Take the body and give me the rest

by Julius Schenk

Seth walked to where Her Ladyship was standing. ‘Well? How did the student do?’ he asked.

  She smiled at him. ‘Very well indeed, and thank you for not killing him. I’m sure that Stephan thought that would have been a very good idea. Now, let’s retire to our chambers before they throw you overboard.’

  Chapter 9

  Seraphina cursed softly as she stepped out of the sleek black carriage and into the dark muddy street in front of the Mermaid’s Kiss. The sounds of drunken revelry washed over her, Dirst and Anton, her other cousin, as they walked towards the ramshackle and disgusting inn. Seth had found the place charming, but they had vastly differing standards.

  Dirst walked ahead of her and pushed the door open with both hand and boot. They walked in and while the music didn’t stop, everybody in the tavern quickly became aware of them. It was no secret that some young wealthy nobles were hunting a runaway debt slave who had murdered one of their relatives, a retired General. Rumour was they were offering a large purse of silver for whoever could help them with information to where he’d gone. Problem was: no one had seen him. The description was young, tall Northern debt slave, ragged clothes and, given the state of the General’s body, should have blood dripping from head to toe.

  Seraphina approached the bar and everyone stood back out of her way. She wasn’t a physically imposing person, but in Cravoss who you were mattered more than anything else. Her two cousins were well known to have fought and won many duels and never to have had to answer for it with the city guard; their family’s wealth protected them from embarrassment and punishment. Duels were semi-legal even if it was a well-trained noble against a drunken sailor or musician with no chance, proper training or even a good sword.

  She turned to face the assembled people and even the musicians on stage stopped playing as she spoke. ‘We are looking for the man that murdered my uncle, my cousin Dirst’s own father. He’s tall, young, Northern and, to make this so much easier, I have a drawing of him for you all to see.’

  She held up another charcoal drawing and slowly showed it to the people in the tavern. It was clear that a ripple of recognition was running through them. Behind the counter stood Dean with his daughter. Seraphina addressed him directly. ‘Was this man in here last night?’ she said coldly.

  Dean was clearly confused and struggling. His mind just couldn’t bend around the fact that the nice Northern scribe was a debt slave and a killer.

  ‘Was he here?’ she asked again.

  ‘Aye, the man in that drawing was here, but a killer and a debt slave? He was a scribe; he read letters for us all. What kind of slave can read and bloody write then?’ he said.

  She smiled at him, ignoring most of his words, as she knew well the answer. She reached into the pocket of her fine cloak and drew out a small handful of loose silver coins, and dropped them loudly on the polished wooden counter top.

  ‘And where did he say he was going?’ she asked.

  Dean looked at her and looked at the two men at her sides, both wore calm and contempt in their expressions, hands plainly on the pommels of their rapiers.

  ‘He didn’t, Milady. He never said anything about where he was off to. He slept the night right here and in the morning when I woke up, he was gone. That’s all I can tell you.’

  Seraphina reached out with her hand and slid the pile of coins directly in front of Dean’s daughter. Addressing her instead, she asked, ‘Where do you think he might have gone, girl?’

  The girl looked nervously at her father and then at the coins, temptation fighting loyalty. ‘He was headed for Pelloss, alright. He was asking me about the place last night and this morning I told him you lot were looking for him and he walked right out in the direction of the docks.’

  Dean looked at his daughter, disgusted, as she slid the money off the counter and into her hand.

  Without another word, Seraphina turned and walked out of the tavern with her men in tow.

  Seth sat on a padded chair which the General knew was called a lounge surrounded by piles of books in Her Ladyship’s lavish suite. The light had dropped, being provided only by lamps and shielded candles now. Her attendant had retired for the evening and Her Ladyship walked back and forth across the room, looking at this or that book and putting different things in order. Seth again remarked that her face was strong and beautiful and that, even though she appeared old in form, her spirit was still that of a younger person, she was filled with such a vital energy.

  ‘Now, first things first. You’ll need to start referring to me as Elizebetha and not Her Ladyship this and Lady that,’ she said.

  Happy with the idea, Seth replied, ‘Of course, and you can call me Seth—plain old Seth just like my parents named me, no Master or Sir that I didn’t earn.’

  She stopped her pacing and sorting. ‘Oh, you’ll earn it; you’ll earn it in hard work, pain and hunger.’

  She started her pacing and sorting again, talking to him while she moved and slowly made the room look a little less dishevelled. ‘Do you have any idea of why I threw you into a life or death fight today?’ she asked.

  He shrugged, but he had thought it fairly extreme way to test his mettle. ‘I just assumed you wanted to test me properly, you did take me on as protection’ he said.

  ‘The reason is that inside of you now, you have the memories of Stephan and his skills, too. There are too many to bring them all out at once, so they come out only when needed and then they stay with you. Can you read and write yet?’ she asked.

  ‘He can, so I can,’ Seth replied.

  ‘And when did you realise you could?’ she asked.

  He thought back to that first discovery in the Mermaid’s Kiss. ‘I looked at some written words and found I could decipher them.’

  ‘You needed the skill and it came. Now, if I’d asked the Officer to spar with you, the memories and skills of Stephan’s sparring and practise would have flooded you, but they would have joined with you and that’s all you would take from him. All the real memories and skills he had from life and death battles, of killing, of that horrible talent of his would have been lost. The only way I could make it a part of you forever was to put your very life at risk,’ she said.

  She moved over to him and sat near him at the small desk. ‘Now, do you have any memories of his summoning or the many, many times before you when he took someone into him?’

  Seth cast back into his mind; he pictured the room where he was chained to the floor; he thought of the General. He thought of the creature and the look of the summoning stones but nothing clear came to him, just a hazy of shapes, darkness and the cold ambitions of a collector. ‘I can’t picture anything clearly,’ he said.

  ‘He took people, Seth. His skill with a sword was only one of his talents. He built on the takings from many, many other men and boys. He killed them and took them into him whole. Now they are in you and you need to unlock each one in turn so that what they knew and learned isn’t wasted,’ she said.

  ‘How can I do that,’ he asked.

  ‘You need to try everything you can, try your hand at anything and see if you feel the tug of the familiar, but also you need to be ready to dream. Your dreams are no longer your own and soon you’ll find you share them with his and soon your own victims,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t intend to kill anyone I don’t have to,’ he said.

  She smiled slowly at him, shaking her head. ‘We never do, Seth, but guard against the hunger. The beast will hunger for the flesh soon and you’ll feel it inside you like a starving man and you’ll have to fight the other hunger, the hunger of knowledge, of the gatherer. You’ll meet someone who can do, who knows, who is everything you want and it’s so easy to take them into you and possess it. Guard against it, Seth; I don’t want you to become a monster like Stephan. I’ll help you.’

  ‘What happens if I give into it?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll become like them, the Dark Guild. All they do is gather more and more; as their knowledge grows so does their ambiti
on. They have been around for hundreds of years, taking more and more, living ageless lives from the takings of others. We won’t be like them, Seth. We are meant for better things.’

  She stood up from the desk and placed her hand on his arm. ‘I’m off to bed now, and you should be as well. When you’re half asleep, I want you to imagine yourself in a room full of doors, hundreds and hundreds of doors of different sizes. Try to open some and see where you go.’

  Dirst walked into the main dining room of the manor house. There his cousin Seraphina was seated at the table consuming a quick lunchtime repast. As he entered the room she flicked her hand at a woman server standing at her shoulder, gesturing for her to leave. When they were alone in the silence of the well-appointed room he spoke to her.

  ‘We have word that he took berth on the ship The Opulent, two months at least to Pelloss and stopping a few days as usual at the island of Dacar,’ he said quickly.

  She put down her fork and looked at the ceiling, thinking about the situation. ‘That’s too much of a coincidence for me to like it,’ she said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ he asked. Stephan never talked plans with his son, but treated Seraphina as his equal in intelligence and The Guild.

  ‘We have someone on that ship that we’re already watching. Elizebetha of Black Rock is on that ship, and the purpose of our watching is to make sure she doesn’t get to port.’

  ‘Well, just ask the blade to take both of them instead of one,’ he said with a casual shrug.

  ‘Okay, get your friend in the Cravosi navy to send a letter. We will have it waiting for our blade in Dacar.’

  Chapter 10

  The room rocked ever so slightly with the sway of the ocean, as Seth lay in the most comfortable bed he’d ever been in to that point so far. He was warm and fast drifting off to sleep in the womb of the ship. It felt a safe place, so he allowed himself to sleep in just his pants with his new dagger under the covers and against his chest. He didn’t feel his enemies would bother him anymore, but when you are hired as a guard, you’d better at least pretend to be one he thought.

  As he drifted quickly into sleep Seth imagined, as Elizebetha had asked him, a room with many different doors. It was the main room in Bloodcrest Hall. Large with cold blue stones that made the walls and the criss-cross of dark wooden beams that held the slate roof in place. The wall was lined with hundreds of doors, some small, some large, one was the door of his family’s cottage, one the backdoor to the General’s manor house. He was aware this was just a creation of his own, like picturing the face and body of the cute girl from the tavern that night; but again, Elizebetha had asked he do it, and so he would.

  Seth reached out for one of the doors with invisible hands and tried to open it. Nothing happened. He imagined himself trying different ones but with the same result, they were all stuck fast. Walking through the room, he spotted a large trapdoor that looked very familiar. He walked to the wooden trapdoor and reaching down swung it open without effort. Looking within he could see a familiar stone staircase, he walked down with a feeling of growing apprehension. Once he was through the door, it snapped shut and bolted behind his head. Seth was swallowed by the feeling of being in his own memory. He walked into the main room and tried to stay calm when it came into full view. Sitting at a table playing cards and talking were Yend and Josephine, around them the room in which he killed them looked the same as it ever had. Carpets on the floors, cupboards and chests filled, overflowing with stolen clothes and trinkets.

  Yend smiled at him as he had the first day when he and his friends had strolled in from the north with a big red target on their backs. Josephine stood and welcomed him, like the first night he’d come to her tavern, the Red Minstrel.

  ‘Seth, so good of you to join us tonight. You’ve been ignoring us,’ she said in her most charming voice.

  ‘It’s true Seth. We are as much a part of you as that lousy General, and we are not half as bad. Knaves and thieves yes, but killers . . . well, yes, but not on the same scale, not by a long stretch,’ Yend told him, putting down his hand of cards.

  Seth was unafraid, and, truly, he did feel some guilt in killing these two. Like Yend said, they were crooked as their housing room walls, and they had planned on killing him—but that was just bad water compared to poison.

  ‘Hello, you two,’ Seth said in a friendly voice. ‘Nice to see you again. Sorry for ignoring you, been busy trying to escape with my life.’

  Yend and Josephine laughed at that. ‘Oh, not to worry young Master, we are here to help you. After all, your life is now our life, your neck is our precious neck. So we’ll help you survive this bloody mess you’re in,’ Yend said.

  ‘Well thanks friend, and what can you do to help me?’ Seth asked.

  Josephine walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘We’ll help you by setting you free. We’ll show you what you really are and what you’re capable of. Then this little girl and her rich cousins will seem as nothing to what you can do.’

  Seth suddenly felt the tear of hunger inside of him like he’d felt back in that basement. Yend and Josephine had vanished to be replaced with the ripped and bloody shells the creature had made of them. Seth felt the compulsion driving him, and couldn’t help himself; the hunger inside was too great. His knees buckled beneath him, bringing him facedown towards the bodies. With blunt human teeth, he bit into the warm flesh still clinging to what was left of Josephine’s small ribcage. He felt the blood and meat in his mouth, as he ate more and more, grabbing the bones in his hands, licking them, chewing the meat off hungrily. His face was covered in blood but the terrible wracking hunger started to abate.

  Memories began to wash through him: them as children, looks across the table, love shared in crime. Good times they had. He saw a flash of blonde hair and caught a view of the cute blonde-haired girl playing fiddle at the Red Minstrel. He felt a flush of mother’s pride as he watched her play through Josephine’s eyes.

  Seth woke to the morning light finding its way into his room, feeling incredibly well rested in spite of the horrible dream and his realisation that he had indeed killed the mother of the minstrel girl in taking Josephine. He put his Northern nature to work on the guilt and started grinding away at it with wisdom of his volk. The only good enemy was a dead one; she had the same in store for you. You’re a soldier. Life is a battle. And, finally: fuck them both. Who cares anyway?

  The sun shone down on the deck and Lady Elizebetha—or Elizebetha, to her face—intended to spend most of her time on it talking with her attendant while Seth wandered up and down the deck. It was nice to be a man of leisure and watch the common sailors handling the tasks that were normally set aside for men like him. Somehow, he’d jumped from a world where his only value was brute force and the strength of his back to one where he had skills, training and knowledge. Him, Seth, being called ‘Young Master.’ Even the ship’s Officers gave him nods of respect as he passed.

  That night, instead of retiring early and unsuccessfully trying to open doors, he walked the deck and soon found himself near the figurehead. He’d never actually spent the time to look at it. He had avoided the sparring area in the daylight hours just in case. Now it was vacant and lit with lamps. He shrugged off his cloak, which was much too warm anyway, and stepped onto the empty space of the deck.

  Drawing his rapier and dagger, Seth went through forms. They came from nowhere, unbidden. Forms and sets of actions, attacks and blocks, faints and side-steps. Seth was getting a feeling of someone but not the General. Feeling something, Seth tried a move in which he stamped down with his foot to the imagined foes instep then spun fully around with a backhand slash of the dagger. It was a deadly move but risky, one that he knew the General would never perform. But where had it come from?

  ‘You must have trained in Pelloss,’ a female voice said from the shadows.

  Seth lowered his weapons as the Pellosina tutor of the Captain’s son appeared in the lamplight. In the soft glowing light, she looked
like a vision of lust. Pellosi women are renowned for being very womanly. She had a beautiful strong face with brown eyes and long brown hair hanging down her back in a clasp. She wore a thin white top that accentuated her lovely curves . Seth realised that he was staring at her like a soldier at a camp follower.

  He coughed. ‘Hello, your name is Minsetta, right?’ he asked quickly.

  She smiled at him amused, knowing his mind. ‘It is, young Master Seth. I remarked that you must have trained in Pelloss. That move is one I have only seen there.’

  He thought of all the General’s memories of Pelloss. He had lived there, but he’d never trained in this style; it was too wild, heathen, un-reserved.

  ‘Yes, I was lucky enough to train and live there for a short time.’

  ‘You are very young-looking to be so good at everything.’

  He laughed. ‘Truly I am an old man, and I just use this young body for the ease of it,’ he said.

  Her lovely brown eyes widened. ‘What an interesting thing to say.’

  Seth hoped he hadn’t scared her off with his talk. ‘Just a joke, that’s all. Sometimes I feel that way is all, do you know this style well? Did your brothers perhaps train in it?’

  This time she laughed openly at him. ‘You must have had a strange teacher indeed. The style you are practising is called the night blade. It’s only practised by women in Pelloss. They don’t use the sword at all, only the dagger. It’s a form of protection against our overly zealous men.’

  Seth didn’t feel embarrassed but felt the connection growing stronger now, with that someone else growing in his mind. He felt that he need to grasp this right now or it would go. He only had a moment, and quickly he cast the rapier aside and sank into a low crouch with the dagger thrust forward.

  He almost yelled at her, ‘Come now attack me and let me learn it properly!’

  Like a cat leaping from the darkness, she brought a knife out from somewhere hidden and dove forwards slashing the shining blade at him. He rolled backwards out of the way, just avoiding it. No blocks, he knew, only avoid. Speed against strength. He slashed at her and lunged with his elbow narrowly missing her perfect face. Attack with everything, he could feel it. She thrust at his chest but a fraction or two slower than fighting speed. He stepped sideways and slapped her hand. Grabbing the knife hand, he pulled it back and dropping his own, he brought his hand up inside her guard and lightly, so lightly, slapped the side of her face.