Flesh and Bone

by Robin Lythgoe

  “Look at me,” someone said. The words and their meaning drifted together until they fused. The order forced Sherakai to muster the strength to focus. Lord Bairith’s clear, sea-blue eyes regarded him with expectation. “It is time to wake.”

  He blinked and straightened. He found himself in a comfortable chair in front of a crackling fire. A drink sat near to hand, and a dullness to his thinking suggested he’d slept for a hundred years. “How long?”

  “Long enough.” The jansu squeezed his shoulder, then seated himself nearby. “What do you remember?”

  He stared at the flames, then rubbed his eyeballs with thumb and forefinger. “Pieces. Everything is jumbled. Distant.”

  “Am I?”

  “No.” He lifted the clay cup on the table simply because it was there. He sniffed it before taking a swallow. Watered wine.

  “Good. I am never far away, Sherakai. I am here for you, no matter what.”

  “Yes, sir.” It mattered, he remembered, that he was polite to the jansu. It was expected. Affection had nothing to do with it; he had none, though it encompassed him, sheltered him. It couldn’t protect him from what was inside.

  The jansu’s refreshment came in a beautiful cut crystal goblet. The contents absorbed the firelight, and only the liquid touching the glass revealed a deep red color. He sighed when he set it down, and the smell of izaku wafted across the space between them, sweet and spicy. Picking up the golden stick that always accompanied the wine, the jansu stirred his drink then licked it with an expression of satisfaction.

  “What will I do now?” Sherakai let his head fall against the high back of the chair again. It seemed not worth the effort to hold it up.

  The jansu set aside his goblet to consider. “There is still work to be done in Romuru. Afterward, I need you to tear down a wall. First, however, it would be best to return you to the Twixt and let you… warm up.”

  The word Romuru triggered memories. Only a few, and only at a distance, but enough to put a hook in Sherakai and stop his drifting. The crash of weapons, the pitch of panicked shouts, ashen faces. He clenched a fist and curled his arm.

  “Finish your refreshment, then we will walk together.”

  Walking exposed his weakness. The immediate problem was lightheadedness. Bairith supported him with a hand beneath one elbow, though if he fell he’d bring them both down.

  No, that was not true. The jansu would use magic to keep them both up. As if he’d heard, a band of air snaked around Sherakai. “Let me do this,” he said, not because he didn’t want Bairith’s aid, but because he needed his own independence. He needed to trust his body, his strength.

  “Soon.”

  The invisible support helped him manage the stairs. The effort involved in ascending them made him break out in a sweat. He had to stop and lean against a wall when they reached the top. The jansu waited patiently, then led him outside to walk in the bailey.

  Sherakai glanced up at the sun, squinting, trying to figure out the time of day. He supposed it didn’t matter. Nothing particularly did. An errant breeze ruffled his hair. The strange sensation had him lifting his hand to his head and discovering his shorn locks. Black wisps drifting to the floor. Landing in pools of blood. Bodies everywhere, as far as he could see…

  The pair of them circled the yard a few times before returning to the room with the fire where the jansu prepared another drink. “I haven’t Healer Tylond’s skill with herbs, but this will help you regain your energy. Perhaps tomorrow the two of us can spar for a little while.” He mentioned sparring as though it were nothing more than a casual stroll. He gave the cup to Sherakai and put his hands on his dragon’s head. Sherakai didn’t see the flare of magic, but he felt it. With it came the comfort of reassurance, of belief, and then the draining away of weakness.

  “Thank you,” he murmured when the jansu let him go.

  “You know it is my pleasure. I detest seeing you suffer.” He resumed his seat, his body angled toward Sherakai. “Do you remember anything more?”

  “Would it please you?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded and drew a breath, casting back over the murky past. “The Twixt.” It was as good a place as any to start. He walked himself verbally through the last fights he’d had, aided by the jansu’s questions. Bairith showed particular interest in the contest with the red-headed warrior. He picked apart Sherakai’s thought patterns to discover—again—what had prompted him to try to fight without the rakeshi.

  “Can you suppress the creature at all?”

  “No. I can only delay it sometimes.” The scrape of a single talon along the underside of his skin made him clench his teeth. It was a strange thing, a warning. He had learned the difference between that and the promise of swift and brutal bloodshed.

  “And now?” He had not missed the flex of muscle.

  He shook his head, hesitated, then shook it again. “It moves inside me. I can feel it like—like a fist in a too-small glove.”

  “Does it speak to you?”

  “No.”

  “Any images or emotions?”

  “No.” Was that true? Sometimes he saw things as they were about to happen—not premonition, exactly, but predictions based on facts. An opponent shifting to change the path of his weapon. The warning prickle of approaching danger. The exact edge of fear needed to compel a man to freeze rather than fight.

  The emotion was all rage; fierce, uncontrollable rage.

  “And you see what happens when the rakeshi assumes control? How so?”

  “It’s as if I’m pushed to a small room far away. I can’t move, but I hear and I see.” He held his hands up to either side of his head, like blinders. “I see…” he whispered to the crimson blossom of blood across blue uniforms. Blue. He didn’t want to think about blue.

  “Clearly?”

  “No,” still soft. “Not always, but many things. I see flashes of scenes, as if the rakeshi is moving too fast for me to mark its path.”

  The jansu continued to question him for a while before directing the conversation to other subjects. Sherakai answered without emotion, then fell silent. He knew little of what took place in the outer world and had no opinion.

  “Do I bore you?” Bairith asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why do you not converse with me?”

  He considered that for a long moment. “I am empty of words.”

  The next days followed the same pattern, though it began earlier: thin herb-infused wine, a meal, walking, questions. At midday the jansu exercised Sherakai on the sands, then the schedule was repeated. The jansu parroted some of his queries; phrased others differently. Sherakai noted each, and on the third repetition declined to respond.

  “Do you need time to think it out?” the jansu inquired.

  “No, sir. My answer is the same as it was the first two times you asked me.”

  “Good. Progress.” He rose from his seat and smoothed his beautiful tunic. “I will walk you up to your chambers.”

  They made the journey in quiet, and Bairith preceded Sherakai into the suite. He walked through each room, noting the lack of decor with a critical eye. Sherakai merely stood in the middle of the sitting room, silent and still.

  “Would you like draperies? Tapestries? Rugs?” He waved gracefully toward the bare walls. “It needs something to make this space warmer and more comfortable.”

  “If you wish.”

  The jansu glided across the barren tile and put a hand on Sherakai’s arm in understanding. “Are you ready to return to the arena?” he asked in the softest of voices, as if it were an illicit secret.

  Sherakai gave a scant inclination of his head. “If you wish.”

  The jansu smiled and stroked his shoulder. “Very good.”

  Herbs in the evening dose of watered wine helped Sherakai to sleep. They fended off the chronic nightmares as well but left him feeling indifferent. Bairith breakfasted with him, then walked him through the portal. The drab, awful light of
the Twist did not lift his spirits any more than the prospect of another string of fights that would end in another string of bodies.

  The jansu escorted Sherakai to a room on the sixteenth deck and introduced him to his new sparring partner. Yndath—no other name—was a surly faced elf of middle years and a badly scarred countenance. He was no decker.

  Standing in the doorway to his quarters, he took one look at Sherakai and his lip curled in disgust. “He’s a fine set of shoulders, I’m sure, but you want me to train this boy?”

  The jansu withdrew a key and offered it to Sherakai. “No, I want you to try to beat him.” He gave the man a faint, patronizing smile, and walked away.

  He held the familiar key in his palm. It unlocked the door to his own quarters on the Hero deck. He slipped it into his pocket without comment, then examined Bairith’s unfortunate lackey.

  Yndath was a little shorter than he. Lean and strong. Rolled-up sleeves revealed ropey muscles in his forearms and mirrored tattoos of a strange, stylized bird. He wore his blue-black hair in a careless topknot, the bottom portion of his skull shaved bare. Most of one ear was missing; the other sported a line of square metal studs down the long outer edge. White scars marred nearly every inch of visible skin. A man with such obvious experience ought to know better than to judge a fighter by his appearance or apparent age.

  “You ever even hold a sword?” Yndath asked. He had an odd accent that mushed the words together.

  Sherakai nodded.

  “Do you talk?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “We have an eighth block practice arena this afternoon. Go get kitted up.” He shut the door in Sherakai’s face.

  Chapter 58

  The smaller practice arenas were entirely enclosed; each level had one for each block. Eighteen levels, eighteen blocks. Only those on the hero deck boasted access to the sky. Three had roofs, while the rest were completely open. Sherakai arrived before Yndath and put himself through a few forms to loosen his muscles.

  “Fancy. I’ll bet you cut quite the figure on the ballroom floor.” The elf went to the water barrel for a drink and to splash his face. He wore a black boiled leather cuirass with strips of studded brown at the shoulders and covering his groin.

  Sherakai waited.

  “Let’s get on with this, then.” He slapped a rounded metal hat with a chain coif on his head and fastened the worn strap. “Which side do you want to hurt the least when you limp home to the master? Back or front?”

  He donned his own helm and followed the elf into the center of the ring. A low ceiling precluded seating for an audience. Instead, horizontal slits marked the walls at regular intervals. The whisper of voices suggested they would not practice unobserved. Yndath squinted at them; Sherakai ignored them.

  “No preference, eh?”

  “You choose.” He drew his sword and gave it an experimental swing to reacquaint himself with the weight and balance. How long since he’d held this blade? The sensation of unknowable years when the jansu had ordered him to wake had dwindled to vague months. Now he was not so sure.

  When Yndath attacked, Sherakai lifted his weapon to parry without thinking. The elf proved a fair challenge. After a series of exploratory blows, they settled down to business. It took time, but Sherakai disarmed him twice. Walking across the sand to retrieve his blade, Yndath cast him a black look. “What am I supposed to be teaching you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why this?”

  “Lord Chiro put us here.”

  The elf hawked and spat. “Waste of time.”

  He shrugged. The training held his attention. It gave him something to focus on, and took him away from the jansu’s endless questions, but not Yndath’s.

  “Are you a mage?”

  Sherakai nodded.

  Yndath nodded back. “That explains why you seem so young. How long’ve you been doing this?”

  “A long time.”

  Yndath waved his sword at him, anger sparking in his eyes. “Don’t give me that. What level?”

  “All of them.”

  His scarred mouth twisted in derision. “I don’t think so. Baby face or no, you haven’t got the scars that come with that kind of territory.”

  “Lord Chiro is rich and titled. He has many mages at his call.”

  The elf walked a slow circle around Sherakai. Even without the aro to aid him, his examination was every bit as critical as the jansu’s might be. “Keeps you pretty, does he? What else do you do for him?”

  The suggestion of insult stirred shadows within his breast. He examined then dismissed it. “Are you ready to go on?”

  “Oh, ho!” His eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed. “I see how it is. He’s training you as his bodyguard. A very personal bodyguard. How’s a job like that pay?”

  “There is no pay. I kill people. That is all I do. And when I am not killing them, I am waiting to kill them.”

  Yndath snorted his disbelief. “Why aren’t you killing them now?”

  “I was injured.” He couldn’t remember the fight that had laid him so low. No ghost of pain reminded him of slashed muscle or broken bone. There were no headaches. He’d awakened stiff and weak, but fully clothed and sitting in the jansu’s parlor as if he’d been up and about already. He’d never been in the jansu’s private rooms before. Not once. The thought unsettled him.

  “How?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Is this a ploy to win my sympathy?” Sherakai didn’t answer, and Yndath engaged again, lazily this time. “A hero, eh?”

  “So they say.”

  “Then Bairith’s finished with me, I suppose.” The pace picked up. “Unless I kill you first.”

  “You can’t.”

  To Yndath’s credit, he was a good fighter. He was best with swords, but no mean opponent with any of the various weapons they used. His continued failure infuriated him. Several times Sherakai disengaged, reminding him that anger made a man careless.

  His own words caused him to consider. Anger drew the rakeshi from wherever he waited within Sherakai’s frame. Anger fueled the beast—but did it make him reckless? Well, the rakeshi wasn’t a man, was he?

  On the sixth rotation, as the shudder and clang of sword work settled into place, the ghosts returned. Images flickered in his peripheral vision. The scent of blood teased him. He retreated, back-stepping quickly.

  Yndath lowered his blade. “What’s wrong?”

  Sherakai sheathed his own weapon and went to the barrel. Yanking off his helm, he splashed water over his head.

  “You need a healer? What’s got into you?”

  He drew both hands down his face as he straightened, sluicing the water away. “It’s starting again.”

  “What?”

  He let out a slow sigh. “The past.”

  Yndath’s mouth curled down on one side, hard. Fetching the ladle off its hook, he took a long drink, then passed it to Sherakai. “Do you act mysterious and moody on purpose?”

  A sword held no mystery. A sword couldn’t be moody. “No.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I’ve no doubt. Shall we continue?”

  The nightmares returned that night. They brought him wide awake, breathless, heart pounding, sweat-soaked. He half-expected to find his mother’s blood covering him. He could smell it. Still, it was several minutes before he dared look at his hands.

  He jerked free of the damp bedclothes and stalked to the bathing room to wash. Icy water sluiced over hot skin. He dunked his head into the basin to scrub with both hands, only to pause and tug on the too-short strands. Abruptly, he laid down on the cold floor.

  The rakeshi twisted. Restless. Angry.

  “Why should you be angry? You killed them.”

  Again, it moved inside him, yet it did not press. There was no shifting of his vision, no stab of agony in his temple.

  What did it mean?

  He might have dozed. The clinking of coins caught his attention, and he f
ound himself counting his secreted earnings into a tidy stack on the floor. “Thirty-two, thirty-three…” What the ‘byss? Thoughtfully, he rubbed a coin between his fingers. He’d saved them for a nebulous someday. They were of little use to him in the Twixt. If they stayed here, they’d be useless and out of reach should the jansu decide his time here was finished.

  He would bring them home, then.

  How?

  It came to him two days later, and he spent the evening after practice sewing them into the lining of one of his jerkins. What would he do with them once he’d returned to the Gates? Hide them again, he supposed.

  “Hide it or they take. Is yours. You see. You are ox.”

  He could hear Rinlag Kirath as clearly as if the words had just been spoken.

  “I’m not an ox, Rinlag.” That implied strength and Sherakai didn’t think his friend had been referring to muscle alone.

  His friend… Better get that idea out of his head, or Rinlag would end up dead if he wasn’t already.

  In the morning he dressed and put on the coin-heavy jerkin. After he broke his fast, he walked through the arena complex to Bairith’s portal. Could he activate it himself? He brushed his fingertips across the viscous surface. Where it moved, a flicker of light followed, then faded.

  He pushed his hand further and it sank in up to his wrist, then slowed to a stop. Another, harder shove got him no further. “Jansu Chiro,” he said. Nothing happened, so he retreated a little distance to lean against the wall to wait.

  It didn’t take long, though time in this place was difficult to measure. Light flared and Bairith Mindar filled the frame. Sparks danced bright and exotic all around him. Elvish. He glanced down the corridor, then back. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “No.” He pushed off the wall and past him into the portal room. “I warmed up.”

  Chapter 59