Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth)

by Matthew Medina

  The priory, or the Priory of the Divines if you were being reverent or official, was not a temple of worship, like what Catelyn had read about in the books from the Before, but a place where people came to offer their supplications, and to whisper their sins, to the Divines. As with all other things, the Empire tightly controlled people’s access to their Creators. They were allowed to beseech Them, but they were not allowed to worship Them.

  People were granted one day each span to make offerings in recompense for their transgressions, and to confess their sins to one of the priors who would then assign penance to be completed in the Eyes of the Divines, or in other words, in front of the entire congregation during the service of supplication. The sins were private, the penance was quite public.

  The priory was not open for such services yet, but confessions were due to begin within the next prayer.

  Catelyn didn’t come to the priory for any such desires, she had simply found that many people came to the priory confessional expecting a private conversation between themselves and the eunuchs who staffed the priory. Catelyn’s exploration of the roofs of the building had revealed the vents which allowed the wafting incense that the priors kept burning during services to leave the building, and to her delight she discovered that they also carried sound quite effectively.

  Many a secret stash or ill-gotten fortune had been confessed to the priors this way, and Catelyn had been able to use this information to supplement her income and reduce her risks quite nicely since finding it.

  She was lying there, relaxed and expecting at least half a prayer’s worth of silence before the eunuch’s opened the doors to the public when the sound of the door banging open wafted up to her ears from below, followed by two pairs of footsteps and muffled yelling.

  She turned her head, rolled over onto her hands and knees and put an ear to the vent. As she did so, the voices rang out clearly, as though she were standing two paces away from them.

  “Damn you, Eyrris. What do you want for it?”

  The first voice belonged to a man, although the voice was lilted in a way that Catelyn automatically associated with the eunuchs who staffed the priory. She didn’t know the priors by name, but she was certain she’d heard this man’s voice before giving penance and intoning the supplications to the Divines.

  “Pater, there’s nothing that you have which I could want.”

  Prior Pater had used his name, but at hearing the voice with her own ears, she confirmed that the second voice was unmistakably the booming deep tone of Dane Eyrris.

  Since Catelyn had made the decision to take up the life she now led, six sojourns ago, she had made a point to get to know every one of the so-called “nobles” that commanded the favor of the Emperor. Dane Eyrris was one such “nobleman”. He belonged to a cult of deplorable individuals who dubbed themselves the Sado Sexual Elite. Dane was not a name, but a title that each of the members carried to set themselves apart from their inferiors. That the Emperor allowed such a group to exist, and to claim a title, spoke of their lofty place in Imperial society. As Pater the prior continued, she imagined that she could almost hear his frustrated gesticulations.

  “But, be reasonable, Dane. What use have you for such...trifles?” This last word, and the way in which it was said, with such strange mystery and desire, sparked something which whetted Catelyn’s appetite and she felt herself press closer to the metal vent to ensure that she wouldn’t miss a single word.

  “I have certain friends, you ball-less freak. And those friends have certain tastes. I’m sure I could interest them and get something that would please me in return,” Eyrris spat out dismissively.

  Catelyn could tell from the way that he spoke that Eyrris was relishing the desperation in the eunuch Pater’s demands. The men who called themselves the Sado Sexual Elite were not named casually. Clearly this was a man who genuinely enjoyed his petty cruelties.

  “Eyrris, listen to reason. Such artifacts are property of the Empire. They belong to Him,” Pater said, then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  “If the Emperor were to find out...”

  Silence followed, as he let that thought linger, but it didn’t last long, as a ringing slap rang its way up through the metal pipe shortly thereafter. Catelyn winced at the sound; it had to have been a brutal strike.

  “Don’t you EVER threaten me, worm! Do you think having your balls chopped off is the worst that can be done to you? Do you?!” Dane Eyrris raged.

  Catelyn heard a commotion, as of someone scrambling away on hands and knees, and Pater whimpering in pain and fear.

  “Eyrris, stop! Please! It wasn’t a threat. I would never turn you in. You know that! I would be held just as culpable as you, just for even speaking to someone like you. But you must understand. This...this is of the Before, at the very latest. This is...it’s priceless.”

  “Fool! Do you think I’m addled? Of course I know what it is! And what the price is for possessing it. From your ridiculous offer, it’s clear that you’re the one who’s not aware.”

  “Eyrris, I beg you. The priory can...”

  Eyrris interrupted the other man with another blow. It sounded heavier, like a kick, but the echoing of the sound as it traveled up from below made it hard to tell. Like the first blow, she could tell Eyrris was not holding back.

  “Pater, I want you to know something.”

  Catelyn heard what sounded like choking gasps from the prior, and Catelyn wasn’t sure whether Eyrris was choking the man with his hands, or standing or kneeling on the eunuch’s throat.

  “I want you to know that your pathetic mewling and begging is exactly why the priory will never get their hands on...this.”

  The pause seemed to indicate to Catelyn that whatever they were talking about, Dane Eyrris had it on him right then.

  “No, you woman, my friends from Aldus will be here in two nights for the Eve celebrations. They will pay me anything I ask, grant me anything I desire, for this relic. And I’ll finally be free to set my own course, and get what I deserve.”

  With that, the gasping stopped and she heard Pater begin to sob, and Dane Eyrris simply laughed at the wretch and walked away, the echoing footfalls growing fainter until she heard the door slam again and then the plaintive sobbing of the fallen prior.

  Catelyn stepped away from the metal vent and strode to the edge of the priory roof, crouching down and focusing her bubble to the street below. She picked out Dane Eyrris as he strode away, and considered to herself what could possibly be worth keeping secret from the Emperor himself. What would cause these two men to quarrel so, to risk death or worse to protect such a secret?

  As Catelyn thought of the possibilities, she reached out for the lucky ring she wore on one toe and twirled it idly with the fingers of her left hand. Spinning it back and forth, it helped her to concentrate, and she focused inwardly and came to a conclusion. If the prior Pater and Dane Eyrris, both citizens of station who stood wholly within the shadow of the Emperor himself, would risk everything for something so valuable, yet small enough to carry around on Dane Eyrris’ person, then there really was only one choice for her.

  Catelyn smiled, and easily made the decision to relieve both men of their burden.

  She shadowed Dane Eyrris back to his home after his argument with the prior and stationed herself on the rooftop across from his building, expanding her bubble to cover as much of the area as possible. She heard him trudge up two flights of stairs, to the top of a three story complex. She listened as he fumbled with keys, something nearly unheard of in most places in the Seat, and unlocked his apartment door.

  She listened as he walked across the room, heard the clinking of glass as he poured himself a drink, and then walk over to one side of the room. She heard him put the glass down, and then stand silently for several breaths.

  Then he swore.

  Catelyn was taken aback by the outburst, as he appeared to be alone. Catelyn’s heart jumped into her throat and she ducked down as low as
she could.

  Oh Divines, did he see me? she thought in a panic.

  She thought about how careless she might have been, and what shortcuts she might have taken that she shouldn’t have following someone so prominent in the Empire. For all she knew he rated high enough to have his own Imperial detachment of soldiers. The prize he was supposedly carrying had been quite a temptation, and she wondered if the thought of its value had gotten the best of her, but when she ran it over in her mind she realized that no, she had in fact been as careful as ever, and she didn’t see how he could have known that she was there.

  But her question was answered by the Dane himself when she heard the unmistakable sound of a belt being unbuckled and dropping to the floor, and the subtle rustle of clothing as it fell from his body. Then more silence, followed by a shifting mechanism in the wall and a clicking noise, and finally a sliding noise. At this distance her hearing was the most acute sense she had but it was almost impossible to do much more than guess that Dane Eyrris had somehow just activated a sliding panel in the wall he was standing next to.

  She heard him move toward it, heard a solid thunk as he put something down, and then heard the panel sliding shut.

  She was intensely focused on the mechanism, so when Dane Eyrris muttered something under his breath, Catelyn almost missed it, but it sounded to her as if he said:

  “I’ve been enjoying myself too much.”

  This comment seemed strange to Catelyn, and she was even more confused when he then went on to say:

  “Speaking of enjoying myself.”

  The next sounds she heard made her face red with embarrassment.

  Days later, Catelyn padded quietly above the din of the crowd below, stepping lightly from roof tile to roof tile, careful not to disturb the dirt and moss that clung to the slate, lest one of the tiles come loose and go clattering over the edge and into the throngs of celebrants beneath her. She did enjoy the soft texture of moss under her toes, and so she lingered ever so slightly at each step, as she scanned the numerous packs of citizens on the street for the distinct sounds and smells of her next target.

  She was hunting.

  It was the Eve of Regret, the anniversary of the proclamation by Uriel III to wall off his Empire from the outside world, for better or worse. The Regret mentioned in the name of the holiday did not betoken any sort of remorse on the part of the Emperor, nor did it indicate any sadness at the loss of contact with the world at large. Rather that Uriel III had deeply regretted that he had not thought to order it done sooner, proclaiming that he could have saved many more of his subject’s lives in the eight sojourns that had passed from the time he had taken control of Exeter to the day when the last of the walls had been completed.

  From the perch where she crouched high above the throng of revelers below, Catelyn expanded her bubble to take in the scene below her, trying her best to focus past the many distractions of the raucous celebrations going on all around her. She heard the conversations of hundreds of drunken and aroused men and women. Snatches of threats and boasts, mingled with moans and screams throughout the streets and alleys of the city. She heard every form of violence, and every base act she could think of or imagine. And probably some she couldn’t imagine. This was not just another night in the Seat. Tonight, the Seat was bathed in a celebratory air.

  To most citizens of the Seat, the behaviors themselves were quite ordinary, but on this night they were magnified significantly by the celebration. She smelled the bouquet of sex on the air the strongest; musky bodies writhing and cavorting upon the flesh of the willing and unwilling alike.

  She thought of her mother, who had once been forced to lead such a life, and her cheeks colored in anger for the degradation she must have had to endure to keep her family safe and fed, but also with love and pride for the sacrifice that she had made to do so.

  But she didn’t stop to dwell on those memories, and she was not here to observe the goings-on of these carousing partiers. She had more pressing business this night.

  She focused her bubble by half and immediately began to hear details of the conversation closest to her, as clearly as if she were standing down in the street among the speakers. From where she crouched high among the eaves of a ramshackle building, she had no fear of getting caught eavesdropping. With the way that the Emperor ruled his domain, law and order were subsumed by sheer brutality and the citizens of the Seat were left to police themselves, with the Imperial army only stepping in with overwhelming force when necessary. The only guards anywhere around the city were all stationed along or near the inner walls and the smaller wall that encircled the Emperor’s personal estate, which was dubbed the Citadel.

  And at this time of night, with the events going on below very few, if any, of the revelers would be concerned about looking for intruders.

  Of course, Catelyn also had a distinct advantage in the way that she operated. No other citizen of the Seat that she knew of, even other thieves, possessed Catelyn’s unique talents. She had trained herself for sojourns to familiarize herself with these rooftops, and how to move agilely and effortlessly using only her muscles and the information she gleaned by focusing her remaining senses; what she called her “bubble”.

  Stealing, like all acts which would normally be considered crimes, was not frowned on by the Empire in practice, only in principle. There were of course laws against it, but as with everything else, most laws were only casually enforced, a mummer’s show played by the Emperor to make it appear that he was looking out for his people.

  Still, flagrant violations of any of the Empire’s laws carried the same sentence: death. So while citizens of the Seat were cutthroats by nature, they also knew that stealing from your neighbors and fellow citizens could still lead to the Imperial army coming to find you, most likely so that you could be murdered in some heinous fashion. The Emperor was especially partial to mass burnings. It was not unheard of for entire blocks to be caught in the conflagration which the Emperor referred to as a “Purge”.

  As a result of this, most citizens considered it to be much more lucrative to conduct such business in the light of day and to one another’s faces, as a matter of pride and self preservation.

  For Catelyn however, who already had nothing to lose, she knew that she risked nothing more than usual by carrying out her nocturnal activities. Every day alive was a reprieve from the death sentence she had been carrying for the past six sojourns.

  With her bubble focused tightly on a sphere about eight paces across, she began to move her head systematically from group to group, listening for the voice of the one person that had drawn her out tonight: Dane Eyrris.

  When she pinpointed his voice after a quick scan, she smiled. As she had been hoping, he was leading a small group of people, already on his way to his home. After his encounter with prior Pater, she had proceeded to shadow him for the next two days. She knew from that earlier conversation that he had been expecting some friends to come into town so that he could show them the relic he had acquired, and perhaps arrange to sell it to one of them.

  She’d expected him to want to get rid of it as soon as they arrived, but instead, he had made plans for the entire group to have a celebratory party first, and then conduct their transaction the following day. Dane Eyrris was apparently a believer in pleasure before business.

  Even among the crowds and his compatriots, she picked out his deep voice easily, intermingled among a number of jovial men and women, seventy paces away and below where she lurked.

  She stood and shook out her legs to get the blood flowing once more, warming them up for the next part of her plan. She was wearing her usual night gear; a variation on the standard plain clothing that all residents of the Seat were required to wear, but with the sleeves on the arms and cuffs on the pants cut down to reach just past her elbows and knees, leaving her lower legs and arms free and bare.

  She leaped up and grabbed the overhanging street lamp she knew was there. She swung her legs and used her moment
um to carry her around, until she landed with her body straddled on the crossbar of the lamp. She stood on the bar, balanced precariously with toes gripping the rusted metal, and arms outstretched, then leaped out into space. Her bubble was focused on her destination, and she landed softly, like a cat, next to the smokestack on the roof of the building across from where she had been eavesdropping. She held her breath to avoid inhaling the soot-laced smoke pouring out of the stack.

  The metal was hot to the touch, as she quickly pushed off against it and lit from the smokestack to a ledge nearby. While she trained most of her awareness on her immediate goal of traveling along her secret highway, she also kept her ears open for any voices of surprise or alarm from the passers by and street parties below.

  She leapt and ran across the rooftops, safe above the crowd and moving lithely and swiftly, feeling the joy of not having to practice her usual noise discipline this night, with the raucous events taking place everywhere around her. The jovial celebrants throughout the city provided excellent cover for the night’s activities, a luxury she was rarely afforded.

  It had taken her exactly forty-two breaths to travel from where she had first sensed Eyrris to where she was now, stealthily hanging from a rain downspout across from his home where the party he was hosting was apparently taking place. Up until the night before, she wasn’t sure what the venue for the gathering would be, as a number of the other Dane’s in Eyrris’ social circles had apparently also extended their homes to host the affair. She was relieved when she heard him relate to one of his servants that he decided to host the festivities at his own home. Her time shadowing him had included scouting the residential apartment where he lived, which meant that she would not be going into that location totally blind, so to speak.