“Listen, shopkeeper, I know the man, and how his mind works. I know his weaknesses in a way you couldn’t even begin to fathom,” Ortis replied.
“I don’t need a reminder of how close you were to your precious Emperor. I haven’t forgotten what you did for him.” Silena barely concealed her loathing for the man she was talking with.
“Then you would do well to recall the stakes of making the wrong decision now.”
“Oh? And just what is it about this place that you think keeps us hidden from view?” Silena asked sarcastically.
“Me,” Ortis said without a shred of hesitation or irreverence. Catelyn could hear in his voice, that he truly believed he could keep them safe here. Catelyn tuned out the rest of the argument, and felt a little like she had when she’d woken as a young girls and heard her own parents arguing. Now, as then, she didn’t wish to hear them yelling. She cared for Silena more than she had about anyone in sojourns. And Ortis. Well, that had been growing more and more complicated over time.
She felt gratitude that he had put his own life at risk to save hers, and she held some small amount of pity for this man, but it did not last for long. At the recollection of what the man was, and the atrocities he had committed in his life, she knew with certainty, and no small amount of dread, that she and Silena would not simply need to find refuge from the Empire, but they would need to find a way to get free of Ortis now as well.
She kicked herself free of the blankets, looking around the room. It was spartan, but surprisingly well maintained, with a small table along one wall, two chairs and a stool. It looked like a room for reading, as there were a number of books and scrolls arrayed on the table. The sight of books and the prospects of being able to read again, thrilled her. But she decided to put those feelings aside and deal with the situation at hand.
She stood and crossed to the door, opening it to reveal the hallway beyond. As she stepped out, the door creaked and the arguing stopped, as both sides seemed unwilling to continue bickering with Catelyn in the middle.
The hallway was likewise simply decorated, but it looked lived in, and Catelyn wondered who resided here. As Catelyn emerged from the hallway into an open room, she saw Ortis and Silena standing less that two paces apart from each other. Ortis was now wearing standard Imperial peasant clothing, and looked much less imposing out of his massive armor. They looked at her standing in the archway, but she could see the tension still lingering between them, as though they both wished to continue their argument.
“Catelyn, it’s so good to see you up,” Silena said, softening first.
“How long was I asleep?” she asked.
“The better part of two days,” Silena said quietly. Catelyn felt confused. It hadn’t felt as though she had slept so long, but Silena went on to explain. “Ortis and I agreed to give you a...draught of a healing tincture. It allowed you to enter a dreamless sleep so that you could recover. We woke you twice to give you nourishment, but you were not really conscious.”
Catelyn shook her head to dislodge some of her lingering exhaustion, and wondered if this treatment was the only thing that Ortis and her had agreed on since their rescue effort.
Two days? she wondered. It didn’t feel like that to me.
She had many questions, but she was still feeling somewhat light-headed and instead crossed to one of the chairs in the room, a wide bowl of wood thick with cushions, and sat down again idly wondering whose dwelling this was. The chair itself was surprisingly comfortable, but such comfort felt out of place in a place so devoid of personality.
When she thought about that dichotomy, she quickly realized that it had to be Ortis’ place of residence. She looked at the furniture in the room, and the lack of decor on the walls, and it just fit. Ortis and Silena still stood their ground, watching her, and it made Catelyn feel self-conscious, so she began asking questions to take the focus off of her.
“So, we’ve been here for two days?”
“Yes,” Ortis said.
“I heard you both arguing about staying here.” Both Ortis and Silena looked down at the floor, and for
some reason she couldn’t fathom, again Catelyn was strangely reminded of her parents, and the way that they had often looked embarrassed when she had caught them arguing. She laughed at the absurd comparison, and they both looked at her like she was mad, but this only made her laugh all the harder.
Silena was confused, but she soon was infected by Catelyn’s mirth, and after a few breaths they were laughing together hysterically as Ortis looked on in utter confusion.
When Catelyn recovered her wits, she apologized. “Sorry, I realize I’m probably still feeling the effects of the tincture. What did you give me anyway?” she asked.
“It’s called dream nettle. I’ve used it before as a curative, but it’s rare to find any outside of the Citadel these days. Ortis has some here. He won’t say much about this place, or why he has supplies of food and medicine stashed here. This is his ‘refuge’ as he calls it.”
Catelyn looked at Ortis, and she could read the look in his eyes.
“You’ve been planning this for a long time, haven’t you?” she asked him directly.
Ortis simply nodded once, his face betraying him as he bowed his head toward the ground, seemingly in shame, though Catelyn could not read his reasons there. His silence was not enough for Catelyn, and she realized that, before she did anything else, she needed to get something out of the way before there could be any further discussion between the three of them.
“Why, Ortis? Why did you come for me?” she asked.
He looked up, tears running down both cheeks.
“So that you can kill me,” he said, without hesitation.
Catelyn felt her stomach lurch. His sincerity, and the look in his eyes, told her without any doubt that he was telling her the truth. Silena stared at him with her mouth half open, unable to find words to speak at this revelation. Catelyn curled her knees up and hugged them to her, unsure how to respond. She reached for her lucky ring, only to remember that it had been taken from her when she’d been been stripped and thrown into her cell.
She looked down and felt the indentation in her flesh and saw the strip of pale skin on her toe where it had lived for sojourns, becoming almost a part of her, and she mourned the loss of the last vestige of the old life she had led. She also missed the fact that it had always been able to help her mind to focus, to puzzle her way out of difficult problems.
Finally she admitted defeat, and said “I don’t...I don’t understand.”
Ortis simply looked at her, his eyes pleading. “You must kill me.” As he said this, he looked at her with an intensity that made her deeply uncomfortable.
Catelyn couldn’t take it anymore, and she jumped out of the chair and toward the door. She bounded into the hallway, looking for the nearest exit. She found a window in a room to her left, and crossed the sparse room to get to it. She pushed up the sash, and climbed up onto the window ledge.
She saw the Seat before her, the Citadel tower just visible in the distance to the south, and although she hadn’t been this far north before, based on several factors she could guess that she was in the North Quarter of the city, possibly even somewhere near the Forma Channel. The window she was looking out of was up about four floors, and she could see people milling about below.
A fleeting thought entered her mind that she should just jump. Just take one step out and let the pull of Ereas put an end to all of her pain forever. But as soon as she thought it, she chastised herself for the selfishness and cowardice of taking that road.
Ortis appeared at the door to the room.
“Get inside, girl, before you’re seen,” he barked.
She looked at him with disgust, and realized that she had tears of her own on her cheeks now. She expanded her bubble and pushed herself out, holding the ledge with her arms. She found hand and footholds with her senses, and proceeded to climb up to the roof. She heard Ortis scramble across the room to tr
y and reach out and grab her by the foot or the ankle, but fast as he was, she was faster.
She scrambled up to the rooftop, and sat on the mosscovered tiles, looking up at the sky. She felt a chill run down her spine as she looked out over the tops of the hundreds of buildings in the Seat, and above the Wall, to the radiant sky above. The sky was hazy, as she remembered it being during her childhood, and the color of muddy water. She hadn’t really been able to take the time, since her rescue, to simply enjoy the return of her eyesight.
She saw the disc of the sun glowing behind the wall of haze, and reveled in it. She had always loved the sun as a child, and even after losing her sight, she had enjoyed feeling its warm embrace on her skin. There was something calming, something reassuring to Catelyn that no matter how dark the world seemed to get, the sun was always there to shower the world with its light and warmth. She hoped it would illuminate the path forward for her now.
She wasn’t planning to run away from Ortis or Silena, but everything had been turned upside down or ended up going crazy over the past several days, and she needed time to clear her head and to think, especially after Ortis’ bizarre and unexpected request.
Why on Ereas does Ortis think I would ever agree to kill him? she wondered. And why does he want me to?
She had her theories of course. She could sense that Ortis was somehow changing. Whatever he had been, he seemed desperate to help her for some reason only he could understand, but it was palpable in every breath he took, and with every beat of his heart. Catelyn had begun to suppose that part of why he was helping her was that he had wanted to change his life, but she hadn’t anticipated that he simply wanted to end it.
But Catelyn couldn’t fathom his strange request. It just didn’t make sense. If he wanted to die so much, what was preventing him from carrying out the act himself, or better yet to simply turn himself into the Empire and let them do it for him? If he wanted so badly to be dead, there were any number of ways for him to accomplish that goal.
She had seen his eyes, though. There was genuine longing and sincerity in them, and she knew that this was as important to him as anything ever had been to him. His words brought up all the lives she already tallied on her conscience. She put her head in her hands and thought about the people who had already died as a result of her actions, and she also considered the man whose life she had taken directly: Jaff.
Thinking of that moment brought sick feelings to her stomach. She had not wished to dwell on the encounter with the brute in Dane Callum’s residence, knowing that she had not had any choice about whether she should have killed the man. But knowing that didn’t mean she had only good feelings about the experience. The truth was that, since that night, she had been awakened several times from nightmares where she replayed the moment when she had killed him over and over again.
Jaff’s death may have been necessary, may even have been fully justified, yet it still haunted her. She tried to imagine what his face might have looked like, but it was just a nebulous blob in her memory, the residue of what little information she’d been able to glean from her bubble. She imagined the long rust-coated nail embedded in his face, penetrating all the way through to his brain.
She had made such a point of avoiding confrontations for so long, that she felt not just guilt at having killed a man, even one who probably deserved it but a profound sense of disappointment that she had allowed herself to be backed into a corner with no other way out.
As she sat contemplating these thoughts, she watched as the sun slipped inexorably towards the horizon, as the world moved her and everyone in the Seat towards the close of another day. She knew that Ortis and Silena were likely still not agreeing on their next course of action, but Catelyn knew what she had to do. She only had the one choice, and she was going to need the help of both of them to make it happen.
She watched the sky in wonder for a while longer, and then when she was ready, she climbed down from the rooftop and slipped in through the open window. She entered the room she had run into to get to the window, and found Ortis and Silena in the same room where she had left them. They were both seated, separately and facing away from each other, unwilling to look at one another, so great was the gulf between them.
As Catelyn appeared in the room, Ortis stood, and made as though he was about to say something, but Catelyn raised a hand to silence him. He remained quiet and awaited her bidding. Silena stood as well, looking annoyed.
“Well, Catelyn. I hope that helped,” she remarked, and Catelyn could almost taste the bitterness in her words.
“I’m sorry Silena. I needed time to think. To figure out what I wanted to do. And I have,” Catelyn told her.
She looked back and forth between Ortis and Silena.
“First of all, I will be forever grateful to the both of you for getting me out of there,” she began, her voice cracking from the intensity of the emotional experiences she had been through in the past span. “I know that you both risked your lives to get me out, and I can see that working together to free me was something neither of you would have chosen if you could have helped it. You’ll never know how grateful I am for that sacrifice, and I can never repay such a debt. And I know that while this place may seem secure, we can’t remain here much longer. Or at least, I can’t remain here. My future is clear and I’ve thought about this for a while now: I need to leave the Seat.”
Catelyn paused to gauge their reactions. Ortis simply stared placidly at her, while Silena’s face was struggling to contain her disappointment and sadness. Neither of them spoke, so she continued.
“The Empire will never stop searching the Seat for me. They’ll simply punish anyone I’ve ever known, and anyone who has had any contact with me, until they get to me. Ortis, tell me if I’m wrong.”
Ortis looked at her, considering a moment before answering.
“I can’t. No one has ever dared to defy the Emperor so blatantly and lived. And now, by escaping from the Citadel, it’s not entirely clear to me what Uriel will do now. I would imagine something like this would not be soon forgotten, and all three of us would be at the top of a very short list of his enemies. But you’ve seen how the Emperor operates. He could be burning the Seat to the ground right now, looking for the three of us, as long as he believes we’re alive. The question is why hasn’t he? I have to admit, things have been...unusual the past few spans.”
That thought filled Catelyn with revulsion. Would the lives of hundreds, of thousands, be added to her conscience?
“Ortis, stop trying to scare the girl. Catelyn, we don’t know what the Emperor has been doing since your escape but we should just be thankful that the city isn’t being burned,” Silena added. “We’ve been laying low in this house ever since we arrived, but from our vantage point, it would appear that the Seat is going on as it always has. There have been no plumes on the horizon, no rioting, no waves of soldiers moving from house to house indiscriminately killing.”
“It’s unlike the Uriel I know,” Ortis admitted quietly.
“Even if it were, Ortis brought us here for a reason, and access to this place is tightly controlled. He and I do have our differences but I’ve taken a look around, and at least for a short while, I agree that we won’t need to worry about being found. He had the place fully stocked with enough food and supplies to survive for spans,” Silena informed her.
“With three of us, the rations will be depleted before then, but there’s at least a span’s worth for all of us. Longer if we ration ourselves,” Ortis said. After a pause, he looked at Catelyn and added “Even longer if you do as I asked.”
Catelyn looked at the man in return, and for the first time, she noticed that Ortis had stopped shaving, because his head was snowy along the sides, and his face was covered in a stubble of fine, white whiskers. Either he had realized that it was pointless, just another way for Uriel to exert his power over everyone, or he was truly unconcerned, and was simply waiting to die by her hand. Catelyn couldn’t look at the man,
and turned away. She didn’t want to deal with the man’s request just now, although she could tell from the look in his eyes that she wouldn’t be able to avoid it altogether.
He seemed adamant, and Catelyn wasn’t in the frame of mind to argue with him at that moment. She changed the subject back to her own situation.
“We need to work out how we’re going to get through Belkyn and open the Grand Gate.”
Ortis glowered at her, and left the room.
Catelyn looked down at her feet, feeling anger at the man.
What did he expect? she thought. That I would simply pull a knife and cut his throat here and now?
“Catelyn, give the man some time. He’s...dealing with a lot.”
Catelyn turned on her friend, directing her anger at Silena now.
“Are you defending him now? Just whispers ago, I heard you raking him over the coals yourself! I know he was instrumental in getting us out. And I am grateful to him for that. But that cannot forgive a lifetime of evil. He’s a monster! Or have you forgotten?”
Silena stood her ground and crossed the room to stand in front of Catelyn.
“I know you’re angry, but don’t you ever suggest that I could forget what that man did to me and my family.” The look in Silena’s eyes, her pain, shamed Catelyn that she had said such words in the heat of her anger.
“I’m sorry, Silena.”
Silena reached out, placed a hand on Catelyn’s shoulder and smiled.
“We’ve all been through an ordeal. And of course, it’s not easy to adjust to the reality of our new circumstances. No, I haven’t forgotten what happened to my family, but I also can never forget what Ortis did for my family now. He saved you. Those acts haven’t earned his forgiveness but it has earned him time from me. And we’ll need his help if we’re going to leave the Seat behind.”
“We?” Catelyn asked, surprised.
“You don’t think I could live the rest of my days a victim of the Emperor’s petty vendetta, do you?”
Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) Page 39
