Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth)

by Matthew Medina

  Erich and Silena gathered the girls to look for any blankets and bedding that weren’t too soiled, where they might be able to spread their own blankets down and catch some sleep. When Silena approached, Catelyn reached out and squeezed Silena’s hand.

  “There’s a body over there,” she whispered, and Catelyn angled her head to point in the direction of the tarp. “It’s just bones, but there’s some...unusual things around it. From before the Before.”

  Catelyn saw Silena’s eyes light up momentarily, the old antiquities trader in her no doubt tempted to explore the remains, but then it just as suddenly passed.

  “That’s part of my past now,” she said a little sadly. “Time for me to look ahead to a new future. Still, I’ll make sure the girls don’t go exploring over there.”

  Catelyn nodded, and Silena squeezed her arm.

  “You OK?” Silena asked warmly.

  Catelyn looked at Silena, and the two of them smiled at one another.

  “We’re close now,” Catelyn said. “In case things don’t...go well, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am at how everything has turned out.”

  “Sorry? Dear girl, what on Ereas for?”

  “Look at us, Silena. We’re on the run, our lives are in danger, and you’ve had to give up everything you had.” Catelyn felt the full weight of her shame and guilt at saying the words, and she stopped before she broke down in front of everyone.

  Silena simply looked at her, with tears shimmering in the corners of her eyes.

  “Catelyn, we’ve given up only the shell of an empty life. A lie, designed and perpetuated by this place. We’ve gained so much more since meeting you, and that is all because of you. The saddest part of all of this is that I was actually once very much more like you are now. I was outspoken, I was headstrong. And that brashness cost me my family. Oh, Ortis may have been the one to do the deed, but I was partially responsible, and I let that guilt change me, and I lost who I was. And I have carried my own share of that burden for too long.

  “You’ve done nothing but remind me that life, and freedom, are worth fighting, and yes, maybe even dying for. But I’ve got a feeling that the Divines are watching over us, and that we will get out of the Seat, and that it will be because of you. And because of Ortis.”

  Catelyn felt such a well spring of gratitude and warmth to have found such a caring and devoted friend. Her elation was marred somewhat by Silena’s invoking of Ortis’ name. Of all people, she still didn’t understand how Silena managed to not rip the man’s throat out for what he had done to her.

  “Silena, how do you go on, knowing who he is, what he did to you?”

  Silena looked from Catelyn over to where Ortis, and now Erich, were clearing away debris from a cylindrical ladder leading up to the street above. When Silena spoke, it was with the warmth and wisdom of someone who had seen and experienced much, but had hidden away her deepest feelings, keeping them safe for sojourns until they were safe to lay out in the open air once more.

  “It was when he came to me, seeking my help to get you out of the Citadel. I very nearly had Erich cut his throat on the spot, showing up at my home unannounced as he did. But as he explained his plan, and his loyalty to you became clear, I saw him for what he was. And then, as I’ve learned more about his life, I’ve seen something else. In all of this, whatever else he was, he was also a victim. He was little more than a boy just growing into a young man when he met Uriel. He became swept away by his fate, as young men do.”

  “That doesn’t excuse his actions,” Catelyn said angrily. She couldn’t believe that Silena was justifying or rationalizing for the man, and she wanted answers.

  “No, of course it doesn’t. I’m not saying that. He’s done monstrous things, and one day I believe he will pay for those mistakes. But I can also pity the man, for the circumstances of his life as well. Were his choices any more free than the choice I made to ignore my family’s deaths, and go on to continue to serve the Empire that was responsible for their murder? We have all been living in the shadow of madness for sojourns.”

  Silena trailed off, looking at Ortis as he worked, then turning and looking deep into Catelyn’s eyes.

  “He needs you to do it, when the time comes. And you will, for all of us,” she said, then turned and walked back to the girls, to get them ready to sleep for a few prayers before they moved again.

  Catelyn felt a hollowness inside her, and for the first time in a very long time, she missed the presence of her parents. Her father’s easy charm and rational mind. Her mother’s loving embrace and noble spirit. But as she thought of those things, she recognized that for the past few sojourns, she had been embodying all of those things as best she could. And she felt the pride of knowing that those qualities lived on, in her; that those parts of them endured.

  Ortis and Erich had finished clearing away the last of the debris, and Erich passed her with a smile and a nod, to get some sleep with his family before what could be their last day on Ereas. Ortis stood away from their group, looking like the pariah, and she chose not to go to him, but simply found a corner of the pumping station where the bedding did not look quite so rotten, and proceeded to fold herself up and fall fast asleep.

  Chapter 24

  Catelyn watched the open square in front of the Grand Gate from high above the street, clutching the edge of the multistory tower tightly and grinding her teeth. Her forehead throbbed, her palms were sweaty and her mind raced, trying to ascertain how everything had gone so wrong so quickly. She was on her hands and knees, peering down at the square, which should have been mostly empty at this time of night, and which instead was crowded with hundreds of Imperial soldiers.

  Catelyn’s plan had been admittedly light on alternative strategies, relying entirely on stealth and surprise to get their small group into the walled courtyard which, as Ortis had drawn it out to them in the bowels of the pumping station where they had planned this part of their goal, was only staffed with ten Imperial soldiers during the overnight shift.

  But either Ortis had vastly miscalculated, or the Emperor knew their plan. Catelyn’s immediate thought was that her suspicions about Ortis were true; that he was leading them into a trap. Days before, after Silena, Ortis and her had left his safe house to make their way separately to the warehouse at the edge of the Seat, he would have had plenty of time to stop and warn his former friends in the Imperial Army. Staring down at the full courtyard, she knew that it had to be the case, and there could be no other explanation and yet despite the logic of this conclusion, she found that she didn’t want to believe it.

  Despite his past, she had grown to trust him. He had risked everything to get her out of the hellhole where the Emperor had thrown her to die. It seemed illogical for him to have done that, to have risked so much, only to then turn around and lead her back into their hands.

  Nothing else explained this terrible development, but Catelyn couldn’t waste time dwelling on how it had happened. She needed to formulate a new plan, or abandon the plan altogether and she needed to do so with haste, before Silena, Erich and the girls came closer, for they would surely be taken and questioned.

  Catelyn ran over the possible alternatives in her head, painfully aware of just how inadequate her original plan had been, and cursing herself, and Ortis, for not seeing just how flawed it was.

  It had seemed so simple and elegant when she had laid out her plan underground, after Ortis had explained how the bailey courtyard was laid out. The Grand Gate butted up against the Walls, and was itself enclosed within a smaller walled compound, access to which was gated by four separate entries along one side of the compound. At night, these four entries were manned and secured, each behind their own portcullis while other guards patrolled within and a number of others resided in the guardhouse.

  But with the courtyard now resembling a military camp, filled with Imperial soldiers, their plan, whereby Ortis would cause a commotion at one gate, allowing Catelyn and the others to slip in through one of the o
ther gates where the portcullis was damaged and unable to close completely, was not going to work now. They wouldn’t get two paces from the courtyard with such a plan now, at least not as a group. Again, the obviousness of some sort of betrayal lay before her like a bloated corpse in the street.

  She just couldn’t believe that Ortis had betrayed them, however and she was forced to consider the idea that the Emperor had somehow anticipated this move.

  Catelyn raced over to the hatchway leading back down into one of the towers at the corner of the walled courtyard, which she had infiltrated earlier that night to scout the interior of the compound. She had to get back to Ortis before he made a move for the entryway and brought the entire Imperial Army down upon all of their heads. She reached for the metal ring along the edge of the wooden trap door and pulled slowly.

  The hinges of the hatch squealed as she pulled it open, but as before when she had ascended the tower, she pulsed her bubble and sensed no one close enough to hear. She had thought it strange before that the Imperials had not stationed any archers along the parapets of the towers or the courtyard walls, but now after seeing an entire Imperial squadron camped within the courtyard walls, she found the lack of any units atop the walls to be even more suspicious.

  The more she thought about it, the more that all of this felt like a trap closing shut around her, and she slipped down the ladder into the tower and down the spiral stone staircase, sweeping her bubble in front of her, sensing for any Imperial soldiers blocking her way. Instead of exiting through the slender lancet window on the second level where she had entered the tower after scaling the exterior wall from below, she bounded down the three stories of the tower and came to rest at the portal leading out to the courtyard.

  She needed to get to Ortis quickly, and it would have taken her too long to get back down the way that she had come up, but entering the courtyard carried its own risks.

  She focused her bubble on the door and beyond, and could barely make out the presence of a handful of guards within a few paces of the door. They sounded otherwise engaged, as soldiers were wont to be in the safety of their own camp, but she knew that their training allowed them to relax while still being vigilant for any sort of intrusion or unusual circumstance.

  Her presence would not go unnoticed for long, but she calculated that being alone, she might be able to utilize her skills to dance her way past the guards and slip under the broken portcullis before they had the chance to react. Their plan was now shot, so exploiting that weakness in the Imperial’s defense would not be giving up anything.

  She steeled her nerves, took three deep breaths, and laid her hand on the handle of the door, testing it. When she was ready, she pushed down and shouldered the door open, slowly and with her bubble racing back and forth sensing for any cry of alarm, any spike in heartbeat or sharp intake of breath that would reveal her presence having been discovered by the men nearby. She could hear the men’s conversation, and they were casually discussing details of prior operations and laughing at the suffering they had each caused. There was no alarm as she exited through the portal door, and Catelyn found herself sighing in relief.

  Once the door was open wide enough for her to slide out, she did so, pressing her back against the stone wall of the tower, hoping that her dark grey garb would sufficiently help disguise her from casual observation.

  Now that she was standing in the courtyard, just a few paces away from the nearest of the Imperial soldiers, she felt a wave of panic setting in. She worked to control her heart from thumping through her chest, and her forehead and low back felt drenched in sweat. If they caught her, she had no doubts that they would not take her into custody again. They would simply run her through, or worse, drag her into one of the tents first where men by the tens, or even hundreds, would take their pleasure before gutting her.

  She wondered how her mother had found the courage to be among such men, to allow herself to be passed around just to stay alive, and to provide some meager income for her family. But Catelyn stopped herself from dwelling on such thoughts now, with the danger to herself so close.

  She watched and listened to the men arguing about how many each of them had killed or maimed, and they seemed oblivious to her standing with her back against the wall just paces away. She edged away from the wall slightly, and they still took no notice.

  There was no cover between where she stood and the nearest of the archways leading out of the courtyard altogether. The nearest archway however was not the one with the damaged portcullis. That was the third one down from where she now stood, which would mean she would need to cross three quarters of the open courtyard, in plain view of any number of Imperial troops. But maybe they would all be as wrapped up in their own situations as the first group of soldiers were.

  She had no choice but to take the risk, and so she slowly began to walk as nonchalantly as she could towards the first archway. She kept her bubble trained to every soldier within twenty paces of her, scanning each of them quickly as she walked. She fought the desire she had to run as fast as she could for the exit, but that would certainly draw attention to her, and everything would be ruined.

  She made it to the first of the archways, and reached out to touch the metal bars of the portcullis, scanning the men nearby with all of her senses. She still saw no sort of alarm, so she moved on, staying close to the wall and making her way with purpose toward her destination. She felt an additional wave of suspicion tickling the back of her neck as she moved.

  How is it no one has noticed me? she wondered. And where are the guards at each of the entry gates?

  She didn’t stop to consider her good fortune, and simply counted herself lucky that she was able to proceed uninterrupted.

  She reached the second archway without incident, and was definitely getting the feeling that this was just too easy. Catelyn expanded her bubble by instinct, but sensed nothing out of the ordinary. The men closest to her genuinely seemed oblivious to her presence, even though she was standing mere paces away with no place to hide.

  She accelerated her pace, moving with more swiftness towards the third entryway, and as she reached the gate, she could see the portcullis wedged open, just as Ortis had described it to them the day before. There was a gap at the bottom just big enough for her to slide under, and she got down on her knees and then slid all the way down onto her belly. She squeezed her arms through first, then her head, and she felt the spiked metal scratching against her skin now, and she carefully edged forward a finger width at a time, feeling the familiar thrill of getting away beginning to coalesce inside her.

  Then, a voice, like a thundering storm, echoed out to her from deep in the courtyard, and the words shook Catelyn down to her very core.

  “Leaving so soon, Catelyn?”

  Catelyn froze. She frantically expanded her bubble, but could sense no one near, and could sense no alarm from the guards behind her, though when she listened, she could hear that they had stopped their own conversations and were trying to determine what had just happened, same as she was. When she didn’t move or respond, the voice, which had sounded eerily like that of the Emperor, continued.

  “Come, come, my dear. Surely you don’t wish to leave before saying goodbye to your friends.”

  Catelyn’s worst fears were realized in an instant. The voice was indeed that of Uriel, but it boomed and echoed off of the courtyard walls in a way that Catelyn had never heard before. But even more frightening than the reverberating voice of the Emperor were the words he had said, which she somehow knew to be true, even though she wished that they weren’t.

  He had her friends. All of her choices had just been taken away in a single instant.

  She couldn’t leave. She needed to turn around and go back for them. She edged her way back under the metal, moving faster, which resulted in her scraping a jagged cut across her upper back, but she ignored the pain and the blood and slipped out from under the portcullis. As she stood in the courtyard, she now saw the fist of Impe
rial soldiers standing paces away, staring at her and smiling evilly.

  And she knew in that moment that this had indeed been part of some elaborate ploy, but she could not fathom how the Emperor had won.

  She raised her arms in surrender, knowing that it would be futile to put up a struggle here. Not until she knew exactly what the Emperor was talking about, and she had some time to assess the situation fully.

  “Bring her to me. And do treat her nicely. She is unarmed,” the booming voice commanded.

  The Imperial soldiers nearby surrounded her, forming a wedge around her. They led her forward, towards the Grand Gate itself, and the other hundreds of soldiers parted for this small group. Catelyn felt her heart pounding, out of fear for what the Emperor had planned for her and her friends, for what he might do to them. Or worse, what he already might have done.

  How have things turned out so horribly? she thought.

  She was led through the throng of Imperial soldiers, who moved aside for her and the small group of guards accompanying her. There were hundreds of soldiers in the courtyard, and all of them were now completely focused on her as she approached the area in front of the Grand Gate where the Emperor apparently stood. She couldn’t see the man yet, and she realized as she approached that she had never seen the man with her eyes. Eyes which he himself had returned to her.

  The walk through the hundreds of Imperial soldiers encamped around the Grand Gate only took whispers, but it felt more like prayers to Catelyn, as she considered the fate of her group and their imminent deaths.

  Finally the sea of Imperial soldiers parted and she found herself staring at Uriel, the Third of His Name, looking directly into the eyes of the madman himself. She had known from her previous encounters with him, that Emperor Uriel was tall, but now that she saw him with her own eyes, it was obvious just how much he stood out among the men who surrounded him. His dark eyes burrowed into her, and she felt small and meek before him. His face was hard, but unlined by age as Silena had pointed out when she had seen him in another courtyard, what seemed a lifetime ago. The most startling fact of his appearance was the long black hair which he wore, pulled back behind his head in a braid which extended past his shoulders and down his back. He had railed at her hair, and the stink of it, and yet here he was, with hair so long it was obvious that it had remained untouched by shears for sojourns. Possibly even his entire life.