Dreaming Death

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  But if the priest was searching for Elisabet, eventually he would come to them.

  They were on the edge of the Seychas District where the architecture wasn’t as old. The hotel had a decorative turret on each corner topped by a small dome, but the majority of the roof was sensibly sloped rather than flat, allowing snow to slide off in winter. The only flat space on the roof was a narrow walkway across the front. Elisabet leaned against the stone rail there, calmly observing the street four stories below as if she could watch forever, showing the patience of a hunter. “Stop moving, Mr. Lee,” she told him at one point. “You’re distracting my eyes.”

  Forced to settle in one place, Mikael waited in silence until the inaction began to prey on his nerves. “Did you learn to shoot to hunt?” he asked, distracting her ears instead.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you hunt?” The only thing he’d ever hunted was other men. He’d never had cause to shoot an animal.

  “Wild dog, Mr. Lee.”

  “To eat?” That sounded wretched.

  “We had sheep. A pack of dogs can kill off a flock in a week. One of us always guarded the sheep.”

  Probably where they’d been when the priests descended on her family’s home, like wild dogs themselves. “Ah, I didn’t think dog would taste very good anyway.”

  “It tastes like dog, Mr. Lee.”

  He was too much of a city boy to know if that was a joke or not. Perhaps on a farm, he reasoned, one wouldn’t want to waste food. “I’d rather not try it.”

  She shrugged, her eyes fixed on the street.

  He scuffed one foot in the gravel atop the roof. “What happened to your grandfather? Did he return to the Family with you?”

  “They shot him before . . . ,” she began. “I buried him.”

  “And you came to Lucas Province on your own? And convinced the elders to take you in?”

  “He said to do that when we were done. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Mikael took off his sword belt and laid that to one side. He probably wouldn’t have known what to do either. “Does Kai know?”

  “Kai’s very intelligent, Mr. Lee,” she answered, her eyes not moving. “He’s put information together. He suspects.”

  Mikael understood the distinction. They both might suspect that Elisabet had killed nine men, but they didn’t actually know it. “That’s why he tried to keep you away from the investigation.”

  “Once he knew this was related to the massacres, yes.”

  Mikael rolled that around in his head. Kai could have put together the information from the facts that he knew. It would require several inferences, but Kai had been sitting in his quarters with nothing more to do than think. Someone in the twenty-fours had, no doubt, been feeding him news and rumor. What else had Kai figured out? Mikael wondered. He asked Elisabet, who gave a short laugh.

  “He doesn’t talk to me anymore, Mr. Lee.”

  “To whom does he talk?”

  “No one, now. He has no one he trusts.”

  Which sounds about right, Mikael thought sadly. “Why not?”

  “He doesn’t know who he is any longer. He’s heard rumors.”

  “Rumors?” Those would be the same rumors Jannika had mentioned, he had no doubt.

  “About his parents. He’s not been the same since. I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t erase them.” She tensed, watching the street below. She half raised the rifle and then lowered it again, resuming her resting stance. “I wish I could. There are too many secrets.”

  They lapsed into silence again. He joined her in watching the street, knowing his observations served no purpose. Shironne had seen the priest’s face. Elisabet had. He had only vague impressions and a description to work with.

  No, he had seen the priest in his dream. Shironne couldn’t have seen him otherwise. But his memory of the priest was buried and he could only hope he recognized the man when he saw him in daylight.

  “He’ll be better off once I’m gone,” Elisabet said, surprising him. “Tova will be good for him. She’s amusing.”

  Gone. She didn’t mean she was leaving, he realized. “After this . . .”

  Her eyes not leaving the street, she shook her head. “I’ve escaped my fate for too long. There will be nothing after. Not for me.”

  Mikael didn’t respond, shocked by her calm assumption that she would die.

  • • •

  The corpse had a terrible feel about it, even before Shironne touched it. It smelled of blood and filth. Chemicals permeated the skin, ones she didn’t recognize, along with a bizarre tang of silver. She shuddered and reminded herself it was only a body. She felt Deborah’s hand under her elbow, reassuring her. Her revulsion must have shown on her face.

  Her mother and sisters were visiting the palace—Above—an introduction to the king’s consort, Lady Amdiria. Shironne had joined them when they arrived, but the opulence of the king’s household was wasted on her. She couldn’t see the imported rugs or brocaded chairs or the consort’s intricately embroidered robes. And while the lady herself seemed very likable, Shironne had been uncomfortable the whole while.

  Sitting about in a fine room was no more useful than identifying unguents in the infirmary. The feeling that she needed to be doing something had prickled along her spine, from the moment Deborah escorted her to her mother’s side, throughout what seemed like an interminable meal where Perrin spoke incessantly, and up to the moment Shironne begged her mother to let her go back to the infirmary. A runner—an impatient young man named Eli—had escorted her back down to Below again. She’d arrived there just before Deborah learned that a second body had been brought to the fortress.

  Paal Endiren. Mikael had watched him die. Not in a dream, but on the street in the Lower Town.

  Shironne stood now in one of the cold rooms, the same place where Iselin Lucas had lain. She and Deborah were alone, although the doctor’s young runner waited outside in the hallway, presumably to carry Deborah’s pronouncements back up to the palace.

  Shironne reached out a hand, touching clothing worn for many days. Sweat, dirt, and a clinging sense of horse pervaded the fabric. There were traces of skin, dirty water, urine, and bits of food gone rancid. She fumbled for a clean cloth, finally locating one in the jacket of her unfamiliar clothes. She wiped at her fingers, unable to keep the expression of disgust from her face. “Where is his hand?”

  Deborah took Shironne’s bare hand in her own, her concern and curiosity winging around Shironne’s mind, distracting her from the feel of filthy clothing. Deborah’s hand lay atop hers on the man’s, the doctor’s living thoughts drowning out any impressions she received from the body.

  This performance fascinated her, Shironne realized. “I need you to take away your hand, ma’am.”

  Deborah’s hand lifted, carrying away with it the strength of her curiosity.

  Shironne shivered, pulled instead into the fleeting remains of the dead man’s memories, still potent. They’d had little time to fade or freeze. “He wanted to die. He’s wanted to die for a long time now, but they wouldn’t let him. He wanted it to be over.”

  That remained foremost among the memories in the decaying mind, repeated so many times that the leaves in the piles all seemed to tell her the same thing.

  She pulled herself away from the memories and simply felt the flesh with its sickening chemical saturation. It had run rampant through the body, seeping into all the tissues, evident even in the man’s sweat. Whatever it might be, it had made him a slave to them.

  She moved her hand back to the filthy tunic, feeling past the clothes into the broken chest, searching for more information. He’d drowned in his own blood, a swift suffocation. Broken bows of ribs on the right side of the body arced into the lungs. She could sense far away in his abdomen the shattered pelvis and torn innards that would have brought
a slower death had he survived the other. He couldn’t have survived both injuries. Even if he weren’t injured, his blood seemed all wrong, as if there were many poisons in him already. She told Deborah what she thought, and the doctor agreed.

  “He’s very thin,” Deborah said regretfully.

  His skin had a dry, papery feel to it. He was dying an old man’s death at only twenty-five. “What could have done this to him?”

  “He appears to have been addicted to a drug called blue sky.”

  “How can you tell?” Shironne asked.

  “There’s a bluish tinge to his skin, a pervasive one. Even touches his corneas.”

  “It turned him blue?”

  Deborah seemed sad. “Only a faint hint of blue. I’ve seen this before in the City Hospital. I can only speculate as to whether he made this choice himself.”

  Shironne puzzled over that. “You think they drugged him to keep him under control?”

  “It’s possible. Paal rarely came to the infirmary when growing up, but I have difficulty imagining him as one who would turn to drugs. Then again, I didn’t know him well.”

  Shironne laid her hand on his and concentrated on sifting through the memories left behind. Most she found were blurred memories of captivity. All the while, he’d been aware of what happened to him, locked inside his own mind, unable to escape.

  He’d wanted to die, if only to escape the endless guilt. He’d wanted not to lead them where they wished to go. He’d wanted to apologize to Elisabet for betraying her, for falling into the wrong hands, and he wanted never to have met the man who stole everything, every confidence, every secret he’d ever held. Shironne feathered through the leaves of memory, finding Paal’s regrets everywhere.

  She worked them, reshaping his memories in her own head until they made sense. “He was captured,” she told Deborah. “I think they did this to him, the drug, but I’m not certain. They captured him, and the man—the one who touched Mr. Lee, the one from the dream—stole his memories. Paal thought he’d betrayed Elisabet.”

  Deborah said nothing, her mind whirling in escalating worry.

  Shironne lifted her hand from the body. “They brought him here to see her.”

  “Paal never tried to contact anyone at the fortress,” Deborah said, her voice strained. “Elisabet would have told me.”

  “That’s not what I meant. The priest didn’t know what she looks like. He’d seen her, sort of, in Paal’s mind, but that’s not the same as actually seeing someone. The impressions we have in our minds are often . . . warped. Besides, all Family look alike to some people. Same uniform, same hair. So they were keeping Paal around to point her out, to verify her identity.”

  The chill in Deborah’s mind mimicked the temperature in the room. “I need to talk to Dahar. Dear, if my runner takes you back up to the infirmary, can you wait for me there?”

  Shironne agreed, thinking that Deborah would place her only in safe hands. Deborah led her to the door of the cold room, where a second man waited with the runner to prepare the body for burial, a calm and anonymous presence.

  While Shironne rubbed at her hands with a warm, damp towel, Deborah instructed the runner. She hurried away afterward, able to move faster without a blind girl in tow. Shironne pulled on her gloves under the runner’s curious gaze, wondering what he would make of her.

  “What would be the best way to do this, miss?”

  He had a pleasant voice and seemed quite tall. Taller than Mikael, certainly. Maybe as tall as the colonel. “Perhaps I could put my hand on your arm,” she suggested.

  He lifted her left hand, set it on his sleeve, and carefully led her down the hallway in the opposite direction from which they’d come. Judging from the arm under her fingers, she added muscular to her mental description, making him a very large young man, fitting with what she considered the stereotype of Family. He thought very little at her beyond mild curiosity, his mind carefully trained. He paused. “How do we negotiate the stairs, miss?”

  “How far away is the first step?”

  “About two feet.”

  Shironne instinctively grabbed for her petticoats to lift them and remembered then that she didn’t have any. Flustered at her mistake, she started up, one hand against the wall, the runner following behind her. His mind laughed at her, though not in a malicious fashion. She felt the railing end and stepped out onto the first landing, then followed that around to the next stair.

  She talked with him, stopping only twice to catch her breath as they made their slow progress up the stairs. In a day or two, she would be sore. Once they hit Five Down, there were more people going up and down, so Shironne stayed near the wall, trying to keep out of the way of faster-moving feet. The sound echoing in the well gave her an idea of the stair’s shape, making it easier for her to negotiate the steps.

  By the time they reached One Down, she knew Gabriel the runner far better. Like her, he was a sensitive. Eli, the runner she’d met upstairs, was his cousin. Gabriel was a runner downstairs, in Below, because sensitives weren’t permitted to serve duty outside the fortress. For their own protection, of course. The next year, when he was a seventeen, he would begin his three years of required service as a sentry. That was when he would first be allowed to serve aboveground. And after those three years he could decide what he wanted to do with his life, whether to continue to serve as a sentry, or to take a different position within the Lucas Family. Shironne couldn’t imagine spending most of her life down here, but Gabriel seemed to think it perfectly natural.

  They eventually reached the infirmary, easily identifiable to her now by the smells alone. She located one of the bunks and settled there, resigned to waiting again. She sighed.

  “You become accustomed to it,” Gabriel said.

  “To what?” she asked.

  “The endless waiting to be treated like an adult.”

  “You don’t find it annoying?”

  He sighed. “It’s the way it is. The rules are there to protect us, even if we chafe at them. I just try to keep that in mind.”

  His acceptance of the label of child, as if he couldn’t imagine it being any other way, fascinated her. Shironne opened her mouth to say that but heard voices in the hallway outside the infirmary and whistling from a sentry. She knew now what that meant. Someone had let their emotions slip out of control. The sentries whistled to protest such lapses.

  She felt Kai approaching then, the thunder of his worry making her teeth hurt. He wasn’t as loud as Mikael, but his sullen nature made him harder for her to bear. She rose and backed away until she hit a table or shelf. She stood there, pinned against it by Kai’s anxiety.

  “Where’s Deborah?”

  He spoke to Gabriel, she realized. Could Kai even see her? She could be standing behind a partition or screen and not even know it.

  “She’s not here, Master Kai. I don’t know where she’s gone.” Gabriel’s voice sounded even. “Please calm yourself, sir.”

  It was the rule down here. Stay calm, or risk upsetting everyone around you.

  Kai’s frustration didn’t diminish. Shironne stood motionless, hoping not to attract his attention, but his focus switched to her anyway. The force of it frightened her, as if he stood next to her and grasped her by the arms. She heard him approaching and shrank back.

  “Where did Deborah go?” he asked.

  “She went to find Dahar.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Kai grabbed her arm, the heat of his hand seeping through the fabric of her sleeve. He didn’t hold her tightly enough to bruise, but she wasn’t going to get away from him. “I heard that David Aldassa is dead, and now Paal. Is that true?”

  Kai wasn’t angry with her. He reserved all that anger for himself. Shironne nodded jerkily.

  “Please,” he said, voice lowering, “just tell me where she�
�s gone.”

  Elisabet. He was afraid for Elisabet’s life. “No one told me,” Shironne protested.

  A feather of frustration broke through his fear. For a second Shironne thought he was going to start shaking her. As if recognizing that impulse, he abruptly let her go, embarrassment flashing across his mind.

  “I need you to help me,” he said in a calmer voice. “The sentries told me she left with Mikael. I need you to find them.”

  “How can I find them? I don’t know where they went, Mr. Lucas.”

  Kai stepped away, giving her breathing space again. “I know what you are,” he said. “I know you can find him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Kai’s certainty surprised Shironne. How did he know she could find Mikael? She hadn’t told anyone that. And she wasn’t even sure she could, not from so far away. She put her hands to her head, concentrating. At the edge of her awareness, she sensed him, far away and to her left. She tried to orient herself but had no grasp of direction in this vast underground building.

  “I think he’s that way, Kai, but I don’t know how far.” She pointed, feeling foolish.

  He said nothing about her use of his name. “Would it be easier if you were outside the fortress?”

  Easier than what? “I suppose so.”

  “Then come with me.” His hand grasped her wrist over her jacket sleeve.

  “No, I can’t,” she protested, and then recalled her earlier frustration. If she was out there, could she help find the killers? She wasn’t sure whether Kai, in his current fury, would be helpful or not. But she might be.

  “You can’t just take her, Master Kai,” Gabriel added his objection. “She’s to wait for Elder Deborah, sir.”

  “I’m her cousin. She’ll be safe with me.” He hauled Shironne toward the door of the infirmary.