them all. The principal needle points. Never more than five was the rule. Less than five, stay alive. He took the first needle between bloody fingers, knelt, found the principal point at the knee joint, jammed it in through thin cloth until it hit bone and fused it and twisted. Felt the needle break. Snap! Found another pri
ncipal point. Did it again and again and again. The anger stayed, driving him, until he grasped for a needle, shaking fingers scrabbling, and found nothing. Twenty-five. This demon would not kill again.
Done. Nothing left to do. He was panting, his chest rising and air rasping in and out. The anger drained away and left him puzzled and sore. He wandered outside and down the hill. The man he met there stared at him and the blood on his hands then threw away his broom and ran up the hill Thom had just descended.
Weariness overcame him. He wobbled, put his hand on the side of the smoking pyre for support and lowered himself to the ground. He put his ear to the earth to listen to the crackle of the stone cooling. Branches that had tumbled off the pyre dug into his side. It was hot there, even through the insulation of his clothes. He figured he deserved the extra pain for he had a feeling he’d just done something very bad.
Up on the hill, people arrived bearing torches and lanterns and went away bearing their torches and another, larger thing.
A different priest came to him, hauled him to his feet and peered at him.
“Ah. It is you,” the priest said. “I have been waiting for you for many years. Come. It is not your fate to be given up to the enforcers today. Come with me. There is something about you worth saving though...” He snorted dismissively. “...most would think you only useful as bait to lure the Tormented One from his hell. Be glad the girl is still alive.”
And so Thom placed his arm across the priest’s shoulders and let himself be led to a small room where his wounds were cleaned, his hair was shaved, and his clothes were changed for those similar to the priest’s. The floor became covered in clumps of his black hair and the night air breathed coolness on the half of his scalp that was bare.
Dazed, through it all he remained silent. He had nothing to say. Nothing to feel. Perhaps he never would again.
They left the next morning. It was still dark and the sun showed only a thin sliver of brightness above the eastern rooftops when they set out from the lodgings of the priest. By the time they reached the northern gate of the city the landscape was painted by the early light and the priest’s head, when Thom looked at him, was cradled in gold.
For many days they walked north, following the road that led past the Imperator’s estate and his winter palace where it rested on the slopes of the dormant volcano, Mt. Yusta. And still Thom did not speak though the priest talked incessantly, even when he shaved the right side of Thom’s scalp – a job that he seemed to do every second day.
Only in the bleakest hours of the night did the priest become silent and withdrawn. Some nights he walked out into the darkness only to return early the next morning, with eyes red and sunken from fatigue. On such nights Thom would wonder what it was that was missing. He felt the absence of the words the priest spoke. They filled his head, those words, and kept away the other evil thoughts that whispered to him.
He still shook, sometimes mere trembles; sometimes he shuddered so hard his teeth chattered. At night the craving returned, along with the whispers, and he would scratch at his legs and the old scars, remembering the rush of pleasure when the beetles bit him.
On the fifth day they entered a village. Children followed them, giggling and pointing. Thom said nothing. The priest threw sweets to them that drew the children closer, as well as some goats a boy was herding.
“Where is an elder?” he asked them.
A woman in a brown dress pushed through the crowd of little ones and Thom watched agog as she berated the priest for drawing the children from their chores.
“I’m sorry, old one,” said the priest, ducking his head. He fumbled in the bag at his waist and pulled out another sweet. “Would you like one?”
“Pah! Old one? When I’m as old as you and as shriveled up by years, then you can call me old! What is it you want with us?”
To Thom’s surprise a thought came to him. Surprising because since the death of the demon he’d couldn’t recall a single thought that was not the idea of someone else. What did the priest want with them? But no, that too was another’s thought – the old woman’s. Then he looked at the priest. Beneath the scraggly white locks that spilled from the left side of his head he did look old. Wrinkles, white hair, skin that clung to the contours of his skull, and his eyes sunken in dark pits – all of these said ‘old’.
“What do I want? First allow me to introduce myself. My name is Omi and as you no doubt can see, I’m a priest of Amora, goddess of love and of hate.”
“So?” The woman frowned.
Hate? But of course, that was the other side of Amora even if some ignored it, pretending love was all that mattered.
“You’ve a child here who’s recently lost his parents?” The children, who’d been still giggling and milling around the priest, fell silent.
She blinked then recovered. “Children! Shoo! Go back to work. Kira, take the littler ones to Yelossi and get them to help him with collecting wood. When they had run off she turned back to the priest, Omi. “Yes, we do have such a child. A girl. How did you know?”
He glanced skyward. “The gods. What else would it be?”
“Oh.”
“Bring the child here. I’m taking her north to my orphanage at Ryrock.”
The child was seven or eight years old with mouse-gray hair and the shy manners of a sparrow. She was missing the thumbs on both hands, which was likely why the village hadn’t baulked at giving her up to the priest, and in lieu of sucking her thumb she sucked two of her fingers. The first thing she did as they left the village was to put her hand into Thom’s. He quickly pulled away and walked on with head straight and eyes firmly aimed at the priest’s back.
When they stopped for the midday meal, Thom sat on a rock by himself, as always. He didn’t volunteer to help; he didn’t speak, as always. After handing the girl some bread and cheese and making her giggle at a joke, the priest sat cross-legged on the grass and watched him.
“Would you like some food?” No answer. “What is your name? You haven’t told me yet.” Then he smiled at the child. “Yours is Mara, yes?” She nodded eagerly. “This man is no-name. Would you like to say hello to him?” She nodded again, vigorously – as if it were a vital decision.
“Hello, Mr. No-name,” she said somberly.
For some reason the sound of her voice sent a pang through Thom’s chest. He stared at her, trying not to show the pain, then quickly switched to watching an ant crawling on the ground with a shred of cheese in its pincers.
“Hmm,” said the priest. “Mr. Noname thinks he can avoid the world if he does not talk or think about it. “Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we, Mara? I think he will have to speak before he can have food.”
“Yes. Mm-hm.”
And so the priest didn’t offer Thom any food. By the next morning his stomach was rumbling. He watched with dull eyes as the priest dumped an armload of dry branches.
“If you help me to cook I’ll let you have some bacon.” The priest grinned and rubbed his belly while making sounds as if he were eating something delicious.
“I’ll help, you, Omi!” Mara jumped off a log she’d been climbing. “Please?”
He harrumphed.
Mara tried to take Thom’s hand and lead him over but he wrenched away his hand.
After that they let him be. A stream burbled along only a few yards from their campsite. After Omi and Mara had cleaned the dishes and their faces and hands, Omi tucked his robe into his loincloth, pulled Thom to his feet and led him into the middle of the stream where the water reached his waist. It was cold enough to make Thom’s legs go numb after a few seconds.
“Freezing, hey? Let’s see if this will stir you up, Mr. Noname. You stay in here until you talk. Hmph!” He marched back to the bank and lay back on a soft grassy area beneath the overarching branches of a eucalypt.
Mara stood, sucking her fingers, her eyes round as fennigs. An erratic breeze shook leaves from the tree now and then and they landed in the wate
r and went skimming past Thom like delicate boats.
The surge of the stream pushed against him, wanting to drag him along in its flow. If he stayed here too long he would eventually fall over and be swept away like the leaves. That idea made him feel...satisfied. The severe cold and the feeling of satisfaction stirred him from the lifeless miasma he’d been inhabiting.
When, after an hour or two, he began to sway from weakness, Mara ventured farther down the bank to the very edge of the stream. She took her fingers out of her mouth and instead tugged nervously at the hem of the flared blue tunic she wore over her leggings and shirt.
“Are you okay, Mr. Noname?”
The priest, who’d been snoring, mumbled as if half awake. Thom pulled his gaze away from Mara and shifted his feet so he could pretend to examine the water. Suddenly a round rock tilted underfoot and he slipped and fell, his head plunging beneath the water. The girl’s shrill cry cut off. There was only the muffled and cold universe of the stream. He let his limbs go slack and willed himself to take that last urgent breath and draw in a lungful of water, but found he couldn’t do it. Ah, never mind, he would wait. That time was coming.
A small hand grappled at his clothes then was torn away by the current. Vaguely he glimpsed a tumble of clothes and limbs. Mara! She was trying to rescue him!
Thom wrenched his head above water, took a deep, gasping breath and coughed. He swung his head from side to side, searching. Where was she? There! A few yards further downstream, with the distance between them rapidly increasing each second.
“Help! Omi! Mr. Noname!”
She floundered, arms thrashing the water but the depth was too great for her. A fallen tree trunk sieved the water with fingerlike branches trailing across the stream and her clothes caught on it for a moment. With five long strokes, Thom was within a yard and he stretched out his arm to grab her as he swept closer, but she spun away from him into a deeper part of the stream. The current tore along with her tumbling over and over. Her voice was stilled. Her face, when he saw it, pale as a corpse’s.
Needle Rain Page 9
