Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth)

by Matthew Medina

  Even if he didn’t wake up from the attempt, I couldn’t move him all by myself.

  Catelyn expanded her bubble, taking in all the information she could from the room around her, desperately searching for something that she might use to add to her own weight.

  Unfortunately for her, Dane Eyrris was a remarkably spartan individual. Apart from a few essential pieces of furniture, what little of Eyrris’ belongings were present would not get her even close to the correct weight. And she couldn’t afford the time it would take to rearrange the room to find something she could use to open the safe anyway.

  She briefly considered simply giving up. She didn’t even know what it was that Dane Eyrris had possession of. For all she knew it was simply a book, not unlike the ones she had found and kept hidden over the sojourns. And while she had a clear love for books and learning new things, she was no longer in a position to appreciate them for what they were. Without her eyesight, books were of no use to her.

  Still, she had come too far and worked through some of her most potent fears to get inside. It would be foolish of her to quit now, so close to her goal.

  From the other room, Dane Eyrris suddenly stopped snoring, and Catelyn froze, her heart pounding, listening for the telltale footfalls she expected to hear any second. But they never came, and a few breaths later, Eyrris gasped noisily and then resumed snoring, even louder than before. Catelyn slowly let out the breath she herself was holding, and waited a few breaths while her heart stopped hammering.

  Catelyn expanded her bubble and tried once more to identify something that she could use to add the additional weight she would need to open the safe. And that’s when she realized that there was, in fact, one part of the room she had deliberately avoided in her search of the area. One part of the room where she had heard sounds of breathless terror just prayers ago. She felt her lower legs twitch, as though they were about to carry her away out the window and into the night against her will, or maybe for it.

  She decided that turning from the reality of what lay in that part of the room wouldn’t make it any better; wouldn’t make it go away. She had tried to hide from the pain and the terror before, when she had been cold and alone and hungry, and the truth always found her.

  She used a trick she had learned a few sojourns prior, where she let her bubble degrade to what she imagined a normal person might smell or hear, and stepped lightly toward the area. A pace away from her goal, her right foot trod in something cold, wet, and slimy.

  Although she had dampened her sense of smell enough so that the stench wouldn't overwhelm her, there was no question that she was standing in a pool of cool, sticky blood congealing on the floor, and sliding up between her toes. She brought her hands to her mouth and swallowed down the urge to vomit, willing herself not to picture the scene in her mind.

  She found a clean patch of wood nearby and wiped her foot until it felt dry, then tightened her bubble to just under a pace, and proceeded forward slowly, arms outstretched. Her fingers brushed it first. She had already known what to expect, but still, feeling the lifeless cold flesh was still almost more than she could bear. Cold, but with the barest hint of warmth to it, and Catelyn’s worst fears were realized, and confirmed what she had heard as she had listened from across the street.

  The horrible truth of it threatened to bring her to her knees, and she lost all of her senses. Her hand would not move from the one spot where she had first touched the body, and all she could tell from that contact was that whoever this was, they had only been robbed of their life less than two prayers ago. While she had been waiting.

  A person had been murdered.

  She clapped her free hand over her mouth to stifle a scream which nearly escaped her mouth, and felt her world come tumbling in on her.

  You could have stopped this.

  The voice, normally so small, and normally only chiming in when it was centered around the doubts surrounding her beliefs, roared to life inside of her.

  Why didn't you stop this?

  Catelyn had experienced her share of horrors over the sojourns, of course. She had even come to believe herself numbed to the worst that the Empire had to offer. But standing here, with one hand on a person who was now dead, and who she might have been able to help…

  “Why?” she whispered in a voice on the verge of breaking, forgetting herself by uttering the word and running the risk of being detected.

  This blood is on your hands.

  Catelyn couldn’t move, stung by the voice's self accusation.

  The thought of it was like a nightmare. The reality of this victim, a person just like her up until a few prayers ago, who was now dead because of the horror of the world she lived in and at least in part, because of her inaction.

  Your inaction, and the actions of this man, and all those like him. And all made possible by the Empire, the voice insisted.

  She had no idea what she could have done, but what made her stop, what threatened to pull her down into an abyss of despair was the realization that she hadn’t even tried. She hadn’t even given a thought to this person’s life, or what it meant at the time.

  She'd literally hidden from it.

  She had been blind for many sojourns, but this was the first time she realized how horrible it was to not see what was right in front of her.

  What are you going to do about it? the voice echoed again, only this time when it came up from inside her, it was laced with bitterness and regret, and a white-hot anger began to rise with it and that fire set her feet upon a path.

  Catelyn dragged the cold form of the person, holding it as gently and as reverently as she could with one hand under each arm, and shuffling slowly towards the wall and the pressure plate in the floor. Catelyn felt a hole in her heart as she worked, but she was resolved to her plan now.

  She was no longer just here for a trinket. She was moving on instinct now, and heeding a darker call from inside, in answer for the crimes which had been committed here.

  What had been done to this person had made it unrecognizable as male or female, and she fought against the urge of the voice in her head, which quite loudly and adamantly called upon her to sneak over to where Dane Eyrris lay passed out in a drunken stupor and slit the throat of the demon who had done this.

  But she knew that such an act, while it may pass unnoticed for many, would not be so for a man with the kind of standing that Dane Eyrris and his ilk enjoyed. The Emperor would not turn such a blind eye to someone the likes of Dane Eyrris falling victim to murder in his own home, and that sort of attention would complicate matters for her greatly.

  There’s only one way for someone like me to hurt him, she thought. And that’s to do what I came here to do: take his precious relic.

  She padded as quietly as she could to the wall with her grisly bundle and stood firmly on the pressure plate. It took some adjustments of the weight distribution, but after a few tries, she heard the mechanism trip in the floor, and the wall section slid down, revealing the alcove with the prize within. She put the body down as delicately and respectfully as she could, and briefly considered sending a prayer to the Divines for the soul of this poor wretch who had run afoul of the Dane and his friends, but the voice of doubt bubbled up again.

  If the Divines truly cared for this person, they could have saved them from this end. Don't profane this person's suffering by invoking them now.

  She set aside her idle thoughts and reached inside the alcove and could feel a cool handle under her grip, like the kind you found on a carrying case. The pressure plate was sensitive enough to the change in weight that as soon as she had put the body down, the panel began to slide closed, and she had to lift the handle of the case up and over before it shut, which caused the panel to scrape slightly against the underside of the case. The noise caused Catelyn to wince, but she breathed a sigh of relief when she listened and determined that it hadn't been loud enough to wake Eyrris.

  The case was slightly rectangular, and about the length o
f her forearm on the longest side. She smelled rich leather and oily skin, and she listened as the wall panel slid back into place and snapped quietly shut.

  With the case in her hand, she wiped the sweat from her brow. She turned away from the wall and expanded her bubble outward, getting the sense of what she was leaving behind. She knew that she was leaving behind plenty of evidence of her breakin, something which usually bothered her, but in this case she remained uncaring.

  In fact, the thought of waking Eyrris with a noise prior to her departing crossed her mind.

  I want you to know what I’ve done, she thought. I hope you pay for what you’ve done but if not, at least you won’t have this to use to pay for any more of your “parties”.

  She knew that although it was the voice in her head that had been saying this and many other things this night, for the first time ever, she found herself agreeing with it. But she also knew that this was probably just her anger talking, and she reined her emotions in before they undid all of her hard work.

  Instead, she took the case in hand, padded over to the window and climbed up onto the window sill. She unfastened the belt she wore, and used it to fasten a makeshift strap which she could use to wrap around the case, and slung the combination over one arm and around her torso such that it sat flush against her back.

  She was almost halfway up to the eaves when she heard the voice in her head again, and she paused before leaping off of the ledge and stepped back to the window, listening.

  Let’s leave him a little something to remember us by. Do you remember what they used to call you? The kids?

  She smiled, remembering, and returned into the room while her inner voice whispered of a just and befitting exit.

  She quickly followed the voice's suggestions, and when she was done, she leaped across the gap between buildings and out into the night, disappearing like a shadow without turning back.

  When Dane Eyrris awoke prayers later, the first thing he noticed was how cool it was in his apartment. He muttered angrily to himself as he stumbled naked through the apartment, cursing and wondering who would have left one of the windows open all night. Whoever it was, he would have them flayed for such thoughtlessness.

  He stepped out into the main room of his apartment and gasped.

  Blood covered the walls, from floor to ceiling. The sticky dark red liquid was smeared over everything, even the wall which contained his safe. The wall panel which concealed the safe remained closed and shut, but Eyrris felt a flush of panic and sprinted to the wall to stand upon the pressure plate.

  He impatiently waited while the panel slid down, only to have his worst fears realized. The case containing his artifact was gone, and in its place there lay a blood soaked cushion from his couch. Whoever the thief was, it appeared as though they had used the cushion as a paintbrush, and the blood from his plaything as the paint.

  He looked around the entire apartment, tearing furniture apart in desperation, looking for the case, but he already knew that it was gone. He was forced to conclude the obvious: that whoever the intruder had been, they had not just had a wild hair about redecorating his home. They had somehow managed to figure out not only where the safe was, but also how to open it and they had even had the temerity to remove the invaluable prize inside.

  “Whoever you are, you’re worse than dead,” he muttered to himself coldly, and then his anger seeped up from within and boiled over, and he roared in frustration.

  Dogs in the street below barked at his scream. When he finally regained his composure, Eyrris noticed that it wasn’t just the walls that were coated in blood, but the floors as well. Only, Eyrris could see bare footprints tracking in and out of the blood all around the place where the wall and the floor met. The footprints were small, smaller than any he had ever seen, like those of a child, and he followed the criss-crossing paths made by the prints through his apartment until they ultimately led away towards the windows.

  He nearly stumbled when he finally looked up and noticed what was there before him. Propped in the window sill of his apartment was the torso of his plaything, its arms crooked into a rude gesture. The body was positioned such that it was propping the window open and he could see a lone, blood-covered footprint pressed into the middle of the glass like some macabre signature, widely splayed toes fanned out as though they were waving.

  This act of adding insult to injury set Dane Eyrris' blood to boiling, and he allowed himself two seconds to contemplate the arrogance of this thief who knew no bounds, and then he gave in and bellowed in unadulterated rage.

  Chapter 3

  Catelyn slumped to her knees exhausted, on the floor of the attic of her roost. It was the same place in the top floor of the building where she had first found safety after losing her family, but she had spent the past six sojourns converting the crawlspace from simply being a place to hide into something fit for living, and one of the biggest changes she had made had been to block off entry from the street level, and put in an access point from the rooftops. She might not have been able to remain in her family’s home, both for practical as well as personal reasons, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave the very part of town where she had been abandoned as a child. She thought it was appropriate to make her home here, where new “new” life had begun.

  This was where she had learned to survive, to live on her own, and where she trained for her new life. And it was where she had first discovered how to extend her senses into the bubble of awareness she now had mastery over.

  No one but her lived in this building, and hardly anyone lived in this part of town anymore. Her parents had been well liked by those who lived on their block, so when word spread of their murder, many of the other residents and families realized that the block was not going to feel safe again. Even the Imperials gave the area a wide berth, as it had become home to the poorest and the most desperate of the Seat’s cast-offs. After many of the residents moved out, the psychopaths, the insane, and the criminals had moved in. Catelyn actually didn’t mind the change, as it helped cover her nocturnal activities and she even was able to blend in by pretending to be one of their number when needed. It enabled her to hide in plain sight, and because of the way that she never entered or exited the building from the streets, almost no one even knew she resided here.

  Once she had recovered her breath, she got up on her feet once more, feeling her thighs and upper arms already beginning to stiffen with soreness. Her night had been more strenuous than her usual jobs. And more horrifying as well. She tried not to think about the dead victim of Dane Eyrris and his friends. The cold, pallid flesh that used to be somebody.

  She shook the morbid thoughts from her mind as she unknotted the straps from around her chest and gently lowered the case she had stolen to the floor, recording the position of it in her mind. Everything in Catelyn’s roost had a place where it belonged, to make it easier for her to find the things she needed. Whenever she added something new, she had to mentally log where it was.

  Part of her was dying to open the case right then, and find out what it was that had so captivated a monster like Eyrris, but she knew it was more important to take care of herself first. She padded the six paces to the trap door she had cut into the floor, lifted the wooden slats and lowered herself into her living space.

  As she dropped down to where she spent most of her time each day, the warmth hit her first as it always did, and she sighed in pleasure. The warmth of her home was the by product of a series of pipes that she had methodically designed and built in her first sojourns. They ran through the living area, out to the street where she had connected them up to the Seat’s paltry network of steam pipes, rerouting some of the city’s supply directly into her loft. The Seat maintained this network for some reason Catelyn couldn’t fathom, but they never inspected the pipeline unless something broke down, enabling her to connect the old pipes she had found, with no one in the Seat being the wiser.

  The heat from the pipes radiated through the enclosed
space and greeted her with its calming embrace and she stretched up on her tip toes as she broke into a yawn, her fingers brushing the low ceiling. She knew she was going to sleep well tonight.

  She removed her clothes, gathered them in a pile and walked to the two basins along the wall. The basins she had found in one of the rundown apartments nearby, and she kept them filled with water, which was then heated by being in close contact with the steam pipes.

  At the first basin she dropped her clothes in, using a wooden stick tied to the rim of one of the basins so that she could submerge the clothing without burning her hands. She could feel the steam on her naked skin as she stirred the clothes until they were thoroughly soaked. Once that was done, she moved to the second basin and bent down to retrieve a copper ewer from a low table near the floor, exactly where it always was. She dipped the ewer in the basin, filled it with the scalding water, then turned and trod six steps to where she kept a broader, shallow basin half-filled with cold, clear, purified water.

  She poured the piping hot water from the ewer into the shallow basin, and a cloud of steam rose to greet her, making a luxuriously warm, clean bathing bowl. She put the ewer down and stepped into the basin, the warm water coming up to her ankles and eliciting a sigh of relaxation from her lips. She grabbed a clean cloth from the small pile she kept nearby, one of her most prized possessions, and began to wash the dirt, sweat and blood from her body as best she could. She removed her blindfold, and ran the cloth over her face, feeling the water wash away the grime of the city. Unfortunately nothing could not wash away the dread she still felt at the experience she had just had.

  After she was bathed, and felt more like herself, she placed everything back precisely in the spots where they belonged, put her washcloth in the soaking basin with her dirty clothes to be cleaned and rinsed later, and stepped over to a nearby stool and sat down to inspect herself. This was a nightly ritual for Catelyn, ever since she had neglected to notice an open cut on her right lower leg, and it had become infected. She knew that such things were actually quite rare, but she had had one experience that made her aware of the need to be as vigilant as possible.