by Holly Lisle
“Kill em!” the men bellowed. “Set fire to ‘em! Burn the houses they’re sitting on!”
“Nay! They’ll only fly away—then we’ll have burned our own houses,” one voice retorted. “Bring out their brother!”
The voices rose in assent.
“Aye, bring him out! Wheel him out!”
A storage door opened, and a handful of men pulled something forward—a statue, Faia thought at first—though if it were a statue, it had been carved by a genius. There were parts of it she realized were too perfect though; the translucent wings, unfurled and arched, the delicate rilles spread around the face, the perfection of the nubby hide—those were nothing created by the hands of artists. The beast had been as much a living creature as the three who screamed in rage as the men wheeled it out—only now it was dead, stuffed and posed on a cart for display.
The three First Folk went into a frenzy, and Faia had a hard time remembering that they were thinking creatures, like her. They seemed no more than animals as they dove and shrieked and killed. Surely the men they fought believed them to be beasts, for no one would stuff and mount the skin of a dead enemy, unless he thought it a trophy.
She thought, however, that the existence of the stuffed Klaue must have been at least a part of the incitement for their enraged attack. She tried to imagine a stuffed human being rolled out into the street to taunt its fellow humans—surely humans would react much as the First Folk were reacting.
One of the First Folk flew in a high, tight circle over the alley in which Faia hid, and Faia froze. She prayed that it wouldn’t see her; it screeched and plummeted to the ground just on the other side of the corner where she hid—so close she could make out the pebble-on-a-pebble texture and iridescent sheen of its skin. She held her breath, afraid the monster might hear even that slightest of sounds, and trembled.
The Klog crouched down with its nose pointed at its stuffed kin. The collar of rilles around its neck and face stood straight out and its body went rigid except for the heaving of its mammoth rib cage. It hissed. Then the Klog thrashed the ground with its tail—the tip of that tail whipped around the corner to within merest fingerbreadths of the place where Faia hid. Faia prayed to the Lady that the monster wouldn’t note the warmth of her body the way some hunters could—and that it wouldn’t smell her fear.
The Klog rose up on its long toes, listening and looking, and twisted around to sniff the air. Faia drew back to the place where she could no longer see any part of it—and where she hoped it could see nothing of her. She knew then, with horrible certainty, that it did sense her presence, even if it hadn’t pinpointed her location yet. She clenched her hands into tight fists, while her heart thudded in her chest so loudly she was certain its pounding would be audible over the sounds of fighting.
Suddenly one of the other First Folk howled.
The monster beside Faia roared and lunged forward, launching itself into the air with a thunderous flapping of wings, throwing itself back into the fight. Faia breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“Enjoy that breath,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear, “because unless you do exactly what I tell you to, it’s going to be your last.”
The cold, sharp edge of a knife pressed against the pulse point at her throat; she felt a flash of fire as the blade broke the skin. A rough hand yanked one of her arms behind her and up between her shoulder blades, pulling so tightly her shoulder became a blazing point of pain.
“One noise and you die—understand?”
She nodded, silent, wishing she could think of a way to escape. The man’s voice was unmistakable, unforgettable. Thirk! He was the man on the stairs; he had followed her through the streets, had managed to locate the alley into which she’d run—but how could he have? She’d felt his magic, the magic of the chalice, ahead of her—she’d been following that magic. Had he doubled around? He must have. Somehow he had found her out and had used the magic of the chalice to come after her.
Thirk twisted her arm tighter, so that she had to rise on her toes. She closed her eyes and hissed; agony pulsed red behind her eyelids. The metal of the knife was both hot and cold against her throat.
“This is your fault,” he whispered in her ear. In the background, she could hear the screams as one of the Klaue caught a man and carried him, screaming, into the air; it dropped him from a great height down onto his comrades. Faia shuddered at the sound of his dying—she could think of herself making that same terrifying wail… and the same sickening thud.
“I ought to throw you out where they can see you,” Thirk continued. “You’ve killed this world, and everything all of us held dear. You really ought to die in their claws. It would be appropriate if those evil animals killed you. You’re the one who let them in.”
Faia whispered, “You’re the one who can fix it. Why haven’t you?”
The knife tightened against her throat, nicking into the flesh again, and she cut off her protest.
Thirk dragged her further into the alley, where the overhang of the houses muffled the sounds of the fight in the square. “I ought to kill you,” he said. “But unless you try to fight me, I’m not going to. Not yet, anyway. I want you to do something for me.” He chuckled. Faia’s stomach flipped at that sound.
“What?” she whispered.
“You’re going to be my bait—so that the one who has it will have to bring it to me.”
“Has what?” Faia was genuinely confused.
“The magic, stupid girl. The magic. The only thing that matters now. I’ve felt it—I know it’s out there. But you don’t have it, so one of them does.”
“You have the chalice.”
He laughed. “Don’t try to fool me again. Edrouss Delmuirie made me think the chalice was the key, but I know better now.”
“We followed you through the mountains—”
He slapped her then, hard. “Stupid girl! Why would you tell such an idiot lie? I followed you! I felt the magic ahead of me, and I followed you—though it near cost me my life.” He stiffened his grip at her throat with his knife hand and dropped her wrist long enough to hold his left hand in front of her. The first and second fingers were nothing but stubs. “It did cost me these—frostbite. Some toes, too. I note that you came through unscathed.”
He pulled the maimed hand out of her line of sight and caught her wrist again, and tugged it up between her shoulders.
“You don’t matter, though,” he told her. “I thought you did, at first. But I checked when I came into the camp. I felt for the magic—and it wasn’t with you. It wasn’t with any of you, nor in your packs. It was ahead. Still ahead. Now I know—the one that will come after you is the one that matters. So you’re going to walk ahead of me, and you’re going to walk slowly, so I don’t have to cut your throat open. You understand?”
Faia nodded.
“Good. We’re going to a place I know.”
He marched her down the alley, then out into a busy street where people glanced at the two of them with curious eyes. A man looked to Thirk, and his eyebrows rose.
“Looter,” Thirk said “Caught her in my shop.”
The man nodded, and his eyes, when they looked to Faia, were full of hatred. “They’ll flay ‘er.”
“Sure will.” Thirk chuckled. “Taking her to the square now.”
“Come t’ watch if I could,” the man said “Ain’t got time.”
“There’ll be more.”
“S’truth,” the stranger said, his voice fall of sad agreement and turned away.
“They’ve had some trouble with looters,” Thirk said softly. “Shops that depended on magical defenses were robbed the instant the town’s criminals realized those defenses were gone. The esteemed Bontonard watch hasn’t been able to keep up with all the looters and fight off the First Folk—” He chuckled softly. “So the good people of Bonton are taking care of the criminals themselves.”
Faia shivered; justice had died within the city. No one would help her while Thirk spoke again
st her.
“You don’t want to do anything to call attention to yourself,” he murmured. “Truly you do not. You cannot begin to imagine the horrible ways I can make you die.”
Faia considered Thirk, and decided she didn’t want to give him an excuse to hurt her any worse. He would, she thought, and he would enjoy it. She made herself stay as quiet and meek as she could, and watched for an opportunity to escape. He never gave her one.
They arrived, mostly through alleys and backways, at a grubby, heavily reinforced back door set into a windowless wall in a dark, narrow cul-de-sac. The sign over the door said, in a handful of languages, “Rooms, Cheap—Inquire Within. Jarel Ronivet—Innkeep.”
Faia imagined the rooms would be filthy, rat-infested, dank, and stinking—
“Let me go,” she told Thirk. “I’ll do what I can to help—”
Sudden, shocking pain flared at the base of her skull, and light exploded from everywhere around her, and the sound of a nonexistent sea roared in her ears. She heard herself cry out, and felt herself fall forward.
And the world went dark.
Chapter 24
WHAT?
Pain—
The taste of old blood and vomit Throbbing pain. Stench rising from somewhere nearby…
Under that the mold-and-punk odor of rotting wood, more smells… mildew, dirt, unwashed cloth, unwashed bodies.
More pain—
What?
Memory took tenebrous shape, flitted away.
Slight movement, terrible pain…
And overwhelming blackness.
Chapter 25
FAIA woke feeling sick and weak, with her eyes gummed shut and a horrible taste in her mouth. She had vague memories of waking before, but no memories of the events that had brought her to this place of pain and darkness. She was facedown on damp, hard-packed earth. The air around her stank of old urine and decay. She could hear footsteps on wooden flooring above her.
The back of her head throbbed in rhythm with her heart. Her shoulders ached, her wrists ached, her knees ached, her ankles ached. She struggled to a kneeling position; both her ankles and her wrists were bound. Faia Kept her movements as quiet as she could—she heard footsteps on the ceiling, and the dull murmur of voices.
Where am I?
She moved her wrists against each other, trying to loosen the bonds. The ropes rubbed her flesh raw, and her hands were already so swollen and numb she wasn’t sure she’d be able to use them to help herself even if she worked them free.
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts—but that only made the pain worse.
The murmuring grew louder, and she heard heavy footsteps coming down wooden stairs. Through the wall, she heard voices.
She froze, listening.
“—naaaa. She hasn’t moved the whole time. Y’ might want to check on ‘er—I know she’s breathin’ now, but if she’s dyin’, I don’t want ‘er in my place. The lairdlaw has been lively hereabouts since the Woes began.”
“They check your cellars?”
“Aye. And my attics, and my closets. I suspect they’d check my britches if they thought I could hide a sick’un there. Innkeeps hereabouts were takin’ in the injured and sick followin’ the Woes—”
“For charity?” Thirk sounded astonished.
“’Course not. For pay—families paid good money to keep their people from sleepin’ on the street, or in the sick wards. Few of the families didn’t visit regular—the ‘keeps took care of the sicks, but sometimes forgot to let their families know of the ones who died.”
“Of course. And the fact that the families kept paying made the innkeeps forget those deaths.”
The other man laughed “Poor fellows—you can’t expect busy men to remember everything. Especially since they get stuck with a death tax and a body removal tax if they remember. Better to keep the bodies in the basement until y’ can smuggle ‘em out, fee the families, and save the taxes. ‘Course, the lairdsmen don’t like that at all.”
“No—they wouldn’t. I don’t think she’ll die, though—and I’ll keep paying room-rate for the use of your cellar until I find the rest of what she stole from my shop. I’ve had some luck—I have an idea now of where she hid it.” Thirk’s voice sounded pleased. “And I’ll take her to the square to be flayed when I’m sure I’ve got the last.”
“Had a hard time makin’ ‘er talk?”
“She’s a stubborn bitch.”
They were just outside the door. Faia could hear their voices clearly. She didn’t want them to know she’d awakened; she leaned to one side and tried to roll from her hip to her shoulder quietly, to drop to the floor so she could fake unconsciousness. With her hands and her feet bound, she couldn’t control her fall; she toppled too fast, and in the wrong direction—she hit her head against something hard when she did, and whatever that was thudded solidly against something else and bonged. The fall brought the pain in her skull from merely terrible up to truly dreadful, but she was more concerned about the noise she’d made. Maybe, she prayed, Thirk and the innkeeper hadn’t heard.
The voices outside the room stopped. She heard the rattle of a key against lockpins, and the lifting of a latch. She lay very still with her eyes closed, and worked to keep her breathing deep and regular.
A door near her head creaked open, and she could see flickers of light through her eyelids.
“She’s moved,” the innkeeper said.
“Of course she has, friend Jarel. I know you’re awake, thief.” Thirk’s voice was cold, yet Faia could discern an undertone of pleasure—or perhaps amusement—in it. “You need not pretend otherwise. You might as well sit up so we can discuss what happens now.” He waited a moment.
Faia didn’t give any indication that she’d heard him.
“Or I can hurt you.”
Faia considered that for only an instant. He would enjoy hurting her. She sat up.
Thirk sat on the broken frame of an old bedstead, staring down at her. He’d placed his lantern on the floor, and his face, illuminated from beneath, looked demonic in the dark room. He turned to the innkeep. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to… talk… to her alone for a few moments.”
The keep’s teeth flashed. “Mind what I said about dead bodies.”
Thirk nodded. “I want to keep her alive a bit longer, anyway.” The keep, with a slow smile, backed out of the room.
“I’ve sent a message to your people,” Thirk said. His eyes glittered in the candlelight; that glittering was an unpleasant effect that made him look like a serpent.
Faia kept still, and concentrated on breathing slowly. She didn’t want to give Thirk any excuse to hurt her more. She didn’t think the keep would be inclined to believe anything she had to say in her own defense. And she doubted that Jarel Ronivet would be distressed if Thirk did kill her, no matter what he had said. The man hadn’t sounded in the least uncomfortable about the idea of charging rent to the unsuspecting families of dead men, though he didn’t sound like he wanted to get caught.
“I just thought you’d like to know we’ll have this resolved soon.” Thirk chuckled. “Or if we don’t, I’ll see you hang.”
“I don’t have anything you want.”
He nodded and smiled. “I’ve come to believe that. I’ve come to suspect you even believed everything you told me this morning. You don’t matter, though, you see—except as bait. One of the men who traveled with you has what I want, and whoever that is, he’ll be along to get you soon.”
“What if he isn’t?”
Thirk laughed softly. “The same thing will happen to you if he doesn’t come as if he does, dear girl. You’ll die. I need you alive long enough for him to find you, and he’ll have to use magic to do it. Once I feel the magic and know he’s on his way, you become merely the first of a number of people with whom I have a score to settle.”
“What do you want, Thirk?” Faia asked.
“I want to be a god.” He stood to leave, and smiled down at her. “W
hen Arhel’s magic is mine alone, I will be.”
He strolled out, taking his lantern, and closed the door behind him. She heard the bar drop into place with a depressingly solid thud. If she had harbored some hope before that someone might be able to reason with Thirk, she didn’t have that hope any longer. The saje was crazy.
Obsessed, too. Faia tried to imagine Arhel if Thirk alone controlled its magic. She didn’t like her thoughts.
Then she considered her own situation. Maybe this was the destiny her mother’s ghost had hinted at—to stop Thirk. Perhaps she, and only she, could prevent him from becoming the god he wished to be. If that were the case, there had to be a way out of the cellar—a way to freedom.
Destiny couldn’t be stopped by stone walls or iron-barred doors.
She hoped.
Chapter 26
FAIA felt the rope around her wrists loosen at last. She worked first one hand, then the other, free of the coils. For perhaps a minute, they remained numb. Then pain flooded into her hands and fingertips, pain so searing she wanted to scream. She cradled her useless hands against her chest and briefly cried.
Pressure eased the pain somewhat—so did friction. She rubbed the hands together, hating the way her wooden fingers refused to move when she willed them to, and hating the flaring pain that streamed up from her wrists to her elbows and shoulders. An old woodcutter in Bright whom she had known well when she was a child, had been pinned beneath a tree as it fell. The village men found him later, and cut the tree away, and took him back to Bright. Her mother—then the village healer—had soaked his hand and wrapped it and tried to massage the life back into it. The hand died anyway—one of the villagers had hacked it off with the woodcutter’s own axe. The crude surgery hadn’t been soon enough or complete enough to make a difference, however. The woodcutter had died not too long after.
Faia rubbed her own still-lifeless hands together and wondered if the same outcome awaited her.
